Where we lose,
in the same typeface.
Every comparison page here has a section called "where they beat us", and it isn't padding. ForeUP and Lightspeed have better tee sheets than we do. Jonas does club accounting we don't attempt. Lightspeed's POS is the best in golf. A spreadsheet is free and might genuinely be enough for a nine-hole course.
We're comfortable saying all of that, because the thing we're actually good at — running the maintenance side of a course that isn't a country club — is a gap none of them are trying to fill.
Twenty-one rows. We don't win all of them.
| Fairway | Jonas | Clubessential | ForeUP | Lightspeed | Teesnap | Club Prophet | Spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Money | ||||||||
| Price published on the website | Four tiers, all numbers, no form | Quote only | Quote only | Quote only | Quote only | Quote only | Quote only | Free, obviously |
| A free tier that isn't a trial | Up to 12 crew, forever | |||||||
| Month-to-month, no contract year | Usually annual or multi-year | Usually annual or multi-year | Usually annual or multi-year | Usually annual or multi-year | Usually annual or multi-year | |||
| Fits a municipal parks budget | Often, at the low end | Genuinely muni-friendly pricing | ||||||
| Maintenance & labor | ||||||||
| Crew & shift scheduling | The core of the product | Module exists; rarely the reason people buy | Yes — until somebody's on holiday | |||||
| Job board with photo proof | ||||||||
| Geofenced time clock | Via the payroll module | |||||||
| Equipment & service log | A binder in the shop, usually | |||||||
| Certification expiry tracking | Blocks unlicensed spray assignment | |||||||
| Spray records & re-entry timers | The binder again | |||||||
| Course map with operational layers | GPS on carts, member-facing | |||||||
| Payroll-shaped export from the clock | CSV with overtime split out, and every punch behind it | It is a spreadsheet | ||||||
| Front of house | ||||||||
| Tee sheet & booking | Real sheet for members and the pro shop. No public online booking, no dynamic pricing, no GolfNow | Genuinely excellent | Genuinely excellent | |||||
| Point of sale & inventory | A reader can settle an invoice at the counter, and members order to the turn. No till, no drawer, no inventory | Best in the category | Very deep | |||||
| Member dues & statements | Plans that bill on a schedule, invoices, aging, card payment. No stored-card autopay, no minimums | Deep, and built for complex club accounting | ||||||
| Member portal in your club's colours | Your name, your mark, one line of ours at the foot | The best member app in the category | ||||||
| Events & tournament sign-ups | Capacity, waitlists, guests | |||||||
| Food & drink ordered from the course | A kitchen ticket rail, not a POS | With the till behind it | ||||||
| Handicap index on the member's record | Typed in from GHIN by a person. No automatic sync — the USGA licence is the club's | Syncs with GHIN | ||||||
| Full club accounting / GL | Not attempted. Use your accountant's system | This is what Jonas is for | ||||||
| Getting in & out | ||||||||
| Live in a morning | Weeks to a quarter | Weeks to a quarter | Weeks to a quarter | Weeks to a quarter | Weeks to a quarter | |||
| Self-serve full data export | One click, no support ticket | Usually via support | Usually via support | Usually via support | Usually via support | Usually via support | Usually via support | |
| Open API and signed webhooks | Scoped keys you make yourself, in about ten seconds | Usually a paid integration project | Usually a paid integration project | Usually a paid integration project | Usually a paid integration project | Usually a paid integration project | Usually a paid integration project | |
| Calendar feed of your own shifts | An .ics link for Apple, Google or Outlook | |||||||
| Imports a photo of the whiteboard | Needs the AI helper connected | |||||||
| Single sign-on with your own directory | Championship tier — OpenID Connect, token signatures verified | |||||||
| Fit | ||||||||
| Works on the crew's own phones | Member app, yes; crew app, no | Member app, yes; crew app, no | Member app, yes; crew app, no | Member app, yes; crew app, no | Member app, yes; crew app, no | Member app, yes; crew app, no | ||
| Shared labor pool with nearby courses | Nobody else offers this | |||||||
| Several courses from one login | Championship tier — a switcher and a rollup across every property | Multi-property is core to them | Long track record with operators | |||||
| Built for a private club with 800 members | It'll work. It isn't who we designed for | Exactly who they designed for | ||||||
Assessments are ours, based on public product documentation, published reviews and reseller material as of August 2026. These products change; if we've got something wrong about yours, tell us and we'll correct it. We don't claim a competitor lacks a feature we simply couldn't verify — those are marked partial rather than no.
The version with actual sentences in it.
The most established club management system in golf, and the right answer for a large private club. It was never built for a municipal 18, and its pricing says so.
Full club accounting and general ledger — this is Jonas's core competence and we don't attempt it.
A polished suite with one of the better member apps in the category. Also priced and sold for private clubs, and bundled in a way that makes 'just the bit we need' hard to buy.
Member experience: the app, the website tooling and the communications suite are more mature than ours.
A genuinely good tee sheet and POS for public and daily-fee courses — and one we'd happily sit alongside. It just isn't a maintenance system, and doesn't claim to be.
Tee sheet and booking: mature, well-understood by staff, and better than ours — we have a sheet now, but golfers can't book on it from the public internet and there is no dynamic pricing.
Probably the best point of sale in golf, wrapped around a strong tee sheet. Excellent at what it does; the economics live in payment processing.
Point of sale — genuinely best-in-category, with real retail depth, inventory and hardware. We don't have a till at all.
The incumbent that most understands municipal budgets, and the one whose customers look most like ours. Credit where it's due — they priced for this segment before anyone else did.
Tee sheet and booking for public and municipal courses, including the public-facing side of it that we simply don't have — our sheet serves members and the counter, not a stranger with a phone.
Deep, configurable, and capable of running an entire club. Also the reason people say 'we'll need a consultant for this.'
Breadth: POS, tee sheet, membership, F&B, inventory and reporting in one suite. We don't attempt most of that list.
What most courses actually use, and it works better than software people like to admit. It's free, it's flexible, and everyone can read it. The failure is never day one — it's month eight.
Free, and already installed on every machine in the building — no purchase order, no vendor review, no login for anyone to forget.
Or skip the reading and open the demo.
A real municipal course with a real Tuesday in it. No form, no sales call, no countdown.