Sports clubs guide
Sports club management software compared: three sport-specific apps against seven general platforms
By Jason Burns Published 9 minute read
What this page is
Search for sports club management software in the UK and Google shows you Spond, Pitchero, ClubSpark, SportMember and 360Player in its own answer box, with Clubforce, Clubee and Pebble in the results below and membermojo ranking for "club management software uk". We build three of the products in this market: RowHQ for rowing clubs, SailHQ for sailing clubs and KanuHQ for canoe and kayak clubs. So this page has an interest to declare, and it deals with that by using only what each company publishes about its own options.
What each group publishes. Breadth on the left, depth on the right, and the gaps in both.
Every fact below comes from a pricing or features page we opened on 27 September 2026. Where a page does not state something, the table says "not published" rather than guessing. Prices are the figures on the page that day and will change. Nothing here is a score or a ranking. If a general platform does a job that RowHQ, SailHQ or KanuHQ does not, the table says so.
The difference that matters most
General club platforms grew up around team sports. Their vocabulary is teams, fixtures, match fees, players, parents, coaching staff and training nights, and the admin tasks they automate are the ones a football club or a county hockey association has. Pitchero lists football, rugby union, rugby league, cricket, hockey, netball and basketball on its menu. 360Player lists basketball, football, floorball, handball, volleyball, tennis, padel, ice hockey, rugby league, lacrosse and American football, and sells video and performance analysis alongside the admin. ClubSpark names racket sports, football, cricket and basketball, and sells court booking to venues.
Rowing, sailing and paddling clubs do not run on fixtures. They run on outings, crews and boats, on duty rotas for race officers and safety boats, on trips, launch lists and kit inspections. A general platform will do your membership management and take your subscriptions well. It has no idea what a single scull, a safety boat duty or a return-from-water record is. That gap is the reason the three sport-specific apps exist, and the reason they do not offer a website builder, a fundraising lottery or league tables. You are trading breadth for depth.
The comparison table
| Product | Sport-specific or general | Membership | Payments | Bookings or duties | Mobile app | UK pricing basis | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RowHQ | Rowing only | Profiles, subs, parent accounts for juniors | Card payments through the club's own Stripe account, no RowHQ fee, Stripe fees apply, bank transfer tracking | Boat booking with live availability, sessions, crews | iOS and Android apps plus browser | Free up to 20 active members, then £15 to £120 a month by member band up to 300, annual billing is ten months, ex VAT | Rowing clubs, school and university boat clubs |
| SailHQ | Sailing only | Types, renewals, households, qualifications, prorated fees | Records paid status only; card and Direct Debit collection not built, clubs keep GoCardless, Stripe or the bank | Race duty rota with six built-in duty types, swaps and exemptions; series and events | Browser on desktop and mobile; no store app | £0.65 per active member a month for 1 to 50, falling to £0.26 at 301 or more, no base fee; add-ons £25 to £49 a month; final price confirmed after a demo | Sailing and yacht clubs whose pain is the duty rota |
| KanuHQ | Canoe and kayak only | Applications, renewals, roles, qualifications | Charge records in a club ledger; online card payments not enabled yet | Fleet and kit bookings, inspections and faults; sessions and trips with a launch list | Browser only | Free up to 20 active members, then £15 to £120 a month by band up to 300, ex VAT; paid checkout not enabled yet, email support to go above 20 | Canoe and kayak clubs and other paddling groups |
| Spond | General, team sports and activities | Member register, sign-up forms, member types | Payment requests and instalments; 2.5% plus £0.20 per UK transaction, club or member pays | Not published | Spond app on iOS and Android for members; Spond Club is web-based for administrators | Free to use; Spond earns from transaction fees | Clubs with many teams that want free chat, availability and payments |
| Pitchero | General, team sports | Membership database and registration | Built-in payments from 2.42% plus 17p on Standard, from 1.67% plus 15p on Pro; no payment processing on Free | Not published; team management covers fixtures, results and league tables | iOS and Android app on every plan | Free for one team with third-party advertising; Standard £38 a month for 20 teams; Pro £99 a month, unlimited teams; paying yearly saves one month; extra teams £2.50 a month | Team-sport clubs that want a website, app and match fees together |
| ClubSpark | General; racket sports, football, cricket, basketball | Membership with auto-renewals and Direct Debit | 1.4% plus 5p per transaction plus Stripe fees; 1.1% plus Stripe on Premium | Court and class booking module from Standard up | Booker and Coaching apps from Standard up | Basic £15, Standard £30, Premium £75 a month billed annually on a 12-month contract (£18, £36, £90 monthly); Basic up to 150 members with ads, Standard up to 500 | Venue-based clubs that book courts and sell coaching |
| SportMember | General; sport list includes rowing, sailing and canoeing | Membership database, parent profiles | £0.35 plus 1% per transaction, club decides who pays | Facility and equipment booking on PRO only | App Store and Play Store | Basic free with adverts; PRO £0.16 per member a month with a stated minimum of £22 a month (the same page's table shows £32); club website £25 a month extra; ex VAT | Clubs that want a free start and an app for every member |
| membermojo | General; clubs, associations and charities | Database, renewal reminders, mailing lists, attendance register, membership cards | PayPal and offline payments on all plans; Stripe on the £95 plan and above; no membermojo transaction charge; PayPal and Stripe fees apply | Not published | Not published; members join and renew from a PC, tablet or phone | One annual fee by member count: 50 free, 100 for £50, 500 for £95, 1,000 for £175, 10,000 for £635, inc VAT | Small clubs that only need membership and renewals done cheaply |
| Clubforce | General; GAA, soccer, rugby, basketball, hockey, athletics | Registrations with customisable forms | Marketplace and tap-to-pay app; fee rate not published on the pages read | Not published | Clubforce Connect app; branded club app costs extra | Pricing page shows €25 a month for Membership or Fundraising, €35 for the Bundle, paid annually; the UK page gives no sterling price and offers a tailored quote | Clubs where a weekly lotto or draw funds the club |
| 360Player | General, team sports | Registrations | Payment requests with reminders and card retries; fee rates not published | Season scheduling; bookings not published | Not stated on the pages read | No price published; depends on member count and modules, quote on request | Larger clubs that want video analysis and player development alongside admin |
Reading the prices properly
Four pricing models are mixed together in that table, and they cost very different amounts at different club sizes.
Free platform, paid per transaction. Spond charges nothing for the software and takes 2.5% plus 20p on every UK payment. A club collecting £30,000 a year in subscriptions through it pays about £750 plus the fixed pence, whoever ends up covering it.
Flat monthly charge plus a transaction rate. Pitchero's Standard plan is £38 a month plus from 2.42% and 17p. ClubSpark's Standard is £30 a month on an annual contract plus 1.4% and 5p, and then Stripe's own charge on top. Read the "from" and the "plus Stripe" carefully.
Per member. SportMember's PRO plan is 16p per member a month with a minimum charge. membermojo charges one annual amount in bands, so a 400-member club pays £95 a year and nothing per transaction beyond PayPal or Stripe. SailHQ is also per active member, from 65p down to 26p a month depending on size.
Banded, everything included. RowHQ and KanuHQ charge by active member band with every feature in every band and no platform charge on payments. A 60-member rowing club is £35 a month or £350 a year. The same club on membermojo would pay £50 a year for membership only, and on Spond nothing at all until it collected money.
Work out what your club actually collects in memberships and fees each year and do the transaction maths before comparing subscriptions.
Where our three apps fall short
SailHQ does not take money. It records who has paid and when renewals fall due, and clubs keep collecting through GoCardless, Stripe or a bank transfer. If your first problem is collecting subscriptions, Pitchero, ClubSpark, Spond and SportMember all do that today and SailHQ does not.
KanuHQ raises charges and keeps a ledger, but online card payments are not switched on and neither is paid-plan checkout. Clubs above 20 active members email support to set up a paid band. That costs a treasurer time.
SailHQ and KanuHQ have no App Store or Play Store app. Members use them in a phone browser. Spond, Pitchero, SportMember and RowHQ all have store apps.
None of the three builds a public club website, runs a fundraising lottery, sells match tickets or publishes league tables for players and parents to check. Pitchero and Clubforce do. If your club's revenue depends on a weekly draw, Clubforce is built around exactly that.
In return, the three apps do jobs no general platform lists. RowHQ shows which hulls are free before a coach allocates a crew, takes attendance against each training session and syncs erg scores with the Concept2 Logbook. SailHQ builds a season's duty rota with race officer, assistant race officer, safety boat, crew, galley and results roles, checks qualifications such as Powerboat Level 2 before assigning, and handles swaps. KanuHQ ties a trip's launch list to member qualifications, craft and kit condition, and records the return. The guides on boat booking for rowing clubs, sailing club duty rotas and canoe club session management go through each of those jobs in detail.
How to choose in an evening
Write down the three jobs that cost your volunteers the most hours. For most rowing clubs that is boat bookings, crew planning and attendance. For sailing clubs it is the duty rota. For paddling clubs it is trips, kit and consent.
Then check the table for each job. If your three jobs are memberships, payments and communication, a general platform will serve you and you should compare them on transaction costs. If your three jobs are specific to your sport, a general platform will make you keep the spreadsheet you were trying to retire.
Ask every vendor the same four questions: what does a member see on their phone, what happens to our data if we leave, what does a 250-member club pay in a year including transaction costs, and which of the features on your website are live today. Get the last answer in writing.
You can start RowHQ and KanuHQ free from their own sites, rowhq.app and kanuhq.app, and book a SailHQ demo at sailhq.app. Their pages on this site are RowHQ, SailHQ and KanuHQ, and the SportsHQ collection explains how the three fit together.
Questions people ask
Is there free sports club management software in the UK?
Yes, in four forms. Spond is free and earns from transaction fees. Pitchero and SportMember have free tiers with advertising, limited to one team on Pitchero. membermojo is free for up to 50 members. RowHQ and KanuHQ are free for up to 20 active members with every feature included. Free usually means either adverts, a member cap or a fee on payments, so check which one applies.
Which club management software works for rowing, sailing or canoeing?
SportMember lists rowing, sailing and canoeing in its sport picker, and membermojo publishes a testimonial from a canoe club, so both will hold your members. Neither publishes boat booking, duty rotas or trip records. RowHQ, SailHQ and KanuHQ are built for those three sports and publish those features, with the payment and app limitations in the table.
What transaction fees do club apps charge on membership payments?
From the pages read on 27 September 2026: Spond 2.5% plus £0.20; SportMember £0.35 plus 1%; ClubSpark 1.4% plus 5p plus Stripe's fee, or 1.1% plus Stripe on Premium; Pitchero from 2.42% plus 17p on Standard and from 1.67% plus 15p on Pro; membermojo none of its own, with PayPal at 2.9% plus 30p or Stripe at 1.5% plus 20p; RowHQ none of its own, with Stripe's standard fee. Clubforce and 360Player do not publish a rate.
Do I need a club website builder?
Only if the club does not already have one. Pitchero, Spond Club, SportMember and Clubforce include a website, and ClubSpark has one in its core modules. RowHQ, SailHQ and KanuHQ do not build public websites; they give members a portal behind a login and let the club apply its own branding.