Frequently asked questions

Yes, completely. ClubPal has no subscription fee, no setup fee, and no monthly charges. We only charge a flat fee when your club processes payments through the platform, 20p + 3.5% per transaction in the UK and the equivalent in your own currency elsewhere. If your club doesn't take payments, you can use every feature of ClubPal entirely for free, forever.

No. ClubPal charges a single flat fee when payments are processed through ClubPal Payments, 20p + 3.5% per transaction for a UK club, that's it. There are no setup costs, monthly subscriptions, per-member charges, or feature gates. Some platforms advertise "zero fees" but still route your payments through Stripe or Square, whose processing fees land on your club separately, with ClubPal Payments, the one fee you see is the only fee you pay.

No. ClubPal doesn't charge per member, per admin, or per session. Whether you have 20 members or 2,000, the cost is the same flat 20p + 3.5% on any payments you process. There are no tiered plans, and every feature is available to every club from day one.

When you refund a payment, the whole 20p + 3.5% fee is returned to your club in proportion to the amount refunded. Refund in full and the entire fee comes back. A payment refunded in full therefore costs your club nothing at all. Most platforms keep the card processing part of the fee whether or not you refund, which leaves the club out of pocket whenever a session is called off. ClubPal absorbs that cost instead.

20p + 3.5% is the fee for a club billing in pounds. The 3.5% is identical everywhere ClubPal operates. Only the fixed part changes with your club's currency: £0.20 in the UK, €0.25 in Ireland and the eurozone, US$0.30 in the United States, C$0.30 in Canada, A$0.30 in Australia, NZ$0.50 in New Zealand. Everything else is identical: no subscription, no setup fee, no per-member charge, and the whole fee returned when you refund a payment.

Most clubs are live within an hour. Signing up takes 30 seconds, we'll email you access immediately. From there, a setup wizard guides you through adding your club details, creating your first session, and configuring memberships. No technical knowledge required, and our support team is available if you need help.

Members create a free account to book sessions, manage their membership, and make payments. ClubPal works in any web browser on a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop, and there is also a free ClubPal app for iPhone and Android, with push notifications for session reminders and chat. Members who aren't tech-confident can also be registered manually by a club administrator.

Not at all. ClubPal is built for volunteer-run clubs, not IT departments. Adding sessions, managing members, setting up payments, and publishing your club website are all handled through a straightforward dashboard. If you get stuck, our support team is on hand via chat and email.

ClubPal works for any volunteer-run sports club. It's actively used by running, triathlon, cycling, swimming, netball, hockey, tennis, rowing, canoeing, martial arts, athletics, CrossFit, and fitness clubs. If your club runs sessions and manages members, ClubPal is built for you.

Absolutely. Many clubs use ClubPal purely for membership management, session scheduling, bookings, communications, and their club website, all of which are completely free. Payment processing is just one part of the platform, not a requirement. If you decide to start taking payments later, it's a simple one-time setup.

Yes. Every ClubPal club gets a public-facing club page included at no extra cost. You can customise it with your logo, colours, news posts, and session listings. It gives your club a clean, professional online presence without the cost or effort of a separate website.

Yes. ClubPal has built-in chat, and it works differently to a messaging app. A conversation sits on the session or event it is about, so a question about Thursday training is asked and answered on Thursday training. Committees, squads and coaching teams get their own channels, and a channel's membership is worked out from your member groups rather than being maintained by hand, so adding somebody to a squad puts them in the squad chat automatically. Nobody has to share a phone number to take part, any member can report a message, and reports go to a moderation queue rather than to whoever happened to create the group.

ClubPal Payments handles secure payment processing, with support for Apple Pay and Google Pay for one-tap checkout. You can collect membership fees, session payments, facility hire, and club shop purchases all in one place. ClubPal charges a single flat fee of 20p + 3.5% per transaction, no subscription, no hidden processing fees on top.

ClubPal supports clubs in 26 countries, including the UK, Ireland and the rest of the eurozone, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Payments are taken in your club's own currency and settle into your club's own bank account. Members can pay by card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay wherever the club is. The 3.5% is identical everywhere ClubPal operates. Only the fixed part changes with your club's currency: £0.20 in the UK, €0.25 in Ireland and the eurozone, US$0.30 in the United States, C$0.30 in Canada, A$0.30 in Australia, NZ$0.50 in New Zealand.

You don't need a credit card, an invoice, or a separate bill. The 20p + 3.5% fee is deducted automatically at the time each payment is taken, and the remaining balance is paid straight into your club's own bank account with your regular payouts. There's nothing for your treasurer to action.

Yes. ClubPal is designed to replace spreadsheets, Google Forms, and disconnected tools in one move. You can import member data, and our support team will help you migrate your existing setup. There are no migration fees, no contracts to break, and you can export all your data at any time if you ever want to leave.

Usually, and the arithmetic is worth doing rather than guessing. Court booking platforms such as AllBooked by Skedda charge a fixed monthly subscription, billed annually, with card processing on top. ClubPal charges no subscription at all and 20p + 3.5% per transaction with processing included. Because the fixed part of both fees is the same, the crossover lands at roughly 50 times the annual subscription: below that ClubPal costs your club less, above it the subscription does. A two court club with fifty members is comfortably below it. A six court centre taking public bookings may not be, and the full workings are on our comparison page.

If room hire is all your hall does, Hallmaster is built for exactly that and handles booking approval and invoicing, which ClubPal does not. Regular weekly hirers are covered in both: ClubPal books a weekly series with clash checking and charges the hirer's card before each date, or records it as paid by standing order. The case for ClubPal is a hall that also runs a membership, sells tickets for events and needs a website: ClubPal puts room hire, memberships, event tickets and the website in one system, with members' hire rates applied automatically. The full side by side is on our Hallmaster comparison page.

Yes, always. Your data belongs to your club. You can export member records, payment history, and session data at any time, no questions asked, no exit fees. We don't believe in lock-in, and we'd rather keep your trust than trap you in a contract.

Yes. ClubPal includes built-in GDPR compliance tools including consent management, a full 6-month audit trail, two-factor authentication, role-based access controls, and a right-to-be-forgotten workflow. You own your data, you can export everything at any time and we will never sell your data to third parties.

ClubPal data is stored securely on Microsoft Azure. Data for UK and European clubs is held within the European Economic Area (EEA) in line with GDPR requirements. All data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and we maintain regular automated backups.