Coacha vs ClassForKids vs Class Manager: The Best Gymnastics Club Software for UK Clubs

Three platforms come up again and again when UK gymnastics clubs go looking for software: Coacha, ClassForKids and Class Manager. All three will help studio owners run a gymnastics club competently, and the reviews online confirm that. So the real question is not which one works, but which fits your club and your setup. As well as what it costs across a full year once subscription and payment fees are added together. (Great for getting a real idea of what your finances will look like). 

That second number is the one nobody publishes.

The short answer

Class Manager’s gymnastics management software is the cheapest of the three across the club sizes we modelled, and the only one with a single flat rate and no monthly subscription. Coacha has the strongest progression tracking and the best safeguarding defaults, plus a free tier for small clubs under 50 members. ClassForKids is the one to pick if your problem is filling spaces rather than admin, because nothing else here brings you features that help you gain new members.

At a glance

All prices verified 24 August 2026 from each vendor's own pricing page, plus Stripe's and GoCardless's published UK rates.

What each one actually costs

However, it’s not just all based on that one cost…It is worth understanding exactly how much you’re paying, what you’re getting for your money, and how it will impact your bottom line before you look at a single number.

Coacha and ClassForKids both quote transaction fees that already include Stripe's cut. Class Manager quotes a single rate that also includes the processor. So all three numbers below are comparable, which is unusual: most comparisons put a platform fee next to an all-in fee and call it a saving.

Here is the full picture:

Class Manager charges slightly more per transaction and nothing per month, while the other two charge less per transaction and add a monthly subscription on top, which means the cheaper option changes depending on how much money runs through your club in a year. Club size decides it.

A worked example

Take a club with 250 gymnasts paying £110 a term across three terms. That is £82,500 going through the system each year, across 750 transactions.

Class Manager comes out £267 a year cheaper than Coacha and £105 cheaper than ClassForKids. That ClassForKids figure is their published floor, though. Their pricing page says "from" on every tier, and their own FAQ answers the question "what payment fees should I expect?" with "payment fees depend on the size and structure of your business". You will not know your real number until you have spoken to their sales team.

Two other things affect the total:

• Under 50 members, Coacha is free. Not a trial: free for life, with unlimited classes and registrations. A small club pays Coacha nothing and Class Manager a percentage of every payment. Coacha wins outright at that size.

• Coacha's invoicing sits on a higher tier. If you need B2B invoicing, you need Coacha Custom at £60 a month, which is £720 a year rather than £432.

Coacha

Coacha is UK-built, priced in pounds, and aimed at sports clubs generally rather than gymnastics alone, though it does run a dedicated gymnastics offering with features built for graded sports.

What it does well. Its progression tracking is the most thoroughly documented of the three, and its safeguarding is a designed default rather than a settings page:

• Skills, grades and badges. Monitor "any number of skills, grades, badges or progressions" and build your own award criteria.

• Progress updated from the register. That is the workflow a coach actually has, rather than a separate admin job for later.

• Safeguarding built into messaging. An adult cannot contact a child without someone else copied in.

• Photo consent on the register. Stored on the profile and flagged visually, so a coach sees it at a glance.

• Multiple coaches per class, with control over what each staff member sees.

Where it falls short. The mobile app is the one complaint that keeps recurring across Coacha's reviews, and it comes from gymnastics clubs as well as everyone else. One club with 400+ members put it plainly: "The app is not quite as good as we would like; the desktop version has all of the functionality."

A gymnastics reviewer said, "The mobile app could do with a slight overhaul". For coaches working from the gym floor rather than an office, that matters.

The introductory price also doubles: Premium is £18 a month for the first three months and then £36 from month four onwards, so budget for the real figure rather than the one on the pricing page.

Choose Coacha if you have fewer than 50 members, or if tracking badges and awards is the single most important thing your software does.

ClassForKids

ClassForKids is owned by The Access Group and covers kids' activity clubs broadly, with gymnastics as one named industry.

What it does well. The Discovery Site is a real advantage, and nothing else here comes close to it. It is a marketplace with a claimed 750,000 parents a month; listings are free to customers, and there is zero commission on bookings. If your problem is empty spaces rather than admin hours, that can be worth more than any price difference in this article.

• Waiting lists let parents join online and get invited automatically when a space opens. 

• Terms duplicate in a few clicks, so next term is set up in minutes

• Upfront fees for membership, insurance or kit are collected during booking rather than chased afterwards.

Where it falls short. You cannot find out what it costs. Every tier says "from", two of the four are price-on-application, and their own FAQ confirms that the rate depends on the size and structure of your business, which means the only way to get a real number is to book a call with their sales team.

More significantly for a gymnastics club: their gymnastics page names no skill, badge, award, or progression tracking at all.

Their app is for parents only. Their own help centre puts it plainly: "the ClassForKids Parents App is designed for parents and carers to stay informed of their kids' class schedule." Coaches and owners work from the browser.

Reviewers flag two more gaps. You cannot leave notes on individual register pages, which one described as "creating communication gaps when multiple admin staff manage 10–50 registers per term". And the system allows only one main email contact per child, which is awkward for separated families.

Choose ClassForKids if growing your membership is the priority and you are happy to buy through a sales process. We have a fuller ClassForKids comparison if you are weighing just those two.

Class Manager

Class Manager is the gymnastics club software we make. Here it is on the same terms as the other two.

What it does well. The pricing is the simplest of the three: 2.7% + 20p and nothing else. No subscription, no per-gymnast or per-venue charge, no separate Direct Debit rate, and nothing locked behind a higher plan. One number covers everything, whatever tier you would have been sold elsewhere.

On scheduling, it is the strongest of the three:

• Clone a whole season including lessons, attendees and instructors.

• Colour-coded timetables across multiple spaces and age groups.

• Waiting lists: teachers and owners are in charge of the waiting list and can move people manually into the lessons, or allow them to move into it automatically 

• Multiple coaches per class.

• Conflict warnings on coach, time, and location that flag a clash without blocking the save.

• Upfront fees for membership, insurance or kit are collected during booking rather than chased afterwards.

Warnings, not walls

That last one is the part clubs tend to notice. Gymnastics timetables are full of necessary clashes: two squads in one hall, a coach moving between apparatus rotations, and more.

Class Manager flags the scheduling conflicts and lets you decide. We wrote about the 5pm tumble track standoff if you want the longer version.

Records and communication

Notes attach at five levels: the student, the family,  the lesson, the class, and the teacher. That is finer-grained than anything either competitor documents, and it is exactly the gap ClassForKids reviewers describe.

Skill tracking follows each gymnast's progress, and waivers, photo consents, and medical notes sit on the profile.

Chats keep parent conversations in one place with broadcast, group and one-to-one messaging, rather than spread across WhatsApp.

One app, everyone on it

The app is free on iPhone and Android, and it is the same app for owners, coaches and families. Each sees what their role needs:

• Owners get schedules, enrolment and attendance figures, billing and reports.

• Coaches get registers, who is signed up, and who is new, returning or trialling.

• Families get schedules, bookings, payments and the club shop.

Messages, updates and schedule changes arrive as push notifications the moment they are sent, so nothing waits in an inbox. What comes through, and when, is governed by your phone's own notification settings, which is how an owner keeps an evening to themselves without losing track of the club.

Worth knowing before you weigh it: the app is new enough that it has not yet collected enough App Store ratings to show a score. It is easy to verify what it does and much harder to verify that families love it.

Where it falls short. Two things, honestly:

• There is no free tier. A 40-gymnast club pays Coacha nothing, and for a club that size, that is hard to argue with.

• No parent marketplace. ClassForKids will put your club in front of parents who have never heard of it. Class Manager will not.

What it does for growth

It removes the friction between an interested parent and an enrolled gymnast. Sign-up is self-service and works on a phone; bookings and schedules are available 24/7, and you can run free or paid trials.

Payment links carry automatic capacity limits so a class cannot be overfilled, and waiting lists catch the overflow. That is what makes a September enrolment push manageable rather than chaotic. Because there is no per-gymnast, per-coach, or per-venue charge, none of that growth raises what you pay beyond the payments themselves. One reviewer noted features expanding without price increases.

Choose Class Manager if you want the lowest total cost without a subscription, and your timetable is complicated. We go into more detail on running recreational classes and competitive squads together, and you can see current UK pricing here.

What gymnastics needs that generic class software misses

Progression and awards

Gymnastics is organised around levels, and a platform that cannot record what a gymnast has achieved leaves you keeping that record in a spreadsheet alongside the software you just paid for, which rather defeats the point of buying it. It is the most gymnastics-specific question on this page. Coacha documents this most thoroughly and updates progress from the register. Class Manager tracks skills and levels per gymnast. ClassForKids does not publish anything on this at all.

None of the three publishes an integration with British Gymnastics or the Rise Programme. If that is essential to you, look at platforms built around it. However, with Class Manager’s skill tracking, you can easily create your standards and skills to follow regulatory bodies.

Multiple coaches and scheduling clashes

Real gym timetables are messy. You run several groups in one hall at once, coaches rotate between apparatus through a session, and squad training overlaps with recreational classes at the busiest times.

Two things help: assigning more than one coach to a class, and being warned about clashes without being blocked by them. Coacha and Class Manager both support multiple coaches. Only Class Manager flags conflicts, and it does so as a warning rather than a wall.

Safeguarding, waivers and consent

All three hold medical information, consent and emergency contacts. Coacha goes furthest by design: adults cannot message children unaccompanied, and photo consent is flagged on the register itself.

Class Manager stores signed waivers, photo consents and policies centrally, with staff permissions limiting who sees what. We have written separately on what software can and cannot do for safeguarding. ClassForKids reviewers credit it for Ofsted and GDPR compliance support.

Waiting lists and capacity

Gymnastics is capacity-constrained, because apparatus and coach ratios cap every session. All three handle waiting lists. ClassForKids makes the most of it, letting parents join online and inviting them automatically when a space opens.

One thing the reviews settle on: support is not a differentiator. All three sit between 4.8 and 4.9 on Capterra, and responsive, helpful support is the most praised thing about every one of them. Nor is any of the three criticised for its core booking, registration, or payment function. They all work. The decision is about cost structure and which small operational details you can live without.

Which should you choose?

• Most UK gymnastics clubs → Class Manager. Cheapest at every club size we modelled, one flat rate, no subscription, and the best scheduling of the three.

• Progression tracking above all → Coacha. Deepest documented skills and awards, updated from the register.

• You need more members, not less admin → ClassForKids. The Discovery Site is the only demand channel here.

• Several hundred gymnasts across multiple venues → run your own numbers. At that scale, the rates matter more than the subscription, so do the sum before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

How much does gymnastics club software cost in the UK? For a 250-gymnast club, expect £2,300 to £2,700 a year all in. That covers both the subscription and the transaction fees, which is where most of the cost actually sits.

Which is cheapest? Class Manager was cheapest at every club size we modelled, from 100 to 250 gymnasts, because it charges no monthly subscription at all. Very large clubs should run the sum on their own payment volume.

Is there free gymnastics club software? Coacha Lite is free permanently for clubs up to 50 members, with unlimited classes and registrations. It is a real free tier, not a trial.

Can gymnastics software track badges and awards? Coacha and Class Manager both track skills and progression. ClassForKids does not publish any progression tracking on its gymnastics page.

Can I collect membership and insurance fees at booking? Yes, with ClassForKids, which adds one-off fees during the booking flow. Class Manager handles one-off charges and kit through its shop.

Do any of them integrate with British Gymnastics? None of the three publishes an integration with British Gymnastics or the Rise Programme.

How do I keep up with club communications? Everything lands on your phone. Messages, updates and schedule changes arrive the moment they are sent, so you are not refreshing an inbox or waiting on a reply.

Can I control which notifications I get? Yes, through your phone's own settings. You choose what notifies you and when, so an owner can switch off after the last session and still keep up with the club.

How hard is it to switch from what we use now? All three offer onboarding help, and ClassForKids includes it for free. Expect to spend an evening or two moving class and family data across.

We have a walkthrough on moving a gymnastics club onto new software, and one on cutting the admin load.