Update: We've Been Busy. Here's Where We Stand.

If you're a baseball or softball coach who's been checking in and wondering what's going on.

We've been quiet. That's not a bad sign. That's what building looks like.

If you've used BenchBoard recently, you may have noticed things feeling more stable. There's a reason for that, and I want to give you the full picture — where we moved, what we built, what's new, and where we're going.

The Infrastructure Move: Goodbye Azure, Hello Hetzner

We moved off Azure. No drama, no crisis — just a cost problem that didn't make sense for where we are right now.

Azure is a serious platform built for serious enterprise workloads. We respect it. But we were paying serious enterprise prices for a product that's still in beta, and watching that meter run was getting harder to justify. We weren't running a hospital. We were running a baseball and softball app.

We've landed on Hetzner, and we're not looking back. The servers are solid. No crashing. No cold starts that make the app feel like it's waking up from a nap every time you open it. No surprise bills. We're paying a fraction of what we were paying on Azure, and the experience is actually better. We believe this is our long-term home, and we're looking forward to growing with them as the platform scales.

If you noticed the app feeling snappier — that's why.

Still in Beta. Still Building in the Open.

I want to be straight with you: BenchBoard is still in beta. We're testing in a few places right now, including in my own town during my daughter's season. I'm still the first and most relentless tester of everything we ship.

That's intentional. I don't want to hand something to coaches that I haven't stood in the dugout with myself. That standard isn't changing.

What has changed is that the foundation is getting stronger with every game. The things that worked six months ago still work. The things that broke, we fixed. And we've been adding.

Scorekeeping Is Live — And It's the Biggest Thing We've Built

This is why we've been so quiet.

Scorekeeping is up. It's in beta, and we're actively locking it down, but it's there and it's real. This has been the single biggest update in BenchBoard's history, and it's taken the most time for a reason.

Here's the question I get: Why build your own? Why not just use the GameChanger API, or pull from iScore?

Fair question. Short answer: we couldn't get what we needed from anyone else.

GameChanger doesn't offer a public API. There's no way to tap into their data, period — they own it and that's by design. iScore has APIs, but they're not real-time. You get a snapshot, not a live feed. And for what BenchBoard is trying to do — powering stats, positions, reporting, and eventually streaming — we need the data as it happens. Not five minutes later. Not after you sync. The moment the pitch crosses the plate.

Real-time matters because everything downstream depends on it. Stats depend on it. Playing time tracking depends on it. The ScoreBoard feature we're building depends on it. If the data isn't live, none of those things work the way they need to.

So we built it ourselves. From scratch. Pitch by pitch.

There will be a dedicated post just on scorekeeping — what it tracks, how it works, how to use it. This isn't the place to unpack all of it. But I want to be clear about one thing: scorekeeping is not required to manage your team, lineup, or defense. You can use BenchBoard exactly the way you've been using it. Scorekeeping only becomes necessary when you want to track stats, positions, and player reports — and that's a big part of why we had to build it. Those features aren't possible without live game data.

More on that soon.

We Want Your Feedback

If you're using BenchBoard — especially scorekeeping — we want to hear from you. Good, bad, confusing, broken, whatever it is. There's a feedback link accessible from within the app. Use it. We're reading everything.

You're not just helping us fix bugs. You're shaping what this thing becomes.

What's New

While we've been heads-down on scorekeeping, we've also been shipping other updates based on what you've been telling us. Here's what you'll find when you log in:

Roles — You can now invite others to help manage your team. Head to Menu > Roles > Add Team Member and assign access to specific areas: the main offense/defense Board, Players (add/edit/delete), Evaluations (manage player eval reports), Reports, and Scorekeeping + calendar. This was a top request, especially from programs with multiple coaches on staff.

Managing Opponents — Menu > Opponents. You can now build and manage your opponent teams — their players, coach names, and roster information. Right now it's manual entry, but that's just the starting point. We're working on pulling in public data from travel leagues, Little League, and other organizations — all with proper permission — so that eventually you'll be able to search for an opponent by name, find them in the database, and add them to your schedule with a tap. No more typing in the same team over and over every season.

Extensive Settings — If you've been into the settings recently, you know they got a significant upgrade. Most of these are scorekeeping-specific, because the rules of baseball and softball are not one-size-fits-all:

• Run Cap Per Inning (the 5-Run Rule, or whatever your league uses) — set your cap and BenchBoard will flash an "End Inning" reminder when you've hit it, regardless of outs.
• Infield Fly Rule — batter is auto-out on a catchable infield pop-up with runners on and fewer than 2 outs. Shows up as a selectable button in scorekeeping when conditions are met.
• Dropped Third Strike — same idea. Rules-aware, context-aware.
• Rule Details — Mercy rules, max innings, all of it. Set it once, play by your league's rules.
• Softball-Only Rules toggle — because softball has its own rulebook and we're not pretending otherwise.
• Advanced Settings / Debug Mode — we've added this specifically so we can work with you when something's off. If we ask you to turn it on while troubleshooting, this is what we mean.

There are also scoreboard formatting improvements and general cleanup throughout. Small stuff, but small stuff is what coaches notice.

Scorekeeping — This deserves its own post, and it's getting one. See above for the full context on why we built it and what it means for the platform. Stay tuned.

What's Coming Next

We're not short on things to build. Here's what's on the immediate horizon:

iOS and Android Apps — Phone and tablet. Both are in beta soon. We're close, and we're not rushing them out the door just to say they're live. When they drop, they'll be ready.

Mobile Printer Integration — This one's actually being tested at the field right now. The goal is simple: open BenchBoard on your phone, tap print, hand the lineup card to the ump. No laptop. No cables. No setup. Just a small Bluetooth printer in your gear bag and a workflow that feels like it was always supposed to work that way.

Team Reports — This is the feature a lot of you have been asking about, and it's coming. That said, it lives downstream of scorekeeping stability — the reports are only as good as the data feeding them. Once scorekeeping is locked down and reliable, reports move to the top of the list. We're not going to ship a reporting feature on a shaky foundation. That's not how we build.

That's the roadmap for now. It's more than enough to keep us busy — and every one of those items has been on the field with us in some form already.

One More Thing: Meet IronBench Labs

We've launched our parent company site at ironbench.org. This is the official home of the company behind BenchBoard.

We mention it because the tablet and mobile apps are coming, and when you go looking for BenchBoard in the Apple App Store or Google Play, the developer name you'll see is IronBench Labs. That's us. That's the one. Now you'll recognize it when you see it.

If you've been patient with us — thank you. If you're just finding BenchBoard — welcome. We're building this for baseball and softball coaches who are tired of tools that weren't made by people who've actually stood in a dugout.

We're still standing in one.

— Rad Founder
IronBench Labs