ClubShed vs Spond for equipment tracking

What Spond does well

Spond dominates grassroots club management in 2026 for good reasons. Its core strengths:

• Communication. Group messaging, push notifications, parents and players in one place. The single biggest reason clubs use it.
• Fixture and event management. Match scheduling, attendance, RSVPs. This is its bread and butter.
• Payments. Subs collection, match fees, tour payments. Spond Pay handles the mechanics.
• Member management. Player profiles, parent contacts, safeguarding fields. Critical for any FA-accredited club.
• It's free. The base tier is genuinely free, which matters enormously to volunteer-run clubs.

If you're not using Spond and you run a grassroots club, you probably should be. ClubShed doesn't change that recommendation.

Where Spond falls short on equipment

Spond has a basic asset/equipment feature, but it's an afterthought bolted onto the member management product. The specific gaps that hurt grassroots clubs:

• No QR codes. You can't print stickers with scannable codes for your bags and bins. Every check-out and check-in requires typing or searching.
• No condition tracking. An item is either listed or not. You can't grade it from 1-5 across seasons, so you can't see what needs replacing.
• No grant-ready audit report. The Football Foundation, FA Community Football Fund, and Sport England all want detailed equipment evidence for applications. Spond can't generate it.
• No seasonal structure. Equipment doesn't have a "start of season" snapshot, "end of season" audit, or "restock list" workflow.
• No bulk operations. Assigning 18 footballs across 4 teams takes 18 individual actions, not one.
• Not designed for the kit cupboard. The UX is desktop-shaped. Trying to add an item one-handed on a phone in a dim storage room is painful.

What ClubShed does well

ClubShed exists specifically because of those gaps. Its scope is deliberately narrow:

• Built for equipment, only. Every workflow is designed around the kit-cupboard reality: phone-first, one-handed, fast.
• QR sticker generation. Print a code for every bag, bin, and kit bag. Scan to check out or check in.
• Condition grading. 1-5 rating per item, tracked over time. Surfaces what needs replacing.
• Grant audit report. One-click PDF for Football Foundation, FA Community Football Fund, Sport England, and DACH/Spain equivalents. Built around what grant reviewers actually want.
• Seasonal structure. Pre-season restock mode, in-season tracking, end-of-season audit wizard.
• Bulk operations. Allocate 18 balls across 4 teams in three taps with "split evenly across teams."
• Audit log. Every check-out and check-in is timestamped. When something goes missing, you know exactly where to look.

What ClubShed deliberately doesn't do

Equally important to be clear about. ClubShed is not building these features. If you need them, use Spond:

• Player and parent communication
• Match scheduling and RSVPs
• Subs and fee collection
• Member profiles and safeguarding records
• Attendance tracking
• Tour and event payments

If a feature is more about people than about gear, Spond does it better. Trying to do both would make ClubShed worse at the thing it actually does well.

Total cost comparison

For a typical grassroots club with three teams running both tools:

• Spond: free (the base tier covers most clubs)
• Spond Plus (optional, for advanced features): around €5/month
• ClubShed Free: €0 for one team and 30 items
• ClubShed Club: €15.99/month for unlimited teams, items, and the audit report feature

If you're a small club, both tools are free. If you're a bigger club using everything, you're looking at roughly €21 a month combined. Compared to the cost of replacing six lost balls and a bibs set, the maths is straightforward.