How to Sell Fitness Programs & Gym Memberships on WordPress: Top Plugins That Really Work
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Looking for how to sell a gym membership using a WordPress website? Having a proper way to provide workouts and member-only content can be a great way to support your gym or fitness center. Additionally, it can help you differentiate between traditional offline workouts by offering custom-made nutrition plans, digital content, physical goods, and more. In today’s article, we’ll explore how WordPress solutions can help you achieve better fitness membership sales and other goals, as well as simply help you provide more than just workouts regularly.
Before we start, feel free to take a look at some of the top solutions we are going to discuss below:
| Name | Price | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Ultimate Memberships for WooCommerce | From $129/year | 5 |
| Appointment Booking | Free or from $49/year | 5.0 |
| Easy Digital Downloads | Free or from $199/year | 4.7 |
Top 10 WordPress Plugins for Gyms and Fitness Centers
With WordPress plugins, modern gyms and fitness centers can easily achieve their goals by using ready-made yet affordable tools for everything they need. From selling memberships and class bookings to delivering online programs and managing communities, solutions for the #1 CMS can enhance the functionality of a fitness website by a mile. Below, we have prepared a selection of such tools based on the tasks they can help you perform.
Ultimate Memberships for WooCommerce
One of the desired features for an owner of any gym website is not only to provide workouts for groups and individuals, but also deliver subscriptions. If you’re wondering how to sell a gym membership, one of the best ways is to use the WooCommerce plugin combined with one of its numerous extensions, such as Ultimate Memberships for WooCommerce.
By transforming the standard eCommerce elements into members-only, this extension allows you to limit access based on various membership plans. Additionally, the plugin supports various content restrictions, which is useful if you want to discover not just how to sell fitness programs online but also how to publish exclusive blog posts or give access to specific product categories based on the customers’ membership.
Key features:
- Detailed membership plan customization;
- Multiple ways to grant access to content and products;
- Editable email notifications;
- Compatibility with the WooCommerce Subscription extension;
- Support for multiple custom fields.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ultimate Memberships for WooCommerce | Addify | From $129/year | 200+ |
MotoPress Appointment Booking
Modern gyms and fitness centers often use third-party solutions to plan workouts and fitness classes. With WordPress plugins, it doesn’t just become feasible but also affordable, since many plugins are way cheaper than their SaaS alternatives. For example, with MotoPress Appointment Booking (and the Coachzee theme from the same team), you can plan upcoming workouts and let your potential clients book and pay for them directly from your website. Aside from learning how to sell gym membership, such an approach can help you easily manage your fitness center without referring to routine manual work.
By using Stripe and PayPal payment gateway integrations, as well as a real-time availability calendar and schedule management for employees, this solution makes it simple for gym owners to automatically confirm workout bookings and plan new ones without performing routine tasks in its free and premium versions. In addition to this plugin, you can also utilize the Events Calendar plugin by MotoPress to access essential event planning and showcasing features. With it, you get access to a user-friendly visual calendar builder and support for recurring events, allowing you to plan workouts and whole fitness classes more efficiently.
Key features:
- Step-by-step booking wizard;
- Ready-to-go fitness design with this plugin integrated (extra purchase);
- Support for online payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal) and on-site payments;
- Automated appointment reminders via email;
- Easy class scheduling for group classes;
- Flexible coach schedules and user profiles.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appointment Booking | MotoPress | Free or from $49/year | 1,8k+ |
Easy Digital Downloads
For those looking for more ways of how to sell a gym membership using digital goods like nutrition plans and personalized online fitness coaching programs, Easy Digital Downloads may be a proper solution. Centralized on making the management of digital products simple and smooth, this solution delivers every feature you’d expect from a top-notch eCommerce plugin. From secure online payments through Stripe and PayPal to advanced file access control and detailed reporting, Easy Digital Downloads makes it simple to establish a digital store for your fitness center without having to develop a new website.
Key features:
- Shopping cart with Stripe and PayPal support;
- Powerful order management;
- Cart saving;
- Numerous add-ons and integrations;
- Detailed reporting system.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy Digital Downloads | Sandhills Development, LLC | Free or from $199/ year | 50k+ |
LearnPress
You may be looking for a way to provide not just downloadable materials but whole workout courses with online lessons using fitness coaching software. In this case, learning management systems may be a more effective solution than others. Luckily, with WordPress plugins, it is easy to achieve this thanks to solutions like LearnPress. This LMS allows for creating online fitness coaching courses and integrating your website with apps like Zoom and Google Meet. Additionally, as top-rated educational software for WordPress, the plugin also supports saving progress of every course, customizing daily lesson duration and course capacity, and many other useful options. It can be a great addition if you’re planning to sell gym membership.
Key features:
- Multimedia-rich lessons for gyms and fitness centers;
- Works with Elementor and Gutenberg;
- Powerful monetization features;
- SEO-optimized course links;
- A wide range of addons.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| LearnPress | ThimPress | Free | 80k+ |
Booking Calendar
Modern fitness centers can not only provide curated personal workouts but also offer their facilities and equipment for rent. One of the tools that can help with integrating such functionality is the MotoPress Booking Calendar plugin. Suitable for a wide variety of businesses that require booking management, this solution comes with a visual calendar builder and inventory manager alongside other useful features. With 3 diverse booking modes and a user-friendly form customizer, this plugin can be used for renting out individual equipment, spaces for workout, gear and apparel, and almost anything you can think of when discovering how to sell a gym membership.
Key features:
- Visual calendar with inventory manager;
- Easy-to-use booking form builder;
- Stripe payment gateway integration;
- Automated email notifications;
- Works with Gutenberg.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking Calendar | MotoPress | Free or from $49/year | 86+ |
WooCommerce
One of the goals that modern gyms pursue is to provide more than just workouts and nutrition programs. In most cases, it comes down not just to ways of selling gym membership, but also to delivering supplements for clients (protein shakes, apparel, training, accessories, etc.). While in most gyms this service is provided on the premises, you can also establish a feature-rich online store, and that’s where WooCommerce can help. From offering bundled products to running regular specials, this plugin is great for setting up an eCommerce website or pages for your gym without developing anything from scratch.
Key features:
- Reliable product management;
- Flexible payment options via WooCommerce Payments;
- Tools & extensions for marketing;
- Easy store customization.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce | Automattic | Free | 7m+ |
Sugar Calendar
In case you’re planning to learn how to sell a gym membership and enhance your gym website with offline events, we recommend taking a look at event calendars with ticketing support. One of such solutions is Sugar Calendar. Available in both paid and free options, it supports core event planning and customization features for better fitness membership sales. Moreover, thanks to varied addons and premium functionality like event ticketing and schedule automation, your gym website can handle multiple tasks at once. This includes not just advertising upcoming events but supporting multiple event venues, adding and selling various ticket types, managing and confirming bookings, etc.
Key features:
- Flexible event management dashboard;
- Recurring event support;
- RSVP & ticket management;
- Event tagging;
- Calendar & list blocks.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugar Calendar | Sugar Calendar, LLC | Free or from $99/year | 3k+ |
MemberPress
One additional goal for setting up membership on your fitness center’s online presence is to provide tiered access to a comprehensive library of workouts, rather than selling them individually. In this case, plugins like MemberPress can be of great use. Offering features like content dripping, members-only dashboard, and paywall, to name a few, this solution can easily enhance your website and monetize your ready-made workouts. If you want to learn how to sell gym membership, attract and retain your gym members, having such an option for them can be of great use, especially if you want to see them stay and develop themselves at your gym.
Key features:
- Easy membership management;
- Built-in coaching platform;
- Easy to set up;
- Payment gateway support;
- Multiple ready-made integrations.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memberpress | Caseproof, LLC | From $399/year | N/A |
BuddyPress
Building a community around your gym or fitness center is perfect for your potential clients and gym-goers to engage with each other online, share tips, and help new members. One of the ways to make it happen without hiring a professional web developer is to use BuddyPress. It is a solution allowing you to add more than just a blog to your website – anything from groups and user profiles to activity streams and notifications. The plugin even supports private messaging and other social networking features, making it a perfect solution for a gym community website, especially when you’re learning how to sell a gym membership.
Key features:
- Powerful member profile management;
- Customizable activity feed;
- Public, private, and hidden user groups;
- Private messaging support;
- Works well with major WordPress plugins.
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| BuddyPress | BuddyPress | Free | 100k+ |
Gravity Forms
Now and then, you may need to find out the opinions of your gym members and visitors. This is one of the key reasons to integrate a WordPress plugin like Gravity Forms into your website, as it will allow you to gather customers’ feedback and correct your business strategy where necessary. With its visual form editor and secure data collection, this plugin can perfectly integrate with your WordPress website, giving you all the controls for safe data collection of members’ opinions and to sell gym memberships more efficiently. Moreover, it can be enhanced further with addons, making the surveying process smooth and comfortable.
Key features:
- Drag-and-drop form builder;
- Responsive forms;
- Conditional logic support;
- Perfect for data collection and surveying;
| Name | Developer | Price | Installations |
|---|---|---|---|
| GravityForms | Rocketgenius Inc. | From $59/year | N/A |
Conclusion
As you can see, WordPress provides enough plugins and extensions to meet nearly any need gyms may have, especially when you’re looking into how to sell a gym membership. Furthermore, thanks to their reasonable prices, free options, and easy-to-use UIs, such solutions deliver top-notch features that would otherwise require development from scratch. With their help, you can easily transform even a one-page fitness website or blog into a self-sustained space for nutrition programs and workouts, member-only content, and more. These plugins can also give you other advantages:
- Streamlined management of bookings: By applying time-proven and reliable booking management methods, modern WordPress plugins for fitness centers can assist you with planning your workouts and coaching programs. As a result, you get to sell fitness programs online and have access to flexible tools that not only save you time but also prevent double bookings and improve class attendance.
- Built-in automation: Solutions like MotoPress Appointment Booking, as well as other similar plugins, are built to not just help you plan your gym classes but also automate routine processes. This can prove to be useful if you don’t want to manually control each membership, payment, booking, and other aspects of gym class management.
- Seamless integration with marketing tools: Most WordPress plugins, including those for e-commerce, are equipped with various marketing integrations. They are designed to simplify promotions of your fitness classes and programs without having to plan and track everything by yourself, but relying on ready-made solutions instead.
- Enhanced user experience: Finally, plugins like BuddyPress, LearnPress, and other complex but accessible tools not just give you access to top-notch features, but also improve the user experience of your customers. By having a responsive and user-friendly interface, such plugins transform a simple WordPress website into an informative online fitness space, accessible to anyone.
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