About Golfspedia — Who We Are and How We're Paid

Who runs this, and how we get paid.

Golfspedia is a matching service for residential golf simulators. You tell us about your room, we show you what a build like yours costs, and we introduce you to one installer who covers your area. We do not sell simulators, we do not install them, and we are not owned by anyone who does. This page explains the arrangement in full, including the parts that are less flattering than a marketing page would normally admit.

Last updated 16 August 2026

What Golfspedia is, and what it isn’t

It is a questionnaire and a cost model attached to a short list of installers. You answer about a dozen questions about the room, the ceiling height, the equipment you want and the budget you have in mind. That is enough to price the build within a range and enough for an installer to know whether they can help before they call you.

It is not a directory — there is no list of companies to scroll, and being listed is not something a company can buy. It is not a marketplace: your details go to one installer, not to a bidding pool, and they are not resold afterwards. And it is not an installer. We have never built a simulator bay and we do not want to; the whole point of the arrangement is that the person who builds your room is a specialist and the person estimating its cost has nothing to gain from the number being high.

How we’re paid

Installers pay us to be introduced to homeowners in their area. You never pay Golfspedia anything, and there is no version of this where a fee appears later.

The part worth understanding is when we are paid: at the introduction, not at the contract. We do not take a percentage of your build and we are not paid more if you buy a more expensive room. That is deliberate, because the alternative arrangement is what makes most cost estimates in this category useless — a site paid on the size of your install has every reason to talk you into a bigger one.

The honest consequence of being paid per introduction is that we would rather make one than not. What stops that from turning into spam is that an installer who receives homeowners who were never going to build stops paying us, so sending you to someone who cannot help is a bad trade for us as well as for you. Where nobody suitable covers your area or your project, we would rather make no introduction at all.

What happens after you send the form

Your answers go to one installer who covers your area. Not four, not a list, and not a pool of companies competing to reach you first. They will already have your room details, so the first call is about your project rather than about collecting the same answers again.

By submitting the questionnaire you agree that Golfspedia and that one matched installer may contact you by phone, text and email about your project, including by automated means. Consent is not a condition of purchase, message and data rates may apply, and you can withdraw it at any time — reply STOP to a text, tell the caller, or email us at the address below.

Two things we do not do, and both are in writing on the privacy policy: we do not sell your details for money, and we do not pass them to a second company if the first one does not work out. If the installer is not a fit, tell us and we will say so rather than routing you onward.

How we vet installers

Golf simulators have no trade licence and no certifying body — there is no equivalent of the credential an electrician holds. So we published a standard instead, and put the whole of it on a page anyone can read: what is required, how each requirement is checked, and what causes a company to lose the badge.

It is anchored on manufacturer authorization — Trackman, Foresight Sports, Full Swing, HD Golf, Uneekor — because that is the one credential in this category that an independent party already issues and revokes. The rest is ordinary contractor diligence: licence, insurance, complaint record, and a written workmanship warranty. We check the documents rather than taking a claim at face value.

What we do not do is promise you an outcome. A badge describes a company as it was on the day it was reviewed. It is not a prediction about how your particular build will go, and it is not a warranty on the work — the workmanship warranty is the installer’s, in writing, and checking that it exists is one of the requirements.

Read the certification standard →

Where our numbers come from

Every cost figure on this site is either reproduced from a published source, derived from one, or is our own judgement — and we label which. Our commercial model currently rests on 26 sources: 7 reproduced as published, 5 derived from a published total, and 14 that are our own assumption with no external source at all.

That last number being the largest is the entire reason we print it. Most cost pages in this category present an estimate as though every input were researched. Ours are not, and the methodology page names each assumption individually rather than burying the ratio.

This is enforced rather than promised. A build gate fails if any figure in the model loses the source it points at, and a second gate scans the copy for language we have decided not to use — payback is only ever stated as arithmetic on your own inputs, with the assumptions shown and the cases where it does not work kept in. The commercial figures were gathered on 7 August 2026 and are secondary sources, not audited operator accounts.

Dates on this site change when the underlying facts change, and not to make a page look recently touched.

See the full methodology and source list →

What we won’t tell you

A simulator will probably not add to your home’s resale value, and we would rather say that than sell you on it. We will not quote a payback percentage, because we cannot substantiate one. We will not tell you a build like yours costs a single number — the estimates here are ranges, they are not quotes, and only an installer standing in your room can close them.

Every photograph on this site is an illustration of the kind of room being described. We have no completed projects to show you, because no installer has yet signed with us, and staging someone else’s work as ours is the thing we would have to do to look bigger than we are.