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Updated October 2026

Membership and fundraising software buyer's guide

For mountain bike clubs, bike parks and trail associations

Trying to choose which software is right for your organisation can be difficult.

This guide is made to help you (the buyer) through the process of choosing software to help manage your members and fundraise. If you are looking for digital membership card software or membership software programs then this guide is for you.

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Trail club volunteer comparing membership software options on a laptop at a trailhead

Last updated: October 2026

What is membership software?

Membership software for mountain bike organisations is a tool designed to simplify the management of membership programs. It helps clubs, parks, and associations automate many of the administrative tasks associated with membership management.

These tasks include membership sign-up and renewal, member communication and engagement, tracking of membership types and benefits, and reporting and analysis. By using membership software, mountain bike organisations can save time, reduce administrative burdens, and provide better service to their members.

Step 1

Determine your requirements

Before you start looking for membership management software, it's essential to identify your organisation's requirements/needs.

  • Why are you looking for membership software, what problems are you trying to solve?
  • Try to identify those problems or areas/processes that need streamlining/automating.

By understanding your requirements, you can narrow down your options and find software that meets your specific needs. Look at your requirements and see which features fulfil these.

You can categorise these features into two lists.

Essential features

  • What features and functionalities are essential to your membership program?
  • The software you choose should have essential features such as member profiles, automated membership renewals and reminders, payment processing, communication tools, and reporting capabilities.
  • Use your requirements generated above to create a list of these essential features.

Nice to have features

  • These features are not essential but would be nice to have and can be the differentiator between two similar products.

Here is a list of some possible features to get you started

Member acquisition and engagement

  • A modern and simple registration and payment process for the members
  • A good experience on a mobile device, as 90-95% of users will be on mobile device
  • Digital membership card
  • Family and group memberships
  • Digital waivers and liability management
  • Increase member engagement and sense of community
  • Partner with local businesses and sponsors to offer member deals
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities
  • Event registration
  • Newsfeed
  • Push notifications/alerts to users
  • Integrates with Trailforks
  • Offline accessible
  • Deals for members
  • Ability for members to maintain their own data and minimise admin time on this

Revenue and member retention

  • Needs to accept donations at the time of membership
  • Needs to accept ad-hoc donations
  • Recurring/auto renewing memberships
  • Recurring/auto renewing donations
  • Automated renewal reminders

Admin

  • Must be user friendly for the admins
  • Workflow automation of common administration tasks
  • Accounting integration
  • Dashboards and reporting
  • Does the vendor understand your sector e.g. mountain bike based organisations
  • Integration with your email campaign software e.g. Mailchimp
  • Flexible configuration to adjust to your organisation's needs and branding
  • Trail management
  • Event management
Step 2

Low budget vs SaaS vs custom

First you need to look at the high level options.

Volunteer at a kitchen table surrounded by spreadsheets, paper forms and plastic membership cards

Option 1 - Low budget

$

Who forThis can be viable if you have a small organisation (less than 100 members) and a lot of volunteer time.

Membership purchaseUse an online store such as Shopify or one that comes with your website like Squarespace or Wix.

Member managementGoogle Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

FundraisingDonations via Trailforks or a fundraising website such as Givealittle.

Pros

  • Inexpensive

Cons

  • Large amount of volunteer time required for admin
  • Limited capabilities
  • Reduced member numbers
  • Reduced revenue
  • Does not scale as members increase
Club treasurer reading a long invoice while developers build a custom app

Option 2 - Custom

$$$$

Approaching a software development company to develop a custom solution for your organisation. This can range from a completely bespoke platform built from the ground up to the developer incorporating an existing open source software into the platform such as a free open source CRM such as CiviCRM.

Who forWe only recommend this for larger organisations due to the cost and management of the development company.

What about building it ourselves with AI?

A newer version of the custom option is a keen volunteer building the app with AI coding tools, sometimes called "vibe coding". It is genuinely impressive how quickly you can get something that looks finished, and it is a great way to sketch out ideas. The trouble is that the demo is the easy 10%. The other 90% is what keeps a membership system running safely year after year:

  • Hard to maintain. AI-generated code often works until it doesn't, and when something breaks, nobody fully understands how it was put together, sometimes including the person who built it.
  • Payments have lots of edge cases. Failed renewals, refunds, disputes, duplicate charges and recurring payments all need careful handling, and mistakes cost your members real money.
  • You are responsible for members' personal data. Names, addresses, emergency contacts and children's details need proper security, backups and compliance with privacy law. A data breach is a club problem, not just a volunteer problem.
  • Apps need constant upkeep. Phone operating systems, app store rules and third-party services change every year. Apps that aren't updated stop working or get removed from the stores.
  • The costs don't stop at zero. Hosting, app store developer accounts, email sending and security tools all add up, on top of many volunteer hours.
  • Support lands on one person. When a member can't renew at 10pm, they will be messaging the volunteer who built it.
  • Volunteers move on. Committees change, people get busy or leave the club, and the next committee inherits a system nobody knows how to run.

If you have a tech-savvy volunteer, their time is usually better spent helping set up and get the most out of proven software than building and supporting their own.

Pros

  • Extremely customisable to your exact needs
  • Possibility to get a mobile app
  • Branded to your organisation

Cons

  • Extremely high initial cost
  • Very high ongoing costs. Ongoing costs are often underestimated as there are always changes required and security patches needed. Development can be very expensive
  • Need to maintain a good relationship with the developer as you are locked into the relationship
  • May contain bugs and need thorough testing
  • An app built by one volunteer, with or without AI tools, depends on that one person for security, fixes and support
Rider showing a digital membership card on a phone to a club admin at a trailhead

Option 3 - Proprietary or off the shelf software

$$ Covered in this guide

This is the most common option and the option we will cover with this guide. There are hundreds of membership management applications available but most are not suited to mountain bike organisations and are either targeted at other markets or so generalised that you will be paying for features that you don't need. These are available as Software As A Service (SaaS) and usually charge a monthly or transactional fee.

These typically fall into two categories, membership management software and CRMs.

Who forAll organisations.

Membership management software

  • This is what we will be focusing on in the next steps below.
  • Membership management software is a tool designed to help organisations manage their membership database and related activities. It allows clubs to efficiently manage their members, handle membership renewals and payments, and communicate with members.

CRMs - Customer relationship management software

  • These are typically larger platforms with a variety of features around managing customers.
  • They are typically designed for either commercial businesses or large nonprofits. For nonprofits these focus more on fundraising than membership.
  • CRMs can have many features you may not require while not providing any benefits to your members.
  • CRMs can be used in conjunction with membership management software, although it requires integration between the two platforms.
  • Better suited to managing larger individual donors than many memberships.

Pros

  • Most likely reliable as being used by other organisations.
  • Much more affordable than a custom solution.
  • Less admin than a low budget solution.

Cons

  • Can sometimes be a bit more costly for smaller organisations due to the fixed pricing.
  • May end up paying for features you don't need.
Step 3

Choosing your software

Now that you've decided off-the-shelf membership software is the right fit, here's how to evaluate and choose between the options available for mountain bike organisations.

Considerations

Consider user-friendliness

The software you choose should be easy to use, even for non-technical users. A complicated system will frustrate your team and waste valuable time. Look for software with a simple user interface and intuitive navigation. The software should also be easy to set up and require minimal training with online help and support available.

Consider cost

Membership management software comes with varying pricing models, including monthly or annual subscriptions, and one-time purchases. Some software providers may also charge additional fees for premium features or support. Consider your budget and evaluate the software's pricing against the features and functionalities it offers. Transaction fees and fees for additional functionality are often hidden so look at the fine print and check what the "payment gateway" fees are listed as. These should be no higher than Stripe fees in your country. Stripe also offers a lower discounted rate for nonprofits.

A transactional pricing model means the provider's goals are aligned with your organisation's and they are incentivised to increase your member numbers and revenue.

Read user reviews and get recommendations

Before making a final decision, read reviews from other organisations that have used the software. Reviews can give you insights into the software's strengths and weaknesses and how it performs in real-life situations. You can also ask for recommendations from other organisations that have similar membership programs to yours. Capterra is a reliable source of reviews.

Consider scalability

Choose software that can grow with your organisation. Look for software solutions that can accommodate an increasing number of members and provide the flexibility to add new features and functionality. Look at how the cost would scale with this.

Check customer support

Look for a provider that offers responsive and helpful customer support. Consider whether they offer phone or email support, whether they have a knowledge base or community forum, and whether they provide training or onboarding support. Read user reviews to see how others found the support.

What if we require extra features in the future?

Typically, membership management software does not offer custom development and will only add new functionalities if there is a high demand from multiple organisations. Therefore, it is crucial to select a product that caters to your specific niche area. Doing so increases the likelihood of getting the desired functionality developed for your needs.

Consider migration complexity

If you are switching from an existing spreadsheet or another platform, check how easy it is to import your existing member data. Ask the vendor what migration support they provide and what it costs. The best providers will help you move your data across, saving significant volunteer time.

Create a shortlist

Compile a list of potential software options. Narrow down your choices to a shortlist of likely products. You can discover suitable products through word-of-mouth, search engines, or review sites such as Capterra. Check with other mountain bike organisations to see what they are using. Review any case studies of organisations similar to yours.

For detailed 1-on-1 comparisons, see our dedicated guides:

Hivepass vs Sporty Hivepass vs Wild Apricot Hivepass vs TidyHQ Hivepass vs Join It

Next, evaluate your requirements against the features offered by each product on your list, including the essential and desirable features you identified in the first step. If you have any uncertainties about a particular feature, you can contact the sales team to get more details. Lastly, consider the factors mentioned above when selecting the final product.

Comparison

Hivepass vs TidyHQ vs Wild Apricot vs ClubExpress

How Hivepass compares on the features that set these platforms apart. Features that all four offer, such as a cloud member database, automated email reminders and family memberships, are not listed.

Scroll sideways to see all four platforms.

Feature Hivepass TidyHQ Pro Wild Apricot ClubExpress
For members
Member mobile app
Digital membership card $200/yr add-on
Offline capable
Push notifications Automatic only
News feed in the member app Partial
Partner deals for members in mobile app
Members can choose to cover the transaction fee US and Canada only
Short term passes that can be purchased in advance
QR codes that guide the user direct to your organisation via the app store
Digital waivers to mitigate liability risks Event waivers
For your organisation
In app chat support for admins Paid plans
Chapter support Enterprise plan only Separate account per chapter
Event registration and management Coming soon
Website generation
Trail management
Links trails to Trailforks maps
Yearly cost (USD)*
100 members $250 $743 $713 $413
300 members $470 $848 $1,663 $1,240
1,000 members $1,240 $1,215 $2,862 $2,940
5,000 members $3,440 $3,315 $5,238 $7,950
Fees
Setup fee $0 $0 $0 $150
Fees to unlock features No No No Yes
Platform fee on payments Donations only1% + $0.50 Yes1% + $0.20, members cannot cover it No No
Card processing Stripe, your own accountnonprofit rate available Stripe 2.99% + $0.30or +20% on plan with your own gateway 2.99% + $0.303.99% on Premium

* Yearly cost in USD from each vendor's published pricing in October 2026. Includes the plan price and any platform fee on payments, based on a $60 average membership with half of members on family memberships (average family of 3.2). Excludes card processing fees. TidyHQ Pro is TidyHQ's top published plan, paid yearly (Enterprise is quote only). Wild Apricot prices by contacts, 1-year prepay. ClubExpress charges per primary member, billed monthly, with family members at a lower rate and a $24 monthly minimum. Check each vendor's website for current pricing.

Yearly cost comparison

Yearly cost by number of members 100 members: Hivepass $250, TidyHQ Pro $743, Wild Apricot $713, ClubExpress $413; 300 members: Hivepass $470, TidyHQ Pro $848, Wild Apricot $1,663, ClubExpress $1,240; 1,000 members: Hivepass $1,240, TidyHQ Pro $1,215, Wild Apricot $2,862, ClubExpress $2,940; 5,000 members: Hivepass $3,440, TidyHQ Pro $3,315, Wild Apricot $5,238, ClubExpress $7,950 $0 $2k $4k $6k $8k Hivepass: $250 TidyHQ Pro: $743 Wild Apricot: $713 ClubExpress: $413 100 members Hivepass: $470 TidyHQ Pro: $848 Wild Apricot: $1,663 ClubExpress: $1,240 300 members Hivepass: $1,240 TidyHQ Pro: $1,215 Wild Apricot: $2,862 ClubExpress: $2,940 1,000 members Hivepass: $3,440 TidyHQ Pro: $3,315 Wild Apricot: $5,238 ClubExpress: $7,950 5,000 members

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