The Best Myzone Alternative for Gyms

I bought Myzone for my gym. I spent a serious chunk of money getting it in, mounted the whole thing up, and got ready for the leaderboard energy everyone raves about. Then I hit the wall nobody warns you about: most of my members wouldn't buy the belt. The ones who did loved it. The rest, the majority, never joined in, and the retention boost I'd paid for never really turned up. If you're looking for a Myzone alternative, there's a fair chance you've had a version of the same afternoon.

So this is the honest founder version of why I moved to a software-only system, and why, once I'd actually laid the numbers out, it wasn't a close call.

What actually goes wrong with a belt system

The problem isn't the tech. Myzone works. The problem is the model, and it shows up in three places.

The upfront cost is on you. Getting Myzone or Polar into a gym isn't cheap. You're buying hardware before a single member has touched it.
The ongoing sell is on your members. Everyone who wants in has to buy a belt. That's a second purchase on top of their membership, and plenty of people simply won't.
So your engagement tool only reaches part of the room. The members you most want to hook, the newer, wobblier ones, are often exactly the people who won't spend more to take part.

I bought it for retention. But a retention tool that half your members opt out of isn't really doing the job you paid for.

Wearables changed the maths

Here's the bigger shift, and it's only sped up since. Walk your floor and count the wrists: Apple Watches, Garmins, WHOOP bands, the odd Polar. Members already own capable wearables, and every year those devices show and collect more: heart rate, recovery, sleep, all of it. Against that, asking a member to buy a dedicated chest belt on top of the watch already on their arm gets harder every year. The hardware model made sense when members had nothing. Now they walk in wearing better kit than the belt you're trying to sell them.

The software-only alternative

Fittest flips it. No gym hardware to buy, and no belts to sell. Members connect the wearable they already own, whether that's an Apple Watch, a Garmin, a WHOOP, or a Polar or Bluetooth heart-rate strap, and their live heart rate, effort points and name go up on your existing TVs. All you need is a screen.

That one change fixes both problems at once. There's no upfront hardware bill for you, and no purchase barrier for your members. Everyone with a watch is on the board from day one, which is the whole point of running a live leaderboard. The members who'd never have bought a belt are suddenly in the game, and they're the ones your retention lives or dies on.

More than a heart-rate number

Because it's software, it does things a belt never could:

Strength Scoring, so lifting counts on the board, not just cardio. Members pick their workout type when they start a session, and choosing strength scores it like a cardio one, so the whole gym plays the same game. It's a bigger deal than it sounds, and I broke it down in strength scoring that rewards lifting like cardio.
Challenges and personal bests, so members always have something to chase.
Daily recovery scores and weekly summaries, so effort turns into a picture members can actually follow.
A simulation feature for running race-style formats like HYROX, if that's your crowd.

The honest comparison

I'm not going to tell you Myzone is a bad product. It helped put heart rate on the gym floor and it does its job. But the model, buy the hardware and sell your members the belts, is the expensive way to do something that no longer needs hardware at all. If you're weighing them up: Myzone if you want a belt-based system and you're happy carrying the cost and the sell; Fittest if you want the same energy on the wall without spending a penny on hardware or asking your members to.

Check both on their current pricing and features before you decide, because everyone moves quickly.

Why it was a no-brainer for me

When I laid it out side by side, it wasn't close. Myzone cost me money up front, cost my members money to join, and reached less than half the room. Fittest cost no hardware, cost my members nothing extra, and put everyone on the board from their first session. Same leaderboard energy, none of the barriers, a flat monthly fee instead of a hardware bill. For a gym owner who bought a heart-rate system for retention and watched it stall, switching was the easiest call I've made.

If you're running Myzone and the hardware side is wearing thin, come and see the alternative running on your own screens, with your members' own watches. Book a demo and I'll show you exactly how it looks.

Priya