Upper Hand is one of the more well-known names in sports scheduling software, especially for coaches and single-facility operators. But after talking to hundreds of facility owners who've tried it (and plenty who've migrated off of it), we've found that Upper Hand sits in an awkward middle ground: more modern than legacy tools like eSoft Planner and EZFacility, but still held back by tiered pricing that gates the features most facilities actually need.
In this post, we'll do a complete review of Upper Hand, walk through its features and pricing, and at the end, look at why Swift might be a better choice for your sports facility.
What is Upper Hand?
Upper Hand is a sports facility and coaching business management software built primarily for sports coaches. It handles scheduling, registration, payments, memberships, and athlete engagement, all from one platform.
It was founded in Indianapolis in the mid-2010s and has grown to power over 1,000 sports businesses across the U.S.
The tool caters to a pretty wide range of customers — from solo coaches running private lessons, to single-location facilities, to multi-site franchises.
That flexibility is one of Upper Hand's real strengths, but as we'll cover below, it's also the source of its biggest drawback.
Upper Hand Features
Upper Hand is a fairly feature-rich platform. Here's what they offer:
Scheduling
Upper Hand lets you schedule private lessons, group classes, teams, camps, and clinics. You can set capacity limits, waitlists, and flexible registration windows. They also handle facility and resource management so that you can avoid double-booking spaces.
The scheduling logic is solid — but if you're used to drag-and-drop interfaces, you'll notice that creating and adjusting bookings in Upper Hand takes a few clicks more than it should.
That might seem small on paper, but it’s massive when you're rescheduling 15 bookings on a Tuesday afternoon.
Online Booking & Payments
Clients can book lessons, classes, and memberships online and pay through Upper Hand's checkout. The platform supports memberships, pricing plans, discounts, and automated recurring billing.
One thing worth noting: to view services and prices, clients are pushed to create an account before they can browse.
That extra step can cost your facility bookings — especially from first-time customers who just want to see what's available before committing.
Marketing & Engagement
Upper Hand includes email marketing tools, reminders, and targeted messaging to reduce no-shows. They also have a mobile app for athletes and coaches to stay connected.
Here's the catch: the branded version of that mobile app (the one with your facility's name and logo, not Upper Hand's) is only available on their Scale plan, the highest payment tier, which requires a custom quote. For most single-location facilities, that puts a branded app out of reach.
Staff & Payroll
Upper Hand handles instructor management, staff permissions, access levels, and payroll reporting. This is a real strength, especially for facilities with a rotating roster of instructors who get paid on different commission splits.
Other Features
Retail and inventory management, discount codes, and advanced analytics are all included — though some of these are gated to higher-tier plans.
Upper Hand also offers an optional website builder (WebKIT) as a $50/month add-on, and their "Upper Hand AI" features are again locked to their highest plan.
Upper Hand Pricing
Upper Hand is one of the more affordable options in the market, with its lowest plan priced at $79/mo.
For a single-facility operator who wants staff tools, inventory, and proper analytics, though, you're realistically looking at $199/month plus transaction fees — and still without a branded app, advanced reporting, or AI features.
For comparison, Swift plans start at $179/month and include everything a new facility needs to get started.
If you want to get a full overview of what’s included, a member of our team would be happy to walk you through a free demo.
Upper Hand's Biggest Downsides (& why Swift might be better)
Tiered Support Means You Get What You Pay For
The biggest complaint we hear from former Upper Hand customers is support.
Upper Hand's customer support is tiered based on your plan, which means the facilities paying less get slower responses and fewer resources. Usually, the exact facilities that need the most help are the ones getting started on the lowest pricing tier.
At Swift, we don't believe in tiered support. Every customer gets the same high-quality support regardless of their plan size, their subscription tier, or how long they've been with us.
When you're running a facility, and something breaks on a Saturday morning before a jammed-packed day of bookings, you shouldn't be stuck waiting in a lower-priority queue because you're on a smaller plan.
Branded App Locked to the Top Tier
A branded mobile app is one of the highest-impact things a sports facility can offer.
It drives direct bookings, cuts down on no-shows, and gives parents a reason to open your app instead of scrolling Instagram.
Upper Hand gates its branded app behind the highest pricing tier, which is custom-priced and generally reserved for franchises and multi-location operations.
Swift takes a different approach.
Rather than saving our best features for our biggest customers, we focus on making sure every facility gets a modern booking page that actually helps them grow because it’s designed for mobile users.
Additionally, we offer our branded app to all facilities as an optional upgrade regardless of the plan you’re on.
Scheduling Takes More Clicks Than It Should
Upper Hand's scheduling is functional, but it isn't drag-and-drop.
Common flows, like adding a coach to a class, swapping instructors on a booking, or rescheduling a recurring lesson, take 5-6 clicks instead of 1-2.
That sounds trivial until you multiply it by 50 bookings a day.
Facility owners who migrate from Upper Hand to Swift consistently tell us the drag-and-drop calendar is what sold them — it's the biggest draw for prior Upper Hand customers.
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Clients Have to Create Accounts to See Pricing
Making clients log in before they can view your services and prices is one of the fastest ways to lose a booking.
Upper Hand's default client flow leans this direction; Swift lets your clients see everything you offer and book in a few clicks — no account required until they're actually ready to pay.
Transaction Fees That Don't Move in Your Favor
This one is less about Upper Hand specifically and more about our business philosophy as a whole.
Most sports facility platforms set their processing fees once and never revisit them. We think that's backwards — your software should be helping you increase your revenue, not their own.
At Swift, we recently reduced our processing fees across the board for every customer, because every percentage point of savings on payment processing goes straight to your bottom line and maximizes profitability.
This is just a small example of how we think about the relationship with our facilities: if you grow, we grow.
Summary: Pros & Cons of Upper Hand
Pros:
- Well-established platform with over 1,000 customers
- Solid feature set for scheduling, payroll, and memberships
- Affordable entry-level tier for solo coaches at $79/month
- Good fit for multi-location and franchise operations on the Scale plan
- AI features
Cons:
- Tiered support — smaller plans get slower response times
- Branded mobile app locked to the top (Scale) tier
- Scheduling requires more clicks than a modern drag-and-drop calendar
- Clients are pushed to create accounts before viewing services
- Scale tier requires a custom quote with no public pricing
- Several useful features (AI, branded app, advanced insights) gated behind higher tiers
Try Swift
Upper Hand might be a great fit if you're a solo coach running private lessons, and $79/month fits your budget.
But for a growing baseball or multi-sport facility that needs a drag-and-drop calendar, support that doesn't depend on which plan you're on, and a software partner that actively works to lower your costs instead of raising them — Swift is built differently.
We've migrated hundreds of facilities off Upper Hand, eSoft Planner, EZFacility, and spreadsheets. Plans start at $179/month. Migration and onboarding are free. Support is free. There are no contracts.
Here's what one of our baseball facility customers said after making the switch:
"We first tried eSoft Planner… they didn't have a lot of features we needed. We next tried UpperHand… customer service was not that wonderful. There were a lot of problems for our admin end."
If you'd like to stop fighting your software and get back to running your facility, book a free demo to speak to a member of our team today.
