The best app for run clubs: what your club actually needs

Most comparisons of club apps lump a football team and a run club together. They are not the same. A team has a fixed roster; a run club is open: every week someone turns up who saw you on Instagram, knows nobody and only wants to know where, when and how to sign up.

So the question is not which app has the most features, but which one makes easy what happens to a run club every week.

The five things a run club's app must do

1. Sign up from a link, without installing anything. The link in your Instagram bio or group has to lead straight to the run. Every extra step (downloading an app, creating an account, asking to be added to a group) is people who never arrive.
2. Take payment in the same step. If the event, race or membership costs money, people pay when they sign up, from their phone. No bank transfers, no spreadsheets.
3. Know who is coming and check people in. Spots, a list of sign-ups and check-in on the day.
4. Be found. Whoever searches Google for "run club in your city" should find your page, with your days, times and what you have coming up.
5. Cost the club nothing. No monthly fee or commitment: a small club cannot pay for software.

WhatsApp or Telegram

It is where the club's conversation lives, and it should stay there. But it meets none of the five: there are no sign-ups, no payments, you don't know who will come and nobody outside finds you. It is for talking, not organising.

Strava

It is where many runners log their training, and its clubs let you create group runs with a meeting point, pace groups, a route and a cap on spots. But joining takes a Strava account and joining the club, and according to its help centre it doesn't take payments for tickets or memberships. It half meets point 3 and nothing else. It is perfect for what it is: sharing kilometres.

Spond

It is a very complete free app for teams: recurring events, attendance confirmation, chat and payments. It works very well when the group is fixed and each member is invited. For an open club, where someone new arrives every week, that closed-group model is exactly what holds you back.

Kibi

Kibi is built for open run clubs, and it meets all five:

1. Every run, event or race has its own link, and people sign up from the browser, or from the app if they have it.
2. People pay when they sign up with Apple Pay, Google Pay or card, and the money goes to the club's account. The same goes for memberships and shop products.
3. You see who is coming, cap the spots and check people in with a QR.
4. Your club has its own page on Google, with its schedule and upcoming activities, and appears on the run clubs page of its city.
5. No monthly fee or commitment. Free is free; paid items carry a 5% fee paid by the participant, so the club receives the full price.

So which one?

If you are four friends who go running, WhatsApp is enough. If you are a team with the same members every week, Spond works well. But if you are a run club, open to whoever wants to come, organising runs, events or races and wanting to grow, what you need is a sign-up platform: Kibi.

You don't have to drop anything: the chat stays in WhatsApp and the kilometres in Strava, which connects to Kibi. What changes is that signing up and paying becomes a link.

See how it works on Kibi's app for run clubs.