Switching to ClubPal

Your hall does more than take bookings

Hallmaster is built to book and invoice a venue, and it does that well. ClubPal is for halls and community venues that also run a membership, sell tickets for the summer BBQ and need a website to put it all on, in one system rather than several.

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Hallmaster and ClubPal

Two tools built for different jobs

Hallmaster is a UK booking and invoicing system for village halls and community venues, and says it is used in more than 1,500 of them. Its own licence describes it as being "solely for the purpose of booking/invoicing venues". Within that it is thorough: room availability, booking requests, regular hirers, invoices and the controls around them.

Most halls run more than a bookings diary, though. There is a Friends of the Hall scheme to renew every year, a summer BBQ or quiz night to sell tickets for, and a website somebody has to keep up to date. Alongside Hallmaster those live somewhere else: a spreadsheet for the members, a ticketing site for the events, and a separate website with the booking calendar embedded in it.

ClubPal puts them in one place. Room hire, memberships, event tickets and the website share the same people, the same payments and the same login. A member's hire rate comes from their membership automatically, and the committee has one set of figures to take to the AGM instead of three.

Hallmaster licence
£195 a year for the booking system, or £279 a year with invoicing, both including VAT, per venue, paid annually in advance. hallmaster.co.uk/pricing, prices from 1 January 2026, checked 25 September 2026.

Hallmaster add-ons
Online payments, accounting software, heating and door access are £30 a year each. Online payments need the invoicing plan and your own Stripe, PayPal or Square account. hallmaster.co.uk/pricing and their payment integration page, checked 25 September 2026.

What Hallmaster covers
Booking and invoicing venues. Memberships, event ticketing and a website builder are not in its published feature list. Hallmaster SaaS Terms clause 5.1, and hallmaster.co.uk, checked 25 September 2026.

ClubPal
Room hire, memberships, event tickets and a website in one system. No subscription, 20p + 3.5% per transaction with card processing included. One published rate, with nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.

An honest starting point

If all you do is hire rooms, Hallmaster is built for exactly that

What Hallmaster does better

On room hire alone, Hallmaster is the more complete tool. A hall whose only income is hire, with nothing else to run, should weigh that honestly.

Regular weekly hirers booked as a repeating series. ClubPal has no equivalent

Booking requests the bookings secretary approves, and invoices paid by bank transfer

A public availability calendar, plus door access, heating and lighting add-ons

What ClubPal adds

ClubPal is built for organisations with members and events, where room hire is one part of the income rather than all of it.

Memberships with renewals, and a members' rate on room hire applied at checkout

Event tickets for the BBQ, the quiz night or the panto, paid by card

A website included, with your events and rooms already on it

Side by side

ClubPal and Hallmaster, point by point

	ClubPal	Hallmaster
What it is built for	Running the whole organisation: hire, members, events, website and payments	Booking and invoicing venues
Online room booking	Per room availability, peak windows, deposits and conditions of hire accepted at booking	Online booking requests into a real time availability calendar, unlimited rooms
Regular weekly hirers	No equivalent. Each hire is booked as a single date	Repeating bookings, with clash checking
Booking approval	Bookings confirm as soon as they are paid	Requests arrive provisional and an admin confirms them
Public availability calendar	Rooms and prices are public. The calendar itself is for admins only	Embeddable on your own website, or on a hosted page with a QR code
How hirers pay	Card, Apple Pay or Google Pay at checkout, with deposits and the balance taken automatically	By link on an invoice, which needs the invoicing plan and the £30 payment module. Bank transfer and cash recorded by hand
Invoicing	No invoices. Hirers get a receipt for a card payment	Invoices, deposit invoices and bulk monthly invoicing, on the £279 plan
Booking without an account	Hirers create a free account on your ClubPal site first	Hirers fill in a booking form, with an email address required
Memberships	Friends of the Hall, supporters or members, with renewals and optional auto renew	Not in the published feature list
Members' rate on room hire	A separate price per membership, applied automatically at checkout	Bespoke rates set per customer
Event tickets	Sell tickets for a BBQ, quiz night or panto, paid by card, with questions per ticket	Not in the published feature list
Website	Included, with your events and rooms on it. Your own domain for £25 a year	A hosted booking calendar page, or embed the calendar in a website you run separately
Accounting software	CSV export of bookings and revenue reporting	Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent and others, as a £30 a year add-on
Door access, heating and lighting	No equivalent	£30 a year add-ons, with RemoteLOCK or HeatingSave hardware
Contract	None. Nothing to renew and nothing to cancel	Annual licence paid in advance. Their terms renew it each year unless cancelled with 14 days' notice

Moving across

What switching actually involves

1. Check your renewal date

Hallmaster licences run a year at a time, paid in advance, and their terms ask for 14 days' notice before renewal. Plan the move around that date. Setting ClubPal up alongside costs nothing in the meantime.

2. Export before you cancel

Download your bookings, hirers and invoice history as reports before the licence ends. Their terms give you 5 business days after it ends to do it.

3. Set up your rooms

Each room with its own availability, prices, deposits and conditions of hire. Regular weekly hirers are booked date by date, so allow time to add the months ahead.

4. Bring the rest across

Your Friends of the Hall list, the next event and the website can move at the same time, so the hall runs from one place from the first day.

More detail on the process is on the switching page, or talk to us about your club before you decide.

Common questions

Moving from Hallmaster

What does Hallmaster cost?

Hallmaster publishes its prices. From 1 January 2026 the booking system is £195 a year and booking with invoicing is £279 a year, both including VAT, per venue, paid annually in advance. Online payments, accounting software, heating and door access are £30 a year each, and online payments need the invoicing plan. Hallmaster takes no commission on payments, so your own payment provider's fees apply on top.

Is there a Hallmaster alternative that includes memberships and event tickets?

ClubPal. Hallmaster covers booking and invoicing, and its published feature list has no memberships, event ticketing or website builder. ClubPal runs room hire, memberships with renewals, event tickets and a website from one system, with no subscription and 20p + 3.5% per transaction.

Can ClubPal handle regular weekly hirers?

Not as a repeating series. Each hire in ClubPal is a single date, so a group that uses the hall every Tuesday is booked one Tuesday at a time. Hallmaster can set up a repeating series with clash checking. If most of your income is regular weekly hirers and you run nothing else, that is a real reason to stay with Hallmaster.

Can we sell event tickets to people who are not members?

Yes. Anyone can buy a ticket for an open event once they have created a free account on your ClubPal site, and no membership is needed. Each event has a single ticket price, so if members pay less for the BBQ, run a separate members' event with an eligibility rule.

Can members get a cheaper rate on room hire?

Yes. Each room's prices can carry a separate rate for each membership, so a Friends of the Hall member is charged the members' rate automatically at checkout, and everyone else pays the standard price.

No subscription required