Rating the providers: #1 Ease of Use
Ease of Use was identified as the most important consideration when selecting a service provider by the most people. There were a wide range of factors mentioned that determine “Ease of Use”. There are a number of different users including various types of registrants such as players, donors, volunteers and administrators such as webmasters, registrars, volunteer coordinators, mechandise coordinators and treasurers. The needs of coaches were identified as being especially important. Finally some providers were identified as really simple to use but because they also provided very little functionality they were not seen as a realistic choice.
Please let us know what you think is important and how you rate the different service providers. Most of the youth and adult sports organizations that we’re focused on had 500 or more annual participants so please identify your approximate size in your postings.
Who’s the best online sports registration provider?
Who is the best online sports registration provider? It’s the #1 question asked by staff and volunteers alike. Most include league management capabilities as part of the same discussion. We want to offer a way for organizations to find the information that will enable them to make that determination and then share the results. The result is this blog.
The first step is to identify and rank the different criteria youth and adult sports organizations use to make their determinations. The easiest way to do that is to just ask people which is exactly what we did. As organizations have different needs there was a wide range of feedback. We’ve taken the feedback we’ve received to date and distilled it into the Top Ten criteria:
- Ease of Use (includes use by administrators, registrants, donors, volunteers – especially coaches)
- Support (includes availability, responsiveness, online resources, training, cost, institutional knowledge)
- Ownership of the Data (includes security, privacy, no selling/sharing/spamming)
- Registration and Payment Features (includes flexibility to collect whatever is needed, liability waivers, enforcing eligibility criteria especially age, family discounts)
- Reporting (includes standard and customzed reports, getting data into Excel)
- Team Features (includes recruiting coaches and other volunteers, building teams, tryouts, team communications)
- Communication (includes email, CRM, newsletters, surveys)
- Cost (includes clearly posted on website, all-in pricing, no additional fees and unexpected costs, low credit card processing costs)
- Fundraising Features (includes team sponsorship, donations, merchandise sales and website advertising)
- Overall Feature Set (includes a wide range of specific features such as customizable website, scheduling, calendars, importing from Excel, maps with driving directions, membership, referees, online storage plus general request that all functionality was included without extra fee and integrated so it didn’t require manual entry)
Do you agree with this list? In your experience let us know how the different providers perform by responding to the Top Ten Criteria and your vote for which provider is the best.
