PushPress builds modern, powerful software for gym owners to run their business and engage with their members. With branded mobile apps, scheduling tools, and seamless member management, PushPress helps fitness professionals focus on what they do best—building strong communities.

PushPress is on a mission to make gym management simpler, and that means building great software for gym owners and their members. With over 1,500 customers of the PushPress Branded App white-labeled mobile apps, each customized for individual fitness businesses—PushPress was spending too much time maintaining and updating their Branded Apps. That all changed when they integrated Shorebird.

The challenge of scaling white-labeled apps

PushPress provides gym owners with fully branded mobile apps. These apps let members book classes, make purchases, and engage with their gym community. But with each app requiring its own assets, configurations, and App Store approvals, the update process quickly became a bottleneck.

“We were manually clicking through 30 app builds at a time,” said Allan Wright, Senior Mobile Developer at PushPress. “With over 1,500 Branded Apps, that could take up to two weeks to finish between all the other work and distractions.”

This pain point became all too real when a bug introduced in a release caused calendar issues for gym owners—right before a long holiday weekend.

“It ruined the calendar for a specific type of appointment across our apps,” said Wright. “I couldn’t fix it fast enough. That bug lit the fire to look for some kind of code push solution to be integrated into our release flow.”

Fast, reliable updates with Shorebird

PushPress adopted Flutter in 2021 after a tough start with React Native. After completing the rewrite and getting it released across their customers they started investing more into the Flutter ecosystem and looking for partners. After that calendar bug, Shorebird was the next step in modernizing their mobile infrastructure.

Our speed to release updates has skyrocketed. It used to take four days to two weeks depending on urgency. Now it’s way faster. The reliability of shipping fixes is night and day.

• Allan Wright, Senior Mobile Developer at PushPress

With Shorebird, PushPress can patch apps directly—without waiting on app store reviews or client action.

“Our job is to deliver value regardless of whether a gym owner has time to sign App Store documents,” said Wright. “With Shorebird, we can do that. Clients are thrilled they’re still getting new features and fixes without any extra work on their end.”

Technical wins and team enthusiasm

Integrating Shorebird across PushPress’ three main apps—including their “Screens” App, which displays class attendance and gym workout information on a TV screen through the Amazon Fire Stick—wasn’t without challenges. With a complex codebase and pipeline already in place, and the need to keep the business running smoothly, the team needed to ensure zero downtime during the rollout. While it took some extra work to do that integration, the payoff has been worth it.

“It’s been really well received,” said Wright. “Especially by the folks who had to manually roll out those 1,200 apps before. They’re huge fans.”

Today, PushPress is seeing rapid growth in Branded App adoption, with a high percentage of customers choosing to launch their own white-labeled experience.

“We’ve had a lot of growth in Branded Apps since integrating Shorebird,” said Wright. “And it’s only going to get better from here.”