Choosing the right service provider for your club or team website needs isn’t important, it’s critical. First, scrap the crappy providers that are for static pages. You know them, GoDaddy, 1shop, Local Guys. Scrap them. Go with someone that specializes in what your organization needs!

Next, plan the process! There are many things to choose from, but first let’s identify what your club or organization needs the most. In this article we will review three large players in the club and team website management space, and let us know how we stack up. We are focusing exclusively on those that market two teams and clubs, as we all know that there are many other services out there that can be adapted that aren’t dedicated.

Clubhosting versus team pages, Team Snap, and clubs express.

First things first we need to identify what your primary need is for your website. Either your site is meant primarily to track scores and manager rosters, handle team management OR let people know about your events,  provide AD space for your sponsors to buy, or a forum for people to chat.

Whats best for Team Management?

The reason we say this is because there are certain areas that each of these companies excel. We are not self fulfilling. In fact, when it comes to managing Teams (like the day to day management) we know outright Team Snap kicks our amazingly sexy butts. In fact, I rarely get impressed by things offered by people, but I love Team Snaps product. 

If your primary goal is to handle a roster, stats tracking, and managed every fine detail of your player like a major league baseball team does, then personally I would recommend looking into either team pages or team snap (with team snap getting the nod). Have a great website that allows you to post all your statistics and roster information.

Now the negative..

These services is that they focus almost solely on rosters and stats, they don’t give you a lots of options for laying out your webpage. Teams that has a great interface it’s easy-to-use, but is very rigid. Team pages gives you more flexibility, but they like to charge extra for the ability not to have their advertisers all over your website.

Wait I thought You said ClubHosting was good for Teams?

Yes for a website, its a great product. However, Team Snap provides you with tools to MANAGE the team. The site is lacking. ClubHosting offers options to display a roster, and you can schedule events for your team schedule, and even sell Tickets. However they (we) don’t do well with tracking of the stats, monitoring your win loss ratios, graphing and tracking your player statistics. In other words it’s not going to be like MLB.com. It will give you a good website. Just be honest with whats important. Managing your team, or making sure you raise money. If its a non profit/free/funded team, TeamSnap always.

Can’t you tell I love this product. I am even going to use for my son’s little league team. Now if I was a Pro Am Baseball organization, no, I wouldnt use that. Ticket sales and Sponsors would drive my intention, and I would use clubhosting or Teampages (teampages is more rigid, and they put ads on your site on some packages).

Ok Ok – Whats the Best Choice for Clubs Website Providers?

Now if you are a club, that basically leaves Club Hosting or club express.

The biggest difference between these two players is Clubhosting has more flexibility and more options, which means it can be a little bit more difficult to set up, but is drastically cheaper. The most expensive plan at Clubhosting costs $85 a year. The least expensive plan at clubs express costs $240 a year.

That means Clubhosting is $155 cheaper with their best foot forward.

They also do not charge you per member, so that means if you have 200 members you may pay $800 elsewhere, but you would only be paying $85 with Clubhosting.

Now the downside to this is because they do not charge you can remember they haven’t focused solely on building a member framework. Club Express wants to make sure that you can easily collect payments for your members so they created an elaborate billing and invoicing system, so they can track how many members you actively have. This also means they know exactly how much extra to charge you.  They receive payemtns and distribute the funds from your club to you (after fees applied I believe). This means a little less time in the setup process, And a smaller learning curve. It is very easy to get a very basic (and somewhat outdated) looking website up and running with clubs express and collecting membership payments. You will not need to apply for a PayPal account, because they handle all the receipts of your payments.

Now that is a major downfall. They are keeping your money and paying you.

Now we can’t nitpick them. They pioneered the space, and if they charged flat rates, and much lower fees, they are a great product. They have a simple and rigid setup, which is easier to get started with. However, we do hear a lot of feedback from members once theyre familiar, there are plenty of basic things they don’t do well at.

What about ClubHosting compared to Club Express?

Clubhosting recognize that because of the amount of options that it offers two organizations, associations, clubs, and teams that they have decided to offer a basic set up package that includes almost every major feature for a low setup fee. Similar setups would cost anywhere from $500-$1500 elsewhere.

Why is Clubhosting so Low?

The biggest reason is they often say That they put together so many websites, that they have it down to a science that requires very little time for them. They spend 2 to 4 hours on average website. Because they have many of the plug-ins and templates Already set up to best benefit the club.

Clubhosting has a very wide range of plug-ins and tools available for managing a team or club website. Their goal is to allow the website to make you money without costing a bunch. They readily pushed getting the news out in front of your users by having automatic email list and Facebook synchronization, and they have a member management plug-in that offers recurring billing.

The only thing they don’t do well is send out manual invoices for mailed checks. They don’t take your checks, they have you do that.

Now I do not know if that’s a good thing or bad, many club express customers have stated that they still used QuickBooks to handle manual payments and tracking of accounting purposes anyway. So the concept that you’re paying hundreds of dollars more to track your payments seems to be wasted on those organizations that are currently using Quicken or Quick Books.

It does seem that was a little extra time spent talking to the gentleman at Clubhosting, you could get better long-term services for your organization for the same or less money that you would elsewhere.

Now if you are an association that has multiple teams below it, or a social network organization they do have different packages that are available for you. If you are a team that is solely focused on tracking your stats and your roster, and managing your teams availability, then we truly recommend team snap.

If your team that wants you to use website that you can customize and sell ad space on, then Clubhosting will work great for that. It kills us to have to recommend another products but we readily recognize the team snap is the clear winner when it comes to the team management aspect.