Selling Software to Gyms: Pricing, Onboarding and Support (2026)
How to price gym software against what gyms already pay, get a new gym switched over in days, support owners without burning out, and keep gym customers from cancelling.
Key Takeaways
- Price against the market gyms already see. Published plans from established vendors start around $75 to $100 a month for a small gym and run to several hundred for marketing-heavy tiers. Your price needs a reason to sit where it does.
- Member-count tiers are the norm; payment margin is the hidden lever. Several vendors price by active members and charge less when the gym uses their payment processing. Decide early whether payments are part of your business.
- Onboarding is the sale. Most gyms’ biggest fear is the switch itself. Free data migration and a dated go-live plan remove the main objection.
- Support has to work at 6 a.m. Gyms open early and run on weekends. Decide what you answer urgently (check-in and payments) and what can wait until business hours.
- Watch gym usage, not just gym payments. A gym whose staff stop logging in, or whose members stop booking through your app, is preparing to leave long before it cancels.
Quick-Start Prioritization Framework
| Decision | Simple first answer | Revisit when |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat monthly price with 2–3 member-count tiers | Larger gyms or multi-location groups ask for quotes |
| Contract | Month to month, cancel anytime | Gyms ask for an annual discount |
| Trial | 14–30 days, full features | Trials start but gyms never import members |
| Setup fee | None; migration included | Migrations take more than a few hours each |
| Payments | Gym keeps its existing processor | Gyms ask you to collect dues for them |
| Support hours | Urgent issues 7 days, early start; the rest weekdays | Ticket volume outgrows one person |
Building software a gym likes is one problem. Getting gyms to pay for it every month, move their members into it, and stay for years is a different one. Gym owners are busy, price-aware and wary of switching, because a bad migration means failed payments and angry members at the front desk. This guide is for people selling software to gyms and studios: how established vendors price their products today, which pricing model fits a small vendor, what a good onboarding looks like week by week, how to run support with a small team, and which numbers tell you whether gyms will stay.
What gyms pay today
Before choosing a price, look at what a gym owner will compare you with. Several established vendors publish their prices, and those pages show both price levels and how the market structures plans. The table below is taken from each vendor’s own pricing page in November 2026; check the current pages before relying on any figure.
| Vendor | Published starting price | How price scales | Notes from the pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gymdesk | $75 a month (up to 50 active members, with Gymdesk Payments) | Active member tiers; $25 to $40 more without its payments | Month to month, no setup fees, 30-day free trial |
| Zen Planner | From $99 a month (Studio) | Package tier and active members | Free onboarding; month to month, annual on request |
| PushPress | $0 (Free), $159 (Pro), $229 (Max) a month | Tier; card rate falls from 4.99% + 30¢ to 2.75% + 30¢ | Unlimited members on all three plans |
| TeamUp | $189 a month for 101–200 active customers | Active customer tiers | Month to month, no setup fee |
| Mindbody | From $79 a month per location | Plan tier; most prices by quote | Payment processing optional; no onboarding fee |
What the table tells you
Three patterns stand out. First, the entry price for a small gym clusters between about $75 and $100 a month. Second, price rises with gym size, usually measured as active members. Third, several vendors make money on payment processing and use it to shape their pricing: Gymdesk charges less when the gym uses its payments, and PushPress’s free plan carries a higher card rate than its paid plans. A new vendor competing on a lower subscription price alone is competing with companies that may earn more from processing than from subscriptions.
Where a small vendor can win
You rarely win by being the cheapest general platform. You win by fitting one kind of gym closely enough that the owner stops doing a workaround: belt tracking for a martial arts school, day passes and waivers for a climbing gym, programming and leaderboards for a strength box. A price at or slightly above the market entry level is easy to justify when you remove a spreadsheet the owner hates.
Choosing a pricing model
There are four common ways to price gym software. Each sends a different message to the owner.
Flat price per gym
One price, all features. It is the easiest to sell and bill. Its weakness is that a 400-member gym pays the same as a 40-member one, so either the small gym finds it expensive or you undercharge the large one.
Active member tiers
The most common model on the pricing pages above. Price rises in steps (for example up to 50, 51 to 100, 101 to 150 active members). It tracks the gym’s ability to pay. Define “active” clearly and generously. Gymdesk, for instance, says visitors, frozen or cancelled members and prospects don’t count, which removes a reason for owners to resent the tiers.
Feature tiers
A core plan for running the gym and higher plans for marketing automation, a branded app or advanced reporting. Zen Planner and Mindbody both sell this way. It works once you have features that clearly matter more to larger or growth-focused gyms. At the start, too many tiers slow the sale.
Payment-funded pricing
A low or free subscription, with revenue from a margin on member payments. This needs you to process payments on each gym’s behalf, which means each gym’s money must reach its own account. Stripe describes Connect as its product for building a platform that models multiple accounts and moves money between parties. It is a bigger build, with onboarding and verification for every gym, so most small vendors start with a subscription and add payments later, if ever.
Your own costs per gym
Know your margin before you set a price. The main costs per gym are hosting, payment fees on your subscription, support time, and the hours spent onboarding.
A worked example
Say you charge $99 a month. At Stripe’s published US card rate of 2.9% plus 30¢ and Stripe Billing’s pay-as-you-go 0.7%, collecting that fee costs about $3.17 + $0.69 = $3.86 a month. If each gym also takes 1 hour of support a month and you value your time at $50 an hour, the gym costs about $54 before hosting. Onboarding at 6 hours, at the same rate, is $300 up front, which takes about 7 months of the remaining $45 margin to earn back. These are illustrative numbers from the published rates and assumed hours; the point is that support and onboarding time, not software costs, usually decide whether a gym is profitable.
Failed payments from your own customers
Gyms’ cards fail too. Turn on automatic retries with your processor (Stripe documents Smart Retries as on by default for new accounts, with up to 8 retries in 2 weeks), send a clear email when a payment fails, and decide in advance how long a gym can stay past due before access is limited. Cutting off a gym’s check-in desk without warning on a Monday morning loses the customer for good.
Trials and contracts
Gym owners have heard of long contracts and early-termination fees, often from their own equipment leases. Low-commitment terms are now common in the market and remove an objection.
- Month to month is common on the published pages above (Gymdesk, Zen Planner, TeamUp); offer an annual option at a discount for gyms that want it.
- A trial only works if the gym puts real members in. Gymdesk offers 30 days without a credit card; whatever length you choose, measure how many trial gyms import members, not just how many sign up.
- Put cancellation and data export terms in writing. Owners ask “what happens to my members if I leave?” and a clear answer helps you close the sale.
- If you sell to consumers anywhere in your product (for example member memberships), automatic-renewal laws such as California’s apply to those consumer subscriptions. Business-to-business contracts follow different rules; get advice for your situation.
Onboarding: getting a gym live
Switching software is the decision owners delay most. The established vendors know this: Zen Planner advertises free onboarding with data transfer done during the sessions, and Mindbody lists no onboarding fee while noting that data transfer may carry fees. Your onboarding needs a plan with dates.
A two-week go-live plan
Day 1: kickoff call. Agree the go-live date and who at the gym owns the switch. Days 2 to 4: export members, memberships, class schedule and upcoming bookings from the old system; import them; the owner checks 20 member records by hand. Days 5 to 7: set up staff accounts, roles and the check-in screen; train the front desk in one 30-minute session. Days 8 to 10: members get an email to set a password and download the app; the gym runs both systems for check-in. Days 11 to 14: switch payments over on a date between billing runs, so nobody is charged twice or not at all; turn off the old system.
Payments are the risky part
Moving members and classes is low risk: a mistake is a wrong name. Moving recurring payments is high risk: a mistake is a double charge or a month of lost revenue. Card details often can’t simply be exported from one processor to another, so plan for how members will re-enter cards if needed, and agree the cutover date with the owner in writing.
Measure time to value
Track the days from signup to the first real member check-in in your software. Gyms that go live quickly tend to stay; gyms that stall in setup tend to cancel at the end of the trial. If the number grows, the fix is usually a better import tool, not more training.
Support that fits a gym’s day
A gym’s busiest hours are early morning, evening and weekend mornings, when most software companies are closed. Your support model has to account for that without one person answering messages at 5 a.m. forever.
Triage by impact
Urgent: members can’t check in, can’t book, or payments are failing for many members. Answer these quickly, including at weekends. Important: a report is wrong, a staff member can’t log in. Next business day. Requests: new features. Collect them, reply with what happens next, and review them monthly. Publishing these levels sets expectations and makes a small team look reliable.
Write the help centre from real tickets
Every question asked twice becomes a short help article with screenshots. The early ones are almost always the same: how to freeze a membership, how to refund a class pack, how to change the class schedule for a holiday.
Talk to owners, not only tickets
A 15-minute check-in call at 30 and 90 days catches problems owners won’t bother to report. Ask what staff still do on paper or in a spreadsheet. That answer is your roadmap.
Keeping gym customers
Losing a gym is expensive because winning one takes demos, trials and onboarding. Watch for the signs before the cancellation email.
| Signal | What it may mean | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Staff logins drop | The gym is drifting back to old habits or another tool | Call the owner; offer a refresher session |
| Member bookings through your app drop | Members aren’t using it; the owner sees less value | Help the gym promote the app; check for bugs |
| Support tickets stop entirely after being frequent | Frustration or a decision already made | Ask directly how it is going |
| Repeated failed payments | Cash trouble or a card that expired | Contact before restricting access |
| Requests to export all data | Evaluating a switch | Fulfil it promptly, and ask why |
Common mistakes
These are the mistakes that most often cost new gym software vendors their first customers.
- Pricing far below the market to win the first gyms, then struggling to raise prices later.
- Charging a setup fee for migration, so the switch, already the biggest fear, also costs money.
- Promising built-in member billing before the platform can pay each gym separately.
- Switching recurring payments mid-cycle, causing double charges or missed months.
- Offering support only in office hours to businesses whose peak is 6 a.m. and Saturday morning.
- Measuring trials by signups instead of by gyms that imported real members.
- Building every feature one gym asks for instead of the ones several gyms share.
- Making data export hard, which makes owners less willing to sign up in the first place.
If you’d rather not build the billing yourself
If you’d rather not do this yourself from scratch, Floot builds full-stack web apps from plain-English descriptions, and Floot Payments handles checkout and subscriptions for charging gyms your monthly fee, paid out to you through Stripe. Collecting member dues on each gym’s behalf is a separate job that it doesn’t cover.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge a gym for software?
Start from what gyms already see. Published entry prices for small gyms cluster around $75 to $100 a month (Gymdesk from $75, Mindbody from $79, Zen Planner from $99), rising with member count or features. Price at or slightly above that if you solve a specific problem better for one type of gym.
Should I price per member?
Most vendors price by active-member tiers rather than per member. Tiers track a gym’s ability to pay without making each new member feel like a cost. Define “active” clearly and exclude frozen members, prospects and visitors.
Should I charge a setup fee?
Several established vendors advertise no setup or onboarding fee, so a setup fee puts you at a disadvantage. Include migration in the price and recover its cost over the first months of the subscription.
How long should onboarding take?
Aim for a dated plan of about two weeks for a single-location gym: import data in the first few days, train staff, invite members, then switch payments on a date between billing runs. Track days from signup to the first real check-in.
Do I need to process member payments to compete?
Not at first. Processing payments for each gym means each gym’s money must reach its own account, which needs a multi-party payment setup such as Stripe Connect. Many small vendors start by charging gyms a subscription and letting gyms keep their existing processor.
How do I know a gym is about to cancel?
Falling staff logins, fewer member bookings through your app, a sudden stop in support tickets, repeated failed payments and full data export requests are the common signals. Call the owner when you see one.
Sources
- Gymdesk, Pricing, 2026 https://gymdesk.com/pricing
- Zen Planner, Pricing, 2026 https://zenplanner.com/pricing/
- PushPress, Pricing, 2026 https://www.pushpress.com/pricing
- TeamUp, Pricing, 2026 https://goteamup.com/pricing
- Mindbody, Pricing, 2026 https://www.mindbodyonline.com/business/pricing
- Stripe, Pricing, 2026 https://stripe.com/pricing
- Stripe Docs, Automate payment retries (Smart Retries), 2026 https://docs.stripe.com/billing/revenue-recovery/smart-retries
- Stripe Docs, Connect, 2026 https://docs.stripe.com/connect