It can be difficult weighing up your options, whether it’s a free football club website you’re after or a website builder with paid-for features. So, where do you start?
Plan out what your club's football website needs to achieve before you begin or if you decide to move to a new solution.
What aren't you currently doing that you'd like your website to do in future? What doesn't work well for you or could be improved?
The technology is there to allow football clubs to do so much more than just publish match reports and display league tables.
From a user perspective, website visitors browsing the internet expect a fast-loading, attractive site that's easy to navigate and everything works as it should.
Maintaining membership records online, as part of your club website, is smart thinking. Encourage members to join, build a relationship and they can be with you for years to come.
With Pitchero, you can:
In one place, club officials can understand who’s joined when, as well as what they’ve paid plus availability and selection over time.
It builds a picture and enables your football club to better serve each member in future.
Your club website should be used to generate revenue continually throughout each year. It’s a missed opportunity if you don’t.
With Pitchero, you can:
Offer online bookings and hire out your facilities all year.
Your Pitchero website and apps allow any football club to promote local and national companies 24/7, not just when games are on, and you’re permanently open for business.
You can create a private TEST website in 60 seconds.
The website is set to Not Live. This means no one can view the website only you can view the website when you log in.
Choose the 30-day FREE trial of one of our packages and get access to every feature. You can test features, upload content, download apps and create a payment - everything!
Start by adding teams, members, content and more. If you've got any questions, you can speak to our support team online or book an online video demonstration with a Pitchero expert.
If you need longer on your trial, we can extend it if you contact us. If you are not happy, you can cancel the trial, and you will NOT be charged.
If you’re involved in running a football club then you’ll know the effort it takes to keep on top of the huge amount of admin.
While choosing to do that online doesn’t magically make it all disappear, it can definitely save time and cut down on processes that are a hassle for volunteers.
With Pitchero, you can:
If you’re looking to start a new club website - or transfer an existing football website from another provider - then you have two clear choices.
The variation is to what extent the people at your football club do the work or external suppliers instead.
Your football club could use a website builder - like Pitchero - that is a complete package with everything you need.
It will typically include templates or themes to style your website, hosting, domain registration, SSL certificate, plus access to support for a low monthly fee.
Your football club could use a website builder - like Pitchero - that is a complete package with everything you need.
A website builder is designed to offer customisation but you can’t dive in and change the code or functionality of the website all the time.
Your football club could use a website builder - like Pitchero - that is a complete package with everything you need.
This will suit if you prefer having certain things locked down so you can’t accidentally break something or potentially take your football website offline.
A content management system (CMS) like Wordpress.org, Drupal or Magento is much more flexible than a website builder. Anything can be changed or customised - for those that like ultimate control.
It means if your football club wants to change the website colour scheme, fonts, or layout of the news items on your homepage, there will be a plugin or some code to achieve that.
The downside is that someone will have to work that out, plus test and implement it correctly.
Technology is always changing and so bolt-on additions (as with a Wordpress plugin to include a newsletter sign-up form) will need monitoring and updating.
Keeping track of this ongoing website maintenance, including hosting and domain renewals, will need to fall to a club official who understands websites or outsource to a professional.
A sports club might choose to hire a website designer to build their perfect football club website to a set specification using a CMS as the framework.
This will be a project that means your football club gets exactly what it wants in every aspect, down to the fine detail, but it needs longer-term planning and much more up-front cost (typically thousands of pounds).
While a website builder still needs someone to create the content, whether it’s news items, statistics, league tables or uploading match videos, a club can create an account and get started immediately.
The price of building or transferring a website is a factor and will obviously differ for every sports club.
The chief decision is whether you want to pay a monthly fee with everything included or use a CMS that might be free (or a paid option) and then buy add-ons for certain functionality or situations.
The decision for a new website needs to be a cost that your club can easily afford - but equally, it's sensible to future-proof.
Think about things like space for storing images and video, as well the size of your website and any restrictions.
Standard
Everything you need for a multi-team sports club
Club Website
1.8%
Mobile Apps
1.8%
Domain & Emails
1.8%
Team Management
1.8%
Venue Management
1.8%
Membership Database
1.8%
Online Payments
1.8%
Transaction Fees
1.9%
No Third Party Ads
1.8%
Priority Support
1.8%
Pro
No ads, reduced transaction fees and priority support
Club Website
1.8%
Mobile Apps
1.8%
Domain & Emails
1.8%
Team Management
1.8%
Venue Management
1.8%
Membership Database
1.8%
Online Payments
1.8%
Transaction Fees*
0.9%
No Third Party Ads
1.8%
Priority Support
1.8%
Saving time
By contrast, hiring a website designer or a web design company will be more expensive initially but is a fixed cost.
Of course, there may be an additional ongoing charge to look after hosting, domain and any support queries that arise.
Given the amount of time we spend online, your club website needs to be your second headquarters.
It has to do everything a modern football club needs but don’t underestimate the ‘ease factor’ whichever route you take.
Volunteers typically maintain a football club website, at grassroots level at least. Paying for support and features that make it easier for those doing the role is not cheating or unnecessary expense.
Looking for a free club website?
Pitchero offers a free service to single teams that includes most standard features, including membership and online payments.
Security & GDPR
Alongside the day-to-day tasks for any football club are those admin jobs that relate to the risks of working online.
In an ideal world, you focus on your sport and don’t worry about backing up the club website all the time or reacting to hackers.
Managing member data securely and sensitively and complying with GDPR are ongoing responsibilities, regardless of the size of club.
Using Pitchero makes this easier and more manageable:
✔️ Pitchero is always online (no downtime)
✔️ Data security uses Amazon Web Services data centres
✔️ GDPR toolkit for gaining consent from users of your website
* The transaction fees listed in the comparison table (above) are charged by Pitchero. This does not include the payment provider fees. For full details, see the Payment Tools section of your control panel.
Football clubs typically do a mountain of different admin tasks. Their club website will be a central hub for this but each may use a variety of computer software or apps.
A few examples could include Google for email/events calendar, Excel for spreadsheets, Xero for accounting, Facebook and Twitter for social media and Justgiving for creating a fundraising page.
The chief problem with this is having to learn each system or software, make them connect with each other (if possible), not to mention countless logins to remember and keep safe.
Whatever the solution you opt for, combining processes has its advantages.
Pitchero offers a free demo to talk you through features, answer questions and show you live examples.
There is also the benefit of a 30-day free trial to explore Pitchero and be sure your football club has what it needs to progress and improve.
Choosing a new website is an exciting step and a move you ideally want to do once. The good news is that help is at hand and every football club, however big or small, has room to improve its online presence.
10,000+ clubs choose Pitchero for their website and mobile apps
1.5m+ members (players, parents, clubs, leagues and supporters) use Pitchero
Every club on the Pitchero platform also gets its own free iOS and Android mobile apps.
Club news, manage availability/selection, messaging
Prompt availability,
select and notify teams
Packed with great features including match fees and payments, team selection and player availability.
"Pitchero gives us a simple-to-use platform for all aspects of the club, but particularly for collecting subs and organising matches.
All of the data is kept safely in an easy-to-use format. Simple to pick teams and message different groups of players. It saves hours of paperwork and means you always have up-to-date information."
"In all honesty, I don’t think we would have been able to play hockey without it."
"Brentwood RFC has used the payments feature to increase membership income by almost 100%!"
“Not only is Pitchero a simple way for players and captains to pay and collect match fees, it also saves a huge amount of time.”
So, you’ve thought about what you want this future version of your football club website to be. Know what the costs are and the functionality required?
Ok, you’re ready to go...
To see a range of Pitchero resources on all aspects of running a football club, there are two free resources:
Our Clubhouse is packed with articles and FAQs from getting set up to using all of the features.
Head to our Help Centre for very specific, step-by-step instructions on using the Pitchero Club website, apps and user accounts.