If you're on the committee of a rowing club, sailing club, cricket club, tennis club or any other member organisation, you've probably wondered what a proper website actually costs. The honest answer is: it depends on what you need the site to do. Ask five people and you'll get five different answers.
This guide breaks it down by the route most UK clubs choose, with the figures we see when committees come to us mid-project asking for help.
What Drives the Price Up
Most clubs underestimate this. The cost isn't really about pages - any modern builder can throw together five pages cheaply. It's about what the site does once people are on it.
- Member portal - log-in, profile, renewal status, contact details, club history
- Online membership renewal - card payments, direct debits, recurring subscriptions
- Bookings - courts, lanes, boats, ranges, function rooms, coaching sessions
- Fixtures and results - kept up to date by someone with no technical skills
- News, gallery, committee announcements - written and updated by volunteers
- Custom rules - junior supervision, equipment allocation, race entry priority, session caps
A brochure site (just text, photos, fixtures list) is cheap. The moment a club wants members to log in and pay online, the cost moves up several tiers - and SaaS platforms start charging per member.
DIY Club Sites: £200-£700 a Year
Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com. Cheap on the headline figure. Plenty of clubs start here.
What you get
- A reasonable-looking brochure site for fixtures and news
- Hosting included
- Templates you can adapt
- A volunteer learning curve of 20-40 hours
Where it falls down
- Adding a members area means upgrading to the Business plan plus apps
- Online payments stack platform fees on top of Stripe
- When the volunteer who built it leaves the club, the next committee can't update it
- Templates look generic - your club ends up looking like every other Wix site
Fine for a 40-member running group that just needs a fixtures list and contact form. Not fine for a 200-member rowing club with crews, boats, race entries and member subscriptions. The bigger the club, the faster DIY hits a wall.
Subscription Club Websites: £30-£50 a Month
The model we use at Nene IT. Flat monthly fee, no upfront build cost, designed and maintained for the club.
What's in £30 a month (standard tier)
- Custom-designed website built around your club
- Hosting, SSL, security updates, software patches
- Small content changes whenever the committee needs them
- Fixtures, gallery, news, contact form, basic embedded membership form
- Mobile-friendly out of the box
What's in £50 a month (member portal tier)
- Everything in the £30 tier
- Member log-in with profiles
- Online membership renewals via Stripe (card or direct debit)
- Basic bookings (courts, sessions, function room)
- Committee admin panel
This is the tier most clubs we work with end up on. For a club with 100-300 members, paying about the price of a phone contract for the lot, no per-member fees ever. You can compare these numbers against the upfront-plus-hourly route on the cost calculator.
One-Off Custom Build: £2,000-£8,000+
A freelancer or small agency builds you a website to spec, you pay them upfront, then you own it. Sounds appealing on paper. The catch is everything that comes after.
What you get
- A site built specifically for your club
- You own the codebase
- Higher initial polish than DIY
The catch
- £2,000-£8,000 upfront is a big committee decision in one go
- Every change after launch is billed hourly (£40-£90/hour typically)
- Hosting and maintenance become the committee's problem
- The freelancer often moves on or stops responding within a couple of years
- Without maintenance, the site decays - dead links, broken plugins, security holes
You have a treasurer who genuinely wants to manage hosting, you have committee members who are technical, or you have very unusual requirements that a subscription provider won't quote for. Otherwise the rolling subscription model is cheaper across five years and a lot less hassle.
Club SaaS Platforms: Where They Fit
SportMember, Wild Apricot, ClubSpark, Spond - off-the-shelf platforms built for clubs. Headline pricing looks cheap but per-member fees compound quickly past 100-150 members. Worth a serious look for small clubs that fit a standard template. We've written the full build-vs-buy comparison if you want detail.
What UK Sports Clubs Pay
| Route | Year 1 | Year 3 cumulative | Who keeps it running |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix Business + apps | £300-£500 | £900-£1,500 | A volunteer (until they leave) |
| SportMember / Spond | £200-£800 | £600-£2,400 | The platform; per-member fees apply |
| Freelancer one-off | £2,400-£8,400 | £3,000-£9,000+ | Nobody, eventually |
| Nene IT subscription | £360-£600 | £1,080-£1,800 | Us, end-to-end, included |
Which Route Fits Your Club
Honest take after building systems for clubs like Oundle Town Rowing Club and Middle Nene Sailing Club:
Choose DIY (Wix/Squarespace) if: Under 60 members, no online payments needed, you've got a volunteer happy to maintain it for the foreseeable future.
Choose a club SaaS platform if: Under 150 members, your sport fits one of their templates, you don't have unusual rules.
Choose a subscription website if: 80-500 members, you want online renewals and a member area, you don't want a five-figure upfront bill, and you want one number to ring when something needs changing.
Choose a one-off custom build if: The committee includes a developer, you have very specific requirements no platform supports, you're prepared to budget for ongoing hourly maintenance.
Bottom Line for Sports Clubs
A club website is an investment, not a one-off purchase. The cheapest year-one option is rarely the cheapest five-year option, and the polished freelancer build that nobody can update is the most expensive of the lot once it's gone stale.
Think about what your club actually needs the site to do for members, not just what it looks like. Then pick the route that keeps it running properly for the long haul.
If you're on a committee in Peterborough, Oundle, Thrapston or anywhere in the Nene Valley, and you'd like to chat through your options, feel free to get in touch. Happy to give an honest opinion - even if that means recommending a route I don't sell.
For more detail on the numbers, see the UK sports club website pricing breakdown or the Wix vs Nene IT comparison.
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