SportsEngine

Pros

Easy to use! Easy to train others to use. Tech support is very helpful. Helped me brand our Athletic Dept and families LOVE it! Easy to access and full of all the information parents need at our High School.

Cons

When I go to the helpful videos, I can't search a specific topic. Too many articles come up for the topic I choose. Other than that, absolutely NO problems with Sports Engine.

Pros

Customization It can be tailored to fit your organizations size and unique needs.

Cons

A little overwhelming if your computer literacy is weak.

Pros

That it has been around for a while- well established company.

Cons

Website appearance looks dated and messy. Registration was a real bugger, lots of support needed to navigate. Also, don't love that most of the changes had to go through support, whereas other platforms offer independence for many of the same tasks.

Pros

The design and setup is more efficient. You can send out thousands of group emails in minutes.

Cons

Mobile phones applications are unable to be completed.

Pros

This has been my favorite sports app I have used with my son's sports leagues. It is super easy to use and great functions. It is up to date with great features.

Cons

I have been using for a few weeks now and I dont see anything disappointing about it yet.

Pros

I like the ease of use the most. It is simple with basic language that anyone can use it. You have access to a community forum, help pages, and customer service rep is always there to help you.

Cons

It would be nice to have Hudl integration. For our players and coaches, it would be nice to have that integrated and automatically update on the roster.

Pros

I liked its flexibility and its ability to track payments.

Cons

Support, support, support. Went from greatest to worst. Especially becasue I am older am I like to talk to someone, and support times are great for east coast, tough for us up here in Alaska.

Pros

Very easy to use. The calendar is pretty much all I use and is super easy to check. The text and visuals make it easy to quickly get the info you need.

Cons

I'm not sure if there is anything that I have an issue with. It could possibly be better advertised so it could grow to become the most popular app used for this sort of thing. all I know is that there's also teamsnap that's similar.

Pros

It is so simple to use. The customer service is amazing and will get the framework of your site in place. From there, you just change the images and details, add a FB pixel, some Google Analytics, and you are ready for launch.

Cons

There are some slight limitations, such as not being able to integrate a custom domain (you have to use forwarding). Most of these limitations though are only on the admin side and if you ask customer service, they can make those changes on the developer side.

Pros

The best thing about SportsEngine is that they integrate directly with US Club soccer. For our club, this is a huge factor which allows our digital forms to be integrated directly with our affiliating body. This is a huge time saver for us.

Their website editor is good (not great) and while we haven't used all the communication tools they do look very positive.

Cons

There are some real limitations with the website editor (can't use html code directly through the site, can't have hidden pages from your navigation), but overall it is a solid investment.

Pros

Nothing anymore. Everything I have questions about they give me a standard "we do not have that capability" answer. They make decisions based on what they want (easy) versus what would be best for their customer.

Cons

I was one of the very first users of NGIN (SportsEngine predecessor) in 2012, 13 years ago. Back then it was very easy to talk to a customer service agent or sales to get issues resolved, and usually immediate response to all issues. I run a High School Football Program in Canada where we register our athletes online and have been doing so for the past 13 years using SportsEngine. This year they decided to 'change' aspects of the registration WITHOUT reaching out to us to tell us of functionality changes that are important to our process of registering athletes, causing some major pains in processing registrations.Every once in a while a user runs into an issue where they try to complete the registration, trying to make a payment and all they get on the screen is a frozen 'sending your payment' message. Nothing goes through. This is not all people trying to register, but a significant amount of them.I contacted SportsEngine customer service (they only allow this in an online chat) on at least 6 occasions over a week long period and the only response I have received is an automated 'we are looking into it' . NO resolution. I booked a telephone conversation with them (that takes a week to book in advance btw) and here we are, 2 hours past the scheduled time they were supposed to call me and you guessed it, NO PHONE CALL. It is THEIR problem and it has been over a week and not even a message or call to tell me where they are at with my issue.

Pros

So many pro's it will be hard to list them all. The ease of use is tremendous which makes it possible for most of the board members to contribute to the site during all cycles of the board year. Because the help documentation is so thorough getting new members up-to-speed and able to manage their own communication streams takes little time and does not require the league to have a 'webmaster guru' to support everyone. Another nice element is that that the site is 'data driven', meaning that all of the news, text, documents, etc. that are added are stored in a database so that you can change templates based on you're personal preferences without loosing any of the content you've created. The registrations work extremely well, and with the rostering functions make adding players to teams a simple and thorough process that can easily be handled by anyone who can use email. Dibs is an essential tool for managing volunteer hours and commitments and continues to evolve - as does every part of the platform - to make a larger impact over time. The other key feature for our league has to be the integration with the SportsEngine® app. One the season gets into full swing, parents and players utilize the mobile app for game times, practice times, league news, and team messaging. With the RSVP features, the app has become the key tool for our team managers, and team staff. There are many more pros that I could list, but there is a limit to what I can write!

Pros

We needed an easier system for more people to be able to use - our previous website was complex and only a small number of people knew how to use it. With a youth sports club, volunteers come and go every year and we needed something that could be easily used by a wide range of people with limited training. With SportsEngine, we've been able to expand our users and provide some basic training - their robust Help Center and videos supplement their outstanding technical support team. And their designers worked with us to come up with a great looking site.

Cons

There a few small things we would like changed, but nothing major. Our biggest request involves the Dibs system, which allows people to volunteer for club events - we'd like the ability to re-name that page, as we've found that "Dibs" is confusing for our families.

Pros

This isn't just website/marketing software! It's a web-based platform for running your entire sports organization. It's how we communicate, manage teams, organize events, accept payments and manage registrations.
Want to get word out at the last minute about a cancellation? Use SportsEngine to broadcast the message by text and email, with a simple calendar update.
Want to bill a parent for their kids extra lesson? Just send them a PowerPay bill online. You'll get paid online and have a record of the whole thing.
To top it all off, the whole thing is backed by NBC Sports, so you get all kinds of free publicity at a National level and your organization looks like they've really got it together.

Cons

There are some things that I don't like, but they just keep making it better. Don't like something? Go to a user group meeting and talk to them about it. If your ideas make more sense, you'll probably see them in an update. They have great support and really listen to the needs of their users.

Pros

Nothing. There is literally nothing I like most about this software.

Cons

I can't think of one redeeming thing about this platform. It's terrible for administrators and families alike The communication tools are awful (the texts alert you to check your email... super redundant... it's 2021!!!) The registration platform doesn't actually work as their videos claim, and the app is so super glitchy that when managers change events, the changes "stick" less than half the time. There is ZERO customer service, I have yet to speak to an actual person. The only reason we stuck with them for so long was because US Club used them.. We're leaving ASAP and you should, too!!!

Pros

Easy to use. Lot of room for creativity. Great communication tool. Great customer and technology support. Online DIY videos are very helpful! Unlimited photos and videos for parents is a big deal! Mirroring tools are valuable. The ability to build custom reports is very helpful. The look is very professional and has helped me "brand" our Athletic Department. When I need to talk to a real person, they are there for me.

Cons

Parents don't read my directions. The software is awesome. When I am searching for an issue in the video support site, I get too many answers. Would love if it would let me search for a term in quotes so I can get to the exact topic. For example, if I put in a search for "how to create a team event" I get every possible topic that has the word "team" in it. Would be helpful to search an exact term. But tech service has worked when the search engine does not. And my Baseball teams wants to separate the calendar events so they can track statistics. Right now I put on the calendar, then when he duplicates an event for statistics, it's confusing to families.

Pros

Easy to review archived documents.
Registration processing fee is not bad. In line with the market.

Cons

The accounting function is outdated.
Very difficult to track and drill down on accounts.
Accounts receivables are impossible to track.
No link to keep players from playing if their account become delinquent.

Pros

The software is easy to use. I am in IT and have designed websites before but I found that with this software I can turn over team pages to my coaches and they are able to maintain their pages on their own with very little training.

Cons

Currently the software lacks a good quality payment method for club members to make payments and allow the administrator to adjust payments on the fly. We currently have to use a different software for this purpose but I am hoping that someday the SportsEngine software will be improved so that I can use it instead.

Pros

As the Director the Mankato Sports Commission as well as being involved at a volunteer level for numerous sports organizations I have been exposed to and had to use many different sports related software/website platforms. SportsEngine is hands down the best of any I have ever used. In minutes I can show somebody who has never used the software a few basic things and get them up to speed enough that they can easily help manage a website on this platform. I love that you don't need to know how to write code or really any technical aspects in order to make changes or updates.

Cons

Occasionally I run into things I'd like to do on our website that are not available as options however the SportsEngine team always gets back to me in timely fashion to either let me know of a way to do it or let me know if that is something they are working on.

Pros

One stop app for all our team spanning multiple leagues. I can keep track of where everyone is play on any given day! SE has been actively updating its offerings either for their web platform or apps based on suggestions made by their users on their Ideas page. Can't wait to see what's next.

We've been giving team managers more access and they love the team management features.

Cons

No Windows 10 app! I get it... not exactly a great case to develop one as their Windows 10 Mobile isn't that popular but with millions of desktops using Windows 10 (including most of our organizations) it would seem a no-brainer to have a simple desktop app to access the info

Pros

SportsEngine is very intuitive. The platform is great and easy to upload and maintain the website. Creating teams and communicating with them is easy. The biggest plus is the communication with everyone and it is super easy with this platform. Also when you have a problem tech support is always attentive. The app has great functionality for team member and parents.

Cons

I would love an administrative app.
the Dibs system for claiming things like volunteer hours or stuff to bring to practice is unnecessarily difficult it seems for parents. it is not at all attached to the app which makes it cumbersome linking it to the app would be great.

Pros

The customer service is great and the software is pretty intuitive.

Cons

If you do not have someone familiar with computers I could see where it might be challenging, but they have a great staff to walk you through every step of the process.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to SportsEngine

Pros

Online Registration, ability to post schedules, standings, playoff results, member database for future events and seasons. With all of our incoming parents they have grown up in the internet age. They expect to be able to have an online source to register, get updates, see schedules, pictures, videos and a lot more. It really does give us a competitive advantage over other leagues.

Pros

Very robust and easy to use. Easy for admin, easy for coaches, easy for trainers, easy for parent and easy for team moms. I also like how you can customize reports with ease.

Cons

Customer service is kinda a pain. You have to schedule a call for help, or wait long waiting times to get help through a chat. No 1-800 help line available. Once you finally get someone, they are usually very helpful.

Pros

Ease of navigating through the site. The website is very user friendly. From an administrative stand point, it's very easy to do the behind the scene adjustments/changes.

Cons

A few items need tweaking:
1. I would like the ability to set registration close dates or capacity levels for each team. Basically, close registration at any level at any time.
2. When sending out an email with a PDF it should be one click to attach and send.
3. When sending out an email to different groups I should be able to click on multiple groups to receive my email. However, that currently can't be done so have have to cut and paste multiple times.
4. I should be able to send a group email to all the families who have an outstanding balance. However, under the current system I have to send out an email to each family individually.
I would be willing to work with you to enhance your site to make it even better

Pros

When it works, its great, it just rarely works correctly or as advertised.

Cons

There are so many bugs that mess everything up. Then they say "its just a known bug" in the system and they are working on it. The bugs NEVER get fixed. Known bug, it was known when you where selling this to me. A scheduling system that doesn't display schedules correctly, or sync roster names or and changes correctly. Tough to operate in a system that doesn't even schedule or roster correctly. Platform does not do what they advertise. At least not well. Its also not very compatible with google chrome.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to SportsEngine

Pros

Platform has great programs but has d to use if there is no customer service

Cons

Long time customer- the customer service has major issues. You do not get immediate answers or assistance-in fact it can take days before you get a response- which has been becoming the norm.. and when I they respond it’s to tell you there sending the issue to someone else. Not sure who else it goes to…. But I’ve had issues a blotted for a week with no response. There is no customer service number so you’re tied to the online chat. This is a huge issue for anyone running events.

Pros

this app enables players, parents, and coaches to stay in constant communication as well as provides up to date calendar and schedule information.

Cons

there are adds that cannot be avoided when opening the app, which can make the experience frustrating

Pros

I liked that the software had many features such as a countdown timer.

Cons

The ease of use was pretty difficult. I felt that I was calling in a lot for help with the software.

Pros

Product and function, live in the moment updates

Cons

Client “success”. Only BOT support available.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing SportsEngine

Switched From

Pros

To be honest, the only positive is that the registration management was much easier than my previous company. When I signed up for sports engine it was $49 a month, At $149 with reduced service, more issues and new better companies now available, they are definitely not worth the money

Cons

Customer service is terrible. they push insurance that is a joke as well as other products down customer throats - over priced, many dumb functionality issues they refuse to fix. Upgrades they added this year for significant price increase were actually downgrades in my opinion. Glad to be leaving. Save your money and frustration and go elsewhere.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing SportsEngine

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to SportsEngine

Pros

Best feature about this platform is it has a mobile app.

Cons

The financial module is a joke, do not pay for it. It's awful and the customer service and support is 1000X worse. It will end up giving you massive headaches and causing a ton of problems and making your club look unprofessional.

Pros

The app seems decent for the most part.

Cons

Sometimes it takes a while to update the webcal events.
Chat messages are delayed so we use a other app for team messaging
There is no webcal link to share with extended family to see the game only schedule. Ideally there would be a filter option for only games so we could share with aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, friends etc without sharing the full practice schedule.

Pros

I find the scheduling and registration aspects easy to use. It creates calendars that can easily be subscribed to and share among players or members. Items and registrations let you track income lines

Cons

It can be a little complicated to FIRST get setup. Setting up discounts is still not as easy-peasy as I would like.

Pros

Registration and payment processing are fairly seamless once established unless you have a problem or need to make a change.

Cons

Horrible customer service makes the product almost unusable. If you need to get anything fixed you are dead in the water

Pros

There are no likeable features on this system

Cons

The system is loaded with bugs that will not be fixed. Games take an age to open, and close. Closing a game has bugs in time and play recoding recording. User interface is dreadful. API is poor and documentation has recently been removed which gives the impression they are no longer supporting this too.

Pros

1. Ease of transition: We switched our Bogus Basin Ski Club website to the SportsEngine platform in August 2018. The transition only took 2-3 weeks and was painless.
2. Training and support: The online and in person training on the SportsEngine software was very thorough, and all of our questions were answered. Ongoing support through emails and scheduled phone calls has always been prompt and most helpful. Many questions are answered through their extensive online articles and recorded help sessions. Their online forums allowing interaction between software users and SportsEngine administrators is effective for getting specialized needs and problems solved.
3. Functionality: In order to create page content on your website using the SportsEngine software it is basically "plug and play" of different page elements, which is ideal for me since as webmaster I have no computer programing skill or background. This literally allows anyone to be the webmaster of your website using this software. Yet one of the available page elements (entitled Code) is designed to add custom HTML code as needed to any page.
4. Reasonable and fixed price: Our club leadership felt that the set up and annual maintenance fees for the SportsEngine software were very reasonable compared to other similar software platforms, and the annual maintenance fee is fixed regardless of the size of our club.
5. Size: SportsEngine is a very large organization and will still be here 10-20 years from now.

Cons

The software is primarily designed for team sports with leagues, teams, players, coaches, parents and youth. We are a ski club of adults only with no teams. Our primary function is year round social activities. Despite this the software has worked very well for us by simply ignoring (not using) all the functionality designed for team sports.

Pros

The ability to log in using Gmail is the saving grace of this software. I also like the admin edit mode (the only thing I like about the edit mode), where you can see what the website looks like as a user, and then change components of it. But that's about it.

Cons

Oh, where do I begin???

The HTML editor looks like it is circa 1997. It's was clearly designed for older computers- you can't even see what you are typing-not enough space. Also, What You See is DEFINITELY NOT what you get. For example, you have to know to hit the Enter key twice if you actually want a line space. Also, forget dropping or pasting pictures- you have to know HTML.

You have to have a degree in SQL programming to figure out how to pull reports. Worse, there is no common field (like a Google Search field) where you can enter in some piece of information... you have to select filter, then select the field, then select a list of operators... and so on... and this is just to find coaches who are registered for the Boys 3rd/4th grade division. it's so frustrating!

Then there are the things you can't do at all... like add an extra email address... This happens all of the time... As an admin, I get requests from parents to add another email address... and I CAN'T DO IT! Only the person who created the account can add additional notification email addresses, and even then (in at least one case) they still don't get emails form the system.

And the emails you do get have automatic advertising.... and are definitely NOT mobile friendly.

It gets worse from there- Coaches HATE, HATE, HATE using SportsEngine to try and upload schedules or even send messages to their team. They actually voted to go back to email.

Pros

It has a robust front-end. Lots of features available for your league/team website. Their tool allowed users to easily build nice looking websites. They had many widgets that allowed you do generate many different web objects on a website (i.e. News articles, league standings, podcasts and use of your own URL). They offer the opportunity to provide feedback to enhance the product.

Cons

Administrator interface was somewhat convoluted and not user friendly. Setting up a season, teams, divisions and games was not straightforward. Reports were limited. In our league, our commissioner needed to track specific penalties. SportsEngine does not offer true report functionality. It lacked the ability to design your own report, specify a query for the exact data you needed or specify the layout of the data. Even though they offer the ability to provide input on new features or suggest them, very few of the suggestions turn into reality. Nice feature to enter games real-time but it also was not always easy to use. Initial outlay was over $6k with annual cost around $700.

Pros

The interface is simple and user-friendly. Parents and players love the team stats feature! Great mobile App. Reporting is a breeze exportable .xls for everything you want to know. Registrations can be used for fundraising sales. Can't say enough about their support team and I manage a support team for a web hosting company. I could have built all the functionality myself but it would have taken months these guys have an out of the box solution at a reasonable price. Don't listen to the hater reviews they have no idea what it takes to keep an application like this running and are looking for free software that can't do what you need it to do. This stuff works and is reasonably priced!

Cons

Some limitations to the size of pick list you can have them build for you when using registrations as fundraising management but I'm asking a lot of their support team to manually build out lists. I wish they would implement export to Google Drive in the spreadsheet reporting features.

Pros

What I enjoyed and valued most about SportsEngine's sites and software is ease of use and versatility. For someone who is tech savvy (one way of saying it) or someone who is functional at best on a computer this company has something for you in their product. You can easily modify and populate a website for the barely functional individual... or you can rock an excellent sports site with tons of integrations and modifications that are all accessible at your fingertips.

Cons

What I like least is so petty and idiosyncratic that it's barely worth mentioning. I would change things like adding anchors in texts on one page that can be linked from another page. Silly but it's small and maybe not worth fighting for. I would also like to see an appointment app that is solely SportsEngine and not a third-party integration that you add code from another site. Wish list.

Pros

SportsEngine is more than a website. It's team collaboration software, content sharing, volunteer management, financial management and more. I still use other software tools, but I wouldn't have to, and in many cases it's just a matter of taking the time to migrate to SportsEngine's better solutions.
I still use Ground.Work for collecting fees, because it's cheaper, but SportsEngine would be easier for me in the long run, if my board would let me switch.

Cons

There are some features of SportsEngine that I find unintuitive, like News and News Aggregators, but the functionality and support is there, which is far more than I can say for most competitors. I also think some collaborations with partners like Ground.Work or JotForm would make sense to reduce cost and complexity of the existing solutions within the SportsEngine suite.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing SportsEngine

Reasons for Switching to SportsEngine

Pros

Help desk tutorials so you can be self sufficient.
Fee collection is HUGE for volunteer organizations....so the multiple options of installments, customizations, and billing are amazingly helpful....especially as businesses are moving away from taking checks.
Our club was literally in the red until we got SportsEngine to help us collect fees properly, communicate, and promote.
ALSO now HUGE is that our main league can send the game schedule directly to our website! ALL on same platform now and gigantic time saver!

Cons

I have seen the availability of immediate support diminish....
Support is GREAT but reaching someone quickly, as a volunteer like myself, is important.

Communicating to people who are not 'members' would help...as we have Alumni who are not
comfortable with websites.

Pros

I love the way the site and app are easy to use for most, but the customer service/help options are the best I’ve ever used. The options for making the site customized for your needs are so easy and fun! You can even set up training sessions on a specific topic if needed! Keeps all our information easy to pull up and organized while letting our athletes and parents informed.

Cons

Could be a bit cheaper, like 3% + $1 each transaction like competitors.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to SportsEngine

Pros

I like the fact that everything is migrating into one location, taking away the need for using/visiting multiple websites to complete necessary tasks.

Cons

There is a lack of some functionality that our organization had with our previous software (Blue Sombrero), which makes some tasks impossible to do without big workarounds (if at all). One example of this is the ability to transfer players between programs without parents having to complete a whole new registration.

Pros

It is very robust. it gives you so many features, from billing, emails, webpages, rosters, etc.

That is what first attracted me to it and the best part about it.

Cons

The customer service has disappeared. They used to be great but I feel they have grown too fast and are just going for the buck without having the support to help. As a visual and audio learner, reading is the least efficient way for me as a customer to get the information needed.

If someone registers, it may show it, but it does not show up. I have tried two different methods that they suggest and there are still huge errors with it.

I tried to update my billing and get the please wait processing and it never progresses.

There are issues when people think they are registered for my site and they are not, they are signed on to Ngin, but not mine. Sometimes a pop up shows up, but most of the time it does not. There should be a banner or something to flag people as that would save so much time and frustration.

Pros

This platform is great for team management and communication among players, parents, managers and coaches. I have been using this app since before it was corporate owned and would recommend to any sports team that doesn't have a lot of resources for communication. Having a team manager run the app for all involved does make it easier on everyone, and all that is needed is a bit of computer literacy, its easy to modify the settings and make the team mom look like a rockstar when it comes to stats, scheduling, registration and communication.

Cons

There have been issues in the past that I didn't care for like: data population for registrations, etc. But their team does listen and any issue I've ever had was minor and apparently others thought the same way and SE listened and has always addressed those issues. Their support team is great.

Pros

Once setup, it is easy to prepare for each season by making any changes to past registrations and duplicating them for the next season. It's radically reduced the amount of cash and checks we handle -- almost every transaction goes through the website now.

Cons

Some may find the initial setup tricky but Sports Engine offers a service for setting up your website, and rates that are really good if you compare with having an web design agency doing the work.

Pros

Once you got used to how to navigate it made doing repeatable tasks very easy.

Cons

The ability to make custom look and feel for our two organizations.

Pros

It makes great integration between the mobile app and the website. Easy to use and easy to edit web pages.

Cons

Loss of ability to edit player pages once the players/parents have claimed/registered their athletes makes it very hard as an administrator to correct problems on my own.