Could Pembee be the Glofox alternative you have been looking for?
Pembee is a class and course booking platform for activity providers, from $45/month — with published pricing, no contracts, and a 30-day free trial.
| Feature by Features | Pembee | ABC Glofox | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | |||
| Monthly fee | From $45/month (Standard plan) | Custom quote — Essential / Boost / Elite tiers, no prices published* | |
| Credit card transaction fees | From 0.59% + Stripe fees | Bundled Glofox Pay processor; rate set in your contract* | |
| Contract length | None — monthly or annual, cancel any time | Term contracts; cancellation handled via account manager | |
| Free trial | 30 days — no credit card required | Demo only; no self-serve trial | |
| Payment Options | |||
| Credit/Debit card | Included | Included | |
| Cash/Bank Transfer | Included | Included | |
| Session passes / Class bundles | Included | Included | |
| Activity Settings | |||
| Sell add-on items | Included | Retail products on Boost tier and above* | |
| Activity pictures and attachments | Included | Limited | |
| Customize activity listing page | Included | Branded member app; web pages template-based | |
| Discount options | |||
| Multi attendee discounts | Included | Workaround via membership pricing | |
| Multi session discounts | Included | Included | |
| Discount codes | Included | Included | |
| Bookings | |||
| Customizable intake forms | Included | Basic — limited field types | |
| Family accounts (one parent, many children) | Included | Limited — gym member model | |
| Terms and Conditions agreement | Included | E-agreements on Boost tier and above* | |
* Based on plan tiers and inclusions published on glofox.com/plans as of April 2026. ABC Glofox does not publish monthly prices; pricing and processor rates are quoted via sales.
Introduction
Glofox — now branded ABC Glofox after its 2022 acquisition by ABC Fitness — is a strong tool for boutique fitness gyms. Yoga, pilates, HIIT, CrossFit and martial arts gyms that want a branded member app and a polished mobile-first experience get real value from it. If you run group classes, courses, terms or family-led programmes, Pembee is built for that shape of business — with published pricing, no contracts, and a 30-day free trial you can run without booking a sales call.
As of April 2026, providers on Pembee have processed over 900,000 bookings and £40M+ in transactions, with a 4.9/5 rating on Capterra (versus ABC Glofox's 4.4/5). This page lays out where the two platforms overlap and where they diverge for class-based and family-led businesses.
How does Pembee compare to ABC Glofox's quote-only pricing?
Published, flat pricing. Pembee Standard is $45/month and Premium is $105/month, listed on the website with no quote, no demo gate and no “contact us for a price”. The subscription doesn't move when you add a coach or open another hall.
Transparent transaction fees. Pembee uses Stripe at 0.59% on top of Stripe's published rates, so the rate you see is the rate you pay. Glofox bundles its own processor (Glofox Pay) and the rate is set in your contract — typically 2.5–2.9% — which makes a like-for-like fee comparison hard to do up front.
Try before you buy. Pembee runs a full 30-day free trial with no credit card required. ABC Glofox offers a sales demo only — to see the product in action you'll book a call and walk through it with an account executive. For small operators evaluating in evenings around a busy term, the friction adds up.
“Clean and crisp front end for parents — easily operated back end for staff. We tried 2 others before this and both were heavily flawed.”
Feature deep-dive: Pembee vs ABC Glofox for class-based businesses
Below is a side-by-side look at the areas that matter most when you're running recurring classes and courses for families rather than memberships for adult gym-goers.
Pricing
Flat plan vs quote-only tiers. Pembee Standard is $45/month and Premium is $105/month for waitlists, abandoned-cart recovery, Meta Pixel and unlimited admin users. ABC Glofox runs Essential, Boost, Elite and Enterprise — with no published prices and the most useful features (lead capture, advanced reporting, e-agreements, branded app) gated behind the higher tiers.
No contracts. Pembee is monthly or annual with 2 months free on annual. Cancel any time. ABC Glofox operates on term contracts, and recent reviews flag cancellation friction more often than the platform itself.
30-day trial, no credit card. Pembee runs the full product, not a stripped-down preview. ABC Glofox offers a demo only — useful, but a different commitment.
Admin and automation
Registers built for classes. Pembee generates a register automatically from bookings, supports paperless check-in and check-out on the session, and carries attendee data forward term-to-term so parents don't re-enter it every season. ABC Glofox is built around a membership-and-bookings model; class registers exist but the term-by-term re-enrolment shape isn't the core flow.
Confirmations, reminders and cart recovery. Email confirmations, balance reminders and reminders before each session cut down manual follow-ups. Premium adds abandoned-cart recovery for bookings that stall at checkout — useful when you're relying on parents finishing a booking between school pickup and dinner.
Clone classes and terms. Duplicating a successful term is one click — useful every September, January and April. ABC Glofox's scheduling is solid for fixed-time gym classes, but multi-week kids' courses with varying patterns aren't the model it was built around.
Customisation
Activity pages you control. Pembee lets you shape each activity page with photos, descriptions, Google Maps links, attachments, and a configurable set of filters so parents can narrow down classes by age group, location or day. ABC Glofox's headline is its branded member app; the public web booking pages themselves are more template-based.
Custom intake forms. Collect the medical, consent and dietary information you actually need — reusable per child, not per booking. ABC Glofox's form builder supports basic fields only, with e-agreements gated behind the Boost tier.
Payments
Stripe-integrated. Pembee uses Stripe for card payments and supports Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna out of the box. Offline payments (cash, bank transfer) carry no transaction fee on either platform. Your Stripe account belongs to you — if you ever leave Pembee, your customers' saved payment methods stay with you.
Subscriptions, class packs and trial tickets. Sell monthly memberships, multi-session bundles and discounted or free taster sessions as first-class objects, not workarounds. UK providers also get integrated HMRC Tax-Free Childcare payments — not something a US-led fitness platform like ABC Glofox supports.
Engagement
Family accounts. One parent, multiple children, one checkout. Medical info lives on the child, not the booking — entered once, reused every term. ABC Glofox models a single member with a profile and a membership; parent-with-multiple-kids is approximated rather than built in.
Branded member app. ABC Glofox's branded mobile app is its strongest feature for boutique gyms — members open “your” app rather than a third-party booking page. Pembee doesn't ship a native branded app; we provide a mobile-friendly parent booking portal that runs in the browser. For most class-based providers, parents booking once a term don't install a gym-style app — but if a branded native app is the deal breaker, Glofox is the stronger fit there.
Marketing built in. Discount codes, multi-child and multi-session discounts, trial tickets, and Meta Pixel support on the Premium plan. ABC Glofox supports codes but multi-attendee discounting routes through membership pricing rather than as a first-class feature.
Insights
Dashboard and reports. Sales reports, class sales breakdowns and monthly revenue reports are in the admin dashboard from day one on Pembee. ABC Glofox reserves advanced reporting for the Boost tier and above. See the full class booking system for the complete feature set.
Conclusion: the right choice for class-based businesses
ABC Glofox is a solid product for boutique fitness gyms that want a branded member app and don't mind a sales call and a term contract to get going. If that's your shape of business, Glofox probably fits you well. But for studios, clubs, schools, camps and after-school programmes running group classes, courses, terms and family bookings — where the pricing is meant to be visible, the trial is meant to be self-serve, and the parent is booking for two children and a medical form rather than swiping into a 6am HIIT class — Pembee is designed for exactly that work.
Wandsworth Preparatory School switched to Pembee from a legacy booking tool and reported a 20% increase in bookings and a 50% reduction in admin time — the kind of gain that makes the switching friction worth it.
Most studios evaluating Glofox are also weighing up Mindbody — read our Mindbody vs Glofox breakdown for the head-to-head, or our Pembee vs Mindbody comparison for a third option. You can also see how Pembee compares to other booking tools.
Try Pembee for free by signing up here — 30 days, no credit card, no contract.
Testimonials
Trusted to handle thousands of bookings each day
“Using Pembee for my event bookings and registration has cut down my admin time immeasurably. I had got to a point where I felt swamped by the volume of paperwork created by my small but busy business and Pembee has saved the day!”
“Fantastic. Easy to use, support is incredible and we have much happier users.”
“I am blown away by the level of support and service from Pembee, the team have helped me set up the app and tweak it to get it working exactly as I want it. I can't fault any step of the process.”
“So easy to use, great for customers and staff. Clean and crisp front end for parents - easily operated back end for staff. We tried 2 others before this and both were heavily flawed with by support or quality - this system has both.”
“Just absolutely fantastic. I am super impressed with their system and also their customer support.”
“Such an amazing piece of software after trialling a few, Pembee is very easy to use and has solved a problem that we encountered!”
“Amazing app for my business. Helpful and easy to use, plus the online support is amazing from the team.”
“Amazing. Not only a great and easy to use platform but brilliant customer service. Pembee has been a game changer for me. From using a previous booking system, my workload has been cut in half - more than half! Cannot recommend enough.”
“Our previous booking system was going offline and we needed a replacement, Pembee worked with us to ensure their system could offer everything we needed to continue the smooth running of our business. Pembee customer support is second to none. Setting up the system was straightforward and there was always someone on hand to help with any queries we had.”
- Bookings processed
- 900K
- Transactions processed
- $50M
- Total Users
- 230,000+
- Sessions listed
- 600,000+