Bikram Yoga Bella Vista: Ten Years of Community, Finally on the Right Platform
Last Updated on 15 July, 2026
How a Sydney studio owner with a decade of student history and 8,000 members moved off Mindbody — and why the data was the hardest part.
A Decade In, A Studio Decides It’s Time
Tammy Li built Bikram Yoga Bella Vista from nothing. Ten years ago, she opened the doors of a hot yoga studio in the Hills District of Sydney’s northwest, set up a single large heated room, and started teaching. Over the years, the studio accumulated something most yoga businesses would envy: a database of roughly 8,000 students, layers of class history, and a community of loyal members — some still paying legacy fortnightly rates Tammy never raised because they’d been with her so long.
That history is also exactly what kept her tied, for far longer than she wanted, to a platform she had outgrown.
“I have been with Mindbody for 10 years, and I’ve been thinking about changing it,” she said. The fee increases were one issue. The interface was another. “It’s getting more complicated, even harder to use than before, and I’m paying more.” She had tried upgrading to Mindbody’s higher-tier marketing package and downgraded again within the minimum trial period.
But what really held her in place was the data: ten years of visit history, first-class dates, birthdays — every detail that turned an 8,000-row database into a community she could speak to by name.
A Studio Built on Showing Up
Bikram Yoga Bella Vista runs on a model that prizes accessibility over rigid structure. The room is large enough to absorb walk-ins, so booking has never been mandatory. “We have quite a large room; we can fit a lot of people,” Tammy explained. “Most of the clients don’t book — they just come in, show up, and join.” Pre-booking is offered, but the door is always open to drop-ins.
That informality coexists with real operational depth. The studio runs two formats — Bikram Yoga 60 Minutes and Bikram Yoga 90 Minutes — taught by a team of nine instructors, including Tammy herself. Pricing is layered: a single class drop-in, 10-class and 25-class passes, three-month and yearly unlimited passes, and three different fortnightly direct-debit memberships, including legacy pricing she has preserved for long-time members.
“I really would like to keep more information on my clients, because the studio was opening from scratch 10 years ago. I’d like to have their visit information, like when is the first class for them, the date of birth, so we can celebrate together.”
Alongside the yoga business, Tammy also runs a basketball program — a separate operation with its own instructors and schedule that she needed tracked without confusing either team.
What the Studio Offers
The studio’s model is intentionally simple, and that simplicity is part of its appeal. Two class formats run in the same heated room. Drop-in pricing sits alongside multi-class passes at 10 and 25 visits, with three-month and yearly unlimited options for committed practitioners. Three fortnightly direct-debit membership tiers round out the membership ladder.
Nine instructors teach alongside Tammy on a set weekly schedule. Staff confirms who showed up rather than relying solely on pre-bookings. Retail is light: yoga mats, towels, and water are sold at the counter, with most package purchases also happening in person to keep transactions simple. The basketball program runs on its own schedule and roster, sharing the back office without overlapping the yoga operation.
Why Tammy Chose WellnessLiving
Tammy researched alternatives herself — she found WellnessLiving through Google and ChatGPT — and the discovery conversations confirmed what she suspected. Three things made the difference.
She needed a system she could actually navigate on her own. As an owner-operator who teaches classes and manages the business herself, Tammy could not afford software that required escalating support calls to accomplish routine tasks. WellnessLiving’s setup pages, schedule editor, and reporting structure presented fewer steps for the same work than what she had been managing on Mindbody.
She needed her decade of data to come with her. This was the single biggest blocker to leaving Mindbody. WellnessLiving’s migration team performed the import on her behalf — client profiles, attendance history, purchase options, schedules, staff records, birthdays — with Tammy reviewing a mapping file to confirm which Mindbody services and passes corresponded to which WellnessLiving items. “You guys can help me to do it, instead of I do it myself,” she said. That was the deal-maker.
She needed one account for two businesses. WellnessLiving let Tammy run both the yoga studio and the basketball program from a single account, with separate booking tabs so instructors would not get confused between the two. “I don’t want my instructor confused about the yoga and the basketball,” she said. WellnessLiving supported that separation without forcing a second subscription.
Beyond those three requirements, what Mindbody treated as expensive add-ons — the reviews widget, the Google business integration that pushes five-star reviews to her listing, and a loyalty engine that awards points for class attendance, dollar spend, birthdays, and referrals — WellnessLiving folded into the core platform.
How WellnessLiving Fits the Operating Model
Three WellnessLiving capabilities map directly to how the studio runs.
Attendance history, preserved. Tammy’s deepest concern was losing the visit history that lets her recognize when a member is hitting a milestone or celebrating a birthday. WellnessLiving’s import brought across not just client contact details but historical attendance tied to the right services and instructors, with birthdays mapped into the client profile fields she flagged as mandatory for staff. The database she built over a decade carried over intact.
Two programs, one back office, no confusion. Rather than spinning up a second location subscription for the basketball program, WellnessLiving configured separate Book Now tabs under one account. Yoga instructors see the yoga schedule. Basketball instructors see basketball. Tammy sees both from the same interface.
Loyalty and reviews built in. With points configured for class attendance, purchases, birthdays, and referrals — and the WellnessLiving reviews widget feeding her Google business listing — the studio has a built-in engine for rewarding existing members and surfacing publicly. That combination sits inside the platform rather than being bolted on through third parties.
What Tammy Is Building
Bikram Yoga Bella Vista is not a studio in transition. It is a studio that has already done the hard work: ten years of teaching, nine instructors, 8,000 students, and a community so loyal that some members have been paying the same fortnightly rate since the doors opened.
What Tammy needed was not a new direction. She needed infrastructure that matched what she had already built — something simple enough to run herself, capable enough to carry a decade of history forward, and flexible enough to hold a yoga studio and a basketball program in the same back office without confusion.
That is what she has now. A walk-in-friendly hot yoga room running multiple sessions a day. A nine-instructor team working from a clean schedule. A membership base spanning first-timers, casual pass holders, and long-term members she has known for years. A basketball program running alongside without drag.
And ten years of student history — visit counts, first-class dates, birthdays — available to power the outreach that keeps a community feeling like one.
If you’re a yoga or fitness studio owner weighing a move from Mindbody — especially one worried about losing years of client history — Wellness Living’s data team handles the migration for you, and the all-in-one platform consolidates scheduling, memberships, marketing, reviews, and loyalty into one back office. Book a free, no-commitment demo to see how it could work for your studio.
