How do SwimTopia® and Swimmingly® Compare?

Here's What It Boils Down To:

Swimmingly was originally designed to help your meets run more efficiently and save you volunteer hours on meet days. They also recently added registration features and soon, communications.

SwimTopia was designed to help your team and meets run more efficiently and save you a ton of volunteer hours over the course of your entire season. With SwimTopia, Meet Maestro, and SwimTopia’s mobile app, SwimTopia provides a one stop shop for everything you need, all season long.

Plus, SwimTopia and Swimmingly are compatible. SwimTopia reads and writes SD3 files for roundtrip compatibility with Swimmingly: you can export entries before the meet, and import results when you’re done.

It’s probably best to start with some definitions:

SwimTopia: comprehensive swim software. All you need to run your swim team and meets in an easy-to-use, powerful, online platform. SwimTopia provides you with a website and all the tools you need for communicating with your team, managing registration, volunteers, social events, spirit wear, and most everything else it takes to run a swim team. SwimTopia accounts include full access to our meet software, Meet Maestro.

Meet Maestro: more than your usual meet software. Meet Maestro replaces any other meet management software you’ve used in the past for seeding the meet, creating heat sheets, entering data and DQs and printing after meet reports. Meet Maestro also includes the ability to store your team’s time history, run or import meet entries, generate relays with one click, and manage your team records. Meet Maestro was designed to work with other timing systems, such as stopwatches, and wireless timing solutions: the Colorado Time Systems Dolphin Wireless System, Time Drops, and Wylas Timing.

Swimmingly: registration, communications, meet software and a timing app for the phone, rolled into one. Swimmingly saves volunteer hours during the swim meet by eliminating the paper trail with their easy-use-app, as well as eliminating volunteer work on the back-end with your Swimmingly Clubhouse. Swimmingly encompasses registration, communications, meet management, and in-app timing. Swimmingly allows you to run your meets by timing on smart phones, and the times feed directly into the meet software, without requiring data entry. Swimmers have a number written on their shoulder and the timer inputs that number after stopping the timer after every race. Swimmingly also allows you to create or import meet entries, create heat sheets, record DQs, and print after meet reports.

SwimTopia and Swimmingly* aren’t mutually exclusive, in fact, they’re compatible: you can easily use Swimmingly to run meets and SwimTopia to manage your team. When considering how Meet Maestro and Swimmingly compare for running meets, both were built to save volunteers time and energy, Swimmingly works by timing on a phone with the Swimmingly app installed, while Meet Maestro was built to integrate with other timing systems.

So, how do SwimTopia and Swimmingly compare? Refer to the table below for a quick comparison, then click “Read More” under any category for a more in-depth look at how we stack up.

SwimTopia

Swimmingly

Team Management

⋅ Custom website and hosting
⋅ Online registration
⋅ Meet entry management
⋅ Volunteer management
⋅ Flexible communications—email and push alerts
⋅ Merchandise sales
⋅ Meet and event RSVPs
⋅ Calendar syncing
⋅ Records tracking
⋅ Robust reports

Swimmingly’s “Clubhouse”  provides teams some functionality such as registration, communication, roster maintenance, parent portals, meet entries/declarations, and schedule management. Other team management features are not available at this time.

Meet Management

Fully integrated meet management with Meet Maestro
⋅ Heat sheets
⋅ Customizable DQ codes
⋅ Records integration
⋅ Scoring
⋅ Post meet reports (results, award labels, time improvement labels etc)
⋅ Wireless timing system integration

⋅ Season and roster setup in Clubhouse
⋅ Heat sheets
⋅ Scoring
⋅ Post meet reports (results, award labels, time improvement labels etc)

Read More

Meet Maestro is a modern and easy-to-use online meet management platform. Meet Maestro and SwimTopia work together to help you simplify running your meets by removing numerous setup steps that were necessary in ‘old’ meet management platforms, and allowing teams to merge their entries online, without needing to exchange files. Meet Maestro saves team computer operators hours of pre, during, and post-meet work. 

Meet Maestro is optimized to work with wireless timing systems such as the CTS Dolphin wireless timing systems, Time Drops, and Wylas Timing. These timing systems eliminate the need for manual time entry on meet days. Meet Maestro also works with stopwatches, having an efficient interface for inputting times. And Meet Maestro can be customized with league-specific DQ codes.

Swimmingly is also designed to save volunteer work and time on meet days, but it does that by changing the way teams run their meets, and attempting to remove paper from the pool deck. With Swimmingly, the timers time on iPhones or Androids through the Swimmingly app, and need to input every swimmer’s unique “swimmer number” (found written on the swimmer’s shoulder or arm in Sharpie) after every heat.

Both Swimmingly and Meet Maestro generate heat sheets and post-meet reports. And both systems have companion apps that provide subscribers with heat sheets and results, thus, both apps reduce the need for paper on the pool deck. However, the subscription to receive these features from Meet Maestro is $2.99 per month for the SwimTopia app Pro features, with only one subscription needed to see all your family’s info,  whereas SwimminglyFan app features are included with the $18 per swimmer membership fee.

Software Cost

$150 + $3 per swimmer, per year for team management (website, registration, communications, volunteer management, merchandise, and more), meet management, and free app features

$18 per swimmer, per year for registration, communications, meet management, in-app timing, and a companion app for meet results

Read More

Swimmingly’s cost covers registration, meet features, timing, and their companion app. If you want to communicate with your team, have a website, sell merchandise, or carry out other administrative duties, you’ll need to pay for software with those capabilities as well.

SwimTopia’s cost covers just about everything related to your swim team (except the pool itself). Our revolutionary meet software, Meet Maestro, is free with your subscription and provides a modern, easy-to-use solution to meet management headaches. You can quickly and easily build your own website, customize online registration, set up an online store, send out notifications, organize swimmers and volunteers, and more. Whatever your needs may be, we’re confident SwimTopia can meet them with solutions that make your life easier—affordably.

For a full breakdown of SwimTopia’s pricing, click here.

Mobile App Cost

Free
⋅ Push notifications for team alerts
⋅ Live event and heat bar during meets
⋅ Family overview—volunteer positions, swimmer history
Pro- $2.99/month
⋅ Heat sheets

⋅ Live results
⋅ Scores
⋅ Result notifications

Swimmingly Fan is included in the $18 per swimmer membership cost
⋅ Heat sheets

⋅ Live results
⋅ Scores
⋅ Push notifications

Read More

Both companion apps provide similar features, although SwimTopia’s app allows members to receive push notifications and see historical athlete information for free. Additionally, SwimTopia Mobile Pro features are paid for through an app subscription with the App Store or Google Play Store, so the cost is not per swimmer.

These are far from the only differences. We are happy to answer questions and to schedule one-on-one demos to go into more detail.

*Swimmingly, LLC owns a U.S. trademark registration for Swimmingly. Team Topia, Inc. is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Swimmingly, LLC and/or its affiliates and/or licensors. Any references to the Swimmingly software are for comparative advertising and compatibility purposes only.