CogNote vs Duet Partner

CogNote is an open-source studio management suite for private music teachers, combining lesson scheduling, attendance, family communication, student progress tracking, quizzes, and flashcards. Teachers can schedule recurring weekly lessons and record attendance with one tap; cancellation windows, banked credits, and credit expiry are configurable studio settings. Families can use a private link to see schedules, practice links, and notes without logging in, and teachers can email lesson notes. Progress views include skill radar charts, trend lines, attendance, and per-note quiz analytics. Students can start practice from a link without an account, using note and symbol quizzes with instant feedback or SM-2 spaced-repetition flashcards. Notation appears on a staff with clefs, key signatures, and more than 40 musical symbols. CogNote is MIT-licensed, supports data export, and can be self-hosted. Hosted Free has soft caps of five active students, five practice lessons, and five sheet music items; Hosted Pro costs $5 a month and includes a 30-day trial for new accounts. Self-hosting is free but requires running the stack, including Docker or Supabase, email, and backups.

Duet Partner provides studio management tools for music teachers to schedule students, collect payments, report activities, and manage business operations. Its Season Smart Scheduler gathers families’ preferred lesson times and drafts a schedule based on teacher availability and priorities. The calendar handles recurring lessons, changes, cancellations, reminders, and attendance. Student records include profiles and sibling family groupings, with bulk email and text messaging and email templates. Duet sends studio-family information by text, with email as a backup; parents and students do not need Duet accounts. Teachers can collect credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH bank transfer payments through Stripe. Duet runs on Android, iOS, and the web. The monthly plan costs $9 a month, while the annual plan costs $99 a year; both include all features and charge a 1% transaction fee on family digital payments. There is no free plan, but a 30-day trial is available. The service currently supports access for a single teacher and does not provide a free studio website builder or an online studio and music-optimized video-conferencing platform.