The Middle Pin vs GolfNow for Business · Checked 20 September 2026

GolfNow, or something you pay for in money instead of tee times.

GolfNow for Business runs the biggest tee-time marketplace in golf and sells software alongside it. Many courses pay for that software with tee times rather than cash. That trade is the whole question for a small course, so this page is mostly about it.

Choose GolfNow if

You have empty tee times most days and want a large marketplace pushing golfers at them.
You would rather give up some tee times than pay for software in cash.
You want a phone-answering service and marketing handled for you.

Choose the Middle Pin if

You would rather pay a known monthly price and keep every tee time and every green fee.
You want to set your own rates without promising anyone they are the lowest.
You want the register, memberships and online booking in one login, month to month.

Side by side

	GolfNow	the Middle Pin
Price	Cash prices not published. Payment can be cash, trade tee times, or both.^1,2	$39.99 a month, or $99.99 with a website we build and host. Published, the same for every course.
How you pay	Trade Times: four rounds each, sold by GolfNow, who keeps the revenue. Current US terms cap sales at 31 Trade Times (124 rounds) a month.¹	A monthly subscription. No tee times traded.
Contract	Set in each order form and “non-cancellable except as provided”. A $500 a month charge per product if trade times are not provided. Cash prices can rise by the greater of 5% or CPI each year.¹	Month to month.
Your rates	Trade times must be priced “at least as favorable” as any rate you give another third party.¹	You set them. No rate-parity clause.
Card payments	GolfNow Payments; rates not published.¹	Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢, plus 2.1% to us: about 5% of card sales. Cash and checks cost nothing.
Online tee times	Included, plus listing on the GolfNow marketplace.³	Included.
Register (point of sale)	Point of sale available.³	Included on both plans, for the counter or a tablet on the course.
Website	Websites and apps available.³	Keep your own, or we build and host one on the $99.99 plan.

What GolfNow is

GolfNow for Business sells a tee sheet, point of sale, websites, marketing and a call-answering service, and lists courses on the GolfNow marketplace. Courses can pay in cash, in “Trade Times”, or a mix. A Trade Time is four rounds that GolfNow sells and keeps the money for.

Where it is strong

Reach. GolfNow says it lists more than 9,000 courses to 3.9 million golfers, and nobody else comes close. For a course with a lot of empty inventory and no marketing budget, putting that in front of golfers is real value, and some operators are happy with the trade. It also rates well on Capterra (4.6 from 19 reviews).^3,2

What operators say

Operators describe heavily discounted “Hot Deals” pulling revenue down and teaching golfers to wait for a deal; one course estimated it gave up more than $116,000 a year in tee times.⁴
The National Golf Course Owners Association’s 2020 “Beware of Barter” report found barter usually works against operators and called success stories “exceptions, not the rule”.⁵
Under the terms, GolfNow owns the personal data of golfers who book through their GolfNow account.¹

What our course data shows

2,645of 12,226 public courses booked online through GolfNow
316of them are 9-hole courses
401moved off it between 2022 and 2023, 112 of them back to phone-only booking
181moved onto it in the same year

From the 2022–23 dataset of public golf courses in the US and Canada we work from, which lists GolfNow’s booking under NBC Sports Next, the name of its parent division at the time. It shows which vendor each course used for online tee times; it is a snapshot, not a live count.

What trade tee times are worth

Put your own numbers in.

A Trade Time is four rounds. This works out what the rounds you trade would bring in at your own green fee, next to what the Middle Pin costs for the same months.

Trade Times a month Your green fee $ Months you are open

Rounds traded—a season

At your green fee—a season

The Middle Pin—subscription, same months

The honest caveat: not every traded round would have sold at full price, and that is the case for barter. This is the most those rounds could be worth to you, not a promise. Our figure leaves out card fees (about 5% of card sales).

Where we fall short

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 card fee is higher than the bigger vendors’ published rates. A course with a lot of card volume can pay less overall on a big subscription with cheaper processing. The calculator on the comparison page shows where that line is.
We are built for small public courses. A private club with a full kitchen and complex member billing is better served elsewhere.

Questions

Is GolfNow free for golf courses?

Not in the way it sounds. Many courses pay for GolfNow’s software with Trade Times instead of cash: tee times GolfNow sells and keeps the money for. The current US terms define a Trade Time as four rounds. Whether that is cheaper than paying cash depends on whether those rounds would have sold at your full rate anyway.

Can I leave GolfNow?

The length of a GolfNow agreement is set in each course’s order form, and the terms describe it as non-cancellable except as they provide. Check your order form for the end date before planning a switch.

Can I use the Middle Pin and still list on GolfNow?

Not yet. We do not connect to GolfNow’s marketplace today.

What does the Middle Pin cost?

$39.99 a month, or $99.99 if we build and host your website. Card payments cost about 5% in total (Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ and our 2.1%). Cash costs nothing. No tee times, no contract.

Other comparisons

See it on a course like yours.

Twenty minutes, real screens, your questions. Or start on your own: month to month, nothing to sign.

Book a demo Start a free trial

Sources

Checked 20 September 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.