Comparison
Mat+ or Glofox for your Jiu-Jitsu academy
Glofox is built for gyms and fitness studios, and it is good at that job. A Jiu-Jitsu academy is a different animal: it keeps belts, it keeps lineage, and it teaches a curriculum that takes a decade to finish. Here is an honest read on which one belongs on your desk.
What Glofox is good at
Glofox describes itself as software to grow your gym or studio, and its own homepage carries the logos of large fitness franchises and studio chains. That is a real strength: memberships, class packs, front-desk sales and a member app across many locations, for businesses whose product is a timetable of sessions.
Plenty of grappling academies run on it, too — Glofox's own site features the owner of a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy among its customers. If your academy is essentially a fitness business that happens to teach grappling, that combination works, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The question is not whether Glofox can take a payment and fill a class. It can. The question is what happens to everything a Jiu-Jitsu academy knows about a student that a fitness timetable has no field for.
“All-in-one software to grow your gym or studio.”
The difference
What a Jiu-Jitsu academy needs that a fitness business does not.
A belt is not a membership tier
Mat+ keeps belt and stripe history as a record in its own right: who was promoted, when, by which professor, and how long they have held the rank. Your grading list is not a spreadsheet you rebuild the week before a graduation — it is the system telling you who is ready and showing you the evidence behind it.
The curriculum is the product
A technique library, mapped to positions and organised the way you actually teach. Mat+ tracks how far each student has moved through it — what their attendance says they have seen in class, what they have drilled, and what they report using in live rolls — so thin areas show up while there is still time to teach them.
Kids, guardians and one bill
Three siblings, one guardian, one payment, three separate belt histories and three separate attendance records. Mat+ treats families as families: the guardian holds the account and signs the waivers, the children hold their own progress.
Attendance is evidence, not a metric
Mat hours are what a promotion rests on. Mat+ counts them per student, per belt run, and feeds them straight into graduation readiness — alongside time at rank and curriculum coverage — so when a student asks why they were not promoted, you have an answer you can defend.
Be honest about which one you are.
Software you resent is worse than software you outgrow. Two short lists — read the one that sounds like your week.
Stay with a fitness studio product if
- You run several disciplines, or a gym floor and a class timetable together
- Your business is memberships and class packs more than progression
- You need one system across many locations of a franchise
- Appointments, personal training slots and retail are the bulk of your day
Come to Mat+ if
- You teach one art and you take rank seriously
- Graduation day is a real event you prepare for, not a status change
- You run a kids programme with guardians, waivers and family billing
- You want retention read from mat attendance, not from app logins
Straight answers.
Can I move my academy across without losing history?
Yes. Export your members, memberships and attendance, send them to us, and we do the migration for you at no cost — including belt history where your export carries it. Your students keep their record; you keep your Saturday.
Does Mat+ do everything a gym platform does?
No, and that is deliberate. There is no gym-floor equipment booking, no spa or appointment scheduling and no franchise back office. We build for one room with mats in it.
What does it cost to try?
Under fifteen active students, Mat+ is free with no card — members, attendance and the timetable. Above that, plans are priced by how many students train with you and every paid plan carries the whole system; see the plans page for the current figures.
We would rather you stayed where you are than moved to something that does not fit. If your academy is a fitness business, keep the fitness software. If your academy is a Jiu-Jitsu academy, come and see what it feels like when the system knows what a stripe is.
