Who runs the car club website when Dave retires?

On a general site builder like Wix or Squarespace, expect roughly $200–$500 a year once you add a domain and a plan that allows enough pages and storage — and you still won’t have dues, rosters or event sign-ups. On WordPress the software is free but hosting, paid plugins and someone to keep it patched are not. On RumbleSeat running your club costs $0: no setup fee, no monthly fee, no member limits and no contract. The only fees apply to money you actually collect — a 1% platform fee plus card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 charged by Stripe at cost — and you decide whether the club covers those or passes them to members at checkout.

Yes. RumbleSeat is free for car clubs, and it is a full platform rather than a trial: a website on your own domain, member management, dues collection, events with sign-ups, forums, photo galleries, car registries and a digital garage for every member. There is no member limit and no card required to start.

You can buy a generic template for Wix, Squarespace or WordPress, but a template only gives you a look — it does not give you a roster, a dues ledger or an events calendar members can sign up through. RumbleSeat instead gives you the club pages already built: home, events, membership and joining, galleries, forums, a car registry and a marketplace. You add your club’s name, colors, photos and copy, and the club machinery is already wired up behind it.

The right question is whether the platform understands clubs. A site builder makes pages; a club platform also handles members, dues, events, forums and vehicles. Look for member management with no seat limits, online dues, event sign-ups and payments, forums and galleries that hold years of history, your own domain, security and updates handled for you, and a clean data export so you are never locked in.

No. RumbleSeat is built to be run by whichever officer volunteers — there is nothing to install, host or patch, and no code to touch. Most clubs are up with a real site in an afternoon, and if you would rather be walked through it, we will take your board through a free tour.

Yes. Connect the address your members already know and keep it. The domain stays registered to the club — RumbleSeat is the platform running underneath it, not the owner of your address.

You don’t start over. Upload your existing member list and the roster is live in minutes, rebuild your pages without code — events, galleries, forums and club info all have a place to land — and point your own domain at the new site. No web developer required.

Yes. Regions live right alongside the national roster, so headquarters and every region run on one platform instead of thirty websites maintained thirty different ways — while each region keeps its own pages, events and members.

It is a fine place to chat and a poor place to be a club. You don’t own the group, an algorithm decides which members see your posts, ads run over the top of your content, and your club’s history gets buried in a feed nobody can search. A club website is the part you own — and it is what shows up when someone searches for your club.