You adopted a platform to make running the club easier. At first it did. Then the price went up, the feature you relied on appeared only on a higher tier, and when you looked into moving elsewhere you found that your Member records, your Subscription history and your whole website would need to be rebuilt from scratch. That is a familiar trap, and it is worth knowing in advance which parts of it Daviah avoids — and which parts it does not.

This guide works through the specific protections that are actually built into the product: what it costs to start, what happens if you stop paying, and what you can take with you if you leave. It also names the parts of the problem that are not answered here, because a guide that skips those is not much use to the person making the decision.

Starting costs nothing and asks for almost nothing

Signing up is free. No card number, no phone number, no domain to hand over — just a name, an email address and a password. You are not starting a free trial that expires; you are on the free plan, which has no expiry.

On the free plan you can build and save your club's entire website and view it through a private preview link. Nothing is published to the public until you choose a paid plan, and nothing disappears if the Committee takes months to decide.

That matters because the cost of evaluating most club software is hidden: you enter a card, a clock starts, and the pressure is on before you have seen enough to know whether the platform suits your club. Here the clock does not start until you decide to publish.

Month to month, with no contract to sign

Both paid plans run month to month. There is no annual contract required, and paying yearly is cheaper if you want it — but it is not a condition.

If a payment fails, nothing is withheld for ten days, and the club receives three emails before anything stops. That gives the Treasurer time to sort out an expired card without losing access to the office in the middle of a busy week.

What Daviah does not address here: prices rising unpredictably and everyday features sitting behind paywalls are not answered by these facts. There is no commitment to stable pricing and no guarantee that the price you pay today is the price you will pay in two years. That is a genuine gap, and this guide will not pretend otherwise.

Leaving does not mean losing your records

The part of the trap that is hardest to escape is data. When a club leaves most platforms, the Member records, payment history and website content go with the platform — locked away or exported in a format nobody can easily use.

If you stop paying, your records stay readable. The CSV exports — Members, Subscriptions, payments, officers — continue to work. Your site and office come back as you left them when you resume paying. There is no rebuild and no re-entry of years of Membership history.

This does not mean moving to a different platform is effortless. Rebuilding a full website elsewhere is still work. But the records that matter most to the Secretary and Treasurer — the Membership list and the financial record — are yours to take.

Reports and exports the Treasurer can actually use

Reports on Membership, officers, attendance and Subscriptions are counted live from the records in the office. When the Treasurer needs a number before a Committee meeting, it reflects what is in the records right now.

Members, dues, payments and officers can all be exported to CSV. That export works even when the account has lapsed, so the data is available to the person who needs it regardless of what is happening with the billing.

What this guide does not cover

Three parts of the pain clubs describe are real but are not answered here. Prices rising unpredictably and everyday features sitting behind paywalls are not addressed — there is no fact about pricing transparency or a commitment to stable pricing, so this guide cannot make that claim. The difficulty of learning the tools is not addressed. The rigidity of what tools allow — whether the platform will do things the way your club actually works — is not addressed here either.

Those are genuine concerns. If any of them is the deciding factor for your club, this guide is not the one that answers it. The overview linked below covers more of what Daviah does for clubs, which may help.

Questions

Do I need a card to try it?

No. Signing up is free and asks for no card, no phone number and no domain. You stay on the free plan until you choose otherwise, and the free plan never expires.

Can I build the whole site before I decide to pay?

Yes. On the free plan you can build and save the complete site and view it through a private preview link. It is not published to the public until you move to a paid plan, and nothing expires while you decide.

What happens to the club's records if we stop paying?

They stay readable. The CSV exports for Members, Subscriptions, payments and officers all continue to work. The site and office come back as you left them when you resume paying — there is no rebuild.

Is there a long-term contract?

No. Both paid plans run month to month. You can pay yearly at a lower rate if you want to, but there is no obligation to do so.

What can we export if we decide to leave?

Members, dues, payments and officers can all be exported to CSV at any time, including while the account is lapsed. That covers the records the Secretary and Treasurer need most.

Does Daviah guarantee stable pricing?

No, and this guide will not imply otherwise. There is no fact about pricing transparency or a commitment to stable pricing. That is a gap worth knowing about before you decide.

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