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Going live
Going live is the moment your pilot club becomes a real, permanent RunClub HQ club. We call it promotion, and it is one switch: the pilot band comes off, your site becomes visible to search engines, the login limit is lifted, and your subscription starts. Nothing moves, nothing is rebuilt, and no member has to do anything.
This page covers what you work through before that switch, what changes the moment we flip it, and how billing works afterwards.
Who can do this?
The readiness work below belongs to your club's Club Admin — the person we set up as your first login. Promotion itself is ours: only RunClub HQ can move a club from pilot to live. See Roles & Permissions.
Step 1: tell us when you want to go live
There is no button on your side, and no deadline you can miss by accident. Email us, or reply to whoever set you up, and say roughly when you want to launch.
Most clubs pick a date with something behind it — the start of a season, the opening of renewals, a committee meeting where the decision gets minuted. Working backwards from a real date makes the rest of this page much easier to schedule.
Step 2: work through the readiness checklist
We go through this list with you before promoting anything. Most of it is work you will have done during the pilot anyway; the point of the list is that nobody discovers a gap the week after launch.
| Ready when | Why it matters | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Your branding is set | Members recognise the emails and the site as your club's | Settings → Branding |
| England Athletics is connected and your roster imported | Your affiliated members carry their URNs and registration status from day one | Settings → Branding, then Members → EA Review |
| Everything you are bringing with you has arrived | So nothing is still on the old system on launch day | Moving your club to RunClub HQ |
| A season exists with at least one fee | Nobody can take out a membership without one | Subscriptions |
| Your committee can sign in | The people who run the club should not meet RunClub HQ on launch day | Running a pilot |
| One real member has joined, end to end | Proves the journey your members will take actually works | Running a pilot |
| A couple of real events are published | An empty diary is the fastest way to lose a member's attention | Events |
| Your homepage has been reviewed | It is the first page anyone sees once you are indexable | Build your club website |
| Payments are decided | Either GoCardless is connected, or you have chosen to stay on manual payments — see Step 3 | Payments |
| Your sending identity is decided | Either your own email domain is verified, or you have chosen to stay on our shared sending — see Step 4 | Custom Email Domain |
| Your custom domain is verified, if you have one | So the site is live at the address you will publicise | We do this with you |
| Test members created during the pilot have been reviewed | So your first real member count, and your first invoice, are honest | We do this with you |
| Payment to RunClub HQ is set up | Your subscription is on file and your first invoice is settled, so nothing about billing is a surprise later | We do this with you |
Nothing here is a hard gate. Plenty of clubs launch without a custom domain, and some launch with three events rather than a full season's diary. If an item does not apply to your club, say so and we will note it.
Step 3: decide how you will take money from members
This is the decision with the longest lead time, so make it early.
- GoCardless Direct Debit. Your club opens its own GoCardless account and connects it to RunClub HQ. Members set up a Direct Debit once and renewals collect themselves. Verification takes GoCardless a few days, so start it a fortnight before you want to launch. Read Payments for the setup. If your club already collects through its own GoCardless account, the mandates your members already signed come across — see From GoCardless.
- Stay on manual payments. RunClub HQ still raises every invoice and tracks who has paid; you collect by bank transfer or cash and mark payments off. This is a perfectly respectable answer, and several clubs run this way for a season before switching.
You are not locked in either way. What matters is that the answer is deliberate before your first real membership is sold, rather than discovered by a member at the payment step.
Step 4: decide where your email comes from
By default your club's email goes out through our shared sending infrastructure, which means your delivery reputation is pooled with every other club's. You can take it into your own hands by verifying your own domain with a few DNS records — see Custom Email Domain.
Do this shortly before you go live, not on day one of a pilot. Your members' first real emails then arrive from your own address, and your reputation starts building against your own name.
Step 5: we promote your club
Promotion takes a few seconds and needs nobody logged out. We will tell you when it is done, and it is worth having someone check your public site and one member's dashboard straight afterwards.
What changes the moment we promote you
| On a pilot | Once you are live | |
|---|---|---|
| The pilot band across the top | Shown on every screen | Gone |
| The pilot line on every email | Added to every message | Gone |
| Search engines | Blocked — your site carries a "do not index" instruction | Indexable |
| Member logins | Capped, usually at 25 | No limit |
| Online payments | Off | On, if you have connected a provider |
| Billing | Free | Your subscription starts — see Your subscription |
| Your data | — | Unchanged. Every member, event, invoice and page carries over |
Our terms do not change. There is no separate pilot agreement: the terms have applied in full since the day your pilot started, and what changes at promotion is that your subscription begins. Your data and configuration are untouched — going live is a switch we flip, not a migration you redo.
You can still hide your site while you finish it
Being live means search engines are allowed in, not that you have to be ready for them. Settings → Branding → Discourage search engine indexing asks them to stay away for a while longer. As on every platform that offers this, it is a request rather than a guarantee, and it does not make a page private.
How billing works
Your subscription starts on the day we promote you. Everything below is what you are agreeing to; if any of it does not suit your club, tell us before we promote rather than after.
You are invoiced in advance. Monthly by default, or annually if your treasurer would rather handle one payment a year. The annual price is twelve times the monthly price — the same money, fewer invoices. There is no discount for paying annually, and no discount for anything else either; the published price is the price.
All prices include VAT.
| Tier | Members | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Small | Up to 100 | £30 a month |
| Medium | 101–250 | £50 a month |
| Large | 251–500 | £80 a month |
| Extra Large | 501 or more | £120 a month |
Your tier comes from your paid membership, averaged over time. We count members who hold a paid subscription, take the average over the previous twelve months (or over however long you have been with RunClub HQ, if that is shorter), and read the tier off the table above. A busy summer of new joiners does not push you up a band on its own.
Your tier is only ever reassessed at a billing period boundary — the start of a month for a monthly subscription, the anniversary for an annual one. It never changes in the middle of a period you have already paid for, and a change is announced on the invoice that first applies it.
How you pay. Today, by bank transfer quoting the invoice number; our bank details are on the invoice and on your subscription page. Direct Debit through GoCardless, which we collect ourselves once you have authorised a mandate, is coming and will be much less work for your treasurer — we will tell you when you can set it up. There is no card option.
Where you see all of this. Your tier, list price, what you pay, any discount, the next invoice date, how to pay and every invoice you have been sent are on Settings → Your subscription in your admin panel — see Your subscription. Every invoice shows the net amount, the VAT and the total, with our VAT registration number.
You can cancel at any time, with no penalty and no notice period. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for; nothing further is invoiced, and you keep the service until that period ends.
If an invoice goes unpaid, you will get reminders first — to your billing contact and to your club's admins. If it is still unpaid after 30 days a notice appears across your admin panel and we get in touch. Suspending a club — which pauses access and outbound email, and deletes nothing — is a decision a person makes after talking to you, never something that happens automatically, and everything is restored as soon as the invoice is paid. We would much rather hear that money is tight than suspend anybody, so tell us early if there is a problem.
What to expect in your first few weeks
- A rush of logins. The login limit lifting is usually the first thing members notice. Expect a wave of magic-link emails, and a handful of people who cannot find the one they were sent — check your Support Tickets queue daily for the first fortnight.
- Duplicate records. Some members will sign up fresh rather than claim the record you imported, usually because they used a shortened name or mistyped a date of birth. Merge them from the members list as they appear; it is a two-minute job each and much easier than a clean-up later.
- Your first real payments. If you have connected GoCardless, watch the first collection run end to end. Read Payments for failed payments and refunds before you need it, not after.
- Search engines arriving. Your site will start appearing in results within a week or two, usually beginning with your homepage and event pages.
- The first renewal season. This is the big one, and it has its own page: Your first renewal season.
Getting help
Going live is something we do with you, not something you do alone. Ask about anything on this page before you commit to a launch date — see Getting help for how to reach us and what to include.