Gym Marketing
Marketing content for gym and studio owners—local SEO, advertising, email and social, referrals, and turning leads into members.
A studio owner shared something this month that anyone weighing ClassPass for business should hear.
She's run a HIIT and pilates studio for more than ten years and has about 65 members. By her own description, the business is a little shy of breaking even. If you've ever looked up what pilates studio owners make, you know how thin that line can be.
ClassPass and Wellhub bring in about $3,500 a month, somewhere between 20% and 30% of her revenue.
She was shopping for new software, and her logic was simple. If switching meant losing that $3,500, it didn't matter how cheap the new software was. She'd be behind the day she moved.
She's right. The marketplace pays her. It also decides which software she can run. That's a lot of say for a line item.
What follows is the owner's side of the counter: how the payouts work, what Wellhub pays, when the marketplace is worth it, and the point where it turns into a tax. Most of the numbers come from ClassPass itself.
How ClassPass Pays Your Studio
ClassPass keeps its rate card private, but its partner pages and help center explain how your rate gets set.
The table below pulls those terms into one place.
Sources: ClassPass payouts, pricing, and policies, ClassPass partner FAQs, ClassPass studio guide, ClassPass help center.
The rate floor and SmartRate
When you sign up, ClassPass works with you to set a floor: the least you'll earn for a booked spot, pegged to a percentage of what your own members and drop-ins pay.
The percentage is confidential between you and ClassPass. ClassPass doesn't publish it, so treat any figure you see quoted online as unverified.
On top of the floor sits SmartRate.
It moves the credit price up and down in real time, using demand, class timing, and booking patterns.
The owner from the top of this post describes it simply: she gives ClassPass her class prices, and the algorithm handles the rest.
Late cancels and no-shows
This part works in your favor. You get paid for late cancels and no-shows in most cases, following your policy up to a 12-hour window.
One catch: ClassPass follows what it calls a "One Spot, One Payment" principle.
If another ClassPass user books that spot, their payment replaces your late-cancel payout. If the late cancel was the last spot in the class and you fill it through your own channels, there's no late-cancel payout at all.
The free trial class
Every fitness partner has to take part in the ClassPass Trial Program. New ClassPass users get one free class at your studio during their trial.
It's an acquisition cost. You pay it in class spots.
What Wellhub and the Other Marketplaces Pay
Wellhub (the company formerly called Gympass) works through employers, so its users show up with a corporate wellness perk.
You get paid per visit, and your contract decides how much.
Wellhub pays per member check-in, with payments processed by the 15th of each month. Its own partner help center lists three contract terms to look for in yours:
- A monthly cap per visitor. Once one person hits the cap, you'll see their later check-ins that month at $0.00.
- First visit free. Your contract may pay nothing for a new Wellhub visitor's first check-in.
- A success fee. A commission that can come out of your payout, as defined in your contract.
Here's a hypothetical to show how the cap works.
Say your contract pays for up to eight check-ins per visitor per month. Your most loyal Wellhub user comes four times a week, checks in about 16 times, and half of those visits pay $0.00.
Active&Fit and One Pass are the other two you'll hear about. Neither publishes partner payment terms that we could find.
Your contract is the only source, so pull it out and read the payment section.
The Case for Listing on ClassPass
ClassPass does real work for a lot of studios.
ClassPass says more than 88,000 businesses list on it and that it has paid partners $3.1 billion to date. It also says 94% of its users are new to the fitness businesses they visit, which is who you want in the room when you're starting out.
It fills space you'd otherwise be heating for nobody.
ClassPass says data from its integrated partners shows the average studio fills less than 36% of its capacity through its own channels.
The owner from the top of this post put the upside plainly. Compare it to what you pay for a lead, she said, and getting paid for one looks pretty good.
For a brand-new studio, that math holds.
If you're starting a pilates studio with empty 6am classes and no ad budget, a marketplace that pays you to fill spots is a reasonable place to begin.
Where the Marketplace Turns Into a Tax
"ClassPass often pays a lower per-spot rate than a direct booking."
ClassPass says so in its partner FAQs, and on a spot you'd never have sold, a lower rate is still money you didn't have.
The trouble starts when your regulars settle in at the marketplace rate.
ClassPass says it guards against marketplace users taking spots your members would have bought, with a tool called SmartSpot:
"The ultimate purpose and goal of SmartSpot is to never put a spot on ClassPass that would have been sold directly."
SmartSpot is available to integrated partners only.
What ClassPass says about conversion
The same FAQs are direct about what happens after the first visit:
"ClassPass users are unlikely to convert to direct clients."
Its help center puts a number on it:
"For every 100 direct clients before you join ClassPass, we typically see businesses having increased their direct clients by 2. From 100 to ~102 after joining ClassPass.
As a reminder, ClassPass is NOT a lead generator; however, ClassPass typically does not decrease your direct client count."
So expect about two more direct clients for every hundred you already had.
ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman has told Athletech News that ClassPass converts more users to direct studio members than it takes from studios. The help-center figure is the more specific of the two.
ClassPass users do come back. In 2024, 91% of U.S. subscriber visits after the first three months went to studios the person had already visited.
Some of your regulars, then, are ClassPass regulars who keep showing up and keep paying the marketplace rate.
Your options for changing that are limited. ClassPass asks partners to avoid targeting its users with anything existing clients don't get, and to avoid comparative references to ClassPass. You can ask them to join your email list.
The payout paradox
This is the part I'd put on a sticky note.
ClassPass says that when your class is more than 80% full with direct members, it earns a 45% higher ClassPass payout, on average, than a class that's less than half full.
That figure comes from venues using dynamic pricing and SmartSpot.
In other words, the classes your members already fill earn the most per marketplace visit, and the half-empty classes that lean on the marketplace earn the least.
Fritz Lanman said it plainly to Athletech News in 2025: "ClassPass can't save a business that has a weak clientele." Read it as a warning, too.
The Software Trap
The owner from the top of this post has software with a broken connection to her marketing CRM. It stopped working, and support couldn't fix it. She now adds leads by hand and admits some of them get lost.
She wants to leave. She can't.
Her software talks to ClassPass, and ClassPass and Wellhub together are between 20% and 30% of her revenue.
You can connect to ClassPass two ways: manually, through its partner dashboard, or through scheduling software that integrates with ClassPass and syncs your availability automatically.
ClassPass recommends integrating.
It says partners who switched from a manual schedule to an integrated one saw ClassPass revenue more than double, on average, according to ClassPass. Money like that is how a marketplace ends up choosing your software.
Mindbody bought ClassPass in 2021, and Playlist, the parent company of both, closed a merger with EGYM in March 2026.
EGYM runs Wellpass, a corporate wellness program with no relation to Wellhub. Since 2021, the company that sets your ClassPass rate floor has also sold studio software.
If you've ever read about Mindbody fees and wondered why so many studios stay put, the marketplace money attached to the software is part of the answer.
Is ClassPass Worth It for Your Studio?
Yes, while it fills spots you couldn't fill yourself.
Our rule of thumb: once it's around 20% of your revenue, it's costing you more than it looks. Four numbers tell you which side you're on, and you can pull all of them this week.
- Marketplace share of revenue. Last 12 months of ClassPass, Wellhub, and any other marketplace payouts, divided by total revenue.
- Effective rate per visit. Total marketplace payout divided by marketplace visits. Compare it with what you charge for a drop-in and what a member pays per class.
- Fill rate by class time. Which of your classes run under half full, and which ones members fill on their own.
- Marketplace-to-member conversions. How many people who first came through a marketplace bought a membership or pack from you directly this year.
Number two is where owners usually wince. Here's the math with made-up numbers, so swap in your own:
- Your drop-in is $30.
- Your members average $15 a class.
- Your ClassPass payouts average $14 a visit.
At $14, a marketplace visit pays about what a member visit does. At $9, it depends on the spot. If a member would have booked it, you're $6 behind; if it would have sat empty, you're $9 ahead.
The Gymdesk gym revenue calculator shows what the same visits would earn at your direct prices. If you're not sure your direct prices are right to begin with, start with how to price your pilates classes or yoga class pricing.
Then find your row. These bands are our own rule of thumb, so adjust them for your margins.
Under 10%: Working
The marketplace fills off-peak classes. Your prime-time classes are full of members. A few marketplace regulars have become members over the past year, and nobody's losing sleep.
10% to 19%: A warning sign
Marketplace users have become regulars in your 6 p.m. class. Your effective rate is sliding. You can't name one person who converted.
20% and up: A tax
At this share, the lower per-visit rate has become your pricing. You can't switch software, raise prices, or change your schedule without asking what ClassPass will do.
This is the band where the answer to "is ClassPass bad for studios?" becomes yes, at least for yours. The owner from the top of this post is here, and it's a normal, fixable place to end up.
How to Step Down Without Losing the Income
When a marketplace is a fifth of your revenue, stepping down makes more sense than quitting cold. You shift the balance over a few months and treat the 90-day exit window as your planning horizon.
Cap the spots
Marketplace access is set class by class. Keep it on the classes that run half empty, and take it off the classes your members fill. You lose the least revenue and protect the spots that matter most.
Own the booking path
When someone searches for your studio by name, the first thing they find should be your own website, with a schedule they can book from.
That means a real booking page, a site that shows up in local search, and a reason to book direct. For the basics, start with these guides to website leads and yoga studio SEO.
Give everyone a direct way in
You can't create an offer just for ClassPass users.
You can create an intro offer for every new client, and make it good enough that booking direct is the obvious choice. Three classes for a set price, a first-month rate, or a short intro series all work.
Price it against the effective rate you worked out above.
Using the $14 example rate, an intro offer that nets you more than $14 a class beats the marketplace from day one. The post on whether to offer discounts covers how deep to go, and the guides to trial programs and the first 90 days cover what happens after that first class.
Then give marketplace regulars a direct option without a membership. Some people just like to drop in.
South Austin Fitness offers a $20 day pass and 10 sessions for $150 alongside month-to-month memberships. Someone who comes twice a week can book directly without committing to anything.
Measure the source
Tag every new member with a source: marketplace, Google, referral, walk-in. Without that, you're guessing, and guessing is how 20% becomes 30% without anyone noticing.
Where Gymdesk Fits
Three of the four moves above need a direct booking path that works without a marketplace in the middle. Gymdesk handles that part.
- Online booking on your own site. Schedule and booking widgets embed on your website, and every account includes a free gym website with booking built in. Clients book with you, on your page.
- Trial memberships that convert themselves. Set up an intro offer as a trial membership, and when it ends, Gymdesk moves the client to the membership you picked.
- Class packs and drop-ins. Per-session pricing, punch-card style packs, and separate drop-in and member prices for the same class.
- Where members came from. Add each marketplace first-timer as a lead in lead management, with ClassPass or Wellhub as the source. Gymdesk tracks the source on every lead and reports conversion by source, so you can see how many of those first-timers became members.
- Follow-up that runs on its own. Automations for new trial signups and abandoned booking forms, so an intro-offer client hears from you before the offer runs out.
Say a ClassPass first-timer loves your Tuesday class. You add her as a lead, she books your intro offer on your site, and when the trial ends, Gymdesk rolls her into the membership you picked.
Now the honest part. Gymdesk doesn't integrate with ClassPass or Wellhub.
If you keep a marketplace listing, you'd manage it through ClassPass's manual partner dashboard. You'd set your ClassPass availability yourself, since SmartSpot is for integrated partners only, and ClassPass says integrated partners earn more.
The owner we opened with was looking at Gymdesk.
For her, today, with 20% to 30% of her revenue on marketplaces and a business near break-even, the math said stay put. I think that was the right call.
Find your row in the table above. Under 10%, losing the integration is an inconvenience. At 20% and up, it costs real money, so plan the step-down before you plan the switch.
Wherever you land, Gymdesk for pilates studios has a free trial, so you can build your direct booking path before you change anything else.
Rent the Empty Spots, Keep the Members
Used well, ClassPass for business does one job: it sells the spots you couldn't sell yourself and pays you for them.
Let it do that job. Keep your peak classes for members, and know your marketplace share the way you know your rent.
The studio that does this still gets a check from ClassPass every month. It just doesn't need one.
