CourtReserve vs Facility Presence: An Honest Comparison for Racquet Clubs
CourtReserve's $159 plan covers eight courts. Most independent clubs run fourteen. Here is what each platform actually costs once court count and add-ons land, where badminton changes the math, and when CourtReserve is the better buy.
An operator emailed us at 11:40 on a Tuesday night. He had a CourtReserve quote open in one tab and his own spreadsheet in the other, and he wanted to know if he was reading the pricing page wrong. The number he kept pointing at was $159 a month. His facility has fourteen courts.
He was not reading it wrong. He was reading the wrong line. That $159 covers eight courts, and everything about the real cost of this decision lives in the gap between the plan you look at and the plan you end up on.
We build Facility Presence, so we have an obvious interest here. That is exactly why the numbers below come off CourtReserve's own published pricing page rather than off a sales deck, and why there is a section telling you when they are the better buy. If a comparison page will not say that, it is not a comparison.
Start with your court count, not the headline price
CourtReserve sells three tiers, and each one is gated by courts before it is gated by features. Launch is $159 a month billed annually, or $199 month to month, and includes eight courts. Advance is $329 annually, $369 monthly, and includes sixteen. Momentum is $499 annually, $549 monthly, for thirty-two.
Most independent racquet facilities we talk to run somewhere between ten and twenty courts. That count lands you on Advance, not Launch, before a single feature conversation happens. The operator emailing us at midnight was comparing his fourteen courts against a plan built for eight, which put his real annual figure closer to $3,948 than to the $1,908 he had written in his spreadsheet.
None of that is hidden. It is on the page in plain type. It just is not the number anyone remembers.
Where the number moves again
On Launch, several things you might assume are included carry their own monthly line. DUPR sync, USTA Connect, World Padel Rating, Swish, video recording, access control and the stringing module each run $25 a month. Flex Leagues is $99 a month. Marketing email includes 5,000 sends, with $5 for each additional 1,000.
Two items are worth flagging because operators consistently miss them. A branded mobile app under your own club's name sits on Momentum only, carries a one-time $499 setup fee, and comes with a one-year commitment. On Launch and Advance, your members download an app that carries "Powered by CourtReserve" co-branding. Branded domains are Momentum-only as well.
If your club's identity is the product you are actually selling, and for a lot of community-anchored facilities it is, that pushes you two tiers up.
The sport question that decides it for a lot of clubs
CourtReserve markets itself by sport, and the three sports it names are tennis, pickleball and padel. Badminton is not on that list.
This is not a knock on their engineering. It is a product decision, and a defensible one given where the North American market has grown fastest. But badminton does not behave like tennis on the software layer. A tennis club sells one-hour court blocks to named pairs. A badminton club on a Friday night is running open play across eight courts with forty people cycling through, a rotation someone is tracking on a whiteboard, and a queue that has to stay fair or the room notices within twenty minutes.
We built Facility Presence badminton-first for that reason. Drop-in open play runs on a live queue with fair court rotation, score confirmation and dispute handling, and standings that update from confirmed matches. Player ratings sync off those confirmed results rather than off a self-reported number. If your Friday night is the busiest thing your building does, that is the part that has to work.
Head to head on the things operators actually ask about
| What you are comparing | CourtReserve | Facility Presence |
|---|---|---|
| Sports positioned for | Tennis, pickleball, padel | Badminton-first, plus pickleball, tennis and multi-sport floors |
| Entry price | $159/mo annually, 8 courts included | Free tier for solo operators, then quoted on your facility |
| Court count at 14 courts | Advance tier, $329/mo annually | Not tiered by court count |
| Per-transaction fees | Integrated payments through their processor | None from us. Stripe's standard rates pass through with no markup |
| Integration add-ons | $25/mo each on Launch, bundled higher up | Included |
| Leagues module | Flex Leagues $99/mo on Launch | Included |
| Open play with live queue and rotation | Player match-maker across all tiers | Live queue, fair rotation, score confirm and dispute, standings |
| Unbranded member experience | Momentum tier, $499 setup, 1-year term | Public microsite under your club's name |
| Commitment | Monthly or annual subscription | Month to month |
| Data migration | Onboarding support and help center | Free white-glove migration |
When CourtReserve is the better buy
If you run a tennis or padel club, they have depth we do not match. Stringing, USTA Connect for WTN and NTRP, World Padel Rating and a long list of vendor integrations are all real, shipped and used by large facilities including USTA properties.
They have been at this since 2016 with a support organization, a user conference and a case study library behind them. We are in beta. If your buying committee needs a decade of references and a named account team on day one, take the meeting with them and take it seriously.
The clubs that come to us instead are usually the ones where badminton is half the floor or more, where open play is the revenue engine rather than a side program, and where the difference between a quoted price and a twelve-month invoice has already burned them once.
Questions we get on this comparison
Does Facility Presence publish a price?
There is a free tier for solo operators covering one location and 100 members, and paid plans are quoted against your actual facility. What we commit to in writing is the shape of it. No per-transaction fees, no markup on Stripe, month to month, and free migration on paid plans. If a quote from anyone, us included, will not tell you what month thirteen costs, that is your answer.
What actually breaks when we migrate?
The three things that break in every court software migration are prepaid package balances, family and household groupings, and bookings already sitting on next month's calendar. We handle migration ourselves rather than handing you a CSV template, and those three are the first things we reconcile. Ask any vendor you are evaluating to walk you through all three specifically before you sign.
Can we run badminton and pickleball on the same floor?
Yes, and that is closer to the norm than the exception now. Court rental with double-booking prevention, packages and credits that draw down at check-in, QR self check-in with attendance history, and CRM tags and segments all work across sports on one calendar. You are not running two systems or paying twice.
The honest test for either platform is the same. Bring your real schedule, your real package structure and your worst peak night, and make the vendor run it in front of you. If you want to do that with us, book a 15-minute demo and we will load your actual court calendar before the call starts. Bring the CourtReserve quote too. We would rather help you read it correctly than win on a number you misread.