1. Clava
Clava is the top choice for UK climbing gyms seeking an alternative to Rock Gym Pro due to its specialised climbing features and user-first design. Its fully integrated waiver system simplifies compliance, allowing gyms to manage and store waivers digitally. The advanced membership management options, including family membership features and flexible class passes, cater to a variety of different customer types. Clava’s courses management functionality is really excellent and allows operators advanced scheduling and tracking complex classes and workshops, making it ideal for gyms offering programs like development courses or kids term-time courses.
The online purchasing and booking experience is where Clava really differentiates itself for the end user. It provides a smooth, intuitive interface for customers which reduces the bounce rates gyms experience on their websites. Seamless integration with tools like Xero, Mailchimp and Brevo enhances operational efficiency and flexibility.
It is also launching its own email marketing suite of tools (available as a bolt-on) so that gym operators can manage their email marketing with a single login. This will mean that you can fully segment your customer database and make sure that your members are only receiving relevant marketing messages to them.
Clava has excellent data reporting available for the operator, so whatever information you need on your members you can get it easily. This makes it super when you’re trying to get under the hood of what is really happening in your business.
Its flat-rate pricing model (£499/month) ensures all essential features are included, making it a cost-effective, flexible and all-in-one solution. You won’t be stung with a nasty billing surprise in a month because you’ve had to add an extra admin or you’ve gone through a certain number of gym entries.
2. Rock Gym Pro
Rock Gym Pro offers a solid feature set including automated billing, café POS and customer management. It’s known for its reliability and tenure in the market. However, since it was acquired by Togetherwork in 2018, the feature set hasn’t really evolved and the lack of advanced online purchasing tools and the clunky interface limits its appeal for modern gyms who want to provide a slicker experience for members and their teams. Its tiered pricing for its cloud solution – which everyone wants in 2025 – can also become expensive for larger operations or those requiring additional features.
3. Beta
Beta is another relatively new platform specialising in climbing gyms. It has some neat features such as route setting management, event coordination, trigger-based marketing and basic membership tracking. While its simplicity and niche focus are strengths, Beta lacks some of the more advanced features of its competitors. It can be a good choice for smaller gyms.
Mindbody Online is a versatile platform widely used across the fitness and wellness industry. Mindbody has been around for a long time and its feature set is rich. It includes tools for scheduling, payments, and client communications. The breadth of end markets that Mindbody services is also its drawback, though, as it by extension rather a jack of all trades.
While Mindbody has a really wide range of general features, it comes up short when it comes to climbing-specific features like conditional waivers or advanced course management. Its user experience for customers is a little dated. Its pricing model and lack of climbing-focused tools make it less suitable for gyms looking for niche functionality.
5. Capitan
Capitan is another challenger platform that provides intuitive straightforward gym management features, including booking, billing, and membership tracking. It has affordable, scalable pricing and user-friendly interface are attractive for smaller gyms. However, Capitan lacks depth in some feature areas, such as integrated waivers, advanced course management, managing discounts or POS for cafe making it less ideal for larger or growing climbing gyms.
6. Roller
Roller is a well developed, flexible platform catering to a broad range of recreational facilities. Its origins come from the leisure industry so it tends to be very good for things like POS but it is less strong when it comes to member and membership pricing management and in particular its waiver solution is weaker, so if you have niche waiver needs then it probably isn’t the one for your centre.
Its intuitive design, robust reporting and strong POS tools are strengths, but when it comes to climbing-specific features, compared to the climbing-focussed solutions like Clava, RGP or Beta, Roller tends to be weaker.
Conclusion
In our view, Clava is the best overall solution for UK climbing gyms, thanks to its niche features built specifically for climbing, its integrations and an outstanding user experience for customers. While competitors like Rock Gym Pro and Roller have their merits, they lack the comprehensive functionality and modern design that make Clava the top choice for climbing gyms in 2025.
