Booking software for creators running workshops and classes

Last checked 18 September 2026

A creator selling workshops loses the sale in the enquiry. The DM asking whether Saturday is beginner friendly arrives at 11pm, gets answered at 9am, and by then she has booked with somebody else. Thrivia is India's booking and ticketing platform for tour operators, trek leaders, and retreat & fest hosts to sell tickets, take bookings, and manage guests. For a creator that means a bookable page per workshop or batch with UPI and card checkout, and, once the accounts are connected, inbound Instagram DMs, Instagram story replies and WhatsApp messages to your own number landing as leads in one pipeline instead of three apps. The inbox and the pipeline are part of the subscription; only the AI agent that answers routine questions for you is a paid add-on. Instagram never hands over a phone number, so on that channel the number only exists if the person types it.

The enquiry is the product

A pottery studio running two weekend workshops a month is not fighting for reach. The reel did fine. What happens is that nine people reply to the story asking about dates, three of them ask the same question about whether it suits beginners, and you answer them between classes over two days. Two have already booked elsewhere by then, one asks again a week later because she never saw your reply under the other notifications, and you have no idea any of this happened because there is nothing to look at afterwards.

A better link in your bio does not fix that. The enquiry has to become a record rather than a notification.

What lands in the inbox, and where it comes from

An enquiry arriving on any of these opens or updates a lead in one pipeline, and a reply you send goes back out on the channel it came in on. The two chat channels need the account connected first; the rest work without that:

• An Instagram DM to your own professional account.
• A reply to your Instagram story. Recorded as its own source rather than as a cold DM, with its own filter in the pipeline, so you can work the people who replied to the story you posted forty minutes ago first. Nothing ranks a story reply above a DM on its own; it only gives you a filter.
• A WhatsApp message to your own connected number. Not a click on a chat button, an actual inbound message.
• A Meta lead ad form submitted on your connected Facebook Page, if you run paid.
• A form on your own website, through the website form connector.
• Behaviour on your own Thrivia page, such as somebody reaching the custom-questions step of checkout, or generating several page events in a week, which opens a lead nobody asked for. Worth reading differently from the rest, because that person did not message you and is not waiting for a reply.

Instagram never gives you a phone number

WhatsApp and Instagram look like the same job, and one difference between them decides how you work.

On WhatsApp, the channel identity is the phone number. Somebody messages you and you have a number, authoritatively, without asking. On Instagram you have a handle and nothing else. Meta does not hand over an email or a phone number with a DM, ever. So the only way a phone number exists against an Instagram lead is that the person typed it into the conversation, and that means somebody has to ask for it before the conversation goes cold.

This is why Instagram-first creators lose people that WhatsApp-first businesses do not. The interested person from six weeks ago is unreachable outside the app, and if she never replies to your DM again, there is no follow-up that exists. Ask for the number early, at the point the person is asking about dates rather than after they have gone quiet, and a captured number never overwrites a better one you already had on that lead.

Workshops that repeat, and workshops that do not

Two shapes cover almost every creator business. One is a one-off, a single dated event with a seat count. The other is a thing that repeats, one page carrying every dated batch, each with its own seats and price, so the 12 October batch filling does not close 26 October. A six-week beginners course sold as one purchase is the second shape with a single batch and six sessions in the itinerary, not six events.

Early-bird, member and bring-a-friend rates are separate ticket tiers on the same batch, each with its own count, so the discount stops when you said it would rather than when you remember.

Payments run through the payment gateway, or through manual UPI, where the customer uploads a payment screenshot that waits in a verify queue until you accept or reject it. For a ₹1,800 workshop that is most of your bookings, because people pay from a UPI app and send the screenshot regardless of what your checkout says. Collecting UPI payments for events covers that path properly, and what to put behind your link in bio covers the page itself.

The three apps and the notes app you use now

The current setup is Instagram for enquiries, WhatsApp for the serious ones, a Google Form or a notes-app list for who is coming, and a UPI QR posted into the chat. It is free, it is fast to set up, and for one workshop a month with twelve seats it genuinely works. What breaks is that none of the four know about each other, so the same person is a DM, a phone number and a row in a list with no link between them.

Moving costs an evening: putting the two workshops up with real dates and seat counts, and connecting the Instagram account if you want the inbox. Once the enquiries are a list, the ones nobody answered are countable for the first time.

What it costs

Thrivia is a monthly subscription with an included booking allowance, not a commission per booking. Plans start at ₹2,999 a month plus 18% GST at the entry rung and rise with bookings and admin seats, with better effective rates on six-month and annual terms. The AI DM add-on is priced separately. Payment gateway charges are separate again. The live catalogue is on pricing, and that page is the one to trust.

Be honest with yourself about the arithmetic at your size. Two workshops a month of twelve seats at ₹1,800 is about ₹43,000 of bookings. A flat monthly fee is a real share of that, and if enquiries are not what you are losing money on, this is not yet the right purchase. The arithmetic changes when you are running weekly, when two people answer DMs, or when you can name three people this quarter who asked and never heard back.

When Thrivia is the wrong choice

• You want to market by email, or build keyword flows. There is no email channel at all, and no flow builder. WhatsApp re-engagement sequences do exist behind the AI DM add-on: a filtered audience of your own leads, up to ten Meta-approved template messages spaced in hours. What is missing is the visual flow builder and the keyword triggers those tools are bought for.
• You sell digital products or memberships rather than dated sessions. Everything here is built around a thing happening on a date with a seat count.
• You need to price in dollars or euros. Every amount is priced in rupees, whatever card pays it.
• You need recurring availability against a working week, the way a salon or a one-to-one coach books. A workshop carries dated batches, and a day can carry named time slots with their own capacity, but nothing generates bookable slots from opening hours.
• You depend on Zapier, a public API, or a calendar sync. None of those exist.