The app Grandma Suzy the treasurer can run from her phone. Members sign themselves up, pay by card on autopilot, book parties in three taps. You only get a buzz when there's something genuinely worth your time.
Same Saturday. Different number of "did the Andersons pay yet?" texts.
→ Open a real working club · or start your own free in a minute
Plain English. No "modules" or "add-ons" you have to upgrade for. Every feature works on every plan — tiers only differ on how many households fit.
The big one. Last year's members don't re-apply — they open the app, see "Renew for next season", and confirm. Household, family members and signatures carry over; they only re-sign the policies that actually changed. Or they tick renew me automatically at signup and the card on file handles it every year without anyone opening anything. Stripe deposits straight to your bank — we never touch the money.
Families who can't drop $500 in March can split it across the season — you choose how many payments and when they fall. Each one auto-charges the card on file. It's a yes from families who'd otherwise say no.
The app texts and emails 14, 7 and 1 days before each payment is due, so nobody is surprised. A failed card gets retried; after 14 days the plan lapses, gate access switches off and their account goes inactive. Set a late fee if you want one — and waive it in a tap for the family having a hard year. You only chase the 2–3 people who actually want to talk.
Member requests Saturday → you tap Approve → they pay → the day locks on the club calendar. Members can't double-book a date that's already taken. Auto party-rules acceptance built in (you write them once).
No passwords for Grandma to forget. Member types their phone → gets a 6-digit code → they're in. iOS and Android even auto-fill the code from the text.
Install Poolside on your phone (like a real app). Treasurer gets payment alerts. Party chair gets party requests. Gate manager gets gate alerts. Nobody gets buzzed about things that aren't theirs.
Members visit yourclub.poolsideapp.com — live the second you sign up. Put it in your email blast, your Facebook, on a flyer with a QR code.
They sign their own waivers. They add their kids. They update their phone number when it changes. They submit photos. They pay their dues. Every adult in a household can have their own sign-in, and kids can have one too if you want them to — useful when the gate is tied to who has actually paid. You stop being IT support.
Members tap their phone to unlock the gate. Full audit log. From $1,200 setup + $75/mo, which includes monitoring — if the bridge drops offline we know before you do. Every gate is different, so we look at photos of yours and quote it properly before anyone commits. (Skip this if you have a key-from-the-board manual gate.)
Stripe's optional. Stick with Venmo and the app still tracks who paid, sends reminders, and runs the rest of the club — just with a manual "yes I got the Venmo" tap from the treasurer. No lock-in.
Every signed application gets a PDF in your Drive. Master roster as a Sheet. One-way — even if you cancel Poolside, your records are still yours.
Photo gallery (admin-approved), donation thermometer, sponsor logos, swim lessons and clinics, volunteer shifts, lifeguard scheduling, board minutes, a help inbox that routes each member question to the right board member — all included on every plan.
For real. We timed it.
Pick your name, your URL (yourclub.poolsideapp.com), your email. Done. No credit card. Your subdomain is live before you put your phone down.
Onboarding checklist walks you through dues prices, Venmo handle (or connect Stripe), invite your treasurer + secretary. Skip whatever doesn't apply.
Paste your apply link in your email blast / Facebook group / club website. Members do everything else themselves. Go swim.
Built for the volunteer treasurer who'd rather be at the pool. Tested by 150-household neighborhood clubs. Free for the 18-house HOA pool that just wants to stop sharing a Venmo password.
Every feature on every plan — no paywalled extras, no "upgrade to send SMS". The only thing that changes between tiers is how many households fit. Outgrowing a tier means your club is growing, which is a good problem.
Stick with Venmo / check and these never apply — you only pay the subscription. Stripe transactions get a small fee on top of Stripe's 2.9% — every fee we charge, in one place:
| Membership dues | 1.0% |
| Programs, swim lessons, clinics | 1.5% |
| Parties and events | 1.5% |
| Donations | 0% — always |
| Reactivating a lapsed payment plan | 1.0% |
A member who spreads dues over the season pays $4 per payment, capped at $16 for the whole plan. Your installments stay the pure dues amount, so the club nets the same either way — and paying in full avoids it.
Yes. A full season, every feature, no household limit, no credit card to start. Open the pool, collect a season of dues, run your parties and lessons, close out — then decide. If it saved your treasurer the spring, pick a plan. If it didn't, you've lost an afternoon of setup and your data exports on the way out. We'd rather be judged on a season than on a 14-day trial nobody has time to use in February.
Annual dues are a chunk. A family looking at "$500 in March" might say no when "$125 per month, March–June" would be fine. Payment plans let you offer both. Each installment auto-charges the card on file. Families who can't put $600 on a card in March often can manage $150 a month. The member pays $4 a payment for the convenience, capped at $16 — your installments stay the pure dues figure.
On a payment plan, the app texts and emails them 14, 7 and 1 days before each installment is due, so nobody is surprised. If a card fails we retry it; after 14 days the plan lapses, their gate access switches off and their member home says "renew to come back." You can also set a late fee that's charged automatically once your own deadline plus grace period passes — and waive it in one click for the family having a hard year. You don't lift a finger except for the 2–3 people who actually want to talk it through.
Yep. Stripe is optional. With Venmo: members pay your @clubname handle, click "I paid" in the app, your treasurer confirms with one tap. The app still tracks who paid, sends reminders, and runs the rest of the club. Just no auto-recurring (Venmo doesn't support it). Most clubs offer both and let members pick.
That's literally the design brief. Admin pages avoid jargon ("slug," "endpoint," "JWT" — banned). Setup is a checklist on the dashboard, not a manual. Help articles substitute your real club name + URL. When something breaks, plain-English error messages tell you what to do next, not stack traces.
No app store. Members open yourclub.poolsideapp.com on their phone, tap "Add to Home Screen" once, and it looks and feels like a real app with your club's icon. No App Store delays, no Apple/Google fees, no install friction.
Board members get their own door on the same app: members sign in on the front, and there's a "board members sign in here" link underneath. A board member who is also a member — most of them — can hold both and switch between them, and only the people you've approved ever see the board side.
Install Poolside on your phone, turn on push. Each board member has a role (treasurer, party chair, gate manager, etc.) and only gets buzzed about things matching their role. The party chair sees party requests; the treasurer sees payment alerts. The president can opt into everything or nothing.
Paid add-on. Members tap their phone at the gate, the app pings a compatible keyfob panel, gate opens. Setup starts at $1,200 and depends on what is already on your gate; monitoring is $75/mo. You send us photos of what you have, we look, then we call you with a straight yes or no and a written quote. Nothing is owed before that conversation. Most clubs skip this for year 1 — manual keys still work fine, and the rest of Poolside is plenty without it.
Your data lives in our Supabase Postgres database AND is mirrored to your Google Drive folder as PDFs (signed waivers) + a Sheet (roster). You own the Drive folder. If you cancel, you keep all of it. The mirror is one-way — deleting in Poolside never deletes from your Drive.
New treasurer signs up, old one gets deactivated, every record is exactly where the old treasurer left it. No "where did Karen save the spreadsheet" archaeology. No fighting over Venmo passwords.
Not happy in the first 30 days of a paid plan? Email doug@poolsideapp.com — full refund, no forms, no exit interview. We'd rather you find the right tool than feel stuck.
Built by a pool board member who got fed up. Every feature in Poolside came from a "wouldn't it be nice if…" from a real volunteer. Got an idea? A pet peeve? A workflow we missed? Tell us — we read everything.
Name your club, pick your URL, send your members the link. Your first season is free, no household limit. No card required to start. Cancel anytime — your data is yours.