An empty spot in a full class is revenue you already sold and then quietly gave back. VERVE Pulse's smart waitlists promote the next member automatically the moment a spot frees, whether from a cancellation or a no-show, and notify them straight away. Add optional no-show penalties, booking reminders, and guest passes, and spare capacity actually gets filled instead of wasted.
Gym waitlist software is the part of your booking system that handles what happens when a class is full: who gets notified first when a spot opens, how fast they can claim it, and what happens if the member who booked it doesn't show up. It sounds like a small feature. For a gym running popular class times, it's the difference between a genuinely full class and a class that only looks full on the schedule.
Left to a generic booking tool, a waitlist is just a list. A spot opens at 5:47am when someone cancels their 6am class, and by the time a staff member notices and texts the next person on the list, the class has already started with an empty spot in it. Multiply that across every popular class, every week, and it adds up to real revenue that was sold once and never collected again.
VERVE Pulse's waitlist promotes the next member automatically the moment a spot frees, whether that's a cancellation or a no-show, and notifies them straight away, with no staff member needing to notice or act. Promotion is atomic, so two people can't be promoted into the same spot. If the class uses spot booking, the promoted member keeps their assigned reformer, bike, or rower rather than being dropped into whatever's left. Members can join a waitlist from the app or by texting the gym directly through the SMS concierge, so the waitlist works even for a member who isn't looking at the app right now.
Gyms that lose real revenue to no-shows can turn on no-show and late-cancel penalty automation: a configurable window, a strike threshold before anyone gets charged, a delayed charge rather than an instant one, a monthly cap per member, and one-click forgiveness for staff. It's off by default, because not every gym wants to charge members for missing a class, and it's the gym's setting to turn on, not a default VERVE Pulse imposes. Booking reminders and guest passes work alongside it: reminders cut no-shows before they happen, and a guest pass or buddy booking fills a spot that was already sold and handed back, rather than leaving it empty.
This matters most for gyms running popular class formats where demand regularly outstrips capacity: reformer Pilates, small-group HIIT, anything with a hard headcount. The waitlist is included in every plan alongside the rest of class scheduling, not sold as a separate add-on.
A live waitlist promotion and the no-show and late-cancel penalty settings a gym can choose to turn on, shown with sample data.
The next member is promoted and told the moment a spot frees.
Penalties are optional, capped, and staff can always forgive.
Promotion runs automatically, the instant a spot opens, without a staff member checking, noticing, or manually messaging the next person in line.
When a spot opens, whether from a cancellation or a no-show, VERVE Pulse promotes the next member on the waitlist automatically. Promotion is atomic, so two members can never both be promoted into the same single spot.
The promoted member is notified straight away, not at the end of the day when someone gets around to it. That speed is the whole point: a spot that clears at 5:47am for a 6am class is only useful if someone finds out in time.
Members join a waitlist from the VERVE Pulse app or by texting the gym directly through the SMS concierge, so the waitlist still works for someone who isn't sitting in the app when a class is full.
For classes with spot booking, a member promoted off the waitlist keeps an assigned reformer, bike, or rower rather than being dropped into whatever's left. The system tracks the exact spot, not just a headcount.
Not every gym wants to charge members for a missed class. For the ones that do, penalty automation is fully configurable and never turns itself on.
Set exactly how late counts as a late cancel, and how many strikes a member gets before anything happens. A one-off late cancel doesn't have to trigger the same response as a habitual pattern.
A charge doesn't fire the second a member no-shows. It's delayed, giving staff and the member a window before money actually moves, rather than an automatic instant penalty nobody can review.
A cap on how much any single member can be charged in a month stops the automation from stacking penalty after penalty onto someone going through a rough patch of missed sessions.
The gym has to switch this on, VERVE Pulse never enables it by default. Once it's running, staff can forgive any individual charge with one click, so a genuine emergency doesn't have to become an argument.
The cheapest way to fix a no-show problem is to stop it happening in the first place. Reminders do that work before the waitlist even needs to.
Reminders go out automatically ahead of a booked class, so a member who simply forgot gets a nudge in time to either show up or cancel and free the spot for someone on the waitlist.
Fewer no-shows means fewer wasted spots and a waitlist that promotes people into real, usable bookings, instead of promoting them into a class the original booker was never going to attend anyway.
For members enrolled in a term-based series, a missed session becomes a make-up credit redeemable against another class, rather than a refund conversation nobody enjoys having at the front desk.
None of this requires a staff member to manually chase a cancellation, send a reminder, or track a make-up credit by hand. It runs in the background of the booking system already in use.
Guest passes and buddy booking give a member a way to bring someone else into a spare spot, on terms the gym controls entirely.
Guest passes are set on the membership plan itself, a fixed number available per calendar month, so different plans can offer different guest allowances if the gym wants them to.
Guest passes default to zero on every plan until the gym sets a number. Nothing gets given away for free unless the gym has deliberately decided to offer it.
Buddy booking lets a member book a class together with a guest, so bringing a friend along doesn't mean a separate conversation with the front desk before the class starts.
A guest pass or buddy booking fills a spot that would otherwise sit empty, so a class that looked full on paper is actually full in the room, and a spare place doesn't just go to waste.
Nobody needs to keep a manual list of who's waiting. It's already sitting on the same schedule staff check for everything else.
Staff see exactly how many members are waitlisted for any given class right on the schedule, useful for deciding whether a popular time slot needs a second class added.
The class roster shows confirmed bookings and the waitlist together, so a coach checking who's coming to the 6am class sees the whole picture without switching tools.
There's nothing extra to keep updated. The waitlist lives inside the same booking system as everything else, so it's accurate the moment a booking or cancellation happens.
What staff see on the roster matches exactly what the member sees in the app: the same waitlist position, the same promotion the moment it happens, no lag between the two.
The waitlist system, including no-show automation and guest passes, is included from the first plan. Higher tiers raise your member cap, they don't gate the waitlist features you need.
Core is $199/month +GST for 300 active members and includes smart waitlists, automatic promotion, spot booking integration, no-show and late-cancel automation, booking reminders, guest passes and buddy booking. Grow is $349/month for 600 members and Pro is $549/month for 1,200 members, both with everything in Core plus their own tier-specific extras elsewhere in the platform, like Grow's marketing tools and Pro's open API. Annual billing gives two months free. Full details on the pricing page.
Gym waitlist software is the part of a booking system that handles what happens when a class is full: who gets offered the next spot, how fast they can claim it, and what happens if the member who booked it never shows. VERVE Pulse's waitlist promotes the next member automatically the moment a spot frees, whether from a cancellation or a no-show, and notifies them straight away, so a full class stays genuinely full instead of quietly leaking spots nobody notices until after the class has started.
No. Smart waitlists are part of Core, VERVE Pulse's entry plan at $199/month +GST for 300 active members, alongside the rest of class scheduling. There's no separate waitlist product to buy and no per-waitlisted-member fee. Grow and Pro raise your included member count to 600 and 1,200 and add their own tier-specific extras elsewhere in the platform, but they don't gate waitlist features you'd need on Core.
When a spot in a full class frees up, whether a member cancels or simply doesn't show, VERVE Pulse promotes the next person on the waitlist automatically and notifies them straight away. Promotion is atomic, so two members can never be promoted into the same spot at the same time. No staff member has to notice the cancellation or manually text the next person on the list.
Yes. Members can join a waitlist from the VERVE Pulse app or by texting the gym's number directly through the SMS concierge. That matters for a member who isn't looking at the app right now, they can still get in line for a spot and get notified the moment one opens, without needing to open anything.
Yes, for classes that use spot booking. If a member is promoted off the waitlist into a class where you pick your reformer, bike or rower, they get an assigned spot rather than just an entry into the room. Staff also see waitlist depth per class directly on the schedule, and the class roster shows who's confirmed and who's still waiting on one screen.
No-show and late-cancel penalty automation is off by default. If a gym turns it on, it's fully configurable: a cancellation window, a strike threshold before anyone gets charged, a delayed charge rather than an instant one, and a monthly cap per member. Staff can forgive any individual charge with one click. It exists for gyms that lose real revenue to habitual no-shows, but VERVE Pulse never charges a member automatically unless the gym has switched it on.
Automated reminders go out ahead of every booked class, and cutting no-shows before they happen is the whole point: a member who's reminded is far less likely to simply forget. Fewer no-shows means fewer wasted spots and a waitlist that clears properly instead of sitting on people who never actually get in.
Yes. Guest passes are set per membership plan, per calendar month, with a default of zero until the gym turns them on, and buddy booking lets a member book a class together with a guest. Both are ways to fill a spot that was already sold and then handed back, rather than leaving it empty for the rest of the day.
No, VERVE Pulse doesn't run a self-serve free trial. Smart waitlists, automatic promotion and no-show automation are included on Core from day one. Book a demo and our team will show automatic promotion running against a real class schedule, along with how the no-show settings work if you want to turn them on.
The mechanics are similar, a full class gets a waitlist, but VERVE Pulse adds spot booking integration so a promoted member keeps their assigned reformer or bike, an SMS option to join by text, and configurable no-show automation with one-click staff forgiveness. If you're switching from Mindbody, Glofox, GymMaster, Hapana, PushPress, Zen Planner or WellnessLiving, your class schedule and booking history import as part of the $990 concierge migration, free on annual plans.