The door decides.
Not the person on the desk.
Four checks before the lock opens: are they a member, are they paid up, have they signed the waiver, are they old enough. Same at 6am as at midnight.
No fobs, no cards, no codes on a sticky note
Members get in with the phone in their pocket. Nothing to hand out at the counter, nothing to replace when it goes missing, and no shared code that walked out with the member who cancelled in March.
Access belongs to a person. Their membership ends, their access ends — the same moment, without anybody having to remember to do it.
Wristbands and cards still work
Some gyms want a physical credential. For the pool, for people who train without a phone, or because that is what the members expect.
A wristband or card points at the same member record and gets checked against the same rules. A second way in, not a second system to keep in step.
A member whose payment failed last night does not get in tonight. Nobody has to have that conversation, and nobody has to be awake.
Most gym software charges extra for the door
Access control is normally a premium add-on, a separate vendor, or a per-club fee running into the hundreds. Perfect Gym puts it behind an enterprise tier. It is consistently the thing you have to upgrade for.
It is on our free plan. Not a trial of it, not a cut-down version of it — the same door rules the five-site group runs on.
The reasoning is not complicated. A door that lets the right people in at 5am is how a gym opens twenty hours a day without twenty hours of payroll. It changes what the building can earn — which is exactly why it should not sit behind an upgrade.
See what is on the free plan
It talks to the lock you already have
The controller sits in the enclosure by the door and keeps the last known rules. The internet drops and your members still get in.
Readers, maglocks, strikes and turnstiles — the parts an installer already fits. We are the thing deciding, not a proprietary lock you can never replace.
One person, one entry
A turnstile counts what a door cannot: how many people actually went through on one release. Two people on one credential, and the record says two.
That matters less for security than for honest numbers. Your attendance figure is people who trained, not times a button was pressed.
Every way in, on one set of rules
A street door, a turnstile in the lobby and a studio upstairs is one system with three points, not three systems to keep in step.
Put the door on rules instead of on trust
Free while your gym has fewer than 100 active members — every feature, no card, no expiry.