Who Active Network is for
Active Network provides registration, payments and management software for events, activities, and parks and recreation organisations. It is an established name in activity and event registration, and operators consider it when they need to take registrations, collect payments and run programs across a community or membership base.
If you are searching for an Active Network alternative, you are usually weighing how a registration and payments layer fits the rest of a leisure operation. That is the question this comparison answers, on the operating model rather than a feature by feature scorecard.
Where Active Network is strong
Active Network has genuine depth in its core. It has long experience in activity and program registration, in large event and race management, and in serving parks and recreation departments that run many community programs at once. For an organisation whose central need is taking registrations and payments for events and activities at scale, that pedigree is real and worth weighing.
A provider focused on registration and payments also tends to be straightforward to evaluate for that specific job. If your operation is essentially a registration funnel for programs and events, a specialist in that funnel may be the simpler fit.
What Cohiva offers instead
Cohiva approaches leisure operators through Complex, its product for aquatic and leisure facility management. Complex covers classes and programs, memberships, point of sale, bookings and access control in one place. For a multi-site aquatic centre, swim school, health club or council operator, the front desk, the learn-to-swim program, casual entry and retail all run off the same record of members and venues.
The difference is what sits around Complex. It is one product in an integrated suite that shares one identity and one data layer. The suite also includes:
- Crunch for finance, with real-time profit and loss, multi-entity consolidation and a 13-week cash forecast.
- Culture for HR, covering onboarding, rostering, leave, timesheets and payroll export for shift-based staff.
- Control for maintenance and fixed-asset management across sites.
You can read more on its own domain at complex.cohiva.app or in the Complex overview.
How the two models differ
The clearest way to compare Cohiva and Active Network is the operating model.
A registration and payments platform does that job well and hands off to whatever else you run. Transaction data is exported to your accounting system. Staff hours are re-keyed into payroll. Maintenance lives somewhere else again. Each handoff is a place where data drifts and reconciliation takes time.
Cohiva is built the other way around. Because Complex, Crunch and Culture share one data layer, activity at the venue flows through to finance and staff without manual export. A class booked, a membership sold or a casual entry taken in Complex becomes a transaction Crunch can see. A staff member onboarded in Culture is available to roster against a venue in Complex. Identity and access are managed once on a shared control plane.
Who should consider Cohiva
Cohiva suits multi-site operators who run several venues or brands and want facility operations connected to finance, HR and governance on one platform. Aquatic centres, swim schools, health clubs, gyms and council recreation operators are the core fit.
If your central need is event and activity registration and you have the rest of your back office handled elsewhere, a registration specialist like Active Network may be all you need. If your operation spans venues as an ongoing business and you are tired of stitching separate systems together, the integrated-suite model is the difference to weigh.
What the integration looks like day to day
It helps to picture a normal week rather than a feature list. A family registers for a learn-to-swim program at the front desk. In Complex, that registration sets up the class place, the recurring billing and access at the gate. Because Complex and Crunch share a data layer, the payment is already a transaction finance can see, categorised against the right venue, with no export to run at month end. The instructor taking that class was rostered in Culture, and their hours feed payroll without anyone re-typing a timesheet.
Now multiply that across several venues. With a registration and payments platform handing off to separate back-office tools, head office assembles the picture by pulling reports out of each system and reconciling them. With the suite, the picture is already assembled, because every venue writes to the same data layer. That is the practical difference behind the integration model, and it is the part a feature comparison tends to miss.
Migration and the cost of switching
Operators rarely move everything at once, and Cohiva does not require it. Complex is a product you can adopt for facility management on its own, then add Crunch, Culture or Control as you are ready. Because they share one identity and one data layer, adding a product connects it to what you already run rather than starting another integration project. When you weigh an Active Network alternative, count the cost of the tools that sit around registration and payments, and the time spent moving data between them.
Choose Cohiva if, choose Active Network if
Choose Cohiva if you run a multi-site leisure operation and want facility, finance, HR and maintenance on one data layer with one identity, so the front desk, the books and the roster stay in sync without manual export.
Choose Active Network if your central job is registration, payments and event or program management at scale, and your finance, HR and maintenance systems are already settled and connected the way you want them.
For a closer look at the facility product, see the Complex overview or visit complex.cohiva.app. To see how the suite fits a specific operation, the aquatic centres and councils and recreation solutions walk through the product bundle.