A Trainerize alternative for operators who actually run a gym

When Trainerize is still the right call

We are not going to pretend Trainerize is wrong for everyone. Its workout-building experience, exercise video library, and coach-to-client messaging loop are strong, and there are categories of operator where switching makes no sense:

• Solo online coaches with rosters under 25 clients. Your product is a programme, not a facility. Trainerize was built for exactly this shape, and the per-client pricing is still reasonable at this scale.
• Hybrid personal trainers with small rosters who split time between in-person sessions and online programme delivery. Trainerize covers the online side cleanly and the in-person piece can sit on paper or a simple calendar.
• Programme-first boutique studios whose value proposition is coaching intellectual property - curated workouts, methodology, a signature style - rather than facility throughput. The AI Workout Builder and Smart Meal Planner feed directly into that value prop.

If you recognise yourself in one of those three, stay where you are. If your business runs on door swipes, class bookings, retail sales, and recurring membership billing, keep reading.

Shredeo vs Trainerize at a glance

Trainerize pricing and capability figures sourced from Trainerize's public pricing page, ABC Fitness Solutions product pages, and third-party coaching blogs. Export limitations are documented across Trainerize support articles and recurring community forum threads.

You own your client list. You don't own your programme history.

This is the single hardest fact about Trainerize, and the one most operators do not discover until they try to leave. Trainerize lets you export a CSV of client contact details - name, email, phone. That is the entire export surface. The things that actually represent years of coaching work - programme templates, assigned workout history, progress statistics, body measurements, adherence logs - cannot be exported. Trainerize cites security and privacy as the reason, and the request has been open on community forums for years without resolution.

If you are a coach with three years of clients in Trainerize, the programme library you have built, the workout history that proves your methodology works, and the progress data that validates your results all live inside a system you cannot move out of in any structured form. You can migrate the people. You cannot migrate the evidence.

Shredeo takes the opposite stance. Instant data export - CSV, Excel, JSON, and dashboard PDFs where relevant - is available from the dashboard, not just on the way out. Your data is your data. If you eventually leave Shredeo, you leave with everything.

Coach software used as gym software eventually breaks

Trainerize models the world around a coach and a set of clients. That shape works beautifully when you actually are a coach with a set of clients. It starts to strain when the shape of your business is a building, a front desk, a class timetable, and a retail counter. The strain shows up in specific places: group classes are group appointments against a trainer's availability, not a full class CMS with waitlists, recurring weekly blocks, instructor subbing, and capacity limits tied to the physical room. Door check-in is a coach-side adherence concept, not an NFC reader at the turnstile with real-time occupancy. Counter sales - a sports drink, a protein bar, a day pass - do not have a native home.

None of this is a criticism of Trainerize. It is a product category statement. Trainerize was built for coaches, not for facility operators. Shredeo was built the other way: RFID/NFC and QR check-in, real-time occupancy, counter sales, a full class CMS, and member profiles that understand memberships, class packs, and retail orders as first-class entities.

Per-client pricing scales against you

Most gym-operations platforms charge per business - one price, regardless of whether you have 80 or 800 members. Trainerize charges per active client, because the product is sold to coaches and a coach's cost base is supposed to scale with their roster. Grow covers up to 2 clients at around $9/mo. Pro tiers step up through 5, 15, 30, 100, and 200 clients, starting from about $22/mo. Studio begins around $250/mo for multi-trainer teams. One reported example from a coaching blog put the bill at $134/mo at 25 clients and $190/mo at 50 clients - treat that as an illustrative data point, not a universal quote.

Add-ons stack on top. The Custom Branded App is $169 one-time setup plus $20/mo on Grow / Pro 5 / Pro 15 or $45/mo on Pro 30 through Pro 200 (included on Studio and Enterprise). Advanced Nutrition is around $45/mo. For a solo coach with 15 clients, the total is manageable. For a gym operator who wants to give every member a Trainerize login and a branded app, the per-active-client curve bends the wrong way as the facility grows.

Shredeo is in PreOrder, so we are not publishing a price list yet, but the model is per-business - not indexed on member count. Book a demo and we will quote you directly.

AI at the coach surface, not the operations surface

Trainerize has shipped real AI - the AI Workout Builder assembles programmes from prompts, the Smart Meal Planner generates nutrition plans, and ChatGPT-via-Zapier workflows are available for automation. These are genuinely useful if the thing you do is build programmes. They are coach-assistive AI: they help the coach produce better programme output faster.

Shredeo's AI lives on the other side of the business. It can help with client search, class scheduling, booking changes, check-ins, payment reminders, KPI dashboards, revenue and attendance reports, exports, member insights, segmentation, and targeted email sends. Instead of AI that helps a coach build a workout, you get AI that can move day-to-day gym operations forward under your staff's role-based permissions.

What the Shredeo Marketing Engine adds

Most gym software uses "marketing engine" to mean scheduled email campaigns, maybe SMS, and a few retention templates. That helps, but it still leaves staff exporting lists, chasing no-shows manually, and running community moments outside the system.

Shredeo connects email automation, in-app notifications, direct messaging, community challenges, and AI-assisted member segments to live gym data: bookings, attendance, payments, membership status, and churn signals. That makes growth work more operational: win-back sequences, no-show nudges, renewal prompts, challenge announcements, and targeted follow-ups can run from the same place as your bookings and billing.

How to migrate from Trainerize to Shredeo

This migration has more friction than most, and we would rather be honest about it. The friction comes from Trainerize's export policy, not from Shredeo's import.

1. Export the client contact CSV. This is the only export Trainerize provides - name, email, phone. Pull it from your account settings.
2. Accept the data you will lose. Programme templates, workout history, progress stats, body measurements, and adherence data cannot be exported from Trainerize. Your coaches will need to re-key priority programme templates into Shredeo. Decide which templates actually matter before you start.
3. Onboard clients into Shredeo. We import the CSV, map subscription packages, set up your class timetable, and stand up the front-desk NFC and QR check-in. A typical single-location import takes under a week.
4. Re-authorise payments. Stripe customer tokens do not transfer between accounts and SEPA mandates are tied to the receiving creditor. Members re-authorise through a branded email and portal flow, with completion tracked during the parallel run.
5. Run in parallel for 2–4 weeks. Keep Trainerize active for the coaches who rely on programme delivery while Shredeo handles bookings, check-ins, POS, and billing. Cut over when everything reconciles.

Keep comparing

Use these pages to compare the broader gym software landscape and check the Shredeo features that matter most during a switch.

Frequently asked questions

See Shredeo in 30 minutes

Book a demo and we will walk through the parts of your operation that Trainerize was never built for - or tell you honestly when your business is a coaching business and you should stay where you are.