Striive Review - Personal Training Business Management Software

As a personal trainer, ideally, you will want a way to keep records of your clients and your appointments. It is one of the first rules of business: stay organised. There is a lot to think about: appointment booking, goal tracking, client referrals, fitness goals and tracking, payments, producing invoices and accounts. 

​If you have only a handful of clients, doing all that manually on paper or even on an Excel spreadsheet might work. However, if you want to grow your fitness business and still have time for what matters most, eventually, you'll have to consider using a system that does it all for you.

Consider your clients as well. They have to remember when they want to book personal training sessions, when their next payment is due, and make sure they pay you. They might also want to record where they are when they start with you and keep an eye on their progress throughout their journey. If they are leading busy lives, where they rely on automation and apps to help them manage their day, they will welcome some system for their fitness.

Bearing all of this in mind, it makes sense to explore personal training management software. Employing the right system will make your and your personal training clients' lives easier and more organised. 

You'll find that there are many solutions out there targeting personal trainers. We've already reviewed quite a few. In this article, we are looking at Striive, a reasonably new contender launched in 2020.  Let's see how it can support your personal training business.

What is Striive?

Striive is a piece of software designed to help self-employed health and fitness professionals manage their businesses. It is marketed to make client onboarding much more simple, with its remote PAR-Q and contract signing features. It also enables personal trainers to switch between in-person and virtual sessions and coaching calls easily and enables simple tracking for business time and payments. 

Striive was founded in the spring of 2020 by sports fans Morgan and Richard, who joined forces with Adam and Leon, who founded InGym to form a brand new innovative company. 

InGym was a client management software that was designed exclusively for personal trainers and fitness instructors. Striive has expanded InGym's reach into the broader health and fitness market as part of its ongoing development.

What are some of the main features of Striive?

One of the most critical aspects of deciding whether a software solution is right for you is understanding if the features will provide you with the type of support that your fitness business needs. So let's look at what you get with Striive.

1. Client Onboarding

Signing up a new client can be one of the most time-consuming tasks you will do as a personal trainer. It is a crucial part of running any business, so getting it right is imperative. Onboarding a client gives you the chance to get to know someone new so you can help them to the best of your knowledge.

It also involves a lot of paperwork and forms. You'll need their contact details, health background, exercise history, the current state of their fitness and their goals. You'll also want them to sign the all-important contract. Striive incorporates this into the software, including training intentions, contractual agreements and their PAR-Q.

2. Workout and Program Planner

Rather than sitting down and writing out workout plans, or even worse, winging it as you go along, there is an integrated workout and program planner in Striive that can easily be adapted and updated when necessary. You can also release information about the plans and programs to clients as and when you feel it appropriate.

3. Client Notifications

This feature makes maintaining your schedule much more manageable and helps your clients stay on top of their sessions times as well. Instead of manually contacting each client if you need to cancel or rearrange their session, you can have automated text messages and emails sent out to them.

You can also opt to send reminder emails and SMS messages to all or certain clients - no more excuses for forgetting a workout now! You can also send statements and schedules to your clients.

4. Online Payment Portal

Instead of managing cash payments or bank transfers and trying to work out who has paid you what and when and who still owes you, you can set it all up and let the system do the rest for you. Striive allows you to receive payments via Stripe, a well-known and reputable payment portal and manages payments automatically.

Clients can use their debit and credit cards to pay on the portal. It also generates automatic billing, whether weekly, monthly or annually, depending on your membership preferences and structure.

5. Client Management

This is where Striive comes into its own as a piece of software. Track your clients' attendance to see who turns up regularly and who might need more regular reminders and accountability check-ins. Gather their PAR Q information and update it.

You can track 1-2-1 personal training sessions and group classes and record the packages each client has purchased and the sessions they've used up. 

6. Flexible Delivery

Switch between face to face sessions and online workouts through video conferencing platforms such as Zoom easily and without too much hassle. Striive sends out information telling your clients exactly where they need to be and when.

Striive allows you to plan, structure, and schedule group classes and manage each client's enrollment and attendance on these classes.

7. Employed Work

If you run sessions for one or more employers, you can use Striive to record the details of that work too. You can add your employers and assign different classes on your schedule to them. You'll be able to use the drag-and-drop planner to manage your schedule and share it with them, including prices. The system will confirm completed classes, and you'll be able to raise invoices individually for these employers. 

8. Business Admin

Striive also has business admin features like a comprehensive scheduling system to plan sessions, classes, holidays and even consultations in one place. You can add multiple locations and assign a range of events on your calendar to them.

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Other admin features include to-do lists, tracking business expenses and generating profit reports.

9. Striive Portal

Your clients will get access to a self-service platform where they can see and manage their schedules and make payments. You can add a login button to your website that will link to the portal. You can choose what colour it should have to match your brand, and all client management, including cancellations and sessions requests, happens in the same place.

Striive Pricing

Striive offers a free 30-day trial with unlimited use of the features so you can play around and figure out what it can do for you. After that, there are three different levels of membership, ranging from £20 to £30 a month. On top of that, you can buy SMS messages in bundles of 250.

Striive Weaknesses

At the moment, Striive lacks in performance metrics and progress management, something that both clients and personal trainers would find helpful.

However, these things have been noted by the manufacturers of the software, who are looking to add these features soon. There is also a lack of functionality in integrating third-party apps into the software, valuable for personal trainers.

Striive Strengths

Despite only being around for over a year, the Striive software has many strengths and is becoming a popular piece of tech in the personal training circuit. It is streamlined and intuitive for all users, making it a pleasure to use. 

The customer service and technical support are second to none, with developers eager to help customers if there are any issues and taking on board feedback. The 30-day free trial allows trainers to see whether the software is right for them, giving them complete access to the features for the entire time.

Who can benefit from using Striive?

Any employed or self-employed fitness instructor, fitness teacher or personal trainer could look at signing up to Striive. The features work well for fitness professionals across all niches and disciplines. With new features being added regularly and many more promised, there will likely be features for specific trainers in the future.

Verdict

All in all, Striive is an excellent piece of software with many superb features. There are still many that need to be added, and the developers are working hard to listen to feedback and come out with upgrades. 

The software is handy for both clients and personal trainers alike, helping them keep on top of scheduling sessions and appointments and making sure all payments are complete. 

For a personal trainer, the Striive software will save a significant amount of time each day in admin work and tasks, leaving you more time to work with clients or take steps to grow your fitness business further. Not only that, but the free demo gives you a decent amount of time to try out all of the features. It is also pretty reasonable in terms of pricing, great value for money.