Building a Custom Membership Platform for a Private Fitness Business
Replacing fragmented admin and manual spreadsheets with a bespoke, scalable membership portal.
Overview
The client runs a successful private fitness business that prides itself on personal attention and a high-touch member experience. Unlike commercial gyms, their model relies on long-term relationships and specific programming, meaning their administrative needs are nuanced.
As the business grew, the manual processes that worked for 50 members began to crumble at 150. The owner found themselves spending more time managing spreadsheets, chasing payments, and manually onboarding new members than actually coaching clients.
They initiated this project not just to "get a new website," but to operationalise their entire member management workflow. They needed a system that would handle the heavy lifting of administration without losing the personal feel that defined their brand.
The Situation Before
Before our engagement, the business ran on a patchwork of disconnected tools. New member enquiries came in via email, were manually entered into a spreadsheet, and then payments were set up separately via standing orders or ad-hoc bank transfers.
This created significant friction. Onboarding a single member could take up to two hours of administrative time, spread across emails, text messages, and manual data entry. There was no single source of truth for who had paid, whose membership was pausing, or who needed a renewal reminder.
The lack of a centralized system meant the owner carried a huge cognitive load, constantly worrying about missed payments or dropped communications. It effectively put a hard cap on growth; the business physically could not handle more members without hiring dedicated administrative staff, which would have eroded margins.
The Approach
We deliberately avoided "all-in-one" gym management software. While popular, these platforms are often rigid, expensive, and bloated with features a private facility doesnt need. Instead, we architected a custom solution that would fit their specific workflow like a glove.
The core philosophy was "Simplicity involves subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful." We didn't need a social network for members or gamification features. We needed a rock-solid, secure, and automated way to handle memberships and payments.
We decided to build a custom membership portal on top of WordPress. This offered the flexibility to design a front-end that perfectly matched their premium branding, while allowing us to integrate robust, proven tools for the heavy lifting of data and payments.
The Build
The platform was built using a custom WordPress architecture. We utilized a dedicated membership plugin framework to handle access control, ensuring that member data was secure and content could be restricted based on membership tiers.
For payments, we integrated Stripe directly into the onboarding flow. This replaced the manual standing orders with automated recurring billing. Crucially, the system was configured to handle failed payments automatically, retrying the card and notifying the member without the owner needing to send an awkward text message.
We created a "Member Dashboard" where clients could manage their own details, view their payment history, and access exclusive content. On the backend, we built a simplified administrative view for the owner, giving them a "Red/Amber/Green" status of the business at a glance.
The Outcome
The immediate result was the reclamation of roughly 15 hours of administrative work per week. New members now sign up, pay, and are onboarded entirely automatically. The owner receives a notification only when a new member is fully active.
Payment reliability increased to 100%. The system captures revenue that was previously leaking through missed standing orders or forgotten renewals. The "awkward money conversation" has been entirely outsourced to the software.
Most importantly, the business now has a scalable foundation. They have since increased their member cap by 40% without adding any additional administrative staff. The system handles 200 members as easily as it handled 20.
Weekly admin saved
Payment automation
Capacity increase
Data duplication
Why This Worked
This project worked because we treated the website as an operational tool, not a brochure. We focused entirely on the "jobs to be done"—payments, onboarding, and data management.
By building a custom solution rather than renting a SaaS platform, the client owns their data and their ecosystem. They aren't paying monthly fees for features they don't use, and the system scales with them at no extra cost.
Services Delivered
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