Choosing your padel booking software: what to actually look at

The business model before the features

Most comparison charts line up dozens of checkboxes. That's convenient for whichever vendor has the most, and rarely useful for the club making the decision. Over three years, it's not the number of modules that will move your P&L, it's how the tool is billed.

Three models coexist in the padel market.

Commission

The vendor takes a percentage of every booking paid online. Appealing at the start — nothing to pay if nobody books — but the bill grows with your success, without the service changing. A club that doubles its occupancy doubles what it pays out.

The custom quote

The price is set after a sales meeting, based on your size and the modules chosen. This is the dominant model among full management solutions. It covers everything, but forbids any comparison: you don't know what the club next door pays, or whether your quote is well positioned.

The displayed subscription

A public rate, calculated on a verifiable unit — most often the court. You know the expense before signing and it doesn't depend on your revenue. This is the model we chose, and we come back to it below.

Where your players' money goes

Second point, less visible but decisive: does the player's payment land on your account, or on the platform's, which then pays you out?

In the second case, your cash flow depends on a third party's payout schedule, and your refunds go through them too. Always ask: which account does the money land on, and how long before it's paid out to me? A vague answer is an answer.

The fourteen criteria, and the six that matter for a small club

Market sales pitches revolve around the same fourteen lines:

• —online booking
• —statistics
• —CRM
• —shop
• —communication
• —finance and till module
• —automated court access and lighting
• —mobile app
• —online payment
• —player matchmaking
• —tournaments
• —memberships
• —academy and coaching
• —digital wallet

A multi-sport complex with fifteen courts, a shop, a school and a restaurant needs most of them. A club with two to six courts uses six on a daily basis:

• —booking
• —collecting payment
• —tracking occupancy
• —filling quiet slots
• —informing players
• —handling cancellations

Paying for the other eight means funding complexity nobody at the club will ever open.

Hence the sorting to do before any sales meeting: list what you'll actually do every week. If a module is only used twice a year, it shouldn't weigh in the decision.

Setup: the cost nobody puts a number on

The monthly price is visible; the switch-over time never is. Yet it's what decides whether you open online bookings this season or the next. Four points to get spelled out in writing.

The time before the first booking

Between signing and the first slot booked online, are we talking hours, weeks, or months? The gaps are considerable from one vendor to the next, and rarely advertised. A long setup isn't necessarily a flaw — it often comes with a data migration — but it needs to be stated upfront, and fall outside your peak season.

Who enters your courts and slots

Your opening hours, your per-slot rates, your seasonal closures: someone has to enter them. Either the vendor does it for you — check that it's included and not billed as a service — or you do it yourself, and the real question becomes: how long for a four-court club? If the answer fits in an afternoon, the interface is well designed. If it needs training, count it as a cost.

What needs installing

Some solutions require hardware: a cash drawer, a receipt printer, a box for lighting or gates. Useful if you'll use it, but it's an investment and upkeep that don't show up on the subscription line. Ask for the full list of required hardware and who supplies it.

And if you leave

The exit cost is part of the entry cost. Can you get your player database and booking history back in a usable format, whenever you decide, at no charge? A vendor who doesn't answer that clearly has already answered it.

The players, in two lines each

None of these vendors publish their prices, with one exception. What follows only reflects what each one publicly announces on its own site, checked on August 19, 2026.

The ground we're good on

If your club sells stringing services, takes cash at the counter, runs sanctioned tournaments and runs a school with its own coaches, a full management solution will serve you better. It'll cost more, and rightly so.

We started from a different need: that of a manager running three courts who kept bookings in a notebook and his group of players on WhatsApp. He didn't want management software — he wanted to stop answering the phone on Saturday mornings, without leaving a cut of his revenue behind in the process.

That's the only ground we claim to be better on: doing those six things well, at a price you know before you ever call us.

Four questions to ask every vendor

Whatever you decide, they'll save you an entire sales meeting:

1. What's the all-in price for my number of courts — and what happens to it if my volume doubles?
2. Which account do my players' payments land on, and how soon can I access it?
3. How long between signing and my first online booking, and who enters my courts and slots?
4. What's the commitment length, and what happens to my data if I leave?

The answers to these four questions will teach you more than a fourteen-line table.