The Middle Pin vs foreUP · checked 8 October 2026

foreUP, or one price with the register already in it.

foreUP is a well-liked cloud system used by courses from state parks to private clubs. It has historically been sold in modules. For a small course, that is the difference worth understanding.

Work out your cost Sign up for free

Monthly fee: $0
A card payment: 5% + 30¢, all in
Contract: None
Companies compared: 7, with sources

Your cost, in two taps

What would you pay?

1What do you use now?

2Card sales in a month

$8,000

3What they charge a month

Fine-tune with your own quote

Average sale $ Their card rate % Plus per sale ¢

The Middle Pin $0 5% + 30¢ a payment · no monthly fee

Them $0

A month, before tax. Cash costs nothing on either side. Hardware is not included. Where a company does not publish a figure, the calculator says so and uses a typical one — put in your own.

Choose foreUP if

You run a busy course with a restaurant and want deep food-and-beverage and billing tools.
You want a large company with a big installed base and integrations.
Your staff already know it, which counts for a lot.

Choose the Middle Pin if

You are a small or 9-hole course and want one published price, not a set of modules.
You want memberships with autopay dues in the same place as the register.
Nothing a month, so a quiet week costs nothing.

01 · Side by side

What each one publishes.

Their column says only what foreUP or a review site has published, with the source. Where nothing is published, it says so.

Price Not published on its own site. Capterra lists a Basic plan from $120 a month. Its last public price list (2023) sold modules from $70 to $130 each: tee sheet $120, point of sale $130, food and beverage $120.^8,1 Free. No monthly fee, no setup fee, no per-booking fee.

How you pay Cash, card, tee-time trades, or a mix.¹ 5% + 30¢ on each card or bank payment, and nothing else.

Contract Not published.² None. Nothing to sign and nothing to cancel.

Card payments foreUP Payments; rates not published.³ 5% + 30¢ a payment, all in: Stripe’s processing is included. Cash and checks cost nothing.

Online tee times Included.⁴ Included.

Website Websites available.⁴ Keep your own, or we build and host one for $99.99 a month.

02 · About them

What foreUP does well.

foreUP covers the tee sheet and online booking, point of sale, food and beverage, billing, email and text marketing, a branded app, websites and tournaments. It is owned by Xplor Golf & Club, formed when Xplor Technologies and Clubessential merged (announced September 2025, closed by March 2026).

Where it is strong

Operators like the tee sheet and say staff pick it up quickly. It averages 4.6 from 160 reviews on Capterra and 4.5 from 27 on G2, and it publishes a page specifically for 9-hole courses, which most companies do not bother to.^8,10,9

What operators say

Courses reported outages between July and October 2024, and slow support.⁵
A reviewer called it “expensive on the payment processing”.²
An industry tracker counted a net loss of at least 68 courses between January and April 2025. That tracker is run by a site that reviews golf software, not by foreUP.⁶

What our course data shows

1,239of 12,230 public courses booked online through foreUP
167of them are 9-hole courses
102moved off it between 2022 and 2023, 23 back to phone-only booking
244moved onto it in the same year

From the 2022–23 dataset of public golf courses in the US and Canada we work from. It shows which company each course used for online tee times: a snapshot, not a live count.

03 · Straight answers

Where we fall short.

We are one of the companies on this page, so here is what we do not do, and the questions people ask.

We are a small, young company. The companies on these pages have been doing this for years, with far bigger teams.
We have no network of discount golfers to fill empty tee times the way GolfNow does.
No handicap (GHIN) integration and no dynamic pricing yet.
Our 5% + 30¢ is more per card sale than the bigger companies’ published card rates. We charge nothing a month instead, so a course with a lot of card volume can pay less overall elsewhere. The calculator shows where that line is for you.
We are built for small public courses. A private club with a full kitchen and complex member billing is better served elsewhere.

How much does foreUP cost?

foreUP does not publish current prices. Its last public price list, from 2023, sold modules separately, from $70 to $130 each, so the total depends on which modules a course takes.

Who owns foreUP?

Clubessential bought foreUP in 2021. Clubessential and Xplor Technologies merged (announced September 2025, closed by March 2026), and the combined business runs as Xplor Golf & Club.

Is the Middle Pin cheaper than foreUP?

There is no monthly fee with us, so at small and medium card volumes, yes. We take more per card sale than the big companies’ published rates, so a course with heavy card volume should put its numbers in the calculator.

Nothing a month. Your course.

Sign up and have it running today. It costs nothing to start and nothing to keep — we take 5% + 30¢ when a card is used. Or take a 30-minute walkthrough with the person who builds it.

Sources

Checked 8 October 2026. Prices and terms change, and most of these companies do not publish theirs, so ask each one for a written quote. If anything here is wrong or out of date, email kevin@themiddlepin.com and we will correct it. Company names are trademarks of their owners and are used only to identify them.