What is SubPro?

A video subscription platform purpose-built for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and grappling. Not adapted. Not repurposed. Built from scratch for this sport.

Why this matters right now

In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and grappling, technique video is not optional — it's the primary vehicle for spreading the art. No other combat sport relies on instructional video the way BJJ does. It's how techniques travel across continents, how game plans evolve, how students fill the gaps between classes.

Players know this. Coaches know this. Academy owners know this. Video is how modern Jiu-Jitsu grows.

And yet — there is no platform optimized for learning Jiu-Jitsu through video. Not one built around how this sport is actually studied, drilled, and reviewed. Generic video platforms exist. Course platforms exist. But nothing built for a practitioner who needs to flip the camera angle, loop a specific 4-second transition 20 times, and take notes on the details that matter.

That's what SubPro is. And that's why now is the time.

Built for how BJJ is actually learned

Existing video platforms weren't designed for martial arts. They were designed for online courses, cooking tutorials, fitness programs. SubPro starts from a completely different set of assumptions:

For students

• Mirror mode — Flip any video instantly. If you're a lefty watching a righty's instruction, one tap and it matches your stance. No more mental gymnastics.
• A-B loop — Set two points on any video and loop that exact segment. Drill a 3-second hip escape transition 50 times until it clicks.
• Timestamped notes — Take notes at the exact moment in the video. Your notes become a personal reference book tied to the source material.
• Custom playlists — Not just favorites. Build ordered playlists around your training themes: competition prep, guard retention drills, your personal game plan. Arrange them however you want.
• Speed control — Slow to 0.5x to catch the details. Speed to 2x to review. Standard.
• Progress tracking — Visual progress on every video. Pick up exactly where you left off.

These aren't nice-to-haves. These are the minimum requirements for serious video-based martial arts study. Most platforms offer a "favorites" button and call it a day.

For owners

• Subscriptions first, one-off sales too — Sell monthly or annual access to your full library through your own payment provider. Want to sell individual collections as one-time purchases? Sell them via your own provider's payment links, and SubPro handles who gets access on your site.
• Merchandise — Gi patches, rashguards, t-shirts. Your brand is part of the culture. Sell it alongside your content. (Growth plan and above.)
• Flexible content structure — Organize by curriculum, by concept, by position — whatever matches your teaching style. This isn't a one-size-fits-all course template.
• Advanced search — Keyword, tag, position-based filtering, and more. Your library should be navigable, not just scrollable.
• Forum — Let your members discuss techniques, share sparring footage, and build community around your content. (Pro plan.)
• Video review (coming soon) — Members upload their sparring or competition footage. You review it and give feedback. Turn your coaching into a two-way conversation. (Pro plan.)

What we deliberately left out

No native app. In 2026, a well-built responsive site works everywhere — phone, tablet, laptop. A dedicated app means App Store fees, approval delays, and maintenance overhead that benefits nobody. Most of your students will watch on their phone during open mat anyway.

No TV optimization. You're not watching technique breakdowns on a 65" screen from across the room. You're watching on your phone at the gym, pausing, rewinding, taking notes. SubPro is optimized for how people actually study.

No bloat. No features that exist on a checklist but nobody uses. Everything in SubPro earns its place.

Everything in one place

The BJJ community has always been fragmented online. Videos on one platform. Merch on another. Community on Instagram DMs. Scheduling on a third tool. Payments scattered across PayPal, Venmo, and bank transfers.

SubPro brings it all under one roof — one branded site, one login, one subscription, one dashboard. Your students get a seamless experience. You get a real business.

And everything is built to be easy — easy to subscribe, easy to pay, easy to watch, easy to manage. That's the difference between a platform that technically works and one that people actually use.

Your content, every language

Here's something the biggest academies already know but haven't been able to act on: your fans are not only English speakers.

The top academies — the ones with world champions, with recognized names — have followers in Brazil, Japan, Korea, France, Germany, all over the world. But their instructional content only reaches the English-speaking market. That's a massive audience left on the table.

SubPro is building automatic subtitle generation and translation directly into the platform. Upload your video in English, and subtitles in Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French — any language — are generated automatically.

Beyond subtitles, AI-powered voice dubbing is on the roadmap. Your voice, your teaching style, delivered in languages you don't speak. This isn't science fiction — the technology exists today, and we're integrating it.

For academies with an existing fanbase, this is a multiplier. The same content you've already produced can reach 10x the audience without you lifting a finger. For smaller academies, it means your niche — your unique approach to half guard, or your leg lock system — can find its audience anywhere in the world.

Who's building this

SubPro is built and run by Hiromichi Fujiwara, founder of Let's BJJ — a Japanese production house that has created a large body of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu content over the years. Brown belt, retired from competition by injury, never left the sport.

Two credentials matter here. First: we have run the official subscription site of World Master champion Ichiro Kaneko for years — pricing, member management, content strategy, the whole machine. Second: we've produced a long list of BJJ instructionals ourselves. SubPro is those two experiences — building instructionals and running a champion's subscription — folded into one product.

A note on language, since we work with publishers worldwide: we're based in Japan and English isn't our first language. Email in English is no problem, and for live conversations we use translation-assisted chat — so nothing gets lost, and you'll never be stuck waiting on a language barrier.

And we build in the open: the development of SubPro itself is documented publicly in our dev log on Substack, and our blog Field Notes shares what we learn about running instruction subscriptions. You'll be able to judge who we are by what we ship, not by a bio.

Your money, your payment provider

This is important. SubPro never touches member payments.

You bring the payment provider you already trust — Lemon Squeezy, Stripe, Komoju, Square, or whichever processor or merchant of record fits your region. When a student pays, the money flows directly from their card to your account through your provider. SubPro is the platform; you remain the merchant.

This means:

• You own the customer relationship. Your students are your customers, not ours.
• You control refunds, taxes, and chargebacks. Your provider, your rules.
• Your revenue is not held by a middleman. Your provider settles to you on your provider's schedule.

Never opened a Stripe or Lemon Squeezy account? That's fine. Setting up your payment provider is part of onboarding — we walk through it together on a call, opening the account in your name, connecting it to your site. We've done this many times for real instructors. You end up owning it; you just don't have to figure it out alone.

Will my videos get stolen?

The honest fear behind every paid instructional. Here's exactly where you stand on SubPro:

• You control downloads. Subscription videos stream — no downloading, with signed URLs that expire shortly after the video's runtime. A copied link is dead on arrival. Downloads exist only where you explicitly allow them per video (some publishers enable them for purchased one-time products).
• No hotlinking. Your videos only play inside your site, for logged-in members.
• What technology can't stop, the law does. Screen recording and re-uploading can't be technically prevented by anyone — so your member terms explicitly prohibit copying, recording, and redistribution. A violator is committing copyright infringement against you, and that's legally actionable. We give you the terms that make it enforceable.

Already selling somewhere else?

If you're on Vimeo, a course platform, or a homegrown setup, you don't have to make a scary all-at-once jump. There are two ways in:

• Run both. Keep your current service exactly as it is, and run SubPro alongside it — as a testing ground for features your current platform doesn't have, or as your international outlet using automatic subtitles to reach the audience your current site can't. Decide which one to consolidate on later, calmly, with real data.
• Move completely. We design the migration path together — your videos, your members, your pricing. Bring it to the hearing and we'll plan it step by step.

Content is everything

Here's the truth that most platforms won't tell you: the platform doesn't matter if you don't have content.

A subscription with 5 videos is not a subscription. It's a disappointment. Your students are paying real money every month. They need to feel like they're getting real value from day one.

We recommend starting with at least 50 videos. That's roughly 2–3 collections covering different areas of your game. Guard passing, takedowns, submissions, escapes — whatever your specialty is.

This is the real work. And it takes time. But it's also the reason your subscription will succeed — because you put in the work before you opened the door.

Who this is for

SubPro is for academy owners and coaches who are serious about building a subscription business. Not "I'll try it and see." Not "maybe someday." Serious.

You should apply if:

• You already run a BJJ or grappling academy (or are a recognized coach)
• You have video content or are committed to producing it
• You understand that building a subscriber base takes time and consistent effort
• You want to own your platform, not rent space on someone else's

Who this is not for

If you're looking for a quick side hustle with zero effort, this isn't it. If you're not willing to produce content regularly, your members will leave. If you don't have students who would actually pay for your instruction, the platform won't fix that.

We'd rather have 10 academies that thrive than 100 that stall.

Why we check quality — and when

Running a subscription is not something you start casually. Your members pay you every month, and every month they expect something worth paying for. We want you to walk in with that commitment — because everything else is built on it.

Here's our side of the deal. We keep your starting cost low — setup from $299 and a flat monthly fee — which means we invest our work in your site before it has earned anything. We only win if you grow: as your member base expands, you move up to a higher flat-rate plan — never a cut of what your members pay you — and we grow with you. Your success is literally our business model. So before we build, we make sure you're set up to succeed — that's what the review is.

The second reason is your members. The moment you charge someone for instruction, you owe them quality. Inaudible audio, shaky cameras, a library that never updates — those don't hurt us first, they betray the people paying you. We check quality on their behalf: enough content to justify a subscription, video your members can actually learn from (see our Video Quality Guide), and a plan for producing regularly.

When does this happen? At the start, together. Almost everything is settled in your application and hearing — your content, your rights to it, your production plan. This is not a system where you launch and then get policed by surprise.

And if things stall after launch, we reach out and help first — suggestions, fixes, time to improve. Only if a site stays inactive with no response do we ask for the slot back, so the next applicant can use it.

How we work with you

SubPro is not a self-serve tool where you sign up, get a login, and figure it out alone. Every site is built one at a time, together with its owner. That's the whole point — and it's why we review every application and only take on a few builds at once. Here's exactly what happens after you apply:

• 1. Apply (about 2 minutes) — Tell us who you are, what you teach, and what content you have. No payment, no commitment.
• 2. We review and reach out — We read every application personally. If it's a fit, you'll hear from us directly by email — usually within a few days.
• 3. Hearing (a short call or live chat — your pick) — We talk through your goals, your content, your brand, your pricing — and which demo you'd like to start from. You also get your setup quote here. Nothing proceeds without your approval.
• 4. We build — done for you — Branding, structure, video setup, member flows. You review, we adjust, until it feels like yours.
• 5. Launch — We plan it with you: first email to students, social announcement, pricing psychology. Your monthly subscription starts only here, when your site goes live.

And after launch, we stay: monthly check-ins on your metrics — what's working, what's not, what to try next. If something breaks or a member complains, you contact us directly — we'll agree on the channel that suits you when your site goes live.

This is why we limit how many academies we take on at once. We're building your business with you, not just selling you software.

How to order: pick a template, we tailor it

Think of SubPro as a bespoke tailor for subscription sites — like ordering a custom gi. A tailor doesn't weave the fabric from nothing, and we don't design from a blank page. We never start your site from a blank canvas: you pick the cut you love, and we fit it to you until it's unmistakably yours.

Start with the live demos. Every SubPro site begins from one of these working templates. Browse them, click around, and decide which one feels closest to your brand — that choice is the starting point of your build. We keep adding new templates, so if nothing fits perfectly today, tell us what's missing.

Then bring your wishes to the hearing: the tagline you want at the top, the mood you're after, colors, structure, anything. We take the template you picked and change it piece by piece until it feels right.

One honest note about cost. The standard build — your chosen template, your branding, your videos, your domain — is the $299 setup. The further your wishes go beyond that (special features, heavy design work), the more the build costs. Nothing is ever a surprise: every dollar is quoted at the hearing, you approve it, we agree in writing — and only then does any payment happen.

What it costs

Plans start at $59/month (Starter). Growth is $129/month, Pro is $249/month. Every plan includes your custom domain, video hosting, all student-facing features, and admin tools — flat monthly pricing, no annual lock-in.

• Starter — $59/mo — 10h of video storage, up to 25 members, 2h/mo auto-subtitles, custom domain, full player.
• Growth — $129/mo — 50h of video, up to 50 members, 5h/mo auto-subtitles, newsletter, 1 staff seat.
• Pro — $249/mo — 150h of video, up to 100 members, 4K streaming, member forum, unlimited staff, custom design work.

SubPro is a flat monthly subscription. No per-transaction fee. No revenue share, ever. Your member subscriptions run through your own payment provider, so what your students pay you is yours — minus only your provider's standard processing fees.

There's also a one-time setup fee starting at $299 for the initial build (standard builds are $299 flat; deeper customization is quoted and approved during your hearing, before any work starts). Setup fees run through the same payment rail as your monthly plan — we'll confirm the exact method at your hearing. Your monthly subscription starts only when your site launches, and both the setup fee and your first subscription payment are covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee — if you walk away before launch, or you're not happy with the build within 30 days after it, you get your money back in full.

How long does it take? From application to launch is usually 4 to 8 weeks, depending on how much content you have and how deep the customization goes. We'll give you a realistic timeline at the hearing.

And if you want out? There's no annual contract. You can cancel your monthly plan anytime — your site stays live through the end of the current billing period, and you can export your content and member data for 30 days after. No exit fee, no hostage-taking.

See full pricing details →