How to choose a team website builder
What to look for in a team website builder for a school or club team: who updates it, what parents need, phones, ads and price.
Most team website builders can put a schedule on the internet. The hard part is the season after you set it up: whether a busy coach or parent can keep it current from a phone, and whether families can find what they need without calling anyone. This guide walks through what actually matters when you pick a website builder for one school or club team.
Start with who will update it
A team site is only as good as its last update. Before you compare features, picture the person who will change a game time at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday.
- Can they do it from a phone? Most schedule changes happen away from a desk.
- Can more than one person edit? Coaches, a team parent and a booster club officer often share the work. Look for separate logins with different roles, so a volunteer can post news without being able to delete the roster.
- Can you hand it off? Coaches and parents change every few years. The site should belong to the team, not to one person's personal account.
If updates take more than a minute or two, the site will go stale by midseason, and families will stop checking it.
What parents and fans look for
Parents open a team site to answer a short list of questions. A good builder makes these pages easy to keep current:
- Schedule: dates, times, home or away, and the address of each rink, gym, pool or field
- Roster: names, numbers and grades, with photos if your program allows them
- Coaches: who they are and how to reach the program
- News: game recaps, tryout dates, schedule changes
- Events and sign-ups: banquets, fundraisers, volunteer slots
- Sponsors: logos and links for the businesses that support the team
If you can, look at a live site built with the tool on your own phone before you decide. Check how many taps it takes to find the next game and its address.
Website builder or team management app?
There are two kinds of tools, and they solve different problems.
General website builders (the drag-and-drop kind) give you full design control, but you build every page yourself and keep the schedule by hand. They work well if someone on the team enjoys web design.
Team management apps handle rosters, messaging and registration for whole leagues and clubs. Many put the public website second, or ask every family to download an app.
Team website builders sit in between: a public site made for one team, with schedule, roster and sponsor pages already in place. You fill in your team's details instead of designing pages. For a single high school or club team that mainly needs a public home on the web, this is usually the least work.
Ads, apps and privacy
Three questions are easy to miss and hard to fix later.
- Are there ads? Free plans often show ads on your team's page, and you don't choose which ones. If you have sponsors, ads from other businesses next to their logos can be awkward.
- Do families need an app? Every app download is a reason for a grandparent to give up. A website opens from a link in a text or an email.
- How are minors handled? Youth rosters with names and photos deserve care. Look for a tool that lets the program decide what is public and hides youth team sites from search engines.
Price
For one team, price differences add up over a few seasons. Compare the yearly cost, not just the monthly one, and check what happens if a payment lapses: whether the site is paused or deleted, and how long you have to restart it.
Booster clubs often cover the cost from sponsor money. A site that shows sponsors well can pay for itself with one local business.
A short checklist
Before you choose, check that the builder:
- Lets you update the schedule from a phone in under a minute
- Supports more than one editor, with different roles
- Has schedule, roster, coaches, news, events and sponsor pages ready to fill in
- Looks right on a phone, since most parents will visit on one
- Shows no ads on your team's site
- Doesn't require families to download an app
- Lets the program control what's public about minors
- Has a yearly price you can cover from dues or sponsors
Where OurTeamSports fits
OurTeamSports is a team website builder for one school or club team, in any sport. Each team gets its own site in its colors, with schedule, roster, coaches, sponsors, news, photo galleries, public events and volunteer sign-up sheets. Several people can edit with their own logins, you can paste a schedule in instead of typing every game, and there are no ads and no app for families. It costs $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year after a 7-day free trial, and it is in early access now. For a side-by-side look at other options, see our comparison of TeamSnap, SportsEngine and Jersey Watch for one team.