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Fitness & subscriptions
An app like ClassPass is three products behind one download: a member app, a side for partner studios and a back office that turns one subscription into visits across many venues. This guide covers what each part has to do, where these apps lose new members, and what the first version can safely leave out.
To build an app like ClassPass you need three connected parts: a member app for discovery, booking and the subscription; a studio side for schedules, capacity and check in; and a back office that defines packages, prices classes in entries or credits and settles payouts to studios. Decide the credit model and studio onboarding before design, since they drive most of the scope. Most new members are lost between install and the first booking, so onboarding, one tap sign in and a paywall shown at the moment of booking deserve as much attention as the class schedule.
Key takeaways for fitness founders
ClassPass made the model familiar: one membership, a monthly allowance, and access to classes across many independent studios instead of a single gym. The member sees one app and one price. Behind that sits a business with two groups of customers, the people who train and the studios that host them, and the app has to work for both.
A good local example is Body Vibes in Warsaw, a fitness class booking app where one subscription opens yoga, pilates, reformer, boxing and many other activities in over a hundred partner studios. Its packages combine a number of entries with in app credits for higher value classes such as reformer, which is exactly the kind of rule that has to be designed before anyone writes code.
Apps Value worked on the part of Body Vibes that decides conversion: the new onboarding path, sign in with Apple, Google and phone number, and the subscription paywall. The rest of the product was already live. The full story is in the Body Vibes case study.
Most early quotes for this kind of app are too low because they count only the screens members see. In practice the scope splits into three parts that share one backend.
Onboarding, search and filters by activity and area, the class schedule, booking and cancelling, the package screen, notifications and the member's history.
Publishing classes, setting how many places go to the platform, seeing who booked, and confirming attendance at the door.
Defining packages and billing periods, how many credits each class costs, promotions, and the monthly settlement with every partner studio.
The studio side can start small. Many platforms begin with schedules entered by their own team in an admin panel and only later give studios self service access or connect to the booking software a studio already uses. That is a sound version one when it is planned from the start. Our marketplace app development page covers how we scope products with two sides like this.
The credit model is a product decision that reaches every screen: the schedule, the paywall, the member's balance and the studio's monthly payout.
Before design starts, three questions need an answer. They look like pricing questions, but each one changes the data model and several screens.
The same rules feed the studio payout. If a studio is paid per visit, per credit or by a fixed monthly agreement, the back office needs the records to calculate it without a spreadsheet. Our guide to marketplace app payments explains the payment flows behind platforms that collect from one side and pay the other.
People arrive at a fitness subscription app from social media, on a phone, with little patience. A long registration form in front of an app they have not seen yet is where many of them close it. The first booked class is the conversion that matters, and everything before it should be short.
In Body Vibes the Body Vibes team decided to ask for the account in the middle of onboarding, not on the first screen. The user answers one question about their goal, sees classes picked for it, and only then creates an account. We built that path together with sign in through Apple, Google or a phone number, so creating an account takes one tap.
Three sign in methods bring one risk: the same person ending up with two accounts, one with the subscription and one without. We built account merging so that every method resolves to the same member first, and since release there have been no duplicate accounts. The work took about a month inside the client's existing Flutter codebase.
A paywall on the first screen asks for money before the member has seen a single class. In Body Vibes the package screen appears when a user tries to book, which is when the value of a package is easiest to understand. It offers several packages, billing periods with their discounts, a highlighted most popular option and a button that updates to the selected package.
Everything on that screen, including packages, prices, discounts, labels and time limited promotions with a countdown, is loaded from the backend. The team can launch an offer or change the lineup the same day, without waiting for an App Store or Google Play review. For a subscription business that runs promotions often, this is worth deciding in version one rather than retrofitting.
Access to classes held in physical studios is a real world service, which usually allows the app to sell it outside Apple and Google in app purchase. Digital content, such as on demand workouts, falls under different rules. Our guide to in app purchase fees explains where the line runs and what each store takes.
The booking core of a fitness app, including a real weekly schedule, slots that cannot be double booked, chat and subscriptions, is what we built end to end for Evesport, a Flutter app connecting personal trainers with their clients. It took 20 weeks from kickoff to launch, and bookings grew 18% in the first 60 days after release.
Evesport is built around trainers rather than studios, but the hard parts are shared with a multi studio app: availability that changes during the week, capacity that has to be enforced at booking, and a subscription that unlocks access. The Evesport case study walks through each of them.
A multi studio app grows quickly in ideas. These are the features that most often wait for a second release without hurting the launch.
What should not wait: onboarding, sign in, the credit rules, the paywall and the studio payout records. Those are the parts that are expensive to change once members and partners rely on them. If you plan a first release on a fixed budget, our page on MVP development for startups describes how we scope it.
About the source
It depends on how much of the studio side and back office goes into the first release, how complex the credit rules are, and whether schedules are entered manually or synced from studio software. Our pricing page explains how we scope and price fixed price projects.
Evesport, a fitness booking app we built from scratch, took 20 weeks from kickoff to launch. Improving an existing app is faster: the Body Vibes onboarding, sign in and paywall took about a month. Our article on the mobile app development timeline breaks down where the weeks go.
You need at least a first group of committed studios before launch, because members judge the app by the schedule they see. Many platforms sign partners while the app is being built and enter their schedules through an admin panel at first.
Access to classes in physical studios is usually treated as a real world service, which can be sold outside in app purchase. Digital content inside the app follows different rules, so the answer depends on what the subscription includes.
Both work well for this kind of product, since one codebase covers iOS and Android. Body Vibes and Evesport are both Flutter apps. The choice usually depends on the team that will maintain the app after launch.
Yes. Body Vibes is that case: we worked in the client's existing Flutter codebase and shipped a new onboarding, sign in and paywall as a regular release while members kept booking classes. Our fitness app development page covers the work we take on.
Thomas sets the company's long term strategy and direction, identifies market opportunities, and owns business development and client acquisition. He builds strategic partnerships that last beyond a single project. He works with clients from the first strategy conversation, so their business goals, not just their feature list, drive every decision.
Whether you are starting from scratch or improving onboarding, sign in or subscriptions in an app that is already live, we can scope it with you and give you a fixed price.
30 minutes, no preparation needed.