If you’re using Shopify to sell registrations, memberships, or event tickets, you’ve probably noticed the limitations. Shopify is excellent for product-based ecommerce — but when it comes to running programs, managing schedules, handling attendance, or automating reminders, it simply wasn’t built for the job.
Many organizations across sports, fitness, recreation, and education have realized the same thing: they’re piecing together apps, spreadsheets, and email tools just to make Shopify “work” as a registration platform.
That’s why more organizations are switching to Activity Messenger, a purpose-built alternative to Shopify for classes, memberships, and events. It gives you registration, payments, attendance tracking, reminders, waitlists, waivers, and communication tools all in one place.
Whether you run classes, workshops, leagues, camps, or membership-based programs, this guide will help you understand why Shopify falls short — and what to replace it with.
Disclaimer: Activity Messenger is our software. We created it after experiencing the limitations of ecommerce tools like Shopify for small-to-medium-sized businesses.
Shopify can handle simple online sales, but these red flags usually mean you’ve pushed it past its limits:
If you’re paying for apps for registrations, appointments, waivers, memberships, reminders, and attendance, Shopify isn’t doing the job anymore.
Shopify doesn’t understand sessions, drop-ins, instructors, or program dates, so everything becomes manual.
Families, multiple children, emergency contacts, allergies, and liability waivers require external tools.
No schedule-based SMS/email reminders, no class notifications, no renewal nudges.
Shopify subscriptions were built for refillable products — not unlimited classes or member-only access.
Every new program = new workaround, new app, new spreadsheet.
👉 The result? Organizations end up stitching together apps like BookThatApp, Bold Memberships, Sky Pilot, Events Calendar, and more — each with separate fees, limitations, and maintenance.
Many organizations try to “patch” Shopify with plugins — but this creates new problems.
You may have one app for appointments, one for waivers, one for reminders, and one for memberships, and none of them speak to each other.
Most popular Shopify apps run $10–$60 per month each. Multiply that by 4–8 apps, and Shopify becomes more expensive than an all-in-one platform.
Your participant information is scattered across different tools.
No single source of truth for:
Apps can’t trigger actions based on:
This leads to more manual messaging.
Most Shopify apps were created for ecommerce use cases — not classes, camps, leagues, workshops, or recurring member access.
Apps update, break, conflict, or stop being supported. That means you become the system integrator.
👉 In short: Shopify apps can extend the platform, but they can’t turn it into a true class, program, or membership management system.
| Feature | Shopify | Activity Messenger |
| Designed For | Ecommerce & products | Classes, programs, memberships & events |
| Registration Forms | ❌ Requires apps; limited flexibility | ✅ Custom forms with participant info, waivers & questionnaires |
| Class Scheduling | ❌ Not built in | ✅ Full class calendars & recurring programs |
| Memberships | Ecommerce subscriptions | ✅ Memberships tied to attendance, benefits & renewal reminders |
| Attendance Tracking | ❌ Not available | ✅ QR check-in, mobile passes, Apple/Google Wallet |
| Waitlists | ❌ Requires apps | ✅ Built in with auto-promotion |
| Reminders (Email/SMS) | ❌ Email only; requires apps | ✅ SMS + email reminders and automations |
| Multi-Participant Registration | ❌ Not native | ✅ Family accounts & multi-child enrollment |
| Waivers & E-Signatures | ❌ Requires apps | ✅ Fully integrated |
| Data Hosting | U.S.-based | Canadian hosting + PIPEDA compliance |
| Best For | Retail businesses / ecommerce | Sports, fitness, recreation, education & nonprofits |
📌 Read More: Activity Messenger also acts as a Canadian-based alternative to Constant Contact, Eventbrite, Jotform, Smartwaiver, and Mailchimp.
Activity Messenger makes it easy to offer classes, workshops, leagues, camps, or recurring memberships. Unlike Shopify, it understands:
Create mobile-friendly registration forms that capture everything you need:
Payment receipts, reminders, and refunds are all automatic — no manual entry needed.
Memberships can include:
All tied directly to attendance and program access.
Scan participants using:
Attendance automatically syncs with rosters and reporting.
Automate everything you currently send manually:
Collect digital signatures and keep everything centrally stored — no searching through Shopify add-ons or PDFs.
For organizations required to meet PIPEDA or who want bilingual tools:
Activity Messenger is ideal for organizations offering:
If you’ve outgrown Shopify or you’re relying on multiple different apps to run your programs, this switch will save you hours every week.
Book a demo with Activity Messenger to see how we can help your organization today.
Book a demoSwitching from Shopify is more straightforward than you might think:
Download participant records, purchase history, and membership renewals.
Set up classes, sessions, seasons, or memberships in Activity Messenger.
Our team helps map customer data into families and active participants.
Test the experience on mobile and desktop before going live.
Let your community know why you’re moving — and that it means fewer apps, easier payments, better reminders, and simple check-ins.
Shopify for memberships or classes work in very simple cases, but it isn’t designed for structured programs. Most organizations end up needing multiple apps for scheduling, forms, reminders, waivers, and check-ins.
Yes. You can export your customer, order, and subscription data and import it into Activity Messenger with help from our team.
Shopify is product-focused. Activity Messenger is program-focused. One is built for inventory; the other is built for classes, rosters, memberships, and participants, but can also offer ecommerce tools for selling merchandise, class passes, and more.
Yes. Activity Messenger hosts data in Canada and complies with PIPEDA, making it ideal for organizations that handle sensitive information.
Most organizations eliminate multiple apps by switching from Shopify to an all-in-one platform (waivers, scheduling, reminders, membership systems, forms, and more).
Shopify remains one of the best ecommerce platforms in the world, but when it comes to classes, programs, memberships, and participant-based operations, it leaves major gaps. Organizations end up stitching together multiple apps, managing disconnected systems, and doing more manual work than necessary.
Activity Messenger is built specifically to replace these workarounds. Instead of forcing Shopify to behave like a program management system, choose a platform designed for your reality: schedules, participants, families, memberships, and ongoing communication.
💡 Ready to simplify registrations and move beyond ecommerce workarounds? Book a demo with Activity Messenger to see how your workflows can be streamlined.
