Seven questions to ask before you buy club software

Comparing club software is harder than it should be. Every platform's site says roughly the same things, every feature grid ticks the same boxes, and every demo looks lovely. The differences that bite you two or three seasons in live in the small print. They are about what happens to your data, your money and your members when something changes.

So here is a set of questions in place of a comparison table. Put them to any vendor. A good platform answers them plainly, and a wobbly answer tells you plenty on its own.

Who owns your data

Under UK GDPR your club should be the data controller and the platform the processor. That sounds like legal trivia. It decides whose data it is, and who answers to parents when they ask questions. Ask the vendor who the controller is, and get it in writing. The good ones already have it in writing.

Then ask where the data physically lives. UK or EU hosting is a plain question with a one-word answer. If the answer runs to three paragraphs, note that.

Finally, ask what export means. A full, machine-readable export of everything, registration records included, is very different from a CSV of names and email addresses. Test it during the trial. Run the export on day one and look at what comes out.

What the price does when you add a team

The pricing model matters more than the headline price. A flat per-club price is predictable. Per-member pricing quietly punishes the thing you are trying to do, which is grow. Ask what the bill looks like this season, then what it looks like after you add two junior teams.

Ask about caps too: team caps, member caps and storage limits. The dangerous ones bite mid-season. A storage cap that pauses photo uploads is annoying. Anything that can freeze registration in September is a crisis.

Be wary of platforms that paywall the basics. Registration is the one job every club has, and handling children's details with care is the floor on any plan. If full registration only appears on the top tier, the headline price is the wrong number to compare.

Where children's data lives and who can see it

This is the medical form question. Somebody's child has an allergy, a heart condition or a difficult home situation, and that information is now in a database. Ask who at the club can see it. Ask whether access is set by role, and whether the person who writes the match reports can open medical records. They should not be able to.

Ask what happens when a coach leaves. Their access should end at once, everywhere, without someone having to remember a cleanup job.

Then ask about consent. Is it recorded against the exact version of the document the parent accepted, so the club can prove what was agreed years later? What happens when a parent withdraws photo consent after a picture has gone up? And can adults message children directly through the platform at all? The right answer is that the platform has no way to do it. A policy asking adults nicely is a weaker answer.

What the website looks like when nobody posts

Most club websites die because updating them depends on one volunteer, and volunteers move on. Ask what the site looks like when nobody posts for a month. Do fixtures, results and tables keep themselves current, or does everything go stale together? Does the design need a photographer to look finished, or does it hold up on a quiet week?

Ask who can edit. If handing the website to a keen parent means giving them access to member records, you will never hand it over, and the site stays stale. Look for an editor role that can publish news without seeing anything else.

Check the site is real in Google's eyes as well. Each team should have a page with its own address. One clever page that shuffles its content around gets found by nobody.

What payment processing costs

"From 1.5%" is an opening position, and it is a long way from a price. Ask for the worked cost, in pence, of a £3 match fee and a £30 monthly sub with every fee included. Then ask whether the rate is published and flat, or negotiated and tiered. A treasurer should be able to predict the cost of collecting money without a calculator and a magnifying glass.

Ask where the money goes. It should settle straight into the club's own account, with the club as the merchant of record and no stop in the platform's pot on the way. Ask how a payout reconciles back to individual payments, because if it doesn't, month-end becomes archaeology.

Confirm card details sit with a regulated payment provider. The platform and the club should hold none of them.

What happens when the club's own payment fails

This is about the club's payment, the subscription to the platform itself. The card behind it expires in August and nobody notices until September. Ask what happens next.

Ask whether there is a grace period with reminders, or whether the public site vanishes that day. Ask whether parents lose access to their own children's records because of the club's billing hiccup. Ask whether a safeguarding removal can still be actioned while the account is suspended.

Those are three separate questions, and the answers vary wildly between platforms. A vendor who has thought about failure answers straight away. One who improvises is showing you how they will behave the week your shop window disappears before a cup tie.

What happens when you leave

Ask this before you join, while the club still holds all the cards. What notice is needed? Does cancellation run to the end of the period you have paid for? What happens to the data afterwards?

You want a stated export window after cancellation, and an export the club admin can run without begging support. The files should cover everything the club is legally obliged to keep, medical and safeguarding records included.

Then ask the harder version: what happens to children's records? "Deleted after 30 days" sounds tidy until you remember that some records must be kept for years. Families may need theirs long after the club has moved on. A vendor who hasn't thought that through hasn't thought much about clubs.