Free to run your club. We earn when money moves.
Every feature, every member, every team — free forever, with no trial to expire and no card to enter. Spike only earns when a club collects money through it — 2.5% of what you collect, whether that is a session fee or a monthly subscription, and nothing at all on cash.
Set up your clubForever, for every club and every player. No member limit, no trial, no feature held back behind a paid tier.
Of what you collect — session fees and subscriptions alike — with a 20p minimum on event payments. Cash is free, because Spike is not the one moving it.
This is not a starter tier
There is one plan and everyone is on it. The list below is not what you get before upgrading — it is the product, and a club of six uses the same thing as a club of sixty.
- Members, roles, teams and groups, with no cap on any of them
- Event scheduling with position claiming, waitlists and attendance
- Club and team chat, announcements, posts and polls
- A drills library and training plans, with animated court diagrams
- Player evaluation, your own skill matrix, and coach feedback
- Guardian accounts, consent controls and paying on a child's behalf
- The iOS and Android apps, with everything the web app does
What that costs in real money
The player pays the fee the club set — Spike’s share comes out of what reaches the club rather than being added at checkout, so nobody sees a service charge on top. Stripe’s own processing charge is separate and goes to Stripe.
| What the club charges | Spike’s share | Why |
|---|---|---|
| £5 session, paid by card | 20p | 2.5% would be 13p, so the 20p minimum applies |
| £10 session, paid by card | 25p | Straight 2.5%, above the minimum |
| £35 monthly subscription | 88p | Subscriptions are 2.5%, with no minimum |
| £5 session, paid in cash | Nothing | Tracked, not processed — no money moves through Spike |
The 20p floor only bites under £8. Above that it is simply 2.5%, and it never applies to subscriptions at all. The same rates are published as plain markdown, for anything reading this page rather than looking at it.
Where Spike takes nothing
Cash at the door
Tracked in the same outstanding list as card payments, so the treasurer has one place to look. Spike takes a share of money it moves, and it does not move cash.
A club that never charges
Plenty of clubs run on a termly bank transfer and use Spike purely for scheduling and attendance. That club uses every feature and pays nothing, indefinitely.
Getting set up
No card to enter and nothing to cancel. You connect the club to Stripe only when it is ready to take its first payment — until then there is nothing to connect and nothing to pay.
Why not just charge per member
Because per-member pricing punishes the thing a club is trying to do. A committee that has to pay more every time someone joins starts leaving people off the system — the casual player, the parent, the second team — and a club roster that is deliberately incomplete is worse than no roster at all.
Taking a share of payments lines the two up instead. Spike earns more when a club collects more, and earns nothing from a club that is only using it to organise. That is a worse business on day one and a better one to be trusted with.
Who this suits
Volunteer-run clubs
The person choosing the software is usually a player who offered to help, spending their own evening on it. A subscription they have to justify to the committee is where that stops.
Clubs weighing up a switch
Nothing to migrate onto a trial and nothing to lose when it ends. Set the club up, run one session through it, and decide after.
Clubs that already collect fees
If money is already moving through a spreadsheet and a bank transfer request, moving it through Spike costs 2.5% and removes the chasing.
Common questions
How much does Spike cost?
Nothing to run your club. Members, teams, events, attendance, chat, training plans, the drills library, player evaluation and feedback are all free, with no member limit, no trial and no card required to start. A club that never collects money through Spike never pays Spike anything.
So how does Spike make money?
From payments, and only from payments. Spike takes 2.5% of what a club collects — an event fee paid by card, or a monthly subscription — with a 20p minimum on event payments. That is the whole business model; there is no paid tier holding features back.
Does the player pay the fee, or the club?
The club. A player charged £7 for a session pays £7 — Spike's share comes out of what reaches the club, so nothing is added to the player's bill at checkout. The club receives the fee it set, minus Spike's share and minus Stripe's processing charge.
What about Stripe's fees?
Separate, and they go to Stripe rather than to Spike. Card payments run through the club's own Stripe account, so Stripe charges the club directly at the rates on their pricing page for your country. Spike's 2.5% is on top of that, not instead of it.
We collect cash at the door. What does that cost?
Nothing. Cash is tracked rather than processed — you mark who has paid and it shows up in the same outstanding list as card payments — and Spike takes a share only of money it actually moves. A club that runs entirely on cash uses Spike for free forever.
Is there a limit on members, teams or events?
No. The free plan is the only plan, so there is no member count that pushes you into an upgrade, no cap on teams or events, and no feature that unlocks later. Clubs on Spike today run from a handful of players to around fifty.
What is the minimum fee about?
On small payments a percentage does not cover the cost of moving the money, so event payments have a 20p floor. It applies under £8 — a £5 session costs the club 20p rather than 13p. Above £8 the 2.5% is simply 2.5%. Subscriptions have no floor at all.
What happens if we refund a player?
The player gets the full amount back and the refund is taken from the club, the same way Stripe handles it. Spike's share of the original payment is not returned, so a refunded £10 session leaves the club 25p down. Worth knowing before you set a fee you expect to refund often.
Do you charge for the mobile apps?
No. The iOS and Android apps are free downloads and carry the same features as the web app. There is no in-app purchase and no premium version.
Will the free plan stay free?
Yes — it is the business model rather than a promotion. Spike earns when money moves through it, which means the product only makes money if your club is genuinely using it to collect fees. Charging clubs a subscription to run a volleyball club is the thing this was built to avoid.
The rest of it
Set the club up and see
It takes a few minutes, costs nothing, and there is no trial clock running. Collect a payment through it only when you are ready to.
Set up your club