A booking system you own, running alongside the marketplace that fills your courts. Playtomic is a player marketplace — it puts new players in front of your club. But the club that owns its customers, its payments and its repeat bookings is in a different position from the club that rents them. This page is an honest comparison for operators asking whether they need a Playtomic alternative — and, more often than not, the answer is both, with the right one as your system of record.
This isn't a better-or-worse table. A player marketplace is designed around the player's next game; a club platform is designed around your P&L. Read it as “which job do I need done right now?”
Scroll the table sideways to see both columns.
| Real Sports Bookings | Player marketplaces (e.g. Playtomic) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the customer | You doContacts, booking history and marketing consent sit in your own database, on every plan. | The player network is the platform's asset — which is exactly why it can send you players you'd never have reached. |
| New-player discovery | Through marketplace and partner integrations rather than a player app of our own. We don't bring you strangers. | Their strengthMatchmaking, open matches and a large local player base. |
| Branding at checkout | Your brandYour logo and your booking page on every plan — linked from your own website or embedded into it, both included. Serving it on your own domain, customer log-in and branded apps are Custom-plan items. | Players usually book inside the platform's own app and brand. |
| Sports and activities covered | Anything bookablePadel, tennis, football, classes, gym, academies, jetskis, boats, events — one calendar. | Deep focus on racket sports, padel above all — and genuinely better for it. |
| Payments | Your own gateway — Stripe, Checkout.com or Paymob — under your merchant account, settling directly to you. | Typically processed by the platform, then passed on to the club. |
| Pricing control | Peak and off-peak rates per resource, member rates, promotional windows, booking-window rules, add-ons at checkout. | Rate setting varies by market; marketplace pricing conventions apply. |
| Memberships & packages | Memberships, class packs and credit wallets, with balances spendable across courts, classes and coaching. | Varies by plan. A marketplace is built around the individual booking rather than a club's own membership base. |
| Classes, coaching & academies | On the same calendar as the courts, as classes with their own capacity and a coach calendar connected to the resource. | Court-slot booking is the core model. |
| Corporate & broker bookings | Staff hold the block on the calendar; a company's players can self-serve with an email-domain promo code. No on-account billing or broker login. | Outside the model — a marketplace sells to individual players. |
| Reporting | Utilisation by hour and resource, revenue by sport, channel and hour, finance-ready exports. | Booking and player reports, oriented to activity on the platform. |
| AI growth layer | Real Sports OS audits your online presence, ranks growth opportunities and drafts campaigns from your own booking data. Starter includes two audit reports; the full suite is on Pro. | Not part of their remit — growth comes from the network itself. |
| Pricing model | Starter free (50 bookings/month). Pro $49/month flat (500 bookings/month, 30-day free trial). Custom quoted for multiple branches, higher volume, your own domain and the AI booking assistant. No setup fee, no lock-in. | Commission and/or subscription — check their current terms for your market. |
We don't publish competitors' prices or screenshots: their plans change, and yours will be quoted for your market. The right-hand column is a general characterisation of player-marketplace platforms drawn from their public materials as of August 2026 — verify the details with them directly. Playtomic is a trademark of its owner; we are not affiliated with them, and nothing here is a statement about their service quality.
If a marketplace is filling courts you couldn't fill yourself, keep it. These are the three moments when operators tell us they wanted something different.
When people come for your club rather than for whichever court happens to be free, paying for discovery you no longer need is the expensive option. And every booking taken somewhere else is a chance for a regular to see a competitor's court on the way to yours.
Memberships, class packs and credit wallets are the strongest defence against a player drifting between venues. They have to live where you set the rates and own the renewal — on your own site, in your own checkout.
Coaching, academies, leagues, corporate blocks, the padel-plus-gym bundle. Once the offer is broader than an open slot, running it from one calendar and one set of reports is what saves your team hours a week.
Whether you're replacing a system outright or running alongside a marketplace, this is the sequence. It works mid-season without losing a booking.
We load courts, resources, opening hours, pricing rules and staff roles with you, on a call.
Customers, memberships, packages and every future booking come across from your current system.
Your team works the new calendar while the old one stays read-only. Nothing is live to players yet.
Your booking page goes live and payments switch to your own gateway. Old links redirect.
Yes, and many clubs do. Real Sports Bookings becomes your system of record; marketplace and partner integrations push availability out for discovery and drop confirmed bookings back into your calendar.
No. Customers, memberships, packages and all future bookings are imported during onboarding, and we run both systems in parallel before go-live.
If most of your bookings come from marketplace discovery and you're happy for the platform to own the player relationship, stay where you are — a network is doing real work for you. Come back when loyalty, memberships or a broader offer become the priority.
Lightly. Starter is free and covers 50 bookings a month. Pro is $49 a month and covers 500 bookings a month plus the full growth suite. Custom is quoted, and it is where the multi-branch and white-label items live: serving your booking page on your own domain, customer accounts and log-in, branded iOS and Android apps, the AI booking assistant, and custom integrations. Putting booking on your own website is not one of them — linking and embedding both work on every plan, including the free one.
Starter is free and Pro is $49 per month, flat, billed on bookings per month. A booking that arrives through a marketplace or is paid on-site counts the same as any other. You keep paying whatever the marketplace charges under their own terms.
Free to start, migration help included, live in about a week.