Walk into almost any football, swimming or padel academy in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh or Doha and ask how the club runs. The answer is usually the same: an Instagram page, a WhatsApp group per age group, a spreadsheet of who has paid this term, and a coordinator who answers "is there space in the Saturday under-9s?" forty times a week.

At some point someone says "we need a proper website". This post is about choosing what to build it with. It's for the club manager or academy owner making that call, whether or not you ever use the tool I work on (Mythex, an AI app builder).

A club site is not a brochure

A brochure site tells people who you are. A sports club site has to do work. When you list what parents, members and coaches actually come to the site for, it looks like this:

  • Programmes and term fees. Which age groups, which days, which venue, how much per term or per month, and whether there's a sibling discount.
  • Sign-up and trial sessions. A parent registers one or more children, picks a programme, and you get the details you need (date of birth, medical notes, emergency contact, consent).
  • Class and court booking. Swimming lessons with limited places, padel courts by the hour, a holiday camp that fills up.
  • Coach rosters. Which coach is on which session, and who covers when someone is off.
  • Parent accounts. A parent sees their children, their schedule, what's been paid and what's due, without messaging the office.
  • Staff views. An attendance list on a coach's phone, a payments overview for the manager.
  • Arabic and English. Many Gulf families read Arabic first, many expat families read English first, and both pay the same fees.

The first item is a brochure. Everything after it needs a database, sign-in and rules about who sees what. That is the line that decides which kind of tool you're choosing.

The three options

1. Off-the-shelf club management software

There are many products built for sports clubs and academies: registration, recurring billing, attendance, a parent app.

Choose this when your club works the way the product expects: fixed terms, standard age groups, monthly or termly billing, and you're happy for parents to download another app.

Watch for: per-member or per-athlete pricing that grows with every child you sign up, an Arabic interface that's partly translated, a public website that's a generic template on the vendor's subdomain, and how hard it is to export your members if you leave.

2. A general website builder (Wix, Squarespace and similar)

They're good at a clean public site with photos, programme pages and a contact form, and most have booking or membership add-ons.

Choose this when you mainly need to be found and look credible, and registrations can stay on a form plus WhatsApp.

Watch for: add-ons that handle "a customer books a class" but not "a parent manages three children across two programmes with different term fees". Right-to-left support also varies, so test an Arabic page on a phone before you commit.

3. A custom app built with an AI app builder

You describe the club in plain language and the builder creates a working web app with its own database: a public site, a parent area and a staff area, built around how your club actually runs. You change it by describing the change.

Choose this when your rules don't fit a product (mixed academies and court rentals, sibling discounts, term fees prorated from week four, coaches who work at two venues), or when per-member pricing is starting to hurt.

Watch for: you own the decisions. Nobody hands you a finished feature list. Someone at the club has to write down how things work and check what was built.

The criteria that matter in the Gulf

Ask vendors to show you, not tell you.

Arabic and right-to-left. It's not enough that the text is translated. The whole layout should mirror: navigation, icons with direction, tables, form fields. Ask for an Arabic demo on a phone.

Payments in AED, SAR or QAR. Can parents pay term fees online, in your currency, with the cards they use (including Mada in Saudi Arabia)? Can you take partial payments or instalments? Which payment providers does it work with? In the region that usually means Stripe (where it operates), Tap, Checkout.com, Telr, PayTabs or HyperPay.

Parent accounts. One parent, several children, one place to see schedules and what's owed. If every child needs a separate login, parents will go back to WhatsApp.

Personal data and where it lives. You'll hold children's names, dates of birth and sometimes medical notes. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all have personal data protection laws, and some sectors and government-linked bodies have their own rules on where data may be stored. I'm not a lawyer and this post isn't legal advice: ask any vendor where the data is hosted, who can access it, and how you'd delete a family's records on request, then check the answer against what applies to your club.

WhatsApp. Your parents live on it. At minimum, every page should have a click-to-chat button that opens a WhatsApp chat with the right coordinator. Sending automatic messages (reminders, payment confirmations) through WhatsApp is a different thing: it needs the WhatsApp Business Platform through Meta or a provider, approved message templates, and a cost per conversation.

Cost per member. Work out what each option costs at today's member count and at double it. Per-member pricing is simple at 80 members and noticeable at 400. A flat monthly price plus payment provider fees behaves differently.

What building it with an AI app builder looks like

Here's the short version in Mythex. It builds fully in Arabic, right-to-left included, and you can write your prompts in Arabic or English.

The first prompt carries most of the weight, so put your real rules in it:

Build a website and member app for a football and swimming academy in Dubai. Public pages: home, programmes (by sport and age group, with days, venue and term fee in AED), coaches, and a "book a free trial" form. Parents sign up, add their children (name, date of birth, medical notes, emergency contact), and register each child for a programme. Arabic and English, Arabic by default and right-to-left. Add a WhatsApp button on every page that opens a chat with the club.

Then add the parts the first build won't guess:

Add a parent dashboard. Each parent sees their children, each child's sessions this week, the term fee for each programme, and what's paid and what's due. A second child in the same programme gets 10% off. Parents can only see their own family.

Add a staff area. Coaches see their sessions for today with the list of children and can mark attendance from a phone. Managers see all programmes, how full each one is, and unpaid fees by programme. Coaches cannot see payments.

Add padel court booking: two courts, one-hour slots from 7am to 11pm, members book up to 7 days ahead and non-members up to 2 days ahead. Show the price in AED, and block a slot as soon as someone books it.

After each step, sign in as a parent, a coach and a manager and try to see something you shouldn't. If you can, describe what you saw, not the fix you imagine.

What the team gets

  • A real database with your members, children, programmes, bookings and attendance, plus file storage for documents.
  • Members-only pages for parents and staff, with roles.
  • Your own domain (something like club.youracademy.ae) from the Pro plan.
  • On the Business plan: a shared team workspace for club staff, roles for who can edit the app, members-only apps, and single sign-on with your company domain.
  • The code, which you can export or sync to GitHub if you ever hand it to a developer.

Honest limits

  • Payments need a provider you set up. The app can show fees and record payments, but taking cards means opening an account with Stripe, Tap, Checkout.com or similar, completing their checks, and connecting your keys. The provider's fees are separate.
  • It's a web app, not an App Store app by default. Parents open it in the browser and can add it to their home screen. If you need a listing on the App Store and Google Play, plan that as a separate project.
  • WhatsApp automation needs its own account. Click-to-chat buttons are easy. Automatic WhatsApp messages need a WhatsApp Business Platform account and approved templates.
  • Check hosting against your data obligations. Mythex hosts apps and databases outside the Gulf today. For most clubs that's fine; if your club is tied to a body with residency requirements, check before you start.
  • You own the requirements. When the term structure changes or you add a new sport, someone at the club describes the change. It's much less work than maintaining spreadsheets, but it isn't zero.

For club staff and multi-branch academies

If more than one person will run the system (an operations manager, a coordinator per venue, a finance person), set it up as a team from day one. Give each venue's coordinator access to their own programmes, keep payments visible only to finance and management, and decide who is allowed to change the app itself. One person should own changes; everyone else sends them requests.

The sports club website builder page has more on what a club site needs. Plans are on the pricing page: there's a Free plan to try a build, Pro is $25/month, and Business, for a shared staff workspace with members-only apps and SSO, starts at $50/month.

Whichever option you choose, write your club's rules down on one page first. That one page will tell you whether a product fits, whether a website builder is enough, or whether you need something built around you. If your club has a rule that doesn't fit any of these, describe it in the comments and I'll suggest how I'd handle it.