Managing a gym or fitness club is no easy task. However, being able to streamline your daily, monthly, and annual duties can help with the heavy lifting. Implementing fitness management software can help you save resources and be a critical factor in the success of your business.
Whether you’re just in the planning stages of opening your own fitness club or shopping around for new gym management software, there is a lot to consider.
Gym management software should enable you to accomplish managerial tasks such as creating schedules, processing payments, and keeping member information organized. Ultimately, this will create a streamlined digital experience for customers and staff. Having the right software for yoga studios can make the resources you have to offer invaluable to your clients.
Having a fitness management program that can easily adapt to your gym’s growth is crucial to long-term success and growth. In a study done by Glofox, increasing member retention by just 5% can increase a fitness club’s annual revenue by upwards of 25%.
In this article, we’ll discuss some essential factors to take into consideration when choosing gym management software. After that, we’ll take a look at some of the best gym management software available in 2023.
What is gym management software?
At its core, gym management software is a tool that can help you organize and track sales, members, and employees. The goal in using one of these software is to ensure that your gym is on track to hit its full potential growth.
In addition, you may require that your gym management software has scheduling capacity, a CRM, or a streamlined POS system. Regardless of whatever bells and whistles it comes with, the most important aspect to consider is that your software management system is able to adapt to the unique needs of your gym or club.
What to look for in a gym management software
Whether you’re shopping around for a new management software or looking to implement one, there are a few factors that are helpful to ensure your gym software systems has.
Functionality
At a minimum, your fitness management software should be designed to help you do every task. Some of these manageable tasks should be:
- Record keeping
- Booking and scheduling
- Finance management
- Marketing
- Staff management
Regardless of the size or model of your fitness club or gym, your fitness management software should have these capabilities.
Integration
The reality is that no software solution is perfect. It is not uncommon for gyms to integrate multiple software to build the perfect management system. This is where integration becomes important.
Let’s say you opt for fitness management software that has a great POS system but is lacking when it comes to customer retention management. One solution you may choose to implement is adding additional software, such as Gleantap, to help make up for this.
Whatever software you get, it needs to have a great application performance interface (API). This will ensure that your software can communicate seamlessly with other applications to optimize your complete management system.
Automation
The more functions you can automate, the more time you will have to focus on big picture goals. Automation can help with things such as lead management, email campaigns, invoicing, and even review management.
Mobile Accessibility
54.4% of all global website traffic is generated from mobile devices. For you, your customers, and your employees, being able to access your unique portal from anywhere is essential for building an effective user experience.
Worthwhile question to ask when choosing a fitness management software
An important part of choosing the right gym management system is knowing the right questions to ask.
If your gym or fitness center is already well established, you may already have a good idea of what you need (and don’t need) out of your system. However, if you are new to the game of fitness management, here are some very important factors to consider:
- Who will be managing? You or your staff?
- When, where, and how will you run and manage meetings?
- Will you have an open gym or classes only?
- What is your on-boarding process for new members? Staff? Interns?
- What will your marketing campaigns look like in terms of cost, target audience, timeline, and method?
- How will you maintain the facility and equipment?
- What metrics are important to you?
- What are the tenants of your brand vision and mission?
- How will you know what your staff is doing and how will you hold them accountable?
- How will you handle finances?
Each answer should inform the critical points you’re going to need support at. Taking your time to hammer out each of these details will support you in developing a smooth management style and choosing the best gym management software for your gym.
Best gym management software in 2023
After you’ve narrowed down your needs and wants in gym management software, it’s time to start doing your research. We considered everything from features to customer support. Here is what we found.
Wodify
Wodify markets itself as an “all-in-one” solution for gym management software.It has a variety of add-on features that make it customizable for small businesses and large franchises.
Key features:
- Invoice tracking
- Membership management
- Digital contracts and waivers
- Scheduling software
- Client progress tracking
- Insights and reports
- Website builder
- Mobile capabilities
Pros
Wodify additionally offers marketing campaigns and makes developing a digital library easy with their Marketplace integrations. Beyond this, one of the biggest draws is that wodify offers an all in one solution for almost everything a gym needs.
Cons
While the breadth of features offered by wodify is expansive the number one complaint against the company is its inconsistent UI experience and undependable programming. Many users complain of shutdowns and an antiquated interface that makes it hard to work with.
Customer satisfaction–both as a gym owner and gym member–is ultimately the reason to implement gym management software, having a good customer interface and smooth running management system should be top of the list for gym owners when choosing software. For these reasons, Wodify lands at number 5 on our list.
PushPress
PushPress is a fitness management software that boasts a wide variety of features that are optimal for smaller gyms.
Key features:
- Check-in and member portals
- Appointment and schedule management
- Product and store dashboard
- Waiver and contract documentation
- Payroll
- Event registration
- Unique dashboards for admins, members, staff, and leads
Pros
In general, PushPress is a “basics first” model. Users cited that its easy-to-use design is what drew them to the software. Many also note that everything from PushPress’s customer service to easy set up help to elevate the user experience. Finally, one of the biggest benefits of PushPress is its ability to fully integrate with a large number of other programs.
Cons
PushPress customers most commonly complained about the fitness management softwares lack of advanced capability. When it comes to following up on leads, analyzing metrics, and integrating with social media, the software falls short. In addition to this, the product does not yet have a mobile application for members to use.
For gyms that are just starting out or looking to focus on the basics, PushPress can be a great option. What it lacks in bells and whistles it makes up for in doing the basics well. However, PushPress was ranked number 4 on our list of best gym software because of its lack of mobile capabilities in addition to its clunky analytic software.
Gleantap
Gleantap is a gym management software that is perfect for any sized business that has their sights set on growth this upcoming year. Beyond scalability, Gleantap adept CRM software, automation, and in-depth analytics system provide a streamline gym management solution.
Key features:
- Forms and pages documentation
- Website text chat
- Email and text automation
- Customizable dashboards and profiles
- Pipeline management solutions
- AI content assistant
Pros
Gleantap shines in their customer relationship management software. Their competent AI solutions for marketing campaign management and pipeline customizability give you total control over your customer’s journey. In addition, they offer some of the most robust data collection and analysis software of any Gym management system on the list.
Cons
One of the biggest drawbacks of Gleantap is its limited scope of staff management solutions. Gleantap does not include a POS or scheduling management software and, therefore, it would be required that those be separately integrated.
For small gyms or fitness clubs that are looking towards growth or large enterprises that already have other systems in place, Gleantap is a strong choice for gym management. In addition, Gleantap customers report highly competent customer service and consistent updates and new features being added.
Glofox
Glofox is one of the longest standing gym and fitness management software on the market. They offer an all-in-one management system to help keep your gym organized.
Key Features:
- CRM system with targeting and segmentation capabilities
- Interactive member timeline
- Membership management
- Global payment processing
- Mobile device functionality
- Scheduling software
- Specialized admin, staff, and member dashboards
- High level of integration
- Messaging automation
Pros
In general, users are most satisfied with the flexible and intuitive user interface for both the web and mobile app throughout the software. Its full onboarding and sign-in process are easy to navigate and build out. In addition to this, Glofox offers fitness club owners the ability to build a virtual library for online classes and are consistently updating their software with new features.
Cons
The biggest complaint from customers is that Glofox’s software makes it difficult to track payments and class attendance. Many users report that the member dashboards and data tracking software are not as comprehensive when compared to other softwares. This leaves many gym owners struggling to find a justification for Glofox’s marginally higher price tag.
Ultimately, Glofox is a powerful, full-stack operating system that allows members to implement one software to take care of many functions. The downside of this is that there can be holes in its operating system. For these reasons, we’ve ranked Glofox at number three in our list of best gym software systems in 2023.
Virtuagym
Virtuagym is another all-in-one fitness management software that works on both a micro and macro scale.
Key features:
- Hybrid management system
- CRM system
- Full management automation
- Staff management software
- Admin, staff, and member portals
- Form and contract organization
- Two-way text chat via SMS, email, and website
- Appointment management
- Lead and Member tracking
- Reputation management software
- Insights and reports
Pros
Virtugym has been praised for its easy to use interface, strong ability to integrate, and responsive customer management tools. Beyond this, Virtuagym is consistently updating and tweaking the app to make it more user friendly and have increased features.
Cons
The main complaint expressed by Virtuagym users is that the app is not customizable. In addition, the mobile app does not fully mirror the website with some features being mobile exclusive. Additionally, Virtuagym does not offer a free trial like most other fitness software management systems.
Virtuagym offers a great solution for both large businesses and can even be implemented by personal and private trainers for client management. However, its lack of POS and customizability leave it at number two on our list of best gym management software in 2023.
Wellyx
Wellyx is a cloud-based fitness management software that is optimized for larger fitness and wellness centers but can also be adjusted to meet the needs of smaller clubs.
Key features:
- Customer tracking dashboard
- Mobile platform
- SMS, email and push notification capabilities
- Staff management (time clock, payroll, scheduling)
- POS
- Contract and waivers
- Online Store
- Reports and Insights
Pros
Wellyx has been praised for its adaptability and extensive features, many of which are consistently being updated. Users report that their POS systems make tracking attendance and monitoring staff tasks easier. In addition many users praise the navigability and intuitive UI design of both the mobile and online formats.
Cons
Wellyx’s users indicate that there is room for improvement when it comes to generating reports and insights. In addition, the automation features do not extend into reputation and review management.
Taking all of this into consideration, Wellyx offers the widest and most refined breadth of services. On top of this, customers report easy set up and fantastic customer service. We’ve ranked Wellyx as the best gym management software to use in 2023.
Final considerations for choosing a fitness management software
As a gym owner, you work tirelessly to ensure that your customers feel valued, supported, and encouraged at your gym. Your content management software is going to be one of the main points of contact between you and your clientele.
For fitness clubs, building long-term members is the meat and potatoes of your business model. That means you will ultimately need to choose a management software that’s going to put your members first means understanding what their needs are.
If you’re catering to a more mature audience, choosing a software that prioritizes email and SMS marketing may be more beneficial. Alternatively, if your target audience is younger, having a gym management software that is optimized to integrate and run social media campaigns may be higher on the priorities list.
Looking at concrete data can also help to direct your research towards the best software for your gym. Real-time metrics and analytics can give you invaluable information about members, trainer performance, and marketing strategy success.
Finding the right fitness management software can take time. Luckily, many companies, like Gleantap, offer a free trial period so that you can find the software that works best for you.
When it comes to administrative tasks, great fitness management software can give you better control of your finances and give you insight on how to best align your marketing and sales operations.
Still doing research? Be sure to check out our blog or schedule your free demo today. Our team is here for you 24/7 to make sure your experience is flawless and optimized to meet your gym or fitness clubs unique needs.
