Buyer's guide · 2026
Club management software is a platform for hobby clubs, sports clubs, social clubs, and societies to manage members, collect dues, run events, and support community without duct-taping multiple tools together.
Clubs have been underserved by enterprise AMS tools and over-served by generic tools that do not understand what clubs actually do. Here is a buyer's guide aimed at the treasurer and the secretary who run most clubs.
01 · Evaluation criteria
c/01
Clubs run on multiple membership types. Covey has monthly, quarterly, annual, and lifetime levels, free trial levels, and household memberships for families. Seasonal and drop-in passes are not a membership type in Covey yet.
c/02
Weekly rides, practices, or classes should be registrable as a series. Covey creates weekly, biweekly, or monthly series; members register session by session or put up to 10 sessions in one checkout.
c/03
Searchable, with opt-in privacy, shown on mobile without rendering problems. Most legacy club tools fail the mobile test. In Covey, each member chooses whether their listing is public, members-only, or hidden.
c/04
Dues, event tickets, and donations in one place for the treasurer. Covey lists every payment in one Transactions list. There is no pro shop or printable board report yet.
c/05
Threaded discussions, email reply-in, private groups. If the forum looks like a vBulletin install from 2008, members will not post. Community forums are coming soon to Covey.
c/06
Under $100/month for small clubs. No per-member fees that spike when a club has a good recruiting year.
02 · Buying questions
For hobby and recreational clubs: Covey, ClubExpress, Wild Apricot. For sports clubs: TeamSnap, SportsEngine, Covey. For yacht clubs: ClubRunner, Covey, custom. Evaluate based on the specific workflows your club runs most often.
Small clubs (under 200 members): $29 to $100/month. Mid-sized clubs (200 to 1,000): $100 to $300/month. Large clubs: $300 to $800/month. Beware per-member pricing that can escalate quickly.
Yes, usually. The hours a treasurer spends on manual dues collection, renewal reminders, and event sign-ups exceed the subscription cost after the first month.
Yes. Facility reservations, court booking, and pro shop orders are available in tools like ClubRunner and some ClubExpress tiers. Covey does not offer facility booking.
03 · Tools to evaluate
04 · Where Covey fits
Covey is built for organizations in the club management software category that want four things at once: a considered interface, transparent pricing, a 48-hour migration, and human support on every plan. If those four things matter to you, Covey is worth a demo. If you need something else (a specific vertical module, an enterprise-scale implementation, a particular integration), we will tell you and point you somewhere that fits.
Legacy membership platforms feel like they were designed in 2008. Covey is built by a small team that treats typography, spacing, and the quiet details as the product.
A real human moves your members, levels, and renewal dates from your existing platform and rebuilds your upcoming events and email templates. You're live on Covey inside 48 hours, not six weeks.
No support tiers, no ticket queues that take four business days. Every plan includes a real person answering your questions, often the same person who wrote the feature.
One page, plain numbers. Plans are priced by active members, not contacts, and every plan has every feature. Migration is included, onboarding is included, support is included.
Ready when you are
30 days free, no card required · Plans from $49/month · Migration from any platform included
