Frequently asked questions

No. Most independent instructors teach at families' home or apartment pools, and you can also add any venue you're allowed to use, with your access hours. Swimvity only offers times inside those hours. If a family doesn't have a pool, they can say so on your booking page and it reaches you as an enquiry marked “Needs help finding a pool”.

Yes. That's what Swimvity is built around. You say how far you're happy to drive, and travel between lessons is estimated from each family's suburb until you have their address. Drive times are estimates, not live traffic.

Setup has four steps: about you, how you teach, where and when, and your lessons and prices. You can stop at any point and pick up where you left off. Existing families and swimming levels can all be added later.

Add them yourself as they come up; there's no big import to do first.

No. Everything works without it: add personal appointments as time off and they're never offered. Connecting Google Calendar is coming soon.

Yes. Your booking page asks a few short questions on their phone, then offers times that work, with their preferred times first. Parents send a request; nothing is booked until you approve it. The page only opens once you have hours, a lesson and somewhere to teach.

Add each pool with the times you're allowed to teach there. Swimvity only offers times inside them, and only shows parents the pools you choose.

No. The optimiser only suggests changes when you run it, and only for families who've said they're flexible. You copy a message to the family, tick that they agreed, then apply the change yourself. Nothing moves automatically.

The scheduling is rule-based: it checks your real hours, lessons, pools and travel estimates. That's deliberate: you can always see why a time is offered.

No. Swimvity is designed to fill gaps and group nearby lessons, and drive times are estimates. How much time you save depends on your week. We'd rather measure it with you than promise a number.

Yes. When you mark a lesson taught it's added to what the family owes. Payments → To collect lists who owes for which lessons, oldest first. Record bank transfers, cash and part payments; extra becomes credit; create invoices and receipts as PDFs. Swimvity doesn't chase families for you. It gives you a polite reminder to copy.

No. Families pay you directly, however you like. Swimvity records payments. It never charges cards, moves lesson money or takes a commission. Any Swimvity subscription is separate from your lesson money.

Not during the pilot: free for at least 90 days, with no card. Billing is switched off and nothing is charged automatically. Any future paid plan will be shown with clear pricing, and nothing is charged unless you explicitly accept it and confirm it yourself on a secure payment page.

Your founding access lasts at least 90 days from sign-up, and Settings → Billing shows the exact end date. Billing is switched off for now, so your account keeps full access. When paid plans are introduced we'll tell you in advance. If billing then applies to your account, you'll need to subscribe to keep making changes once your founding access and any free trial that applies have ended. If you don't, your account becomes read-only: nothing is deleted, you can still see and download everything, and your booking page stops taking new requests until you subscribe.

Once paid plans start: yes, any time, from Settings → Billing. You keep full access until the end of the period you've paid for; after that your account is read-only and your data stays yours to export.

Founding instructors use Swimvity free for at least 90 days, with no card. Plans and pricing coming soon. Founding instructors will receive an exclusive offer when paid plans are introduced. Details will be shared in advance. Any paid plan only starts if you explicitly accept it. No commission on your lessons.

Not yet. Swimvity is built for one independent instructor today. A version for swim schools is planned: see what's on the way.

Yes. Families' and children's details are visible only to your business: never to other families, never used for marketing or analytics. Swimvity asks for as little as possible about children: a first name and, optionally, an age and swimming ability. Read more about security and privacy.

Yes, any time, including when your account is read-only. Settings → Account & security → Download my business data gives you your families, lessons, payments and invoices. If a family asks to be forgotten, you can erase their details from their family page.

The app runs in Vercel's Sydney region and its database is in Sydney (Neon, on Amazon Web Services). Some services we rely on, such as email delivery, error reports and the security check on public forms, may process data outside Australia; the privacy policy lists them.