We built Zipper because good studios deserved better software.
Chris spent years at HubSpot working with hundreds of small businesses — including a lot of fitness studios. The story was always the same: great instructors, loyal members, and software that made everything harder than it needed to be. He also happens to be a registered yoga teacher, trains BJJ, and has finished multiple Ironman races, so he’s seen the booking-system crashes from both sides of the front desk.
Kerry was building enterprise software at Microsoft (Azure) and Lumeris — designing systems that had to scale to millions of users without buckling. By night and weekend, he’s running 50+ mile ultramarathons. So when Chris pitched him the idea of fixing studio software for good, he was in.
We started Zipper because the people changing lives through fitness and wellness deserve technology that helps them win — not systems that fight them every day. Classes, appointments, payments, automations, CRM, and the client app, in one place. No marketplace running alongside you. No contracts. Just the platform we wanted our own studios to use.
We’re still small enough that you’ll talk to a founder when you reach out, and that’s on purpose. We’d rather stay close to the people we serve than scale into a place where you become a ticket number.
The humans behind the software
Small by design. When you call us, an actual person picks up — probably one of these four.
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Chris Alto
Co-founder & CEO
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Kerry Ritter
Co-founder & CTO
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Ben Main
Sr. Software Architect
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Connie Holen
Head of Marketing & Client Experience
You may meet some of our furry friends on support calls
...so we figured we’d introduce them properly. They’re unofficial team members and full-time emotional support.
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Picabo
Queen of the mountain
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Piper
Zoomies first, snuggles second
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Butters
Big fan of computer cords
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Mocha
Tennis-ball obsessed
The principles behind the platform
Every product decision we make comes back to these 4 beliefs.
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Zero-click software is the future.
We believe the next era of studio software is conversational, not click-heavy. We're pioneering chat-based actions for both clients and staff — so the things you do every day take a sentence, not a sequence of menus.
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Integrated by design, not by duct tape.
Studios deserve software that works together, not against itself. We built Zipper to replace the duct-taped stack of class software, payment processors, and email tools with one coherent system — because your operations shouldn't depend on five vendors playing nicely.
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Classes and appointments — equally.
Every booking type deserves first-class treatment. Most platforms were built for group classes or appointments and bolted on the other as an afterthought. We treat classes, privates, semi-privates, events, and programs as equals — one calendar, no second-class citizens.
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Your data is yours.
Every studio gets its own data warehouse. No locked-down reports, no marketplace running alongside you. The numbers belong to the business that earned them.
Let’s see if we’re the right fit
Book a 30-minute walkthrough with one of us. We’ll tailor it to your studio and show you exactly what switching looks like — or honestly tell you if Zipper isn’t the right call.