Gym in Charlotte, NC been open since 2010.

We currently use Mindbody for payments and contracts and forms, we use TrainHeroic for programming, and I am in BLG (Big Little Gyms) marketing group they take care of our website and we use their backend CRM for leads and booking intros.

Mindbody absolutely sucks and we have wanted to get out of it for years. MB is costing us close to $600 a month between the $255 subscription and processing.

We LOVE Trainheroic. We use it for our powerlifters, weightlifters, custom program people, and for our classes. And I have a dozen or so standalone programs for sale on the marketplace.

We are looking for software that will do it all. The problem is most do one thing better than the other. Curious what everyone is using for software. ********Just a heads up, if you pitch me your janky software you used Claudecode to create a month ago I am going to downvote your comment and may report it to be deleted...I am looking for established software!*********

I have looked at PushPress, Wodify, Chalk it Pro, and Gym Desk. They all have their pros and cons.

BLG is pushing everyone to Chalk it Pro, and I have looked at all their demos and I don't really like it. The pricing is good, and they use stripe for processing. But I don't like their programming side.

My issue with the others is that we are not crossfit, we do a bit of crossfit adjacent workouts, and we are a HYROX affiliate, but I don't love how so many of these softwares are tailored to crossfit. I get it, crossfit dominated the fitness space for so long and that is who used these softwares but that is not us. We also offer just open gym, and we need to be able to check people in with a self checkin for both classes and open gym and all of the powerlifters and weightlifters who come in at all hours. All of the class based softwares seem to just checkin people for classes.

Looking at Gym Desk, they are basically just processing. Do we stick with this setup, one program for processing and one for programming (TrainHeroic)? Or do we try an integrated software? We are losing money and that upsets me.

Also, if anyone has been in BLG and left for another group please chime in! The group is great, their service is great, I have nothing bad to say and when I need help or have questions I always get help, but I simply do not use the coaching/marketing side of the group and I know I should but I don't, they handle our website and CRM. BLG does have an option to do just the website and CRM without the coaching and marketing and I am considering that too, would take us from $500 month to $350 month.

Thanks for any help!

We switched our gym to Mariana Tek in March, so I'm trying to work out whether this week has just been unusually bad or id this level of downtime is something we should expect.

We've experienced two major outages in the last 72 hours, and today's outage caused a real mess at the gym.

Members couldn't book or cancel classes, waitlists weren't updating, and staff couldn't access rosters for check-in. the most frustrating part is that the members don't see the software having an outage. They just see our gym not functioning properly.

For anyone who has used Mariana Tek longer, is this type of downtime normal, or has this week been an anomaly?

I am building a posing room at my fitness studio. The room is 10 x16, the 12 foot ceilings are concrete. I am installing 8 foot long vertical mirrors on each of the long walls, mounted two feet off the floor. Above one of the mirrors, I am installing a second mirror, 8 foot long by 3 feet high whose angle can be adjusted from 15-30 degrees. I am unsure about the lighting set up I need. I know I need tight light beams like 15-25 degrees each, 90+ CRI, and 4000K. I don't know how many lumens . I know I will do track lighting, since I cant do recessed lighting with the concrete ceiling. I'm not sure if the track lights will be too high, at 12 feet, or if I should suspend them down to the 10 foot level. I also don't know how far in front of the mirror I should place them or how many lights I should hang on the track. Any advice would be appreciated. I'd like to buy this stuff at Home Depot if possible.

Hey all,

I'm currently a personal trainer (although not licensed- working on it) I also have years of sales experience and digital marketing experience- so my strong skills seem to be something owners may be lacking or looking for support in.

I'd love to find a gym owner to pair up with so we can help each other grow towards our mutual visions.

My personal goal is to run a personal training studio focused on my niche, and build reoccurring classes.

I'm looking to match with someone in NYC- but open to anyone interested in collaborating over message

I built this, so I'd genuinely love your thoughts, whether good or bad.

It's called FitRite. The idea was simple: put everything a gym needs into one dashboard instead of juggling a booking app, payment software, spreadsheets, lead software and outdated management systems.

Here's what it does:

• Members and recurring payments (everything goes through your own Stripe account—we don't take a percentage of your membership revenue).
• Class and PT scheduling with a public booking page, so people can book without creating an account first.
• QR check-ins, where members simply show a pass on their phone at reception.
• Lead management with instant replies to new enquiries. If a non-member books onto a class, they're automatically tracked as a lead, so you can follow up instead of losing them. The AI assistant can also remind you about people who haven't converted or help draft follow-up messages.
• Till and stock management for reception sales like drinks, supplements and merchandise.
• Hosted join, booking and enquiry pages if you don't already have a website.
• An AI assistant that's built into your business instead of being a separate chatbot. Rather than exporting spreadsheets or copying information into ChatGPT, it already understands your gym's data. You can also give it access to your own Fitrite cloud storage so it can answer questions using your documents as well. It can analyse your business, draft emails and prepare actions, but anything involving payments or other sensitive actions is always queued for your approval—it never acts on its own.

Whether you run one gym or multiple locations, everything is managed from the same login.

There's a live demo if you want to click around:
app.fitrite-ai.com/demo

Website:
https://fitrite-ai.com

We're actively selling this, but we're also building it around what gym owners actually need. If you run a gym, I'd genuinely like to know where you'd think this falls short, what features you'd expect that aren't here, or what would stop you from switching from your current setup.

https://preview.redd.it/oefrdlkb9vah1.png?width=2158&format=png&auto=webp&s=33bc5468b448baa7d2fbb848a6f079b1a10d6b88

To all the fellow gym owners, i have one question how do you manage marketing? How to increase walk-ins ? What strategy do you follow? Do you have a dedicated team for that?

Please help a gym owner 🙏🏻

I have a settled plan to open my own pilates studio in the coming months. Was thinking an idea to have a dedicated men only pilates session with the surge of interest in this field. Any thoughts? Pros and cons would be helpful!

P.S: it will still be an inclusive pilates studio for all genders, only like once in a week we have this men only session and the instructor I was thinking can still be either male/female

Me and my wife opened a gym a year ago. The town has a population of around 5000 and growing. We’re doing very good, around 600 members, we have even been going through the process of expanding into a larger building. Right now we only have 5000sq ft. We plan on building a 10,000 sq ft gym. BUT now we have a 40,000 sq ft franchise gym that is coming in the next town over which would be about 10 miles away and there memberships are only like $30 compared to us at $50. AND now there has just been announced a 20,000 sq ft gym that is gonna be about 5 miles down the road from us. Both of these gym wouldn’t be ready for another year. We’re torn on what to do, keep pursuing our new build or try and sell now before these other gyms open up?

Not trying to micromanage but I’ve had enough “yeah we did that” conversations where clearly it didn’t happen. Paper checklists can be helpful but don’t always get filled, the whiteboard gets ignored, and I can’t be there for every shift. What are people actually using to hold staff accountable without turning into the bad guy?

I manage a gym and recently started a coach-led circuit training class.

The first class had 3 attendees, and our next class also has 3 booked. The people who came really enjoyed it, but I'm trying to figure out how to turn this into something that consistently fills up.

A few questions for gym owners who have successfully built group training:

• What got you from 3–5 people to 10–15+ consistently?
• What marketing actually worked? (Social media, referrals, member challenges, free trials, etc.)
• How did you retain the first members and turn them into regulars?
• Did you focus more on building community, results, or accountability?
• At what point did the class start growing on its own through word of mouth?
• Looking back, what would you have done differently during those first few months?

I'm not expecting overnight success, I just want to build something people genuinely love and that becomes part of our gym culture. What's a good circuit structure to follow that'll keep them safe, fun, but also wanting more that they come back?

Any advice or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

Seeking advice...We are setting up a new 24/7 gym. It's 500sm with 6m high ceilings and a moody vibe. We have all the usual equipment you would expect. What we'd like to know is; what are the pieces of equipment you can't live without? What has been a dealbreaker for you in the past? What do you wish your current gym had?

Hey!

I hope everybody is doing well!

As the title indicates, how do you hire your trainers at your gym and what is the best results you’ve seen in your experience?

I’m not selling anything just genuinely curious!

Do your trainers pay monthly rent, a percentage of their revenue, or nothing at all?

Are they employees or independent contractors?

Do you have different trainer levels (new, senior, elite, etc.) with different benefits?

Which model has been the most profitable for the gym while still attracting great trainers?

I’m considering changing the membership software we use at our gym and trying to understand what the main differences are between the options.

The names that keep coming up are Glofox, Gymdesk, and Zen Planner.

From what I can tell, Glofox looks strong for class scheduling, memberships, payments and the member-facing app. Gymdesk seems simpler and potentially more affordable, while Zen Planner appears popular with more traditional and class-based setups.

The main things we need are recurring billing and failed-payment management, class scheduling and waitlists, attendance tracking, and a good experience for members using the app

Glofox probably looks like the best fit so far because we’re quite class-focused, but it’s difficult to know what any of these systems are like once you’re using them day to day.

Has anyone used or moved to/from one of these platforms? What worked well, what became frustrating, and were there any unexpected costs or limitations?

Hi!

I've been working on finding a side project for a while now.

In my day-to-day life, I run a gym with 900 members, a team of 20 staff, and 1,400m² of space, just so you have some context about what I do.

We went through a seriously tough period, and I managed to pull the business through it by planning smart, restructuring our operations, reviewing and adjusting everything financially, and cutting costs where we could.

Now I want to offer that exact skillset as a side project, specifically for other gym owners who are struggling.

The problem: the people who need this most often can't afford it.

That's why I'm thinking about adjusting my offer. My plan is to run an ad that includes a free tool in exchange for contact information. The tool I want to offer is a simple Excel file where gym owners can log their incoming invoices to get a better overview of their cash flow, something that genuinely helped save us during that difficult period.

Is this a smart move? What do you think?
And how should I structure my actual service offering?

again, this is not a self promotion. i just need some help with my offer

Gym owners - curious how you think about data and analytics when making decisions.

Do you actively use numbers to run the business, or do you rely more on intuition and experience?

Examples:

• retention / churn
• member attendance
• revenue trends
• lead conversion
• class utilization
• failed payments

Or are you just like, fuck it, put it all in AI and be like let's fucking goooo!?

We’re reviewing software across several gym locations, and the main concern is no longer booking or billing. It’s controlling who can access member data and how that data moves between platforms.

We need:

• Location-based staff permissions
• Central reporting
• Automated email/SMS tied to attendance
• Reliable integrations without CSV uploads
• Clear SOC 2, PCI, and breach-notification policies

For anyone running multiple locations, did you keep marketing inside your gym platform or connect a separate CRM? Any security or integration issues we should watch for?

Hey everyone,

I’m a web developer currently building my portfolio in the fitness niche, and I’m looking to work with 1 gym owner, personal trainer, or fitness coach for $50.

I can build you a modern, professional website with features like:

• Customized Landing page for your brand
• Membership / pricing section
• Client transformation testimonials
• Contact / lead generation form stores data's in your sheets
• Mobile-friendly design
• Basic SEO setup

Why only $50?
I’m focused on building strong portfolio projects specifically in the fitness industry and want real client work to showcase.

In return, I only ask for:

• Permission to feature the website in my portfolio
• Honest feedback or testimonial if you’re happy with the work

If you’re interested or know someone in the fitness space who might need a website, feel free to DM me.

Thanks! 💪