Between September and February, a sailing club board decides what the next season will run on. The membership roster is in three places, a club boat gets double-booked, and someone says the club should get software. What is live is boat and fleet scheduling, certifications and endorsements with skipper level, crew assembly, the AI Sail Brief (AI-generated advisory; verify before sail.), the announcements digest, the membership roster, waivers (click-through acknowledgement), and self-serve creation with migration done by our team. Migration covers members and boats only. The search is how to choose club management software. The hard part is the meeting.
This guide is the meeting: who is in the room, which criteria change a vote, which risks to write down, and the questions to send every vendor, including us. The download is a board memo you can edit and attach. The eight jobs a system has to do live in the sailing club management software buyer's guide.
Nothing below is a case study, a logo, or a named club. This guide describes what is live today and does not re-check the product afterward.
Who has to be in the room
Club software is a consensus vote. A demo that satisfies only one of these three comes back to the table in March.
The commodore or club manager owns the operational pain: the clipboard, the double-booked boat, the certification that lives in someone's head. They need the club's rules enforced at the moment of a reservation.
The treasurer owns the number and the exit. They need a price they can type into a budget without a sales call, and a written answer for what the club takes with it if the vote ages badly.
The person who runs cruises and social sails owns boat and fleet scheduling, certifications and endorsements with skipper level, and crew assembly. Members do not vote the purchase. If they cannot book from a phone browser, the commodore stays the integration.
Four steps, in this order
1. Name three jobs, not forty. Pick the three failures from last season that cost a volunteer a weekend. Score those. Park the rest. A forty-line request produces a tie.
2. Score the incumbent. The spreadsheet, the Facebook group, and the corkboard are a vendor. Put them in a column. A tool that loses to "stay as we are" on the jobs you named is not ready, and a tool that only wins because the demo felt familiar has optimized for the meeting.
3. Split live from roadmap before anyone says yes. Ask for two lists, in writing. If the season you are planning depends on a roadmap row, the motion should say the row is not live. The motion carries no date.
4. Put paper on the agenda. The companion memo has the criteria, the risks, the questions, a blank column for the current system, a blank column for a second vendor, and Zeil's column filled in. Edit the header. The live-versus-roadmap section stays.
Criteria that change a vote
Six tests. A vendor who cannot answer one of them in a sentence has answered it.
Overlap-proof reservations. Two members must be unable to take the same club boat for the same hour. A warning dialog is a courtesy. Enforcement means the system refuses the second reservation. A spreadsheet cannot do this.
Eligibility at the reservation. Certifications and endorsements have to gate the booking. The club's safety record, if anyone asks who was qualified to skipper on a given date, should be a query. A name typed into a cell is not a qualification.
One roster the booking reads. The roster is read at the moment a reservation is made. A certification that lapses after a Saturday reservation already exists is a separate question: ask what happens to that reservation. A demo's implication is not the answer. A mailing list that only marks who has paid is a different product. Whether the system can model a household is a discovery question for every vendor, including us. Household billing is often the blocker; confirm it in your bylaws.
A price the treasurer can type in tonight. Zeil is $99, $199 or $349 a month. Dues and payments are on the roadmap. Collection is not live yet. When it is, members see a Booking fee of 2%, the same on every payment method, with the fee-inclusive total shown first. The club is the seller.
A price the budget can hold. Flat published monthly pricing can go into a spreadsheet tonight. Per-member pricing rises when a membership drive works. Quote-only pricing waits on a salesperson. ClubExpress, verified September 23, 2026, is about $0.42 per member per month at 200 members or fewer and about $0.30–$0.38 above that, near $136 a month at 400 members. Clubspot is a modern all-in-one (regattas, scoring, membership billing, point of sale, marina); as of July 30, 2026 its public page had no dollar figure.
A written way out. Ask what leaves with the club: members, boats, certifications, history. Per-person download and a full club file are different promises. Get the answer in writing, on the vendor's letterhead or in the contract, before the vote.
Risks worth a line in the minutes
A roadmap item treated as installed software. If the motion says "so we can stop double-booking the club boats," the motion has to say that boat and fleet scheduling is live. A roadmap with no date is a fair answer. Inventing a date, or treating "coming soon" as live, is not. Marina+ is waitlist-only. Not sold.
What a cruising or social club can use now is boat and fleet scheduling, certifications and endorsements with skipper level, crew assembly, the AI Sail Brief (AI-generated advisory; verify before sail.), the announcements digest, the membership roster, waivers (click-through acknowledgement), and self-serve creation with migration done by our team. Migration covers members and boats only. This guide does not give a beta date or a general-availability date, and it does not re-check the product. A vote that assumes scoring this fall is assuming something this guide does not offer.
Marina billing is a different purchase. Marina+ is waitlist-only. Not sold. Slips, moorings, and liveaboard billing are not part of this decision. The marina system you have stays in place.
The officer who just finished a migration. Free migration does not refund that work. Migration covers members and boats only. It does not include race results, standings, or past series. Offer a season of coexistence: Zeil on boats, eligibility, and crew; the newer system keeps billing, the website, or registration. Agree before the trial.
One volunteer as the integration. Name an owner, a backup, and the date the clipboard comes off the wall.
Proof you cannot check. Until a vendor can introduce a club that agreed to be named, "clubs like yours" is a sentence. We will not invent one.
Questions to send every vendor, including Zeil
Send these in writing. A live answer in a demo does not go in the minutes.
- Which of our three jobs are live in production today, and which are still on the roadmap?
- What, exactly, stops two members from reserving the same boat? Show the refusal, not the warning.
- If a certification lapses on Thursday, what happens to a Saturday reservation that was already made?
- Is collection live? Dues and payments are on the roadmap, not live yet.
- What is the published monthly price for a club our size, and which of those features are included as live?
- What will you migrate, what will you refuse, and who retypes the roster?
- If we leave in a year, what file do we receive, and is that file available today?
- May we speak with a club that agreed to be named? If the answer is no, say no.
The board memo download (hosted PDF) has these questions, a comparison table, and a suggested motion.
What Zeil will put in its own column
Here is Zeil's own answer, limited to what is live today. The memo's table is the copy a treasurer attaches. This is the same ledger, shorter.
Live. Roster, directory, roles. Club-owned boat scheduling; the database refuses a double-book. Certifications at reservation. Crew assembly with a minimum and a maximum. AI Sail Brief, skipper and crew variants, regenerated when the forecast shifts — an advisory, skippers decide, and every brief says "AI-generated advisory; verify before sail." Announcements and the weekly digest. Waivers are a click-through acknowledgement. Mobile web. Self-serve creation is included. Migration is a service done by our team. Migration covers members and boats only. It does not include race results, standings, or past series.
Not live. Dues and payments are on the roadmap, not live yet. A forecast shown on the reservation, and NOAA tides, are not claimed live. Guest registration is not claimed live. Self-serve subscribe is not claimed live. A per-member download, an audit-log viewer, and a full-club export are not claimed live. Sailing school and junior programs are not live.
Roadmap, with no date. Renewals, member segments, regatta registration, financial reports, QuickBooks, a native app, and school financials are on the roadmap, with no date. Race scoring is on the roadmap, with no date. It has not shipped. PHRF corrected-time math is on the roadmap, with no date. An in-product duty roster is on the roadmap, with no date. It is not live. Sailing school and junior programs are not live. Today Zeil has no member-boat registry, sail-number field, or full-club export. The PHRF column is on the roadmap, with no date.
Price. Zeil is $99, $199 or $349 a month, and every plan starts with a 60-day free trial. Founding Clubs are on the terms already published at /founding-clubs. Race scoring is on the roadmap, with no date. It has not shipped. Founding Clubs · pricing. Put your own officers' hours in the memo beside the price, because that's the cost a spreadsheet hides. Marina+ is waitlist-only. It is not sold, and it has no date.
FAQ
When should the board decide? September through February, with onboarding done before boats go in. A vote in April is a vote to run the coming season on the current system. Choose that, or choose a trial. Drifting into April is the third option, and the worst one.
Do we have to switch everything at once? A 60-day look fits roster, club boats, and eligibility. Race scoring is on the roadmap, with no date. It has not shipped. Marina+ is waitlist-only. Not sold. A club that just moved somewhere else can keep that system and add on-water operations beside it. Migration covers members and boats only. It does not include race results, standings, or past series.
What does the monthly price leave out? The monthly price is the subscription: $99, $199 or $349 a month. Dues and payments are on the roadmap, not live yet.
Is the AI making safety decisions? The Sail Brief informs the skipper. It does not approve, clear, or guarantee anything. The disclaimer is part of the product.
Where to go next
- Board memo PDF — fill both blank columns before the meeting. "Stay on the spreadsheet" counts. Download: https://zeilapp.com/choosing-club-software-board-memo.pdf
- Best sailing club software for volunteer yacht clubs · ClubExpress alternatives · Zeil vs ClubExpress — live Hoffman cluster. SailingClubManager alternatives · Zeil vs SailingClubManager — compare pages.
- Sailing club management software — the eight jobs and the scorecard.
- Next: boat and fleet scheduling, the membership roster, certifications and endorsements with skipper level, and crew assembly. An in-product duty roster is on the roadmap, with no date.
- Pricing · Founding Clubs.
Download the board memo — criteria, risks, questions for every vendor, and Zeil's column filled without a customer story. Download the board memo →
Author: Zeil crew.