Gym membership software for a small independent gym

A big chain has a head office, turnstiles and an app with your logo. A 300-member independent gym, a CrossFit box, a boxing club or a Pilates studio has the owner, a couple of coaches and a lot of things to remember. The software has one job: take that memory off the owner’s shoulders.

Every morning, the first page should answer: who is active, whose membership ends this month, who hasn’t paid, and how full are today’s classes? If a system can’t answer those four in one glance, the rest of its features don’t matter much.

Separate the person from the plan. A member is a person with contact details, an emergency contact, a health questionnaire and a history. A membership is what they’ve bought: monthly unlimited, off-peak, a ten-class pack, a student rate, a corporate deal. People switch plans, freeze for injuries and come back after a year; the history should survive all of it.

• membership types with price, duration or number of sessions;
• start date, renewal or end date, and status (active, frozen, lapsed, cancelled);
• sessions remaining for packs, calculated automatically from check-ins;
• freezes with start and end dates;
• notes from coaches: injuries to work around, goals, personal bests.

Lapsed members are your cheapest source of new members. A list of people whose membership ended in the last three months, with a friendly email offer, often brings back more people than a leaflet drop.

Most gyms ask new members to complete a health questionnaire (often based on PAR-Q) and sign terms covering risk and the gym rules. Keep the date it was completed and flag members whose form is missing or old.

If you run classes, you need a timetable with capacity: twelve bikes, eight reformers, twenty spaces in the circuit class. Members book, the system stops at the limit and offers a waiting list, and late cancellations can count against a pack if that’s your policy.

Check-ins are what make the numbers honest. Whether it’s a tablet at reception, a QR code or a coach ticking names on a phone, every visit should be recorded. That’s how you know who is really using their membership, which classes are worth keeping and which members are drifting away before they cancel.

Most UK gyms collect monthly memberships by Direct Debit (through providers such as GoCardless, Ashbourne or Harlands) or by recurring card payments (often through Stripe). Packs and drop-ins are usually paid by card at the desk or online.

Some gym platforms handle payments themselves and take a percentage; others connect to your payment provider. Either way, the membership software should show clearly who has paid this month, whose payment failed, and who is in arrears, so you can have the awkward conversation early.

In many independent gyms, personal training is where the margin is. Sessions are often sold in blocks (ten sessions for £350, say), coaches may be employed or self-employed and renting space, and every coach has their own diary. If this lives on WhatsApp and in coaches’ heads, sessions go unrecorded and packs never seem to run out.

• a diary per coach, so members and the front desk see real availability;
• PT packs with sessions remaining worked out from completed sessions, not typed in;
• session notes: what was trained, weights, how the member felt;
• who sold the pack and, if coaches are paid by session, a monthly summary per coach;
• an expiry date on packs, if that’s your policy, and a reminder before it arrives.

If coaches are self-employed and rent space from you, agree in writing who “owns” the client relationship and the data. It matters when a coach leaves and wants to take their client list with them.

Specialist gym and studio software in the UK, including names such as TeamUp, Glofox, Mindbody, Gymdesk and ClubRight, typically costs from around £70 to £250 a month for a small site, with some pricing based on the number of active members. Add payment-processing fees, any branded app and setup or migration fees.

For a gym with 250 members paying £40 a month, software at £150 a month is around 1.5% of revenue. It’s worth it if it saves hours of admin and stops a few members slipping away; it’s not if you only use a fraction of it.

Yes, and it makes sense when your gym doesn’t fit the template: a climbing wall with route setting, a martial arts club with gradings and belts, a physio-led studio with treatment notes. With Plannify you describe it (“members, memberships due for renewal, health forms and check-ins”) and a team of AI agents builds the software in front of you, with the words of your gym.

You get member records, membership types with renewals and sessions remaining calculated, a timetable with capacity, check-ins, lapsed members on a list, roles so coaches see what they need and nothing more, and automations such as an email a week before a membership ends. You can also build a separate app for members to book classes.