Frequently asked questions
Including the parts where the answer is no. If you're weighing this up for a board, the “what it doesn't do” section is probably the most useful one.
Start free trialGetting started
How long does setup take?
Most communities have a working site and their first event live within an afternoon. Branding is colours and a logo, importing a roster is a spreadsheet upload, and amenities take about ten minutes. Connecting a custom domain adds however long your DNS takes to propagate. The getting started guide walks through it in the order that causes the fewest problems.
Do we need someone technical?
No. Gather Commons assumes the person administering it is a volunteer with a day job, not an IT professional. The only step that touches anything technical is pointing your own domain at the site, and that page tells you exactly which records to create.
Can we try it before paying?
Yes. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial. Your card is collected at signup but not charged until the trial ends, and cancelling before then means you are never charged at all.
What if we already have a website?
You can point your existing domain at your Gather Commons site when you are ready, and build the whole thing first so members never see a half-finished page. If you would rather keep your current site, you can use a subdomain instead and link between them.
Members and households
Can we import our existing member list?
Yes, from a CSV. Download the template first — it includes every column we read plus an example household. Column names are flexible, common variations are detected automatically, and you can correct the mapping before anything is saved. The summary afterwards accounts for every row and explains anything it skipped, by row number.
Our roster lists every family member on their own row. Does that work?
Yes, and it is the common case. Include a column saying whether each row is a primary member or a dependent, and a column naming which primary each dependent belongs to. Families are then grouped into households rather than becoming separate members — which matters because families usually share an email address, and separate members would collide.
Do children need their own logins?
No. Family members are recorded on the household and need no email address or login. Adults with their own email address get their own login, so a spouse can sign in and book without going through the account holder.
What happens when a child turns eighteen?
Open their household in the member list, add their email address, and give them their own login. If you recorded a date of birth rather than an age, their access to age-restricted amenities updates on its own — no action needed.
How are households counted for dues?
The member list shows households and total people separately. A family of four is one dues-paying household and four people using the pool, and both numbers get asked for at board meetings.
Reservations
Who is allowed to make reservations?
Your community decides, and courts and facilities are set independently. Each can be limited to the homeowner and their spouse, opened to any adult in the household, or opened to any active member. Courts default to any adult; facilities like the clubhouse default to homeowner and spouse, since they carry damage and liability.
Can we set an age limit for booking?
Yes. You set your own adult age — a swim club might use 16 for courts, an HOA clubhouse might want 21. Members with no age or date of birth on file are treated as adults, deliberately, because most imported rosters arrive without ages and locking those members out would be worse.
Can we stop members booking every good slot?
Yes. You can cap how many open reservations a household may hold at once, limit bookings per week, set how far ahead people can book, and set minimum and maximum durations. Those are usually more effective than restricting who can book at all.
Does it handle the pool and clubhouse as well as courts?
Yes. Pools, pavilions, clubhouses and picnic areas are amenities like any other, with their own rules, approval settings and calendar. Courts and facilities each get their own calendar view with day, week and month filters.
Can bookings require approval?
Yes, per rule set. Facility bookings can also require members to acknowledge your rules and liability waiver before the reservation is accepted.
Payments and pricing
What does it cost?
Core is $149 a month or $1,490 a year, and includes events, reservations, the member directory, documents, online payments and your own website. Premium is $249 a month or $2,490 a year and adds SMS notifications, waiting lists for events and courts, and sponsor tools. Pricing is flat per community rather than per household, so it does not grow as your community does.
Is there a setup fee or a contract?
Neither. No setup fee, no minimum term, and you can cancel yourself from Admin then Billing at any time — no phone call and no retention conversation. Cancelling stops future renewals and you keep access through the period you have already paid for.
Where does the money members pay us go?
Directly into your community's own Stripe or Square account. It never passes through us, so we are not holding your dues and there is no payout delay from our side. You connect your processor once and the funds are yours from the first transaction.
Can we still take cash and cheques?
Yes. Payments recorded outside the platform can be entered against a member, so your records stay complete even for households who will never pay online.
What it does not do
Is this accounting software?
No. You can collect dues, membership fees and event payments, but Gather Commons is not a general ledger and does not produce financial statements. Communities that need formal accounting keep a tool built for it and run Gather Commons alongside — that is a common and sensible arrangement.
Does it handle violations or architectural review?
No. Those are governance workflows and we deliberately do not have them. If your board's year is shaped by violation notices and architectural requests, a platform built for that will serve you better, and plenty of communities run one for governance and Gather Commons for everything members touch.
Is there a mobile app?
Not a native app in the App Store. Gather Commons is built mobile-first for the browser, because most members open it on a phone while standing somewhere — so it works properly on a phone without anything to install or update.
Do you support lesson booking and teaching pros?
No. Court reservation platforms built around lesson programmes and teaching professionals do that better than we do. Our reservations cover member booking of courts and other amenities: booking windows, time limits, prime-time rules, guest policy and conflict-free scheduling.
Your data
Who owns our member data?
Your community does. You decide what to collect and who can see it; we process it on your instructions to run the service. You can export it at any time, and after cancellation it stays available for a window so you can take it with you.
How do members sign in?
A link sent to their email — no passwords to set, forget or reset, which removes the most common support request a board deals with. Members can add a passkey afterwards to skip the email step entirely.
Is member information private?
The directory is private to signed-in members, and roles control what each person can see — someone can manage events without access to payments. Your public site shows only what you choose to publish.
What about children's information?
Swim teams and junior programmes mean most communities store information about minors. That data belongs to your community, and you control who can view it. You are responsible for any parental consent your jurisdiction requires — our privacy policy sets out how we handle it on your behalf.
Still deciding?
The comparison pages say plainly where another product is the better fit, which is usually more useful than another list of features. Or read getting started to see what setting up actually involves before you commit an afternoon to it.
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