Wellyx: management software for gyms, spas and studios at $60K a month

Wellyx sells cloud-based management and marketing software to gyms, spas, dance studios, salons, yoga studios, and other fitness businesses, and its co-founder reported $60K a month in revenue in a December 6, 2023 Starter Story interview.

How it started

Katherine Barlow’s idea came while she was managing a local health club in London. In the December 2023 interview, she said the club needed better stock control, smoother operations, and marketing support, but the software she tried had limited features or required integrations. She discussed the problem with friends, and one connected her with a full-stack developer. Barlow and the team then surveyed health-club owners and managers to identify operational gaps and validate what to build.

In that interview, Barlow said the initial development team had 5 people, including a UX designer and developers. She used her savings and did not seek startup funding, but she did not state a start-cost amount. Faced with a growing feature list, the team deferred advanced marketing modules and concentrated on the first version. She said the resulting software consolidated 5 tools into one and saved time and money.

What it sells and how it charges

In the official Wellyx website text checked on September 30, 2026, the company describes gym management software that automates billing, membership management, 24/7 access, bookings, and scheduling. The site targets gyms and health clubs as well as dance, yoga, martial arts, Pilates, PT, and gymnastics businesses.

Its feature list also includes access control, digital forms, payroll management, a member app, point of sale, marketing automation, sales-lead management, online bookings, and a website builder. The breadth is designed to let a fitness business manage customer records, schedules, payments, and marketing within the same system.

Wellyx’s own revenue model is subscription software. Its official pricing page is titled Gym Management Software Pricing & Subscriptions, but it does not state a specific dollar amount. The site separately lists billing and point-of-sale functions without saying that Wellyx earns a transaction fee for them.

How it got its first customers and what kept growth going

Barlow said traffic and sales began after the team finalized its SEO strategy, which combined organic and paid PPC work. The in-house marketing team launched a PPC campaign that generated early leads:

The PPC campaign helped us with brand awareness and generated much-needed early leads.

She said most of those leads converted into customers who remained loyal at the time of the interview. Targeting focused on decision-makers such as fitness-club owners and managers. Email marketing, including cold email through SendGrid, became another channel; by December 2023, the company had used SendGrid for cold email for more than 5 years.

The automation-email experiment did not work as planned. Barlow said the team generalized its messages, some emails went into spam folders, and open and click-through rates were low. It later added Mailchimp, used campaign analytics, and introduced follow-up based on recipients’ actions. By the interview, she said Wellyx was closing new deals almost every month.

Continued acquisition work centered on cold email, SEO, PPC, and email marketing. Product development also continued: Wellyx built Android and iOS applications in response to client demand, developed editions for different industries, and added or expanded inventory management, online booking, scheduling, loyalty programs, and access control.

Growth was not uninterrupted. Barlow said the pandemic halted growth and sales fell, although the team used that period to improve the software. The interview does not provide revenue attributed to each acquisition channel, so these activities describe the operating approach behind the reported growth rather than a measured revenue formula.

The numbers

The figures below are historical and founder-reported. They should not be read as current revenue, staffing, or customer figures.

Measure	Reported figure	Source and basis
Revenue	$60K a month	Founder-reported in the Starter Story interview dated December 6, 2023
Business start	January 2016	Wellyx case listing; the founder separately described beginning the software work in 2015 in the December 2023 interview
Initial development team	5 people	Founder-reported in the December 2023 interview; included a UX designer and developers
Founders	3	Reported at the December 2023 interview
Employees	80	Reported at the December 2023 interview
Annual users	200+	The founder described them as loyal annual users in the December 2023 interview
Organic reach	Around 21K monthly organic visitors and 1.1 million impressions	Founder-reported in the December 2023 interview
Start cost	No amount stated	The founder said she used savings but did not quantify the cost

How it compares

According to 1M.chat’s analysis of 1,997 founder-reported businesses in Starter Story interviews from 2015 through 2026, 354 Software & SaaS businesses had founder-reported revenue in the comparison set. This was a self-selected sample of founders who chose to be interviewed, not a random sample of all businesses.

Measure	Wellyx	Software & SaaS comparison
Monthly revenue	$60K, founder-reported December 6, 2023	$40K median among 354 businesses with founder-reported revenue
Employees	80 at the December 2023 interview	4.0 median
Founding structure	3 founders at the interview	45% of the category was started by one founder
Revenue of $1M a year or more	No annual revenue figure was stated	35% of the category reached that threshold

The same 1M.chat analysis places Wellyx at about 2 times the category’s median monthly revenue. The annual threshold is a separate measure, so this case does not annualize the $60K monthly figure or place Wellyx within the $1M-a-year group. The difference between 80 employees and the category median of 4.0 also means the revenue comparison should not be treated as evidence of greater employee-level efficiency.

Among 244 Software & SaaS businesses with channel information, 55% reported organic social media, 54% reported SEO and organic search, 31% reported word of mouth and referrals, and 31% reported paid ads. Wellyx’s account overlaps with the SEO and paid-ad categories through its stated SEO and PPC work, but it did not identify organic social media or referrals as channels. No percentage breakdown of Wellyx’s own revenue by channel was provided, so the figures are descriptive rather than a direct attribution of Wellyx’s growth.

What a founder can take from it

Validate a recurring operating problem before building. You can start by identifying work that customer businesses already struggle with, then use owner and manager interviews or surveys to test whether the problem is broad and important.
Set a clear boundary for the first version. You can separate essential functions from later modules, as Wellyx did by postponing advanced marketing features until the core software was working.
Treat acquisition tests as diagnostics. You can examine lead quality, message relevance, spam placement, open rates, and click-through rates instead of assuming every email or advertising channel will perform the same way.
Segment products where workflows differ. You can compare the operating requirements of gyms, studios, salons, and spas before deciding whether industry-specific editions or configuration options are justified.
Connect product decisions to customer evidence. You can review client requests, recurring support needs, and market changes when prioritizing features, while keeping acquisition performance visible to the same team.

These are operating lessons from Wellyx’s reported experience, not a forecast of what another business will earn.

Sources

Revenue, team and start-cost figures are what the founder reported at the interview date, not current figures and not a prediction of what you will earn. Product and pricing facts come from the business's own website as checked on 30 September 2026. Method & sources · Disclosure