Export everything first
Before you give notice, and before you tell anyone, export your members and their contact details, any credits or packs they have left, their memberships and renewal dates, and their attendance history. Save it in more than one format if you can.
A provider is never more helpful than in the weeks before you have told them you are leaving.
Read the notice clause twice
Work out the last date you can give notice, what you keep paying after it, and whether anything renews automatically. Put that date in your diary with a reminder a fortnight before.
Pay for one overlap month
Run both systems at once for a month. It feels wasteful right up until the morning something doesn’t work, and then it is the cheapest insurance you will buy.
Use the month to set up your timetable and class types in the new system, and to try it with your staff and a few regulars before everyone else arrives.
Payments are the hard part
Members notice payments before they notice anything else. Direct Debit mandates often can’t simply be handed from one provider to another, and saved cards usually don’t move either.
Ask both providers, in writing, exactly how members’ payments will transfer before you commit to anything. Plan for members setting payment up again, and decide what happens to anyone with credits left.
Tell members once, plainly
One message: what is changing, on what day, and the one thing they need to do. Send it well before the switch and remind them the day before. Drip-feeding updates makes a simple change feel like a problem.
Switch in a quiet week
Not January, when new members are joining and every class is full, and not the week of an event. Be on the floor for the first classes after you go live, so anything that goes wrong gets fixed in person.
If you are moving to Amble
Amble imports members, their memberships and any credits left, your class types, weekly timetable and instructors from CSV files, and past attendance too. Memberships keep their next payment date, so nobody pays twice. Saved cards can’t be moved in a file, so members add a card in Amble once.
Amble is free for up to 25 members, with a 2% fee on card payments. Paid plans start at £29 a month with no payment fee, and your first paid plan comes with a 30-day free trial. That means the overlap month costs nothing on Amble’s side while you have 25 members or fewer on it.