Football club website — what it needs, what it doesn't, and the honest free-vs-paid tradeoff

1. Why your club needs a website (yes, you still do)

“We've got a Facebook page” is the most common reason clubs give for not having a website. The problem with that is threefold:

• Facebook isn't searchable. A parent Googling “[your town] U10 football” will not find your Facebook page. They'll find your competitors, or a website built ten years ago by a kid's dad.
• Facebook isn't a record. A 2018 fixture list disappears down the feed. A safeguarding policy isn't pinned forever. A photo gallery is impossible to navigate.
• Facebook isn't yours. Algorithm change, account suspension, policy update — your club's online presence shouldn't be one bad week at Meta away from disappearing.

A website is your club's permanent record — the place new parents find you, the place the FA looks for your safeguarding policy, the place your kit photos live. Facebook + WhatsApp are still useful for live announcements. They are not a substitute for the site.

2. The 8 things every club website needs

After the homepage, prioritise these eight. In rough order of how often visitors hit them:

1. Team pages — one per age group / squad, with coach name, training time, training venue, age criterion. This is the highest-traffic page on most club sites.
2. Contact + Join — a clear path to “how do I get my kid into your U9s.” A form, an email address, and a phone number for one named person.
3. Match info — fixtures, results, where games are played. Even a manually-updated page beats nothing.
4. News + match reports — ongoing posts. See match report template.
5. Safeguarding — mandatory if you have youth teams. Welfare Officer name + contact, FA policies, reporting routes. See safeguarding policy template.
6. About / committee — who runs the club, the mission statement, founding year, ground location.
7. Photo gallery — matchday photos, end-of-season presentations, kit launches. Drives engagement.
8. Online shop — kit, scarves, mugs. Even a small one. Easier than chasing cash, plus it's branding.

That's it. Eight pages or sections. You do not need more on a Day 1 site, and most successful grassroots websites still have only these eight 10 years in.

3. The 4 things you do not need

Spending budget on these is a common trap:

• A custom-coded site. Unless your treasurer is also a senior front-end engineer working pro bono, a custom WordPress build costs £1,500–5,000 and breaks the moment the volunteer who built it leaves.
• A full-fat fixtures + league table system on Day 1. Most clubs use the league's existing site (FA Full-Time, or the league's own portal) for fixtures + tables. A manually-curated “this Saturday” block on your homepage covers 80% of the parent need.
• A members-only login system. Tempting, but it dramatically raises the maintenance cost. Most things you'd hide behind a login (training updates, fixture changes) belong in WhatsApp anyway.
• A live-stream / video platform. Save it for non-league with actual broadcast demand. Grassroots video lives on the family WhatsApp, not the club site.

4. Free vs paid — the honest tradeoff

Most club website platforms have a free tier and a paid tier. The honest tradeoff between them, across the market:

The honest reality: a free tier is enough for 80% of grassroots clubs in their first 1–3 seasons. The paid tier becomes worth it once you (a) want your own domain, or (b) need to email more than ~30 parents a month, or (c) need to look more polished for sponsors. Until then, free is the right call.

5. The major UK platforms compared

Five names worth knowing — with honest assessments. (Yes, we're one of them. We've written detailed comparison pages you can read for our take.)

Pitchero

The market incumbent. Heavy on features (mobile app, payment collection, live commentary, video). Polished but template-heavy — many Pitchero sites look identical. The free tier is genuinely limited; most active clubs pay. Strong in non-league rugby/cricket as well as football. Full breakdown: GrassrootsFC vs Pitchero.

MyClubPro

Newer, slicker visually. Strong on team management + comms features. Pricing structure is per-team rather than per-club, which suits multi-team clubs differently. Full breakdown: GrassrootsFC vs MyClubPro.

Touchline

Premium-feeling, designed-up sites. Good for clubs that want a magazine-quality look. Pricier; less “just works” for non-technical committees. Full breakdown: GrassrootsFC vs Touchline.

WordPress / Wix / Squarespace (DIY)

Pros: total flexibility, no football-specific template. Cons: you build it. You also maintain it. Most clubs that start here end up on a football-specific platform within 2 seasons because no volunteer wants to debug a plugin update at 11pm before a cup final.

GrassrootsFC

Us. Built specifically for grassroots and youth clubs in the UK. Free tier covers the 8 essentials including team pages, online shop, photo gallery, news, contact, safeguarding, and an admin panel. Paid tiers add email newsletters (with consent / GDPR suppression built in), custom themes, and your own domain. Per-player privacy is the default, not an upsell — designed for youth football, where parental consent matters. Built by the team behind KiCKS and MyFootballJournal.

6. Domain names — what to call it

Three rules:

• Match your common name. If everyone calls you “Selby Town Youth”, that's the domain — selbytownyouth.co.uk. Don't try to be clever.
• .co.uk over .com for UK grassroots clubs. Cheaper, more idiomatic, and Google in the UK preferences regional TLDs for local searches.
• Hyphens are fine: selby-town-youth.co.uk works. Hyphens are not the SEO penalty people think they are.

Most platforms let you start with a free subdomain (selbytownyouth.grassrootsfc.co.uk) and upgrade to your own domain later — that's the right call. Spend the £9/year on a .co.uk through any registrar, then point it at the site when you're ready.

7. SEO basics for clubs

SEO — making sure people Googling your area find you — is mostly about getting four things right:

1. Page titles + descriptions — every team page should mention your town and the age group: “U10 Boys · Selby Town Youth FC”.
2. Real content, not just a logo and a phone number. Every team page wants ~150 words: training times, who the coach is, the spirit of the squad.
3. Schema markup — structured data the search engines can read (your platform should do this for you).
4. Backlinks from local sites — your league's site, the council park's facility page, local news. One mention from BBC Look North does more than 50 keyword optimisations.

Most platforms handle the technical SEO automatically. Your job is the content — real words, real photos, real names.

8. A 5-minute decision rubric

If you can answer these honestly, you know which way to go:

1. Will the person editing the site be a coach or a parent volunteer (not an IT pro)? — pick a football-specific platform, not WordPress.
2. Do you need to email more than 30 parents a month? — pick a platform with built-in email newsletters with suppression-list management. (Most don't. Check.)
3. Do you have youth teams? — pick something with built-in safeguarding consent + private-by-default player profiles. Don't roll this yourself.
4. Are you committed to your own domain? — check the platform's pricing for custom domains. Some include it. Some charge separately.
5. Do you need it live this weekend? — pick a free tier you can sign up to in five minutes. Migrate later if you outgrow it.