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Get more eyeballs on your virtual classes.
Whichever live streaming solution you use, and whether or not you use a class management/booking system, you will definitely want to maximise the number of people finding out about your classes.
This is perhaps more important than ever, because an increasing number of people are searching online for classes that are suitable for them, so you need to give your classes as much visibility as possible.
OpenActive is here to support you to reach a wider audience. OpenActive is a Government-funded initiative designed to make it far easier for you to work with multiple partners to promote your classes to as many people as possible.
Put simply:
You have classes that you want in front of as many people as possible.
There are various for-profit and not-for-profit platforms out there that want to promote your classes to their collective user base.
OpenActive is the simple, standardised way for you to share live information about your upcoming classes with all of those platforms simultaneously.
Examples of the platforms that want to promote your classes are: classfinder, Decathlon, Sport England, Ordnance Survey, Public Health England and many more. Cumulatively, they have a reach of millions of users every month, and they want to put your classes in front of those users. In most cases, your classes are promoted for free and without any extra effort from you once you're setup.
The straightforward answer is that you need to do two things:
Use a class management/booking system to manage your classes; and
Ensure the system you use is "OpenActive enabled".
Find out more about using a system to manage your classes and in the next section of this guide.
Great question! 🤓 OpenActive is an enabler of these types of platforms. Instead of having to upload your class timetable information and keep it up to date in every fitness marketplace platform, you should be able to share that information directly from your existing booking system - minimal effort, maximum reward.
Some class management/booking systems (e.g. MindBody) have direct integrations with fitness marketplaces (e.g. ClassPass), so your timetables are shared directly. However, if you wanted to switch to using a new system or work seamlessly with multiple fitness marketplaces, you would only be able to make use of the marketplaces that your system has integrations with.
OpenActive standardises the way fitness marketplaces and class management/booking systems integrate with each other. This makes it easier for your chosen booking system to integrate with multiple fitness marketplaces, so you can access all of them without any additional effort.
This ultimately:
Gives you more choice in which booking system to use; and
Means that the booking system you choose should be able to seamlessly connect you to a wide range of fitness marketplaces.
So, you've decided that it makes sense for you to use a class management/booking system. Now just make sure it is "OpenActive enabled"!
Excellent! In order to reap the full rewards and increase the visibility of your classes, you need to check if your chosen system is "OpenActive enabled":
If your system is OpenActive enabled, great! You're in the perfect position to advertise your virtual classes far and wide!
If your system is not OpenActive enabled, then you can either:
Use one of the systems on offer in addition to your current system (although this is not recommended as maintaining information in both places doubles your effort); or
Replace your existing system and use one of the OpenActive enabled systems on offer as your new class management/booking system.
If you are not sure if your existing system is OpenActive enabled or if it is not on the list of systems on offer, we highly recommend that you ask them to do the necessary work to become OpenActive enabled. It should not take them long. Alternatively, please do email hello@openactive.io with information about your system so the team at OpenActive can help make this a reality.
Don't panic! That's an excellent position to be in.
There are class management/booking systems of all shapes and sizes out there for you to choose from. The following section lists some of the systems on offer that you can choose from. Pick one and you're off!
Having a class management/booking system is a great idea if:
you are managing quite a few classes;
you want to build a relationship with your participants; and/or
you want to take bookings and payments.
You may not need a class management/booking system if:
you don't need to take bookings or payments;
you don't need help managing multiple classes; or
you just want to get on with live streaming your classes direct to your audience on Facebook or Instagram.
However, without a system, you’ll miss out on an opportunity to increase the visibility of your classes.
If you already use a system or are looking to start using one, continue reading for more information and helpful pointers.
Looking for a new system? Look no further (than the table below!)...
* You can ask your chosen booking system to do the necessary work to become OpenActive enabled. It should not take them long. Alternatively, you can email hello@openactive.io with information about your system so the team at OpenActive can help to make this a reality.
Overwhelmed by the range of systems on offer? Please drop us a line at hello@imin.co and we'd be happy to help you navigate the options that exist and make a decision.
Some class management/booking systems leave the choice of live streaming solution to you - in which case you can use the previous section on choosing a live streaming solution to select the one that will work best for you.
When you have the live stream URL for the class (e.g. Zoom Meeting URL, YouTube Live URL, etc.), you can add it into the appropriate place/relevant field in your chosen system or send it in an email to those booked on before the class.
Your class management or booking system may already have a helpful guide to live stream your classes, or even have a partnership/integration with a live streaming solution like Zoom.
It's worth having a look as that will probably be your easiest option.
If it isn't obvious how to use live streaming solutions with your current system, send us a note at hello@imin.co and we'd be happy to help.
An introduction to and overview of Bookwhen, an OpenActive compliant system. For more information, please use contact details below.
📨 support@bookwhen.com
Whatever you organise, we make booking simple. We're the flexible online booking system for Classes, Courses, Workshops, Events and more.
Our simple schedule page makes it easy for your attendees to book onto an event with no pre-registration necessary. Features include waiting list, 'basket' system for booking, custom booking form, online payments, attachments, discount options, support for online events and in-app support.
Our paid plans start from £9/month and we also have a free plan which allows up to 50 bookings per month.
Fitness & Sports, Yoga & Pilates, Children’s Activities, Training & Learning, Activities & Experiences, Arts & Crafts, Photography and Wellness.
We generally support smaller providers and our mission is centred about helping small businesses grow. But bigger clients across the board include: Amazon, University of Oxford, NHS, Scouts, Uber and Zumba.
Recurring events and classes
Multi date, multi attendee booking
Class passes and block booking discounts
Zoom integration
Customisable booking forms
Child attendee and GDPR safeguarding in booking process
Easy to embed in any website
Franchise feature for taking commission payments
Secure event page to embed on demand video content
Available in 8 other languages - French, Spanish, German, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Italian and Hungarian
API
There are three methods for adding live streaming to your Bookwhen events:
Add specific joining link to any event. If you don’t want to use an integration, or you’re using a different platform to Zoom or Jitsi, you can manually add a joining link to individual events in your schedule. Bookwhen will automatically send the information to attendees. Again, this information is secure, so only booked attendees can access.
🖥
Providers can sign up for a 2 week free trial with just an email address. Setup can take as little as 10 minutes, and we have live chat support on hand to help. Check out our demo video .
Enabling OpenActive is easy, and you can choose specifically which of your classes you’d like to appear in the feed. is a link to our help article.
Zoom integration. This automatically creates a specific meeting link for each of your events and sends this to attendees. The information is secure, so only booked attendees can access.
Jitsi integration. This automatically creates a specific meeting link for each of your events and sends this to attendees. The information is secure, so only booked attendees can access.
You can read more in our help centre .
System name
Suitable for live streamed classes?
OpenActive enabled for virtual classes?*
Accepts online booking/payment?
Free tier available?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Unknown
No
Yes
No
Unknown
No
Yes
No
Unknown
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Implementing
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
No
An introduction to and overview of Open Sessions, an OpenActive compliant system. For more information, please use contact details below.
📨 chris.norfield@londonsport.org
Open Sessions is a platform that enables sport and activity session providers to post their sessions to multiple activity finders (such as Change4Life, Get Active, and more). Making it easy to put your activities in front of thousands of potential local customers.
Open Sessions is free to use and you can promote sessions that take place online or at a local venue.
Most of our users are small to medium organisations or independent instructors who don’t have their own online booking system.
For example, community groups offering tai chi or seated exercise classes in local community centres; local authority run walking for health programmes or independent instructors offering low cost fitness or sports sessions.
We know that many organisations and individuals can’t afford a fee for publishing their sessions, and that they might not need complicated functionality to manage their sessions or take payment.
So, Open Sessions is focused on making it easy for you to publish your session details so that they appear on local and national activity finders.
It’s basically a free and simple way to get started with publishing your activity sessions online.
Register and tell us about the sessions you run.
We publish your sessions on the web’s biggest activity finders.
1,000s more people can search for and book your sessions.
Open Sessions is run by London Sport. We’ve been heavily involved in the OpenActive movement since its inception. We also run the free activity finder website www.getactive.io.
Open Sessions works anywhere. So whether you are in Lambeth or Loughborough, you can use it today to start promoting your sessions.
All sessions uploaded via Open Sessions are automatically published in the correct OpenActive format.
No need to enable anything, just create a session and click publish.
When adding a session, go to the location tab and select “Online Class”. You’ll be prompted to enter the url for the live online class.
An introduction to and overview of Participant, an OpenActive compliant system. For more information, please use contact details below.
📨 roger@participant.co.uk
Participant is a secure online booking system which caters to the needs of event organisers and participants. Payments are integrated into the platform saving you the expense and hassle of setting up a separate agreement with a third party payment provider. We collect the payments on your behalf and transfers the funds on a weekly basis into your bank account. New events take minutes to set up and participants simply click on a link to book and pay. We offer a standard solution which has no fixed monthly costs as well as a more feature rich version which comes with a whole suite of additionally functionality.
As Participant is very scalable it is used by numerous large organisations (such as the Football Association, Premier League football clubs and Great Ormond Street Hospital) as well as hundreds of smaller providers that offer after school clubs, holiday camps, weekly classes and training courses across the country.
Integrated payments so no need for third party payment provider
Weekly pay outs with detailed payment settlement report
Budgets codes to significantly simplify the accounting process
User profile functionality enables customers to view all their bookings and payments
Receive donations
Enable webinar and online course delivery solutions for remote events
Getting started takes just minutes:
Set up an account in minutes
Set up your first event
Take bookings and payment
A simple user guide is available and we’re always available to help you get started.
When setting up your event on Participant you will follow the 5 steps within the red bar:
Once on "Publish Options" at the bottom of the page, you will need to tick the ‘Allow event to display for OpenActive' check box, select the activity type and tick the relevant Attendance mode:
Once done click "Save" and your event will be ready to start taking bookings.
Yes, the relevant link would be included in the confirmation email along with relevant instructions how to access the class, what equipment is required, etc.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
So you're on the road to live streaming your classes to help people stay active whilst at home. You've taken a proactive approach to get the nation healthy and to continue delivering your classes in the face of difficulties. You're awesome!
🖥
Apart from , you should be thinking about:
An introduction to and overview of Playwaze, an OpenActive compliant system. For more information, please use contact details below.
📨 team@playwaze.com
Playwaze is offering a free ‘Netflix-style’ live and on demand activity finder for those who want to:
Promote your activities and content in a widget on your website
Enable anyone to find and access your activities and content from your website
Provide free access or take bookings and/or payments to access your activities
Manage your activities and content in one place but promote them in many, for free (e.g. on your website, your social media channels, other high profile activity finders)
Great for:
Keeping anyone and everyone active at home
Bringing people together online
Helping combat isolation
Playwaze is suitable for anyone who wants to promote and/or deliver live and on demand activities.This starts from a single coach or instructor to large organisations. We already work with:
Coaches, Personal Trainers and Instructors
Clubs, Charities and Community Organisations
Universities and Regional Activity/League Providers
Fitness Studios, Gyms, and Local and County Councils
National Governing Bodies and Active Partnerships
Playwaze is the only provider who can provide you with a FREE custom branded ‘Netflix-style’ activity finder at speed, and/or allow you to manage your activities and content real-time, and make these free or take bookings and/or payments. In summary, we are offering:
A free live and on demand activity finder, on your website in 2 working days
Free use of our activity tool for you or your partners to manage your activities and content
Ability to make activities and content free, or take bookings and/or payments
To get started with Playwaze, follow these 3 simple steps:
REQUEST YOUR FREE FINDER: click here to request your free live and on demand activity finder.
REGISTER ON PLAYWAZE: click here to register and create your organisation or company.
BEGIN ADDING YOUR ACTIVITIES AND CONTENT: once you’re registered, just start adding your live and on demand activities!
There are no catches, no if’s and no buts. Playwaze is offering a free way for you to promote, manage and provide anyone with easy access to your activities and content while we wait for the current circumstances we are all to begin to subside.
It’s a simple tick of a box to display your activities and content on your website, and on all other public activity finders.
Once you are setup and start adding your activities and classes, you simply have two options you can select (you can use one or both):
I would like this activity to be listed on my activity finder, embedded on my website.
I would like this activity to be published and promoted on all public activity finders.
Playwaze doesn’t host your live streams or on demand content directly; there’s no need to when there’s lots of great systems out there for that already. When you add your activities and content, all you do is provide us with a link to where you are delivering your activity or hosting your video, and we will send the person who wants to access it straight there (unless they need to book on or pay)!
This means you can use any great live streaming tool like Facebook Live, Instragram Live, Zoom or any other, and upload your on demand content to YouTube, Facebook or Vimeo!