Sports clubs guide
Choosing club management software for a small sports club
By Jason Burns Published 8 minute read
Start with two numbers, not a feature list
Before you open a single product page, write down how many members the club has and roughly what they pay in a year. A club with 60 members paying £120 each has £7,200 of subs income. Those two numbers decide more about which software suits you than any feature comparison.
Three pricing models on the same 60 member club. The rates are the suppliers' published figures; the sums are ours.
That is because UK club management software comes in two pricing models. ClubPilot, which publishes a comparison of the UK market, describes them: "free to use with transaction fees, or a monthly subscription with lower fees. Neither is automatically better. Small clubs with modest income usually win on the free-plus-fees model. Clubs turning over meaningful subscription revenue usually win on a subscription."
It also gives the warning that matters most: "A platform that's free to use but takes a percentage of every transaction isn't really free, and across a full year of subscriptions that percentage quietly adds up."
Run your own sum on online payment fees before anything else. For the 60 member club above, using the rates the companies publish and quoted in the table below:
- A free app charging 2.5 percent plus 20p on each payment: 60 payments of £120 is £180 in percentage fees plus £12 in fixed fees, £192 a year.
- membermojo at its £95 a year tier with card payments through Stripe at 1.5 percent plus 20p: £95 plus £108 plus £12, £215 a year.
- WebCollect at its £80 a year tier for 50 to 100 members, collecting by Direct Debit at 0.5 percent capped at £2 plus GoCardless's 1 percent: £80 plus £36 plus £72, about £188 a year.
Three models, all within £30 of each other at this size. Double the members or the subs and the picture changes. The rates are what each company published on 27 September 2026; the sums are ours.
What the UK platforms publish
Every figure here comes from the company's own page unless it says otherwise. Where a company does not publish a price, the table says so rather than guessing.
| Platform | Built for | Pricing published on its own site | Payment fees |
|---|---|---|---|
| ClubSpark | Tennis venues. The LTA's page describes membership packages, court booking, coaching bookings, communications and a website module you can build "quickly, easily and for free" | The LTA page we read states no licence price. ClubPilot's comparison says it is free to LTA-registered venues | ClubPilot says from 2.9 percent plus 25p via Stripe |
| Spond | Teams and small volunteer clubs. Its site lists events, invites and reminders, messaging, payments, adding guardians and availability requests, with Spond Club as a separate club-level product | "Try it, its free" on its own site | ClubPilot and Pembee both put it at from 2.5 percent plus 20p; the Spond pages we fetched showed no rate |
| Pitchero | Team sports wanting a club website; its site describes automating payments, registration, fixtures and communication | Free plan for one team with third-party advertising and no payment processing. Standard £38 a month for up to 20 teams. Pro £99 a month, unlimited teams, no advertising. Extra teams £2.50 a month. 30 day trial | Standard from 2.42 percent plus 17p. Pro from 1.67 percent plus 15p |
| membermojo | Membership records for clubs, associations and charities | One annual fee by member count: up to 50 free, 100 for £50, 500 for £95, 1,000 for £175, including VAT. No membermojo transaction charges. Stripe needs the £95 plan or higher. 60 day trial | Passes on PayPal at 2.9 percent plus 30p or Stripe at 1.5 percent plus 20p |
| WebCollect | Clubs, societies and associations; templates for rugby, cricket and canoe clubs | Annual fee by member count: up to 50 free, 50 to 100 £80, 100 to 300 £160, 300 to 500 £230. Three months free trial | Direct Debit 0.5 percent with no VAT, capped at £2, plus GoCardless at 1 percent. PayPal 10p plus PayPal's fee. Cards £70 set-up and 30p each plus bank charges |
| SportMember | Multi-team clubs; claims 46,355 clubs on its site | Basic £0 per member per month. PRO £0.16 per member per month, minimum £22 a month excluding VAT | Not stated on the pages we read |
| myClubhouse | Sports clubs, social clubs and societies, by Simmetrics Ltd | 30 day free trial. Its pricing page returned no content when fetched | Not stated on the pages we read |
| Manage My Club | Membership, finances, kit, incident book | 30 day free trial. No price on its homepage | Card or Direct Debit; rate not stated |
Two cautions. The ClubSpark and Spond fee rates come from other companies' comparison pages, because neither platform published a rate on the pages we could fetch. And "free" almost always means free software with fees on the money. ClubPilot's FAQ says it directly: "free tools usually recoup their costs through transaction fees on payments".
The support question
Free software usually means thinner support, and small clubs feel that most in the week before the season starts. ClubPilot notes that Spond's customer support is "lighter than you'd get from a paid platform" and adds: "If something breaks the week before your season starts, that matters." Pembee's comparison, checked in July 2026, calls Spond "excellent" as a free comms tool but says "support is mostly do-it-yourself".
Test the support during the trial: send the help desk a real question and time the answer.
General platform or one built for your sport
Most of the platforms above are general. They handle members, payments and messages for any sport and configure the rest through settings. That is a strength for a football club with eight teams and a weakness for a rowing club with fifteen boats.
The difference shows in the nouns. A general platform has events, groups, fixtures and facilities. A rowing club has outings, crews and hulls, and needs to know which side someone rows. A sailing club has duties, safety boat cover and qualifications that expire. A canoe club has trips, a launch list and a kit store where the throw line is due an inspection. You can bend a general product into those shapes with custom fields, but the volunteer who built the workaround eventually leaves, and the next one inherits a puzzle.
Our own SportsHQ apps take the other approach. The SportsHQ site puts it this way: "Each app is built for one sport, not configured for it." RowHQ handles boat bookings, crews and sessions for rowing clubs; SailHQ is built around duty rotas, boats and race programmes for sailing clubs; KanuHQ covers membership, craft, sessions and trip records for canoe and kayak clubs. SportsHQ states that RowHQ and KanuHQ are free for clubs with up to 20 active members with every feature included, and that SailHQ confirms pricing for each club. Those are our products, so weigh that paragraph accordingly and check each product's own site. The same test applies to anyone else's sport-specific tool: does it use your club's words without a workaround?
Six questions before you move the member list
- Can we get our data out, in full, whenever we like? membermojo's tour page says the whole database can be downloaded as a spreadsheet "at any time", with a unique member id per row. Ask every supplier the same question and get the answer in writing.
- Who counts as a member for billing? WebCollect counts everyone "connected with your organisation", which takes in lapsed members, parents of juniors and anyone who bought an event ticket. membermojo counts paid, pending and retained lapsed members but not archived ones. A 60 member club can be a 110 person bill.
- What do the fees come to on our subs? Do the sum from the first section with the supplier's published rates and your real numbers.
- How do juniors and parents work? Spond lists adding guardians as a feature. WebCollect requires junior subscriptions to sit in a group with a family admin. Ask how a parent responds for a child and where consent is stored.
- Do members see adverts? Pitchero's free plan carries third-party advertising; its Pro plan has none. Check what your members will see.
- What happens when we grow? Pitchero charges £2.50 a month per extra team. membermojo asks you to upgrade when you pass the tier and refunds the unused time on the old plan. Find the step in the price before you reach it.
Moving without a revolt
Whatever you pick, the members will judge it by the first month.
Import, do not retype. Manage My Club describes the standard route: have the members "in a CSV file or Excel spreadsheet" and use the bulk import. membermojo says current members "wait until renewal for their first visit and require no assistance", which is the least disruptive pattern: nobody is asked to do anything until their renewal comes round.
Move one job first. Renewals are the easiest, because the deadline does the nagging. Attendance or bookings next. Leave the old spreadsheet open and read only for a month, then close it. Tell members once, clearly, what they will be asked to do and when.
Where the SportsHQ collection fits
The SportsHQ collection is our set of sport-specific club apps. The sports clubs page explains the problems each one was built around, and each app's own site carries its current features and pricing.
Questions people ask
What software do club managers use?
It depends on the sport and the size. ClubPilot's comparison says tennis clubs affiliated to the LTA usually start with ClubSpark, team sports clubs often suit Pitchero, and small volunteer clubs with no budget tend to use Spond. Membership-led clubs use membership management tools such as membermojo and WebCollect. Rowing, sailing and canoe clubs can use sport-specific apps, including our own.
Is there free club management software?
Yes, with a catch. Spond's app is free, Pitchero's free plan covers one team, membermojo and WebCollect charge nothing up to 50 members, and SportsHQ says RowHQ and KanuHQ are free up to 20 active members. Free tools generally earn their money on payment fees or by limiting teams or members, so work out what the fees come to on your subs before treating free as free.
What is the best app for managing a sports club?
There is no single best. ClubPilot's answer, which we agree with, is that "the best choice depends on your sport, your club's size and your budget". Pick by pricing model, data export, junior handling and whether the product uses your sport's words.
How much does club management software cost in the UK?
From free plus payment fees up to about £99 a month on the published prices we read. Pitchero Standard is £38 a month and Pro £99. membermojo runs from free to £175 a year for 1,000 members; WebCollect from free to £230 a year for 500. Payment fees of roughly 1.5 to 2.9 percent plus a few pence per transaction sit on top of most of them.
Sources
Fetched on 27 September 2026: ClubPilot, best club management software in the UK 2026; Pembee, best football club management software (prices it says were checked in July 2026); the LTA's ClubSpark page; Spond's UK homepage; Pitchero's pricing page; membermojo's pricing and membership database tour pages; WebCollect's homepage and pricing page; SportMember's homepage; myClubhouse's homepage; Manage My Club's homepage. Commercial pages, not linked from here. Also sportshq.app, our own site.
Related guides: club membership software for a volunteer committee, rowing club boat bookings, sailing club duty rotas and canoe club sessions.