Who Gladstone is for
Gladstone provides leisure management software for leisure centres, trusts and health and fitness facilities. It is a recognised name in the leisure-management category, and operators consider it when they need to run memberships, bookings and the day to day operation of a leisure centre or a portfolio of them.
If you are searching for a Gladstone alternative, the comparison that matters is how a dedicated leisure product fits the rest of your operation. That is what this page answers, on the operating model rather than a feature checklist.
Where Gladstone is strong
Gladstone has genuine depth in leisure. It has long experience serving leisure centres and trusts, including the health and fitness clubs many of them run, with software built specifically for that sector. For an operator whose need is a mature, dedicated leisure-management product and who already has finance and HR handled the way they want, that focus is a real strength.
A product concentrated on leisure management is also straightforward to evaluate for that job. If your back office is settled and you mainly need a proven leisure operations system, a specialist in that space deserves serious consideration.
What Cohiva offers instead
Cohiva approaches the same 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, so the front desk, the learn-to-swim program, casual entry and retail 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.
- 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 Gladstone is the operating model.
A dedicated leisure-management product does its job and then hands off to whatever else you run. Transaction data is exported to accounting. Staff hours are re-keyed into payroll. Maintenance is tracked separately. 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 membership sold or a casual entry taken in Complex becomes a transaction Crunch can see, categorised against the right venue. A staff member onboarded in Culture is available to roster against a venue in Complex. The control plane is shared, so identity and access are managed once.
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. Leisure centres, trusts, aquatic centres, swim schools and health clubs are the core fit.
If you run a leisure operation and only need a proven, dedicated leisure-management product, a specialist like Gladstone may be all you need. If your operation spans venues and you want the back office joined to operations, 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 member joins at the front desk. In Complex, that sets up the membership, 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 at month end. The staff member who signed them up was rostered in Culture, and their hours feed payroll without anyone re-typing a timesheet. A pump that keeps the pool open is tracked in Control, which carries both its maintenance history and its depreciation.
Now multiply that across several centres. With a dedicated leisure product handing off to separate back-office tools, head office assembles the picture by pulling reports from 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.
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 leisure 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 a Gladstone alternative, count the cost of the accounting, payroll and maintenance tools that sit around leisure management, and the time spent moving data between them.
Choose Cohiva if, choose Gladstone if
Choose Cohiva if you want facility, finance, HR and maintenance on one data layer with one identity, so leisure operations, the books and the roster stay in sync without manual export across your sites.
Choose Gladstone if your priority is a mature, dedicated leisure-management product for centres and trusts, and your finance, HR and maintenance systems are already in place 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.