Switching guide
LilYPad alternative: what switching actually involves
LilYPad is a decent fit for a small indoor playground and plenty of operators like it. This page is for the ones who’ve hit its edges — the Saturday with nobody to call, the per-seat bill, the booking boxes on their own website — and want to know what leaving costs before they start.
Still choosing between the two? Read the feature-by-feature comparison instead.
The cost of staying
What another year on LilYPad costs you.
Priced per seat
A third-party listing publishes $99 per user per month, so each front-desk login you add raises the bill. Omni-Play is one flat rate for unlimited devices and staff. At one or two seats LilYPad is cheaper; the lines cross as the desk grows.
The busiest shift is the unsupported one
Reviewers note LilYPad’s support isn’t available on weekends. A play venue earns its week on Saturday, so that’s the shift where a stuck register costs the most. Omni-Play answers seven days.
Online booking is a bolt-on
Round-the-clock party booking arrives as a separate module embedded in your site as boxes reviewers call dated, and its price isn’t published. Omni-Play’s deposit-backed wizard is core to the platform; guest self-booking runs through our Integration Partner API and is in early access, so ask where it stands before you count on it.
Your data
What comes across, and what you rebuild.
The converter has rebuilt a working venue’s full history straight from an Aluvii export, and the money reconciles to that export’s own grand total.
Comes across from LilYPad
- Guest households
- A guardian, their children, and a second guardian, rebuilt as one household per family.
- Sales history
- Every transaction with its tenders, split payments, and refunds — so last year still reports.
- Membership charges
- Your membership roster and the charge history behind it.
- Parties and events
- Head counts, party dates, and the day each booking was actually taken.
- Product catalog
- Mapped name by name against your export. An unmapped name stops the run rather than guessing.
- Promo codes
- The codes you already run, with the usage they already have.
Set up fresh in Omni-Play
- The QuickBooks link
- LilYPad integrates with QuickBooks and Omni-Play doesn’t. Reports export as CSV for your bookkeeper to import — a real step down if that link is doing work today.
- Wristband colors
- LilYPad tracks timed sessions with colored paper wristbands. Omni-Play tracks the same guests on a will-call board with live occupancy, so the workflow changes even though the outcome is the same.
- Taxes and fees
- Omni-Play's own tax stack is authoritative, so you configure taxes here instead of importing them.
- Deposit and cancellation policy
- You write the rule once — forfeit, refund, or store credit — and the engine runs it on every cancel.
- Signed waivers
- Old waivers stay where they are. Guests sign an Omni-Play waiver on their next visit, or ahead of it by link.
- Cards on file
- Membership billing runs through Stripe, so each member’s card is captured again — at the desk, or by the member on their own guest page.
- Staff accounts
- Roles and permissions are built fresh. Staff get an emailed invite and set their own password.
The cutover
How long you're exposed, honestly.
The conversion runs offline against exports, so LilYPad keeps taking payments the whole time. There is no window where neither system can ring a sale.
-
Before you switch
You keep trading on LilYPad
You send the exports, we convert them offline and reconcile the totals against your own file. Nothing about that reaches your live register, so there’s no rush and no risk in starting.
-
Setup
The desk workflow is the real work
Loading the data is the easy half. The half that matters is sitting with your staff to rebuild how a Saturday runs — sessions, capacity, the will-call board — so nobody meets it for the first time during a rush.
-
Go-live day
Pick a quiet weekday
LilYPad is untouched by the conversion and keeps running until you stop it. Go live midweek, not Saturday, and you have four low days to find the rough edges.
-
Your first weekend
The difference you switched for
This is the shift the whole decision was about. Support runs seven days, so when something goes sideways at eleven on a Saturday there’s someone to call.
Read this before you move
Stay on LilYPad if any of this is true.
We'd rather lose the deal than sell you a downgrade. Each of these is something LilYPad does that Omni-Play doesn't.
Weekdays are enough and you like their support
Reviewers praise LilYPad’s responsiveness and the pace of new features. If you’ve never needed help on a Saturday, that’s a real relationship to give up for a problem you don’t have.
Your books run on the QuickBooks link
LilYPad integrates with QuickBooks; Omni-Play exports CSV instead. If that link saves your bookkeeper a day a month, price the loss before you move.
You run one or two logins
Per-seat pricing is only a problem when there are seats. At a single user, LilYPad’s published $99 sits below Omni-Play’s $149, and the math doesn’t turn until the desk grows.
Switching questions
What operators ask before leaving LilYPad.
- Can I move my data off LilYPad into Omni-Play?
- Yes, from your exports. Guest households, sales with tenders and refunds, membership charges, bookings, products, and promo codes convert across, and the money reconciles against the export you gave us. Taxes, deposit rules, waivers, cards on file, and staff accounts are set up fresh.
- What replaces the colored wristbands?
- A will-call board. The day’s admissions sit on an expected, here, departed lifecycle with a one-tap check-in, and live occupancy counts only the guests who are actually inside. Staff read a screen instead of scanning the room for a color, which is a change in habit as much as in software.
- Do I lose the QuickBooks integration?
- Yes. Omni-Play has no QuickBooks integration; its reports export as CSV for import instead. If that link is carrying real weight in your bookkeeping, weigh it honestly — it’s a reason some venues should stay where they are.
- When should I go live?
- Midweek. LilYPad keeps running until you stop it, so pick a quiet Tuesday or Wednesday and give yourself four low-traffic days to find the rough edges before the first Saturday.
Book a demo
Bring us your LilYPad export.
We'll convert it, reconcile it against your own totals, and show you the result before you commit to a date.