Duet Partner vs Nova Music

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.

Nova Music is a studio management platform for music teachers, combining lesson scheduling, student records, billing, family messaging, and practice tracking. Teachers can schedule recurring lessons, view multiple calendars, detect conflicts, and manage availability; Pro adds makeup credit tracking. A PIN-based student portal lets students see upcoming lessons, submit assignments, track progress, access shared resources, and message their teacher. Practice tools include daily logs, streaks, goals, points, levels, and achievement milestones. The Free plan supports up to 10 students and includes scheduling, group lessons, basic attendance, direct messaging, a student portal, and 100 MB of file storage. Pro costs $10 a month, supports unlimited students, and includes invoicing, Stripe payments, calendar sync, and 5 GB of storage. The features page also lists cash, check, card, and Venmo as payment methods. Nova is available on iOS and the web; the iPhone app requires iOS 17.0 or later. The maker describes it as built for piano teachers, guitar instructors, voice coaches, and private studios.