To preface this review, I am not a technophobe, but neither do I particularly want to use new technologies and gadgets. However, since using BJJLINK I am convinced that this software is an absolute bargain for any BJJ academy and offers a ton of features that will make your day-to-day tasks 10x easier.
BJJLINK is split into two sections. Firstly, it offers a social media network, which is free and open to anyone. Whilst I was not particularly interested in this part, it does offer some member retention to you as an academy owner. In addition to this, it offers a lot of crossover with the academy management app.
Secondly, it offers a complete one stop solution to pretty much everything your academy will need. Other than cleaning your mats for you, I couldn’t think of anything else that would need adding to the app. The dashboard is incredibly easy to use, it’s a great price at $30 USD per month and functions on laptop, tablet and phone.
Table of Contents
Useful Features
Member Payment Management
This is likely the #1 feature for any academy looking to use the app. Although, it’s worth mentioning, if you wanted to do your own payments and completely ignore this feature, it’s still well worth the $30 per month.
The member payment management allows you to take payments through the app and check who hasn’t paid. If there is a canceled membership, expired credit card, or any other non-payment you will be alerted.
If some of your members pay by cash, you can turn this feature off for each individual. It can be customized to your required settings.
If you’re using a notebook or an excel spreadsheet, those might be OK ways to track payments. However, this app is far easier, more simple and will save you a lot of time.
Check-In Feature
My personal favorite feature is the check-in. There are three ways to do this. One way is to ask your students to download the BJJLINK app. When a student attends class, they can simply press the “check in” button when in the same GPS region as the academy.
The other way is to have a tablet in your academy with the free BJJLINK app installed on it. Your members can simply come in and enter their pin on the screen display. As soon as they have checked in the system will remember that they attended this class.
This means that you no longer have to rely on your receptionist to mark off cards or manually record everyone on a computer.
Lastly, if you don’t want to make your members responsible for checking in, you can simply do it through the management system yourself. Whilst this won’t save you time, it will at least make sure nobody is gaming the system and pretending to come to class in order to get promoted.
Attendance Tracker
The attendance tracker is great for big BJJ academies that lose track of individual members. You are able to track individual members for promotions or to see if they are losing interest in BJJ.
For example, if you run an academy of 150 students and one member stops showing up, he may have moved to the morning class, or he may have quit. By looking at his profile, you are able to see if he is still training and send him a message if he hasn’t been in for a month or so.
Another great use of this tool is to keep track of promotions. If you don’t know every student in your academy, it’s possible you have a 2 year white belt who deserves to be promoted. The tracker allows you to notice these things that you otherwise would have missed.
Waivers
Depending on your country or state, there will be different rules and regulations. You are able to create ANY waiver you like within the app and immediately send it to all members. If someone hasn’t signed the waiver you can easily see who they are.
This is ideal for countries with Covid restrictions or just states with very liberal laws around suing for personal injury. You can create new waivers and send them out as fast as you can write them. The bonus thing is that you will never lose the paperwork since it’s digitally signed and stored.
Send Notifications To Members
This is a great alternative to hoping all 100 of your members are in the same whatsapp group and regularly read what’s going on.
Let’s say you have to go out of state for an emergency, you can simply send out a quick notification with the click of a button to all member’s phones. You can change class times, cancel classes or make a big announcement like a seminar.
The app allows you to reach everyone instantly with one button.
Managing Your Timetable
You can upload your timetable to the app and edit it to suit your needs.
The timetable can be as detailed or as basic as you want. For example, you can just put your gym’s schedule of opening days and hours.
On the other hand, you’re able to add specific details such as which professor will be taking the class or if you’re teaching a particular move such as the omoplata.
If you suddenly change your timetable, it can easily be sent to your members in an instant notification.
Sell Your Own Products To Members
BJJLINK also has an inventory management system alongside its payment software. If your gym sells anything from rashguards to protein bars or water, it can all be uploaded and paid for on the app.
You are able to manage your own stock levels if things sell out or come back in stock, as well as taking payment for a new gi or can of soda.
This doesn’t stop you taking cash for products, but gives you the option of letting people pay by card and keeps track of everything within the app.
Updates & Additions
The support for this app is incredible. I counted no less than 14 updates within the last 6 months.
Also, to their credit, these updates are not bug fixes. Academies who have already subscribed to the app have asked for something such as “please add limits to my class sizes” or “let me filter my members by who hasn’t paid this month”. I can see that these features might not have existed 5-6 months ago but do now.
Cost
The cost for BJJLINK academy manager is $30 USD per month. This is unbelievably cheap. I can see from the list of academies, there are BJJ schools in South America using this software every month, paying the same rate as academies in the USA.
Another nice thing is that the cost doesn’t scale up per member. If you’re running a school with 150 members, it isn’t going to cost you any more than someone who has 20 members.
Personally, I had never used BJJ software until I tested BJJLINK. I have however, used lots of software in other niche areas. Compared with other niches, BJJLINK is miles ahead, the software is easy to use, looks nice and does what it’s meant to do. It doesn’t lag or have any annoying bugs, so $30 is really quite a steal.
If I had to put a fair price on this software after using it for a week or so, I would have to say it is probably worth $50-$100 USD per month.
Free Trial
Another awesome thing about the academy management software is that it’s pretty much 100% risk free. BJJLINK offers a 1 month free trial for any gym thinking about signing up. This way if you do get the software and find that you simply don’t use it, you won’t be stuck in a contract for the next 12 months for something you don’t want.
Social Network
The social network feature of BJJLINK is open to everyone for free.
You’re able to easily make your own profile, upload a profile picture, display your belt level, where you train, lineage and a few other things.
It’s pretty much like a BJJ Facebook, which is pretty good since you most likely don’t want to spam non-BJJ people with BJJ related content.
In all honesty, I hate social media, so I can’t say I would use this feature. With that being said, I think this social network would definitely appeal more to younger people and lower belts. These people are generally more enthusiastic about showing people that they train, got promoted or just want to show a cool technique they did during sparring.
From an academy owner’s perspective, this is 100% ideal. If your members are interacting with one another, they are much less likely to quit. It’s not imperative for everyone to use, but some people will definitely benefit from sharing things with their friends and classmates.
If you hate social media like me, you can ignore it. But your students and academy can only benefit from this feature.
Should You Buy It?
The very least you should do is spend $30 to see if you are going to get use out of it. BJJLINK is great in that it doesn’t have any contracts, hidden clauses or cool off periods. If you want to cancel your membership it’s very easy to do so and then you don’t have to pay again.
There could be a small chance that you pay the money and it’s not for you. But really there is probably $30 worth of at least one feature every gym could use. Even if you were to just use the app purely to create waivers to send to your members, this would be $360 per year. That is only one small function of the app and could save you getting sued for something which wasn’t your fault in the future.
