Classes first moved to Zoom. That was enough to survive, but the studio wanted something of its own: a library of classes you can come back to any time, and a subscription that bills itself.
The smallest version you can sell
We didn’t build “Netflix for yoga”. We built a library of classes with filters for style, difficulty and teacher, plus accounts and subscriptions. For the videos we used a proven video host instead of building our own.
Payments run through Stripe: subscriptions, a free trial week and discount codes. Everyone manages their own card and invoices, so the studio doesn’t have to answer emails about payments.
- Visitorbrowses the classes on offer
- sign-up
- Free weekcard via Stripe, first payment only after a week
- after a week
- Subscriptionrenews by itself; companies give employees a code instead
- straight away
- Class libraryany time, from anywhere
It took ten weeks to get from the first line of code to a finished platform.
- startFirst line of code
- after a weekStripe subscriptions working in test mode
- after 10 weeksPlatform finished
- after 13 weeksLive payments
Then whatever real use showed us
Favourite videos and personal collections. Automated emails. And company access: employers can offer yoga as a benefit, with their own code, a user limit and an expiry date.
Still running
The studios reopened long ago and the platform carries on. Today it has over a thousand accounts and over a hundred videos.
For more than two years it ran without a single change to the code. And when new members started joining several times faster than before, nothing stalled.
We’ve looked after it the whole time. Along the way we moved it to new infrastructure, and users didn’t notice a thing.