Obe Review

Saturday, March 25th

2023 Online Fitness Program Reviews

Obe

• 7-day free trial
• $24.99/month
• $169.99/year
• Over 10,000 classes across 20+ class types
• Live stream classes seven days a week
• New on-demand classes added daily
• Only available to users in the US and Canada

Have you spotted obe in your Facebook or Instagram feed and wondered what all the hype is about? Derived from an acronym representing "our body electric" and said like the word "obey" , this online fitness platform has options for every exerciser, from young professionals pressed for time to kids and seniors who want to get healthier from, well, anywhere.

Ample choices for on-demand classes

Your obe membership includes access to over 10,000 on-demand classes with new ones added every day. There are four class categories at obe, with a total of 20 class types. These include:

• Cardio: HIIT, Dance HIIT, Dance Cardio, Cardio Boxing, Bounce, Jump, and Ride
• Strength: Sculpt, Pilates, Strength, Power, and Barre
• Yoga: Vinyasa, Yoga Sculpt, Restorative, and Meditation
• Activate/Recover: Warmup, Cool-down, Stretch, and Foam Roll

Live class option too

You also can participate in a live daily schedule with streaming classes. But don't worry: even though your live instructor might call you out by name ("You can do it, Chloe in Chicago!" ), they're only going by the names and locations on their list and not spying on whether or not you're really giving it your best effort. Still, it can help you really feel like you're in the studio together with everyone else signed in for the workout.

No leaderboards, but tracking and challenges are available

You'll also be able to take advantage of Programs and Challenges, if you need a little more structure to get yourself in gear and working out regularly. Plus, obe's tracking tools and online community can give you that extra push. But, there are no leaderboards here: as they put it, "no leaderboards, no guilt trips - just a great time."

More expensive than most online fitness platforms

Your experience starts out with a 7-day free trial. After that, you can either pay $24.99 per month or $169.99 per year. We recommend starting out month-to-month after the free period ends, so that you can make sure you're getting enough out of obe to make it worth a longer commitment - because there are no refunds here.

Keep an eye out for discounts

When we visited obe most recently, we got a 50% discount pop-up offer. We weren't thrilled that we had to provide both our email and our mobile number to qualify, but it is what it is. There was another interesting promo featured at the top of the page: sign up to be an annual member and get a free year's membership to gift to a friend, along with a Daily Harvest box for you (valued at $70). Be sure to look at the top of the obe site to see if there's a code available at the time you're signing up.

Decent user feedback

So, should you sign up for obe? On the one hand, it can't hurt to give it a try for seven days and compare it with other online fitness platforms you've had your eye on. It gets pretty high reviews on the Apple App Store (average of 4.8 out of 5 across several thousand ratings) and a similar average over fewer reviews on Google Play (average of 4.5 across 300+ ratings). People love how obe helps them get excited about fitness and participate regularly: some people opt into a live class at the same time every day, so that they always get a new mix of class types, while others praise the ample on-demand catalog for making it impossible to get bored.

Customer service is bad

On the other hand, this online fitness company had an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau, with almost 100 complaints filed there over the last three years and more than half of those coming in the last 12 months. Most of those have gone unanswered and represent significant issues: this isn't a case of people signing up for a trial and not realizing they'd be charged, like you see with some fitness platforms. Complaints here describe a completely non-functioning app and then not being given any credit or refund for months of unusable time, canceling before the end of the trial period but still being charged multiple times, no response at the customer support phone number, you get the picture.

Lots of room for improvement

While we don't want to overlook the thousands of positive reviews from fitness enthusiasts who feel transformed by their experience with obe, we can't ignore the company's lack of a response to legitimate claims filed with the BBB - especially when the complaints line up with comments we saw on both app stores. This online fitness platform is much more expensive than most services we reviewed, and we're not convinced that obe is worth the extra dollars - or potential drama. Take a look at some of obe's rivals first and then decide for yourself.