Virtuagym - Avis

I only use the Calorie Counter app and meal plan software. I like that I can see all of my clients food logs, load foods into their meals plans, and customize their macros. It makes it easy to monitor my clients intake to ensure they are hitting their goals to lead to results. Being able to save meals is great, especially when I have clients who eat the same meals a lot, or if I want to save a quick meal for my clients to have access too. I also like how my clients can see the little icon (yellow) to let them know I personally input that food item or created a meal. Overall I have enjoyed using the software!

There needs to be a way to create a recipe. One like MyFitness Pal, where you load all of the bulk ingredients of the recipe, then attach the number of servings the entire recipe creates so you can log the single serving. It is too challenging for my clients to log food if there is a recipe involved because it is a VERY length process to create a meal based on serving size when it is cooked in bulk. I believe there also needs to be a feature to track the 3 macros in grams versus percentages. Clients have a better understanding when they know "I have to hit 150g of carbs" versus seeing 100% at the top once carbs are hit. In the app, when you click on the percentage circles it gives a large range of macros to fall within. This does not allow for accuracy to truly see fat loss or muscle gain. When it comes to grams of macros, there is a very small window (5g of Pro/Carbs and 2g Fat) to ensure calories are not way over or under. Right now the app can fluctuate 80g which is HUGE that is 320 calories plus or minus on both carbs and proteins , fats fluctuate close to 22g which could be a 198 calorie difference. If someone continually hit high on those macros they would never lose the fat they desired

When people input foods, there seems to be a lot of confusion when attaching a portion, or just in general since it autofill's to Macros Based on 100g. I have seen many food items input completely wrong, this could really put someone in a bad position when logging .

I like that I have a custom app for my members to book the classes we schedule, and that it handles all of the transactions for memberships, goods, & services digitally. I don’t have a cash register in my fitness studio, and everyone can use this app.

My biggest struggles with the software are mainly due to tech issues to fully utilize the software AND represent all that I want to in the app, which are probably more due to user error.

I enjoyed the community board feature where updates can be posted in real time to the group/clients which promotes interaction.

The app user friendly according to member feedback.

Not ideal for martial arts based businesses.

The templates and features within the software seem catered more towards larger chain gyms/health clubs to track fitness stats important to personal training and traditional group fitness classes.

The initial sales call made it appear that it would be easier for a small business to use, but it didn't feel like that at all.

Their workout trackers are awesome. I love that they integrate with different companies (though maybe not particularly well) as I was trying to set up an integration with AccuroFit and after two month, it still seems they cannot figure out how to do this. I purchased their recommended bioimpedance scales which is great because we are able to run gym challenges, and members love being able to track their lifting workouts and have a workout player whenever they want. We regularly use the community portal aspects of the software and the app based system makes it easy to talk to members and send notifications about specific things.

Their salespeople are good. Good enough that with their features alone they can convince you to purchase a YEAR LONG subscription without trying it out. By the way, they don't ever explain to you what features you're paying for or when your pricing goes up, why that happened because you accidentally made some changes that affect your subscription. The customer support team/on-boarding team is absolutely dismal. From day 1, I felt like I was explaining to their support how their system worked. They have no idea what is going on and they basically give you 2 30 min phone calls and expect you to figure it out on your own (when they can't even figure it out). I wanted to setup a system that allowed for different credits and booking based on levels and their onboarding specialist asked me during our first phone call "What software did you switch from and why?" I explained that I switched from WellnessLiving and what I liked about them and person managing our account told me "Well maybe you should have stuck with them."

They have an difficult system for trying to reach anyone to answer your questions. They use Zendesk, which is both incredibly confusing as it goes into (how I understand it) a central e-mail system which can take them 1-3 days to get back to you. At which point, they respond with very unhelpful advice or flat out ignorance. Also, their pay service integration sucks. It is very difficult to use them for bookkeeping and POS and I ended up just resorting to Square.

Ease of putting in client info, though I did not like that everyone was automatically a male. Very strange.

If you have clients who have expirations for packages, the software does not keep track of it as users book classes, nor does it keep track of the number of credits left as clients use them. You are only aware when there is none left. There is a pop up that pops up each and every time you log on, even if you click on "no thanks" for the notifications.

The customer side of this is great. Being able to adjust the app as we want and the ability to program for clients right in the app is awesome. We are getting great reviews from our clients.

The business side of things need some work. There are very simple functions that the system can not yet do like; limit sale of a membership, integrate scheduling types (appointments, classes, enrollments), adjust membership and invoice dates (after expiry, adjusting payment processing...), payroll report function. It makes it a lot harder on our end to manage our business.

Easy to use, great out of the box functionality. Custom mobile app is impressive and works very well.

Could do with more full integrations i.e. with more wearables (Garmin etc). A couple still have a few bugs that need to be ironed out.

I liked the multiple discussion groups that could be created. Theoretically, virtuagym has features that COULD, could being the keyword, change the game. Unfortunately, the system had way too many glitches to be used for business purposes unless you are trying to look like a joke who has no idea what they are doing.

Faulty Workout editor and the other glitches I experienced. I wish I could add video to these reviews to show what the workout editor was doing since its hard to explain, but basically, it was not working as it should AT ALL. Even customer service AND my account manager, who conveniently disappeared when I asked for my money back, admitted that the redirects that were happening within the editor made no sense. It was clearly faulty. I was also unable to message clients within the software because it would tell me "no records found" even though if you went to the client list, they were clearly in the system.

I was also given little to no guidance when I was having an issue with payments, not processing. Basically, everyone has to be manually charged if you have a service fee in place. So all my clients were only being charged the service fee, and the monthly balance would land in outstanding. When I reached out to customer service about this and asked if there was something I need to do manually in order for the rest of the payment to process, I was told no. I even asked a follow-up question to MAKE SURE there was nothing I needed to do. Of course, it was later revealed that the outstanding balances were there because I did not send the invoices, which means YES, you do have to manually process the payments as I guessed when I contacted customer service, even though they apparently don't know this themselves.

-If you're looking to stick out against the competition, having your own branded app is a MUST. I feel like this company really understands that, with the private trainer sector being highly over-saturated with exercise enthusiasts trying to find a way to stand out. Everyone lives on their phones, so only makes sense to push towards that. I've had the idea for the longest time to get my martial arts brand off the ground and teach through an app, and Virtuagym's setup was pretty impressive.

-With the app design, there's a section on my web portal dedicated to just that, from design interface, to what I want to offer, to the schedule and more. By the time my app was ready to go live, all they had to do was refer to my app design section to upload everything. I didn't have to do any app coding whatsoever, so that saved hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in app developer costs.

-The scheduling software is pretty top notch. I'm able to list all my classes and connect it to a calendar on my website that's always live.

-The Pro version of my app gives my clients an additional app, the Foods app, where they can keep track of their nutrition, calories and macros. Pretty much gives my clients 2-apps-in-one.

-The Support Team has been very responsive to me. They get back to me pretty fast. The onboarding team were awesome and really helped me complete all the things I wanted to offer through my training.

-The Coaching design of the software is great!

-I wish the videos could be connected through different providers. Right now, the app uses YouTube to connect all my exercises to my videos in the app. It'd be nice to offer different means, like Vimeo. YouTube has restrictions to videos, like only being able to load 16 videos per day and sometimes loads slow.

-Clients are unable to listen to their music at the same time as watching any of my videos. However, the support team is aware of this hiccup and is looking into it.

-One option that I really liked about the previous software I used (Zen Planner) was the ability to list ranks and creating conditions of when they'd be ready to test for a promotion. However, I also understand Virtuagym's focus is sports and exercise, not exclusively to martial arts, so it makes sense that it wouldn't offer this.

-The check-in desk software could use some work. Right now it's only Windows-based, so that cuts out other people like myself that use a Mac. Easiest thing they could do would be having an easier check-in process on the dashboard that I could open up on a web browser on my iPad, with pictures of my clients that they would tap to check in. Maybe the check-in software on Windows is great, but I haven't had the opportunity to test it yet.

Great sales people that can sell ice to eskimos. The ideas sounds great, and I was super excited to start to use the product.

The features they promised were either not developed yet, others were not fully functional, and those were the key features they told me about that got me to buy into their product. They took money upfont and wouldn't refund me even though what they promised they couldn't deliver. In over 10 years of being in business this is one of the worst companies I dealt with. End of they day, reputable and confident companies will provide a free trial and no contract. I highly advise to skip this company and look at others that offer a free trial and there are many companies that are month to month because their clients are happy and want to stay with them.

The colour scheme, the salesman was very good at talkinh up a bad product.

App, Software layout, lack of commmunication, no working phone lines ever.

App with Exercise Library I thought would be a great thing for our business

Software is very annoying to figure out. I'm very good with this stuff and having several issues figuring out what does what. Alot of simple features, they just do not have the capability of doing for some reason..