Two Tools Most Rugby Clubs Already Use
If you help run a rugby union club, two names will be on your screen most weeks. RFU GMS - the RFU's Game Management System - is where you affiliate the club and register players. Pitchero is where many clubs run their website, post match reports and pull in league tables. Both are well established in rugby, and this guide is not here to talk you out of either. You will keep using GMS whatever you do, and Pitchero is a genuinely good website platform.
What this guide is about is the gap that sends so many rugby volunteers looking for something more: the weekly grind of collecting subs and match fees, asking who is available across the minis, juniors and seniors, and keeping parents informed without a chat that is 200 notifications deep. That is day-to-day club running, and it is a different job from affiliation or a club website. Below we are honest about what GMS and Pitchero do, where they stop, and what the realistic alternatives are.
A disclosure up front: one of the alternatives below, Teamo, is built by Sportplan Ltd - the same company behind this website. We have an obvious interest in you liking it, so we have worked hard to be fair, to credit GMS and Pitchero for what they do well, and to tell you plainly where a rival suits you better. Read the recommendation with that in mind and try more than one before you commit.
RFU GMS: The Official Record - and What It Is Not
Let us be clear about GMS first, because it is not optional and it is not going anywhere. RFU GMS is the RFU's official system for affiliation and player and club registration. It is the system of record for who is registered to play at your club, and it ties into the wider rugby union framework you affiliate through. Every club needs it, and nothing in this guide replaces it.
The honest point is simply this: GMS is an affiliation and registration system, not a day-to-day club-admin or payments tool. It is not designed to run recurring Direct Debit for your membership subs, to surface who has paid match fees at selection, to take availability from parents across every age grade, or to be the app a player opens on a Tuesday to check whether training is on. Those are different jobs, and clubs that try to stretch GMS to cover them quickly find it was never built for that. So GMS stays as your official record - and you reach for something else for the weekly running of the club.
Pitchero: Strong as a Website, Less So for the Weekly Admin
Pitchero is widely and deservedly used in rugby. As a club website, news and league-table platform it does a real job well: a public shop window for the club, match reports, fixtures and results, and league pages that pull in the standings supporters want to see. If your priority is a smart, maintained club website, Pitchero is a sensible choice and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The honest gaps are about everything that happens after the website. Pitchero is website-first rather than payments-and-availability-first, and its more useful features - and removing the adverts on the free tier - largely sit in paid plans. Collecting subs and match fees, recurring Direct Debit, availability collected cleanly across age grades, and parent communication that does not get lost tend to be the weak spots people cite. None of that makes Pitchero a bad product; it makes it a website platform first, which is a different thing from the operational, money-and-availability engine a busy multi-team club runs on each week.
The Alternatives for Day-to-Day Club Admin
Once you accept that affiliation (GMS) and a website (Pitchero or similar) are settled, the live question is what runs the weekly admin: subs, match fees, availability, the app in everyone's pocket and the parent comms. Here are the realistic options, with the trade-offs spelled out.
Teamo - Whole-Club Admin From Day One (Made by Sportplan)
To repeat the disclosure plainly: Teamo is made by Sportplan, the company behind this site. Weigh what follows accordingly. What sets Teamo apart is that it was built whole-club from day one - one membership register, a branded club app with a single Club Newsfeed, and a free club website - rather than starting as a website or a single-team app and bolting the rest on later.
Teamo is free for up to 25 members with no adverts; above that you choose a paid plan (from around £9.99 a month) or an ad-funded free plan. Within it you get the operational tools a rugby club actually runs on. Payments run through TeamoPay: card at 2.5% + 20p - the same card rate as Spond - and Direct Debit at 2% + 20p, a lower percentage that is cheaper for the recurring membership subs a rugby club lives on. Auto-pay bundling packages subs, match fees and events into a single payment, saving the fixed 20p on each extra charge, and payments post automatically into Xero so the treasurer is not reconciling a spreadsheet by hand. (Fees are correct at the time of writing and change over time - check current rates.)
The feature most rugby treasurers notice is collection. Teamo puts live payment status straight onto the team sheet at selection, so unpaid balances surface as you pick the side rather than in an awkward chase later - the no-pay-no-play approach that helps clubs collect the large majority of the subs they are owed. It does it privately, too: team managers see only a treasurer 'traffic-light' health indicator, never who individually owes what. The app is mobile-first - around 90% of use is on a phone - which suits parents juggling minis, juniors and seniors. There is Gift Aid automation, which files the HMRC claim for you via a partner integration, and - kept separate from Gift Aid - Teamo Rewards, a fundraising extension that can earn a club around £10 to £15 per adult member per season. On safeguarding, which matters in a contact sport with large junior sections, Teamo was nominated best safeguarding app by England Athletics' Head of Safeguarding, and its child-safe chats keep guardian visibility built in.
On fixtures and how it fits with GMS - read this carefully. Teamo handles your fixtures, training and events the way any good club app does: a shared calendar with availability collected per player and automatic reminders, across every age grade. It does not sync with RFU GMS, and you should not expect it to - GMS remains your official affiliation and registration record, full stop. Teamo's role is to complement GMS on the day-to-day side: subs and match fees by Direct Debit, availability, the branded app, parent comms and the treasurer's Xero. Keep GMS as the system of record and let Teamo take the weekly admin off your volunteers. Because it comes from Sportplan, the rugby drills library behind this site sits naturally alongside it. If that whole-club approach is worth a closer look, you can see how Teamo runs a rugby club end to end.
Where Teamo wins: Direct Debit and no-pay-no-play collection, a branded app, a free club website, autopay, Xero, Gift Aid automation and a safeguarding record - the whole-club operational features GMS and Pitchero either do not offer or keep in paid tiers.
Where it falls short, honestly: it is a bigger system than a single team needs. The 25-member free cap is real and a busy club will cross it into a paid or ad-funded plan. And if you genuinely run just one team that only wants a chat and a scheduler, Teamo - or even Pitchero - is more platform than you need; a lighter free team tool will suit you better.
Spond - A Strong Free Option for a Single Team
To be fair to the alternatives, Spond deserves a mention. It is an excellent free scheduler and group chat: availability, RSVPs and messaging with no member cap on a single team and no adverts, and its Spond Club admin tier is free as well. For a single rugby team - one age group, one coach - that mainly needs "who's in on Saturday?" and a clean group chat, Spond is hard to beat and costs nothing.
Its limits are the mirror image of Teamo's strengths: the public club website is the paid part, payments are card and digital-wallet only at about 2.5% + 20p with no Direct Debit for recurring subs, and there is no branded club app of your own and no Gift Aid. For one team that never takes a Direct Debit, none of that matters. For a multi-team club building one community, it is exactly what people end up missing.
When to Add a Club-Admin App
You do not need a club-admin app on day one, and forcing one onto a single new team is overkill. The signal to add one is when the manual chasing starts costing volunteers their evenings. Use this rough order of operations.
When to Add a Club-Admin App
- Affiliation and registration first: get the club affiliated and players registered on RFU GMS. This is the official record and comes before anything else.
- A public shop window: decide whether you need a maintained club website and league pages. Pitchero does this well; Teamo includes a free website if you would rather not run two systems.
- When subs and match fees start slipping: the moment you are chasing unpaid fees by hand across more than one team, a payments-and-Direct-Debit app earns its place. This is usually the tipping point.
- When availability gets messy: if you are re-asking "who's available?" across minis, juniors and seniors every week, you need proper availability rather than a counting-emojis group chat.
- When parent comms and safeguarding matter: large junior sections in a contact sport need child-safe messaging with guardian visibility - a reason to move off an open WhatsApp group.
One Thing No App Replaces
Whichever way you go, keep this straight: a club-admin app is not your governing-body record. RFU affiliation and registration through GMS remain the official system of record, and your league's results platform remains the official source for standings. Teamo, Spond or anything else complements those - they handle your money, membership, availability and communication week to week - but they do not affiliate your club or register your players, and they do not sync automatically with GMS. Keep GMS running as the official record and let the app take the weekly load. Do not confuse the two, and do not assume any app talks to the RFU on your behalf.
So Which Should You Pick?
Strip it back and it comes down to what you are actually trying to solve:
A Quick Decision Guide
- Affiliation and player registration: RFU GMS, always. Non-negotiable and unchanged by anything here.
- Mainly a club website and league pages: Pitchero does this well; budget for a paid tier to drop the ads and unlock the better features.
- Day-to-day whole-club admin - Direct Debit subs, match fees, availability, a branded app, Gift Aid: a club-first platform earns its place. Teamo covers it (and includes a free website), free to 25 members - just remember we make it, and try a couple.
- A single team that only wants a scheduler and chat: Spond. Free, ad-free, uncapped, and excellent at the core job.
The admin tool is only ever half the job. Once who-is-paid and who-is-available runs itself, the evenings go back into rugby. If you want to dig deeper, our roundup of the best free rugby club apps compares the lighter free options, the guide to setting rugby subs and match fees covers the money side in detail, and the fixtures and tournaments guide walks through getting availability and reminders right across age grades. When you are ready to plan a session, browse the full Rugby drills library for hundreds of practices sorted by skill.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Pitchero free?
Pitchero has a free tier for a club website, fixtures and news, but it carries adverts and the more useful tools sit in paid plans. Removing the ads, unlocking the better membership and payment features and getting proper support all move you onto a paid subscription. So yes, you can start free, but most rugby clubs that use Pitchero seriously end up paying for a tier. It is genuinely good as a club website and league-table platform - just be clear that the day-to-day admin features you may want are largely the paid part.
Does RFU GMS collect subs or take Direct Debit?
No. RFU GMS (the RFU's Game Management System) is the RFU's official platform for club affiliation and player and club registration - it is the system of record for who is registered to play, not a day-to-day subs or match-fee collection tool. It does not run recurring Direct Debit for your membership subs the way a club-admin app does. Clubs typically keep GMS for affiliation and registration and use a separate app for collecting subs and match fees, taking availability and handling parent communication.
What is a good alternative to Pitchero for a rugby club?
It depends what you want Pitchero to do. If you mainly want a club website and league pages, Pitchero does that well and the alternative is another website platform. If what you actually need is day-to-day club running - collecting subs and match fees, Direct Debit, availability across age grades, a branded app and parent comms - then a club-admin app is the better fit. Teamo (made by Sportplan, the company behind this site) covers that whole-club admin and includes a free club website too; Spond is a strong free option for a single team. Try a couple before committing, and remember none of them replaces RFU GMS for affiliation.
Do I still need RFU GMS if I use another app?
Yes. RFU GMS stays your official affiliation and registration record whatever app you use for club admin. A club-admin app like Teamo or a scheduler like Spond complements GMS - it handles subs, match fees, availability, the branded app and communication - but it does not register your players with the RFU or affiliate your club. Keep GMS running as the system of record and let the app take the weekly admin off your volunteers. Do not expect the two to sync automatically; treat GMS as the official source and the app as your day-to-day tool.
sportplan_rugby
