Cass Olholm is a qualified nutritionist, head coach and qualified pre and post natal trainer, and the founder of Train With Cass, a Brisbane-based training platform built on progression rather than aesthetics. The app that carried the business was not built by PixelForce, and it was failing in the most damaging way possible for a subscription product: it crashed during signup. Prospective members who arrived through a free trial hit an error before they ever reached a workout, and paying members who had already committed were losing access to programs they had bought. In a subscription business, every one of those sessions is a cancellation forming.
Crash rate down 90 percent, 99 percent uptime and maintenance costs cut 50 percent, through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
Stabilise first, decide second
PixelForce took over the Train With Cass fitness app from the developer who built it and stabilised it in place. The crash rate came down 90 percent, uptime reached 99 percent and maintenance costs were cut 50 percent, through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
Crash rate Down 90%
Uptime achieved 99%
Maintenance costs Cut 50%
The Problem
The Solution
PixelForce took over the platform and treated it as a diagnosis problem rather than a bug list. A full technology audit mapped the codebase and the infrastructure, and logging and crash reporting were put in place so failures could be attributed to a cause instead of a symptom. The crashes were then fixed at their sources through targeted refactoring of the components responsible, through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
The Outcome
The crash rate came down 90 percent, uptime reached 99 percent and maintenance costs were cut 50 percent. The rescue included a seamless handover from the previous developer.
An inherited app that failed at the worst moment
Cass Olholm built Train With Cass around a coaching philosophy that is unusually specific: train for performance, not for appearance. Her credentials are the product - a qualified nutritionist, head coach and qualified pre and post natal trainer running structured programs for a community that follows her because of how she coaches. When that community is being asked to pay a monthly subscription, the app is not a marketing asset. It is the entire delivery mechanism, and its reliability is indistinguishable from her reliability.
The original build, delivered by another developer, did not hold. The app crashed frequently and ran slowly, and the failures clustered at the two points that cost the most: free trial signup, where interested followers were converting, and program access, where paying members were being turned away from content they had bought. Repeated repair attempts by the incumbent had not stopped the crashes recurring, which is itself diagnostic - it indicates a cause that was never found rather than a series of unrelated defects. Cass approached PixelForce needing the immediate bleeding stopped, and needing an honest technical assessment of whether the platform was worth keeping.
Crashes at the conversion point
A fitness app needs reliable access to signup and training content. The rescue work focused on stabilising the inherited platform.
Repairs that did not hold
Previous fixes had been applied and the crashes had returned. That pattern points to an undiagnosed root cause rather than a list of independent bugs, and it changes the work from patching to investigation.
A handover that could not disrupt members
A handover needs clear ownership of the codebase, infrastructure and accounts. PixelForce completed a seamless handover from the previous developer.
A decision that needed evidence
Cass needed to know whether the platform could be maintained or whether it had to be rebuilt. That is a commercial decision, and it could not be made responsibly until someone had audited what was actually there.
Train With Cass operates from Brisbane and PixelForce works from Adelaide and Sydney, and the engagement began under time pressure with members already affected. The cadence was set accordingly: frequent, short updates on what had been found and what had been fixed, rather than a monthly report. Cass had already been through a period of being told the instability was normal, so the working agreement was that every claim we made about the platform would be backed by something in the audit or in the crash data.
Hinney Lo Founder & CEO, PixelForce
Book a consultationWhen an app has been patched repeatedly and keeps crashing, the problem is almost never the patches. It is that nobody has instrumented the thing well enough to know what is actually failing. Audit first, measure second, fix third. Doing it in that order is what turns a rescue into a result instead of another round of guesses.
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Rescue by diagnosis, not by patching
An app rescue begins with a technology audit of the codebase and infrastructure: what exists, how it is deployed and what needs attention. Crash reporting and logging help establish which failures can be reproduced and investigated. The resulting plan separates immediate stabilisation work from changes that need further scoping.
Targeted refactoring and structured quality assurance address the agreed defects and check the affected user journeys before release. Performance work is scoped against the behaviour being measured. We rescued the Train With Cass fitness app, taking the crash rate down 90 percent, achieving 99 percent uptime and cutting maintenance costs 50 percent, through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
A takeover also needs clear ownership of the codebase, infrastructure and accounts, with the transfer responsibilities documented. Reviewing the architecture and technical debt informs the options for continued maintenance, modernisation or rebuilding. The later Train With Cass 2.0 rebuild was a separate engagement; the rescue results above belong to the original platform.
Audit · Measure · Stabilise
Crash rate down 90 percent. 99 percent uptime. Maintenance costs cut 50 percent.
A fitness app rescued through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
- Technology audit
- Crash instrumentation
- Root-cause repair
- Controlled handover
- Performance recovery
- An honest recommendation
01 06
Technology audit
The engagement opened with a full audit of the codebase and infrastructure, documenting what had been built, how it was deployed and where the structural weaknesses were.
On a rescue this is not preparation for the work. It is the work. Everything that follows, including the decision about whether to keep the platform at all, depends on an accurate picture of what is actually there.
02 06
Crash instrumentation
Crash reporting and logging were put in place before repairs began, so that every failure produced evidence pointing at a cause. Once that instrumentation existed, a long list of apparently unrelated crashes resolved into a small number of recurring sources.
03 06
Root-cause repair
The components responsible were refactored at the source rather than patched at the point of failure, and each fix was verified through structured quality assurance before release. The crash rate came down 90 percent and uptime reached 99 percent.
04 06
Controlled handover
A controlled handover establishes ownership of the codebase, infrastructure and accounts, documents the system and agrees the transfer responsibilities. Train With Cass was rescued through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
05 06
Performance recovery
Load times and responsiveness were addressed alongside stability. To a member opening the app in a gym, a screen that takes too long and a screen that never arrives are the same experience, so responsiveness had to improve for the stability work to be felt.
06 06
An honest recommendation
An audit informs whether problems can be addressed within the existing platform or whether a rebuild should be scoped. The decision weighs product requirements, maintainability, integration constraints and the work involved in each option. On Train With Cass, maintenance costs were cut 50 percent. The later Train With Cass 2.0 rebuild was a separate engagement.
Cass Olholm Founder, Train With Cass
After being managed by another agency, I approached PixelForce with numerous issues affecting the TWC app. PXF team wasn’t deterred, and their confidence in stabilising and improving the app was truly reassuring.Train With Cass
Services in the Train With Cass rescue
Frequently Asked Questions
Train With Cass is a subscription fitness app founded by Cass Olholm, a Brisbane-based qualified nutritionist, head coach and qualified pre and post natal trainer. It delivers structured training programs built around progression rather than appearance. PixelForce rescued and stabilised the original app after it was built by another developer, taking the crash rate down 90 percent, reaching 99 percent uptime and cutting maintenance costs 50 percent.
An app rescue is taking over a live product that is failing, from the team that built it, and planning the work needed to stabilise it while managing service continuity. It is a different discipline from building new software: the constraints are an unfamiliar codebase, real users mid-session, and a history of attempted fixes. PixelForce runs a rescue as audit first, instrumentation second, root-cause repair third, and only then a recommendation about the product's future.
Start by gathering evidence about failures: the affected user journeys, logs, crash reports and the conditions needed to reproduce the problem. A technology audit informs which changes to make and what to verify through quality assurance before release.
We rescued the Train With Cass fitness app, taking the crash rate down 90 percent, achieving 99 percent uptime and cutting maintenance costs 50 percent, through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
A takeover needs an agreed handover plan for the codebase, infrastructure, accounts and support responsibilities. Service continuity is a requirement to assess and plan for, rather than an unconditional promise.
We rescued the Train With Cass fitness app, taking the crash rate down 90 percent, achieving 99 percent uptime and cutting maintenance costs 50 percent, through a seamless handover from the previous developer.
An app rescue starts with a technology audit to establish the existing codebase, infrastructure, defects and takeover requirements. The cost drivers include the amount of remediation, integrations, data work, verification and the responsibilities being transferred.
If the work requires a rebuild, Scoping & Design defines the requirements, designs and fixed-cost Statement of Work before development is quoted. The figure comes out of that scope. Stabilisation and rebuilding have different work requirements; the audit informs the comparison.
The decision starts with the existing product and the requirements it needs to meet. An audit informs the options: stabilise the current platform, modernise selected components or scope a rebuild. Compare maintainability, integrations, delivery risk and the work involved.
On Train With Cass, maintenance costs were cut 50 percent. Its later 2.0 rebuild was a separate engagement. Each inherited app needs to be assessed against its own requirements.
Stability has to be maintained or it decays again. PixelForce offers Phase 3 Post Launch Support as a warranty, monitoring and support arrangement on a flat monthly fee, or as a full product retainer for clients who want continuous development, priced per four-week cycle against a committed story-point capacity in tiers named Steady, Growth, Scale, Velocity and Momentum, with Enterprise on application. For a rescued platform, monitoring matters more than usual, because the instrumentation put in during the rescue is what keeps the next problem from becoming a surprise.
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