Gymora - Self-Hosted Gym Membership Manager

The problem

Independent gyms, yoga and pilates studios, martial-arts schools and CrossFit boxes run on one of two things: an expensive per-member SaaS subscription that keeps climbing as you grow, or a spreadsheet that can't tell the front desk whether the person at the door is actually allowed in. Neither answers the questions you ask every day — who's active, who's expiring, who owes money, and did this class-pack member just use their last credit?

What Gymora does

Gymora is a self-hosted PHP application you install once on your own server or shared hosting. It is the staff-side system for a single location: members, membership plans, a fast front-desk check-in, payments, and an operations dashboard. You own the data, you pay once, and there is no per-member fee.

It is deliberately not a public class-booking website. It is the tool your front desk and owner actually use.

Who this is for

- Single-location gyms, boxes and studios tired of per-member SaaS pricing - Owners running the business on spreadsheets who need real check-in control - Studios that sell class packs and need credits tracked automatically - Anyone who wants their member data on their own server, not a vendor's cloud

Who this is NOT for

- Multi-location chains needing central management across sites - Businesses that want a public, member-facing self-booking website (this is staff-side) - Anyone needing built-in credit-card processing (Gymora records payments; it doesn't charge cards)

What you get

- Member management — roster with contact info, emergency contact, notes, status; search, filter and CSV export - Flexible plans — monthly, annual, class packs (with credits) and day passes - Membership lifecycle — assign, renew, freeze/unfreeze, cancel; automatic term dates - Front-desk check-in with real guards — blocks expired, frozen and cancelled members with a clear reason, and decrements class-pack credits (blocking at zero) - Billing — record charges and payments, mark paid, and an arrears list with totals - Ops dashboard — active members, check-ins today, revenue this month, expiring memberships and overdue payments - Self-hosted — MySQL or SQLite, PHP 8+, standard shared-hosting compatible - One-time purchase — no subscription, no per-member charges

Objections answered

"Will this run on my shared hosting?" Yes. Gymora needs PHP 8+ with PDO — present on virtually all cPanel/Plesk hosts. Choose SQLite for zero database setup, or MySQL for production. The web installer takes about two minutes.

"Is it a booking site my members log into?" No — and that's intentional. Gymora is the staff/owner operations system. Your front desk checks members in; your owner watches revenue and arrears. There is no public-facing member login to secure or support.

"Does it charge my members' cards?" No. Gymora records payments and shows you who is in arrears. Take payment through your own processor, card terminal or cash, then mark it paid. That keeps you free of card-data compliance obligations inside this app.

"Can I trust the check-in logic?" The entire membership/check-in core lives in one class (`src/Membership.php`) and ships with 90 offline test assertions (`tests/run.php`) covering the guards, credit decrement, status transitions, expiry, arrears and revenue math.

Skeptic FAQ

"I could just use a spreadsheet." A spreadsheet can't tell your front desk, in one second, that a member's pack is empty or their membership lapsed yesterday — and it won't total your arrears or this month's revenue. Gymora does both without you writing a single formula.

"My current SaaS does this for $X/month." It also bills you every month forever, scales that bill with your member count, and holds your data. Gymora is a one-time purchase that runs on your infrastructure indefinitely.

Honest limitations

- Single location, single-tenant (one staff/admin login per install) - Staff-side operations tool — not a public member booking/self-service site - No built-in card processing or email/SMS sending - Not accounting, tax or legal software

Technical details

- PHP 8.0+ (tested on 8.3), zero Composer dependencies - MySQL 5.7+ or SQLite 3 (verified on both) - Standard shared hosting compatible (.htaccess, mod_rewrite) - Web installer included; CSRF protection; integer-cent money; timezone-aware dates - Demo mode with realistic sample data (one click to load, one to reset) - All source code included and modifiable

What's included

- Full source code (PHP, HTML, CSS, JS) - Web installer - README and QUICKSTART - Demo data seeder - 90-assertion offline test suite - Commercial single-purchase license

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Features

• Member CRM with plans, statuses and full payment history
• Front-desk check-in with expired/frozen membership guards
• Class-pack credits with race-safe double-spend protection
• Arrears and revenue dashboard
• Branded printable receipts and CSV exports
• Installable mobile app (PWA), dark mode
• REST API with OpenAPI spec, signed webhooks, 2FA, roles + audit trail
• Scheduled backups with dry-run restore; email via your own SMTP
• MCP endpoint - works with AI assistants under the same role guards

Requirements

PHP 8.0 - 8.4, MySQL 5.7+/MariaDB (SQLite also supported), Apache or Nginx. Runs on ordinary cPanel/Plesk shared hosting. No Composer, no Node, no build step.

Instructions

Upload the zip and extract it on your host, then open the site in a browser - a 2-minute web installer asks for database credentials and creates your admin account. QUICKSTART.txt and a full README ship in the package. An offline test suite is included so you can verify the build.