Recess vs Glofox
Glofox is a gym and boutique studio platform, Irish in origin and part of ABC Fitness since 2022, and it builds one of the better branded member apps in this category. The difference is not the app. It is which plan a feature sits on, how much of the price they publish, and what happens when one parent is paying for two children on two different schedules.
Every Glofox claim on this page was read on Glofox's own website, help center and terms of service, and every source is listed at the foot of the page with the date it was read.
Recess has no monthly platform fee, no add-ons and no setup cost. It earns roughly 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered by Recess out of that fee rather than billed to you.
Recess is not built for chains past about a hundred locations. Glofox sells to multi-location groups and franchises and has an Enterprise plan for exactly that. Past that size they are the better answer, and we would say so on the first call.
Who each one suits, plainly. Glofox is shaped around a gym or a boutique studio where an adult buys a membership and books a class, and it is genuinely good at that. Recess is shaped around programs: terms and seasons, camps, afterschool, ranks and skills, and a household where two children sit on two different ladders and one card pays for both.
What sits where, and on which plan.
Glofox names three plans, Essential, Boost and Elite, and a fourth Enterprise tier you have to ask about. Only one price appears anywhere on their site. Everything in this table was read on their own pages on 31 August 2026, and their own FAQ says availability varies by region, plan and account setup, so check anything that decides it for you.
Their branded app is very good. The Standalone App sits in the Apple App Store and Google Play with your studio as the publisher, your icon and your colors, and no Glofox branding on it. Members book from a live timetable, pick a spot on a floor or bike map, pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay, buy from your in-app store, read your community posts and get through a Kisi or Gantner door with it.
If that app is why you chose Glofox, it is a good reason and we are not going to argue you out of it. The rest of this page is about the plan the app sits on, not about the app.
Your own listing in the stores, included, from the first day. Glofox ships two apps, not one. Their help center says the Member App "comes free with a Glofox Essential package or higher", and their own glossary describes it as a "semi-branded" app: members download Glofox, search for your studio, and see your logo in the header. The Standalone App, the one carrying your name on the store listing, is bought as an add-on on Essential and Boost and comes included on Elite. On Recess there is one app, it is yours, it is in both stores under your own listing, and it costs nothing.
And every feature, free, permanently. On Glofox's own plans page, online lead capture forms, advanced reporting, the retail store, E-Agreements, community content, targeted communications and task management all begin on Boost rather than Essential. Their help center adds that SMS is an add-on service and that Family Accounts are "not available on all Glofox packages". On Recess a studio with sixty members runs exactly the same software as one with six hundred, and there is no plan to outgrow.
What Glofox costs, and what they publish.
Glofox publishes one number. Their plans page reads "Plans starting at $99 per month". Essential, Boost and Elite carry no prices of their own, Enterprise is a conversation, and every card leads to the same form.
Their pricing page is a quote form, not a price list. It runs in five steps. It asks what kind of business you have, then whether you are new or run one, two to thirty-nine, or forty or more locations, then your first name, last name, email address and phone number. The step labeled Pricing comes after you have handed those over.
Do the plan fee and the card fee stack? Yes, and they say so themselves. Their FAQ page says plan pricing "varies by region/currency, and excludes standard payment processing fees charged by your provider". Their terms of service name Stripe as the provider of Payment Services, and their October 2025 product update confirms that "standard Stripe card processing fees still apply".
Glofox does not publish a card processing rate. Their terms say the fees related to Payment Services "are described in your Order Form". Where this page needs a number it assumes 2.9% plus 30 cents, the rate Stripe publishes for United States online card payments, and it says so at every point of use. That is Stripe's published rate rather than a Glofox rate, and the same terms give Glofox the right to pass on Stripe increases with fourteen days' notice.
Three more things are priced separately, and none of those prices are published either. ABC XLerate, the Custom Branded Member App and ABC Insights are add-ons rather than plan features on Essential and Boost. SMS is an add-on billed in credits, one credit per 160 character message per client. And their terms say only initial online training and implementation come standard, with supplemental or on-site training, consulting work and custom reporting quoted separately as Professional Services.
Read the leaving terms before you read the joining ones. Their plans page promises "flexible contracts". Their terms of service say the agreement runs for whatever Initial Term is written into your Order Form and renews automatically unless you give thirty days' written notice, that it is month to month only where no term is written in, that fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable, and that on termination they will make your data available within sixty days but are under no obligation to do so until all outstanding fees are paid, "including, without limitation, payment of our then-current off-boarding fee". That fee is not published anywhere on their site. Ask for the figure in writing before you sign.
Recess is one thing at one price. No plan to choose, no seat count, no setup fee, no exit fee, and nothing behind a paywall inside the product. Recess earns a service fee of approximately 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered by Recess out of that fee.
That is a trade rather than a free lunch, and we would rather you saw both halves of it. If you would sooner carry the cost yourself and keep the checkout total clean, a monthly subscription is a legitimate choice. Do the arithmetic on your own volume before believing anyone, us included.
Their published floor against zero.
Their side uses the only price Glofox publishes, $99 a month per location, plus processing assumed at 2.9% and 30 cents. That processing rate is Stripe's published United States rate rather than a Glofox rate, and $99 is their entry plan rather than the one most studios land on, so read the total as a floor and not as a quote.
Add-ons, SMS credits and any setup or off-boarding fee are left out because Glofox does not publish them, so the real gap is wider than the number above rather than narrower. On Recess your members pay a service fee of about 5% at checkout, which is how the software is free for the studio.
The questions that decide this one.
Actually free, permanently, with every feature included. There is no plan to choose and nothing waiting on a higher tier. Recess earns a service fee of approximately 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered by Recess out of that fee rather than billed to you on top.
You get one of your own, and it costs nothing. Glofox builds a good standalone app and we are not going to pretend otherwise. On Recess every studio gets a client app carrying its own name, logo and colors, published to the App Store and Google Play under its own listing, included from the first day rather than bought as an add-on. If your members are attached to a particular Glofox screen, ask us to show you the equivalent before you decide.
One figure. Their plans page says plans start at $99 per month. Essential, Boost and Elite carry no individual prices, and the pricing page is a five step quote form that asks for your name, email address and phone number before the step labeled Pricing. Their FAQ also says pricing varies by region and currency and excludes payment processing fees. If a published price matters to you, that is a real difference between the two products.
Yes, with conditions they state themselves. Their help center documents Family Accounts, where a guardian buys and books for a child under a studio-set minimum age, with a parental waiver. The same article says the child account cannot log in itself, that the feature is switched on by contacting your onboarding manager or support, and that Family Accounts are not available on all Glofox packages. On Recess, family and team accounts, sibling billing and one balance across a household are standard, and each child has their own login.
Their help center carries no article on belts, gradings, ranks or skill ladders. Their Tags article names martial arts belt tracking as an example use for a Tag, which the same article describes as manually created and static. That is a statement about what Glofox documents rather than about what their software could be configured to do, so ask them directly if progression is central to your school.
It has Courses, which are their multi-week block: a start date, an end date, a capacity and a price paid in full up front, with everyone starting and finishing together. Read their own two caveats first. Their help center says course bookings do not appear in a member's My bookings, so a member cannot cancel out of one themselves, and that cancelling someone from a course returns neither their money nor a credit. On Recess a term is an enrollment, it can be paid in installments, and it can be gated so only a student at the right rank or skill can join it.
Recess, and it is not close. Every feature is included from day one, so a school that has not taken its first payment runs the same software as one with six hundred members. On a tiered platform the things a new owner reaches for first, lead capture, reporting, agreements and a retail store, tend to be the ones sitting on the plan above the one you can afford.
Every Glofox claim on this page was read on Glofox's own website, help center and terms of service on 31 August 2026, not from review sites, roundups or summaries. Glofox changes its plans and features, and its own FAQ says availability varies by region, plan and account configuration. Verify anything here that decides it for you.
1. Plans page, glofox.com/plans, for the three named plans, the $99 per month starting price, and which add-ons are optional or included on each plan. 2. Pricing page, glofox.com/pricing, for the five step quote form and the fields it asks for. 3. FAQ page, glofox.com/faq, for pricing varying by region and currency and excluding processing fees. 4. Terms of Service, glofox.com/legal/terms-of-use, effective 1 March 2023, for the Initial Term and automatic renewal, the thirty day notice, non-refundable fees, the off-boarding fee, Professional Services, and Stripe as the provider of Payment Services. 5. Billing and Payments feature page, for the payment providers named. 6. Custom Branded App feature page, for what the standalone app does.
Help center articles at support.glofox.com, each with the update date shown on the article: 7. How to Set Up Courses, updated 21 July 2026. 8. Understanding the Difference Between Classes, Courses and Appointments, 2 March 2026. 9. How to Set up Family Accounts, 16 July 2026. 10. Tags, 23 August 2026. 11. How to Customize the Member App and Standalone App, 30 July 2026. 12. Glofox Glossary, 23 February 2026. 13. Two-Way Communication SMS, 12 May 2026, and How many credits will be deducted for each SMS that I send, 27 February 2026. 14. Migrating from Mindbody and Other Software to Glofox, 27 February 2026. 15. Stripe's own published pricing page, for the assumed processing rate. The company facts in the opening line come from Glofox's official company information page, last updated December 2025.
Two assumptions, marked here and at every point of use. Glofox publishes no card processing rate anywhere on its site or help center, so where this page needs a figure for an ordinary United States card sale it assumes 2.9% plus 30 cents, the rate Stripe publishes on its own pricing page. That is Stripe's number, not Glofox's. And the calculator uses the $99 per month starting price, which is the only plan price Glofox publishes and is their entry plan, so every total it produces is a floor rather than a quote.
Where this page says something is not documented, that is a statement about their help center rather than about their product. Their English help center held 342 articles when it was read on 31 August 2026, and none of them is about belts, gradings, ranks, skill ladders, semesters or camps. Glofox may still be able to do those things. Ask them.