Every fee we charge
All of them, on one page, including the ones most software companies bury. If we charge for it, it is listed here.
The short version: you pay us a flat annual subscription. On top of that, when one of your members pays you by card, we take a small percentage. That is the entire business. There are no per-member fees, no setup requirement, no charge for support, and nothing is gated behind a higher tier.
1. What you pay us directly
| What | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Your first season | $0 | Every feature, no household limit, no card up front. |
| Starter | $900 / yr | Up to 75 households. |
| Pro | $2,400 / yr | Up to 200 households. Where most clubs land. |
| Enterprise | $4,200 / yr | Unlimited households. Multi-pool clubs. |
| Setup & audit (optional) | $500 / $750 | One-off. We import your roster and configure the club for you. $500 up to 100 households, $750 above. Most clubs do it themselves in an afternoon and pay nothing. |
| Gate / keyfob add-on (optional) | from $1,200 + $75 / mo | Quoted per site after we look at photos of your gate. Every gate is different, so there is no fixed price. Monitoring is included — if the bridge drops offline we know before you do. |
Subscriptions are billed annually in advance. Outgrowing a tier is a click, and your data and settings stay put.
2. What we take when a member pays by card
These apply only to money that moves through Poolside via Stripe. If your members pay by Venmo, check or cash, none of this applies and you only ever pay the subscription.
| What is being paid for | Our cut |
|---|---|
| Annual dues — including renewals and every payment-plan installment | 1.0% |
| Programs, swim lessons, clinics | 1.5% |
| Parties and events | 1.5% |
| Reactivating a lapsed payment plan | 1.0% |
| Donations to your club | 0% — always |
Donations are free because skimming a donation to a volunteer-run pool club looks bad and earns almost nothing. That is the whole reasoning.
3. The one fee your members see
A member who would rather spread dues across the season than pay in one go can choose a payment plan. That costs them $4 per payment, capped at $16 for the entire plan — the way an installment plan works on insurance or a utility bill.
- Your books do not move. Each installment is the pure dues figure. The fee rides alongside and comes to us, so your club nets exactly the same whether a household pays once or six times.
- Paying in full avoids it entirely. It is a fee for the convenience, not a fee for paying.
- The cap is the point. Without it, a flat fee across an eight-payment plan would take $32 on $600 of dues — over 5%, which is the sort of number that makes a board tell its members to write checks instead.
4. What Stripe takes, which is not ours
Card processing costs 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction in the US. That goes to Stripe, not to Poolside. We mention it because it is the largest number on this page and you should not be surprised by it on your statement.
You can pass that cost to members who choose to pay by card — a $600 dues bill then shows as $618.23 on a card and $600.00 by Venmo. One switch in Settings → Payments.
Worth knowing: that pass-through covers Stripe's fee only. Our percentage always comes out of the club's side, never the member's. We are not going to quietly add our cut to a member's bill and let you find out about it later.
5. What a real year looks like
A 150-household club on Pro, dues at $600, where 60% of households choose to pay by card in the first year and 40 of those use a payment plan. Your numbers will differ — the point is the shape.
| Line | Amount | To Poolside |
|---|---|---|
| Pro subscription | — | $2,400 |
| Dues paid by card — $54,000 at 1.0% | $54,000 | $540 |
| Programs and swim lessons at 1.5% | $12,000 | $180 |
| Parties and events at 1.5% | $4,000 | $60 |
| Donations at 0% | $3,000 | $0 |
| What the club pays Poolside | $3,180 |
Separately, the 40 households that chose a payment plan pay $16 each — $640 — which comes from those members, not from the club's budget.
Stripe's own processing on the $75,000 that moved by card comes to roughly $2,200, which you can pass to card-paying members if you want to.
So the club's own cost for the year is about $3,180 against $109,000 collected — a little under 3%. Roughly three quarters of that is the flat subscription, which does not grow as your club grows.
6. What we never charge for
- Per member or per contact. The tiers are capacity bands, not headcount meters. 74 households or 200, the price is the price.
- Features. Every tier gets every feature. No "upgrade to Pro to send SMS".
- Extra board members or admins. Add the whole board.
- Support. Email a person, get a person.
- Getting your data out. Export any time, including on the way out the door.
- Text messages and emails, within your plan's annual allowance — which is sized so that a club sending normal reminders never touches it.
- Canceling. No termination fee, no notice period, no exit interview.
7. Things a club sets, which we do not take a cut of
Some fees on your Poolside account are yours. You set them, you keep them, and they never appear on our invoice:
- Late fees. You choose the amount, the due date and the grace period, and you can waive any of them in one click. Charged once per household per season, never more.
- Your own reactivation fee on a lapsed payment plan.
- Party prices, membership tiers, program fees — all yours to set.
Money-back, no drama
If you are not happy in the first 30 days, email us and we will refund your subscription. No forms, no exit interview. We would rather you found the right tool than felt stuck in this one.
"If a fee isn't on this page, we don't charge it. If we ever add one, it goes on this page before it goes on your invoice."
— Doug, founder
Want the reasoning behind the numbers rather than the numbers themselves? That is on why we charge what we charge.