Podello – Padel Club & Community Elementor Template Kit Guide
When I first picked up the Podello WordPress Theme, I wasn’t looking for a generic sports site. I was specifically trying to fix a very real-world problem for a padel club: messy court bookings, scattered event information, and a “community” that really only existed inside a WhatsApp group. My task was to turn all of that into a clean, central website that staff could maintain and players would actually use.
In this review, I’ll walk through exactly how Podello behaved in my hands as a site administrator, not as a designer chasing fancy animations. I’ll cover installation, the way I configured the template kit with Elementor, how the page layouts map to real padel-club needs (courts, lessons, leagues, memberships), what I had to tweak for performance and SEO, how it compares to other WordPress approaches I’ve used, and when I think Podello is the right choice for a club or community.
Before I installed anything, I did what I always do when taking over a club website: I made a list of the problems I was actually trying to solve.
For this padel club, it looked like this:
What I wanted from Podello was not just “a nice sports template,” but a structure that matched how a padel club actually works: courts, events, memberships, coaches, junior programs, social competitions, and a sense of community.
My test environment was a fresh WordPress install on a standard LEMP stack (PHP 8+, basic caching plugin, nothing exotic). Since Podello is an Elementor template kit, the process is slightly different from installing a traditional theme, but as an admin it felt manageable.
Because Podello is a template kit, it’s meant to be used on top of a lightweight theme plus Elementor. I followed this flow:
From an admin perspective, the key advantage of a template kit like Podello is that you can drop its sections and page structures into an existing site rather than being tied to a monolithic theme with lots of built-in assumptions.
Once the kit was installed, I imported:
This gave me a full skeleton of a padel club site in under an hour. All I had to do was wire it up to the navigation and start swapping in real content.
Before I touched text or images, I customized the global styles:
That upfront setup meant the club’s brand slipped neatly into the kit’s structure and the whole site felt cohesive instead of “demo-ish.”
Once the base kit was in place, I started wiring pages to match real club operations. This is where I really saw the strengths (and a few limits) of Podello.
The existing site’s homepage was basically a banner and a phone number. Podello allowed me to turn that into a real entry point.
I used Podello’s hero layout to surface:
Below that, Podello’s three-column feature strip worked perfectly for:
Then came a “Featured Programs” section:
Each card pointed to a more detailed page, and that alone solved a major discovery problem—new players no longer had to guess where to start.
I rounded the homepage out with:
Building this out with Podello felt like assembling with LEGO: the pieces were padel- and sports-compatible, and I just needed to combine them in the right sequence.
For the courts page, I used Podello’s feature sections to show:
Podello’s built-in icon blocks let me represent amenities visually (lights, locker rooms, café, parking) without needing a custom design each time. I linked to the external booking system from several points on this page, but visually everything felt aligned with the kit.
This was where Podello’s pricing tables really shined.
I used three main membership columns:
Under each, I listed:
Podello’s table styling kept everything readable, and as an admin, it’s straightforward to adjust pricing later without touching layout.
I also used a FAQ accordion to answer:
Those are the kind of questions staff were answering again and again via phone, so putting them here saved everyone time.
The coaches page leveraged Podello’s “team member” style cards:
I also added an area about the club’s admin staff and volunteers, so the site reflected the community beyond the courts. Podello’s layout here is standard but effective; nothing fancy, but it’s very manageable from an admin perspective.
The events/tournaments section of Podello fit a padel club nicely:
I configured separate categories for:
That made it easy to filter or highlight specific event types at different times of the year. I linked the “Join” or “Register” buttons to the club’s external registration tool, but the informational side lived entirely inside Podello’s layouts.
For news and updates, Podello’s blog layout—card-based grid on the index, clean single post layout—worked fine. I used it for:
From an admin standpoint, this is a standard WordPress blog experience with a themed wrapper. Editors who already know basic posting can work in this area with almost no extra training.
The contact page used Podello’s contact template:
I kept it intentionally simple. The design supports adding more blocks (FAQs, staff contact cards), but for this club, “less is more” was the right call.
After living with Podello for a while, a few feature areas stand out from an admin perspective.
The biggest win is that the kit comes with sections that already “think like a club”:
I didn’t spend time making generic agency blocks look like a padel club; most of what I needed was already oriented in the right direction.
Because Podello is a template kit, not a rigid theme, I can mix and match:
This is especially helpful when we spin up temporary landing pages for special events or campaigns; I don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just combine Podello pieces in a new way.
Elementor itself is a double-edged sword: lots of freedom but potential for chaos. Podello mitigates that by:
I still limit who can edit which pages, but once I’ve trained staff to duplicate an existing Podello template page and swap content, they can maintain most of the site themselves.
Any Elementor-based kit carries some performance overhead, and Podello is no exception. But with basic discipline, I was able to keep the site fast enough for a sports club audience.
Here’s what I did:
Once caching and minification were configured, the Podello-based site felt responsive even on mid-range phones, which is important because many players check it on the go.
SEO for a padel club is mostly about local discovery and structured information:
Podello didn’t get in my way here. I used:
The kit’s HTML structure plays nicely with search engines, so SEO is more about good content than fighting bad markup.
Before Podello, I’d tried three broad approaches for sports and club sites.
With big multipurpose themes:
For the padel club, that felt like overkill and under-fitting at the same time.
I’ve built or managed custom-coded themes that are:
But they come with a price: every new section, layout tweak, or marketing experiment tends to require developer time. For a club with a tight budget and fast-changing needs, that’s not always ideal.
I’ve also used general sports/fitness themes meant for gyms, trainers, or generic clubs. They often:
Podello sits in a more appropriate niche:
If the club later chooses to add full online payments for memberships, merchandise, or events, I know I can layer in WooCommerce and borrow UI patterns that align with other WooCommerce Themes, rather than abandoning the existing Podello layouts.
After working with Podello, I can see several scenarios where I’d choose it again.
I’d be more cautious with Podello if:
For most single-club or small-network scenarios, though, Podello hits a very useful middle ground.
From my perspective as the person who has to keep the site accurate, up to date, and fast, Podello did three things particularly well:
If you’re responsible for a padel club or padel community website and you want something that actually helps with bookings, memberships, and engagement—rather than just being an online poster—Podello is a very strong starting point. It won’t run your club for you, but it will finally give you a website that is aligned with how your club actually lives day to day, and that’s exactly what I needed.
