Your tee times are yours. We never take or trade them.
Some of the best known booking platforms are cheap, or free, because the club pays in tee times instead of cash. A block of prime inventory goes to the vendor and is resold on a discount marketplace. We do not do that. You keep the whole sheet, you set every price, and the software is funded by a published subscription from $99/mo. This page also sets out exactly how we are paid, because a promise about money is worth very little if it only covers the part that flatters us.
The barter model is the hidden cost of free golf software. A platform goes in at little or no upfront cost, then takes a number of tee times each day, week, or season as payment. Those times are resold on a third-party discount site, often under your own rate, to golfers who may never come back at full price. The club loses its best inventory, teaches its local market to wait for a discount, and ends up competing with its own tee sheet.
It is seldom cheaper. Add up the prime slots surrendered over a season, the rate erosion from public discounting, and the brand cost of appearing on a bargain site beside courses you would never compare yourself with, and the free platform is usually the most expensive thing on the table. The fee did not go away. It moved from a line you can see into inventory that is hard to count.
Our arrangement is the opposite, and it is written into the terms: we never take, trade, resell, or discount your tee times, and we never list your course on a third-party marketplace. Every slot stays yours to fill, hold, price, or give away. There is nothing in how we are paid that improves if your Saturday morning goes to a bargain hunter at half rate.
The rest of the money question is short. The subscription is how we are paid, and that is the whole of it: no commission on a booking, no share of a green fee, and no markup added to your card payments. Where a club takes cards through the platform, Stripe charges its own processing rate and that money goes to Stripe, exactly as it would if you contracted with them directly. A club that prefers its own processor can bring one. We would rather set this out in a paragraph than let a prospect wonder which line is the real one.
What you keep, and how we are paid
Any vendor will tell you the first half. The second half is where the barter model hides, so it belongs on the same page.
What stays with the club
Your inventory and your rates
None of this is negotiable and none of it varies by tier.
- Every tee time on the sheet, including peak weekend mornings
- The rate card, and the right to discount or not discount as you choose
- Member pricing, category rules, and advance-booking windows
- Demand-based pricing, where you run it, at rates you set
- Lottery and waitlist allocation on your own priority rules
- Guest and visitor policy, including who may bring whom and at what rate
- Online booking on your own domain, in your branding
- The member relationship, and the data behind it
How Links Meridian is paid
Stated in full
Two things, both published, and neither of them your tee sheet.
- A subscription per club, published by tier on the pricing page in your currency
- One published add-on, an additional course for clubs on a flat-rate tier
- Stripe's own processing rate on card payments, paid to Stripe rather than to us
- No markup added by us on top of that rate
- Clubs may bring their own payment processor instead
- No tee times taken, at any tier, on any plan, ever
- No commission on a booking, a green fee, or a member's spend
- No fee for exporting your data or for leaving
The outcome for your club
The whole sheet stays yours
Not one slot is handed over as payment. Every tee time stays on your sheet for you to fill, hold, or price as you decide, including the ones you would never discount.
You set every price
Nobody publishes your prime times under your rate card. Your pricing stays yours, including member rates and any demand-based pricing you run.
Your course is not on a bargain site
You never appear on a third-party discount marketplace next to courses you would not compare yourself with. Your rate card and your brand stay where you put them.
The cost is a line you can read
A published subscription from $99/mo, and nothing added on top of your card processing. Both of those are countable. Surrendered inventory is not, which is the whole difficulty with it.
Our incentives point the same way as yours
We earn the same whether your Saturday is full or empty, so there is never a reason for us to want your best times sold cheaply somewhere else.
It is in the contract
The no-traded-tee-times commitment is in the terms, not only in the marketing. Ask for the clause before you sign, and hold us to it afterwards.
Five ways a golf platform can be paid, and what each costs a club
What a platform costs matters less than which of these five it uses to collect it.
Most vendors use more than one of these, and the trouble is rarely the model itself. It is that only some of them appear on an invoice. A commission and a processing rate can be compared between suppliers. Surrendered inventory cannot, which is exactly why it is the one worth refusing.
How free software gets expensive
The deal looks good in January
Little or nothing to pay up front, and the times being given up are described as spare capacity you were unlikely to sell anyway.
The times taken are the good ones
Spare capacity in practice means Saturday and Sunday mornings, because that is the inventory the marketplace can actually sell.
Your rate appears in public, lower
The same round is listed under your own rate card on a site anyone can find, including the members and visitors who would have paid it in full.
The market learns to wait
Local golfers work out that the discount site is cheaper than your own booking page, and your direct bookings start moving there.
The renewal arrives
By now the marketplace holds a share of your demand as well as your times, and leaving means losing both at once. That is the point of the arrangement.
What it actually cost
Total the surrendered slots at your own rate, add the erosion on everything else, and compare it with a published subscription. The free option is usually the dearer one.
Barter-model platforms vs Links Meridian
What's included
Common questions
Does Links Meridian take or resell our tee times?
No. We never take, trade, resell, or discount your tee times, and your course is never listed on a third-party marketplace. You keep the whole sheet and set every price, and the commitment is in the terms as well as on this page. It holds on the cheapest plan and during the trial exactly as it does on the largest.
What is the tee-time barter model?
It is how some free or very cheap golf platforms are paid. Instead of a cash fee they take a block of your tee times, usually the ones that sell, and resell them on a discount marketplace at a rate you did not set. The club gives up its best inventory and, over a season, teaches its local golfers that the cheapest way to play there is not through the club.
So how do you make money?
One way: the subscription. A fixed amount per club per month by tier, published openly and quoted in whatever currency the club is billed in. There is no commission on a booking, no share of a green fee, and no markup added to your card processing. When a club takes cards through the platform, Stripe charges its standard rate and that goes to Stripe, the same as it would under a direct contract with them, and a club that would rather use its own processor can. None of that is your tee sheet, and none of it moves when your Saturday gets busier.
Why go into how you are paid at all on this page?
Because a page that only listed the ways we are not paid would be running the same trick it is complaining about. The argument here is that a club should be able to see the whole cost of its software and compare it against another quote. That argument only holds if we apply it to ourselves, so: one subscription, published by tier, plus whatever Stripe charges you directly for processing. Every part of that is visible and comparable. Surrendered inventory is neither, which is the actual point.
Is the barter model really more expensive than a subscription?
Usually. Total the surrendered slots at your own rate over a season, add the erosion on the rounds that now sell at a discount, and add the ones that moved from your booking page to somebody else's. Compare that with a published monthly figure. The result is not close for most clubs, and the reason the arrangement survives is that the first number never appears on an invoice while the second one does.
Do all the features come with every tier?
Whatever your tier lists, you get all of it for the tier price, and nothing inside it is charged as a module. Tiers are not identical, and pretending otherwise would only annoy you later: the entry plan is a working tee sheet and member record, while lottery and waitlist arrive at Standard, rain checks and the check-in kiosk at Professional, and demand-based pricing at Enterprise. The pricing page has the full grid. What does not vary by tier is any of the commitments on this page.
Can you migrate us off a barter-model platform?
Yes, and it is worth knowing how. Member records import through a staged migration that analyses your file, shows you the proposed mapping, runs, reconciles against your source totals, and can be rolled back. Awards, Course Records, event results, tee-time history, future bookings and pricing rules come across the same way. Because you see the proposed mapping before anything is written and the dry run reports what would change without changing it, you can check a season of bookings against your old system before you commit to the switch.
Do you have an API we can integrate with?
Not yet, and you would find that out within a week of asking, so here it is first. The interface our own apps run against is versioned and documented, but it only recognises a logged-in member or member of staff. Nothing issues a credential to an outside developer, and there is no authorisation server for one to authenticate against, so a third-party integration cannot be built on it today. It is first on the build queue. Meanwhile the practical routes into and out of the platform are file export in standard formats and the accounting link described on our data-ownership page. The commitment stays listed because we mean to keep it.
What should we ask our current provider?
Four questions. How many of our tee times do you take, in a normal week and a peak week? Where do those times get resold, and at what rate against our own card? What happens to the golfers who book through that channel, do we get their details? And what does it cost us to stop? The answers are usually more revealing than any feature comparison.
Would you ever start taking tee times?
No. It is in the terms, and it is not the sort of commitment a company walks back quietly, because the whole argument for buying from us rests on it. Changing it would mean putting a new agreement in front of you and asking you to sign it. The practical reassurance is structural though: our revenue is a subscription per club, so a busy tee sheet at your prices is worth more to us than a discounted one at somebody else's.
Do we keep the relationship with golfers who book online?
Yes. Booking runs on your own domain in your branding, so a visitor books with your club, and their details, their history, and their consent sit on your member and guest records. Under the marketplace model the golfer is frequently the platform's customer rather than yours, which is what makes leaving expensive later.
Does this apply to the free trial and the entry tier?
Yes, without exception. No tee times are taken on any plan at any point, the 30-day trial included. A commitment with a spending threshold under it would not be worth making.
Can we run demand-based pricing without a marketplace?
Yes, and it stays under your control. The demand engine reads your own occupancy and suggests where a rate change would help, and you decide whether to apply it. Prices move on your instruction, on your own booking page, at rates you set. That is a different thing from a third party publishing a discount against your name. Demand-based pricing sits on the Enterprise tier.
What happens to our rates if we get busier?
Nothing on our side. The subscription is a fixed published figure for your tier, so a good season is entirely yours. This is the practical difference between a subscription and a commission: one of them takes a share of your success and the other does not.
How do we hold you to any of this?
Ask for the terms before you sign and read the clause. Then check the observable things: search your course name on the discount marketplaces, look at whether your booking page is on your own domain, and confirm the payment position in writing. Everything on this page is written to be checked, not believed.
Related pages
Our contract promise
The six commitments, and how to check each one.
Transparent, published pricing
Every tier and the one add-on, in your currency.
Data ownership & exit
What leaves with you, in what format, at no charge.
Tee sheet & booking
The sheet itself: lottery, waitlist, and your own pricing rules.
Switch from BRS Golf
How we compare with the incumbent tee-sheet platform.
See pricing
Every tier published, with what each one contains.
The commitments behind the platform
This promise sits inside a wider set we publish rather than reserve for a sales call.
Find us on G2, Capterra, and GetApp.
Keep every tee time, and see the whole bill
From $99/mo, your inventory stays yours, and the whole of what we charge is on the pricing page. Free 30-day trial.