Heylo vs Sweatpals

Pricing

Both Heylo and Sweatpals fall in the Free price range. Heylo: Free to use; Heylo takes a small percentage when groups collect payments. Sweatpals: Free to join and discover; hosts set their own ticket prices.

Format & matching

Both apps use groups of Varies, and Heylo relies on manual / self-select matching while Sweatpals uses interest-based matching.

How they work

Heylo: A group leader creates a branded group page on Heylo with their logo, colors, and a custom URL. They post events with all the details — location, time, registration caps, guest policies — and members get notified by push notification and email. Members RSVP, pay if there's a fee, and join event-specific group chats to coordinate. The leader can collect recurring membership dues, require waivers, screen new members before letting them in, and track attendance over time. Members manage everything from the app or web — no separate payment apps, no email threads, no spreadsheets.

Sweatpals: Download the app, set your location, and browse a feed of fitness and wellness experiences happening near you — everything from sunrise yoga to weekend hikes to pickleball meetups. Join a community built around your favorite activity and chat with other members. When an event catches your eye, book a ticket directly in the app. If you're a host, you can create events, manage memberships, collect payments and waivers, and even send SMS blasts to your community — all from one dashboard. The discovery feed also surfaces experiences you wouldn't have found on your own, which is where the magic happens.

What to love

Heylo: Replaces GroupMe, Venmo, Google Forms, and email chains with a single platform. Completely free to use with no paywall or usage limits — Heylo only takes a cut of payments. Branded group pages with custom URLs look professional and are easy to share. Built-in payment collection, waivers, and member screening solve real operational headaches. Works on iOS, Android, and web so nobody is left out.

Sweatpals: Two-sided marketplace — great for both discovering events and hosting them. Built-in ticketing, payments, waivers, and SMS marketing for hosts is genuinely useful. Strong presence in Austin and Bay Area with 25K+ local users. Community chat and social feed create ongoing connection beyond single events. Free to discover and join — no subscription paywall for attendees.

Reality check

Heylo: Not a friend-matching app — you need to already know about a group or start your own. Discovery of groups is limited; there's no curated marketplace of communities to browse. The platform's value scales with group size — solo users won't get much from it. Heylo's transaction fee on payments may not work for groups with tight budgets.

Sweatpals: Concentrated in a few cities — experience outside Austin, SF, and Miami is thinner. App can be buggy — multiple reviews mention glitches with profiles and photos. The 'Pals' matching feature is inconsistent and often shows no results. Host-dependent quality means some experiences are polished and others are bare-bones.

Søren's take

On Heylo: Heylo isn't a friendship app in the traditional sense — it's the infrastructure that makes community groups actually work. If you're running a running club and juggling Venmo requests, GroupMe threads, and Google Form RSVPs, Heylo consolidates all of that into one clean platform. The fact that it's free (they only take a cut when money changes hands) is a huge deal for volunteer-run groups. The limitation is discovery: Heylo doesn't help you find a group, it helps groups run better. If you're a group leader, this is a no-brainer. If you're looking for friends, you'll need to find the group first — but once you do, Heylo makes the experience seamless.

On Sweatpals: Sweatpals is trying to be the Eventbrite of fitness, and in the cities where it has traction — especially Austin and the Bay Area — it works. The dual focus on attendees and hosts is smart: hosts get real tools (ticketing, waivers, SMS), and attendees get a discovery feed that surfaces things they'd never find on Instagram. The app itself is still rough around the edges — reviews mention bugs and the matching feature barely works — but the core experience of finding a local run club or yoga class and just showing up is solid. If you're in one of their active cities and want to meet people through movement, it's worth downloading.