--- title: "SignUpGenius Alternative: No Ads, Scheduled Reminders" description: "SignUpGenius is a sign-up sheet with ads and monthly text caps. We send scheduled shift reminders for weekly rotations: flat $9/mo, not a bulk-text plan." canonical_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/alternatives/signupgenius md_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/alternatives/signupgenius.md last_updated: 2026-08-18 --- # An honest SignUpGenius alternative for recurring volunteer shifts **SignUpGenius is a sign-up sheet. VolunteerReminder is a reminder service.** If the job is collecting names for a one-off potluck, SignUpGenius does that well and its free plan really is free. If the job is getting the same 30 people to the same shifts every week, that is what we build: scheduled shift reminders on a flat $9-a-month plan, with no ads on your volunteers' screens and one price instead of a monthly text allotment. It is not a bulk-text plan, and it is not a per-message credit pack. We build VolunteerReminder, so we are not a neutral party here. Every SignUpGenius number below is sourced to their own pages or to Capterra's listing, and further down we say plainly who should stay on SignUpGenius. If you run volunteers — a food pantry, a church rotation, a thrift store, a PTA — you have probably hit one of three rough edges: the ads your volunteers see, the monthly cap on text reminders, or the fact that the tool thinks in one-off events when your problem is the same Tuesday crew, week after week. [[TOC]] ## What is SignUpGenius good at? Credit where it is due. - **Everyone knows it.** Your volunteers have used it before, and familiarity has real value — it is one less thing to explain at the announcements. - **The free plan is genuinely free** — no expiration, no credit card, unlimited sign-up pages ([Capterra pricing listing](https://www.capterra.com/p/135392/SignUpGenius/pricing/)). - **Breadth.** Hundreds of themes, payment collection, and one-off event sheets of every shape. For a school carnival with 14 stations, or a Thanksgiving basket drive where 60 families each claim a dish, it is a capable tool and we are not. ## Why do the ads matter more than they sound like they should? Because your volunteers are the ones who see them. On the free plan, participants get pop-up and interstitial ads on the sign-up pages themselves, and organizers regularly report the ads landing on top of the sign-up buttons — you can see the pattern in SignUpGenius's public reviews on G2 and Capterra and in community threads like [r/planners](https://www.reddit.com/r/planners/comments/1h88tzk/). SignUpGenius's own resource page confirms ad-free pages are "Available On Starter and above" ([signupgenius.com/resources/signupgenius-cost](https://www.signupgenius.com/resources/signupgenius-cost)), so removing them starts at roughly $108 a year billed annually ([signupgenius.com blog](https://www.signupgenius.com/blog/signs-youve-outgrown-a-free-plan)). That is the part worth sitting with. The ads are not on your screen; they are on the screen of the 70-year-old who has covered the Tuesday sorting shift for nine years, on a page that carries your organization's name. ## How many text reminders does SignUpGenius actually include? A set number per month, by plan tier. The tier data published on Capterra shows text quotas of **150 texts a month** on the entry paid tier, **500** on the mid tier, and **1,500** on the top tier ([Capterra pricing page](https://www.capterra.com/p/135392/SignUpGenius/pricing/)). Run that against a real rotation. Forty volunteers, two reminders each per shift, roughly four shifts a month is well past 150 texts before the month is half over — and the reminders are the whole reason you are paying. What happens next is the predictable part: coordinators start deciding which volunteers "really need" a reminder, and a rationed reminder is how a covered shift turns into an empty one. Multiple listings put the current lineup at Starter $8.99/mo, Essentials $22.49/mo, and Premium $44.99/mo, billed annually ([signupgenius.com blog](https://www.signupgenius.com/blog/signs-youve-outgrown-a-free-plan)) — their pricing page now also says Silver / Gold / Platinum at the same dollars ($8.99 / $22.49 / $44.99 billed annually). Treat the exact dollar figures as reported. The meter is the durable point — prices move, and a monthly text cap on a weekly rotation stays a monthly text cap. Because each participant opts in individually before anything can reach their phone, and if they haven't, the message is emailed to them instead ([support.signupgenius.com](https://support.signupgenius.com/hc/en-us/articles/29745866112663-Receive-Text-Message-Reminders)). For a gala planned in March, fine. It is useless on the Thursday night when someone drops Saturday's dock shift, and it quietly punishes the volunteer who joined last week — she is on the sheet, she is not on the texts, and nobody finds out until she does not turn up. ## What breaks when weekly shifts live on sign-up sheets? SignUpGenius thinks in events: a sheet, some slots, a date. A recurring rotation — the Tuesday food-pantry crew, the second-Sunday nursery team, the Saturday register shift — means duplicating or rebuilding sheets, then re-collecting the same names from the same people who already told you they are in. It works. It is just not what the tool wants to do, and every duplicate is another place for the schedule to drift out of sync with who is actually coming. ## What does VolunteerReminder do instead? One job: make sure the volunteer who is on the schedule actually shows up. You build the rotation once, and the reminders go out on their own. **[Deluxe](/pricing) is $9 a month** for scheduled text and email reminders to up to 60 volunteers, two texts per shift. - **A flat plan instead of a monthly allotment.** SignUpGenius allots 150 texts a month at its entry paid tier. Deluxe covers scheduled shift reminders for your roster at one price, so nobody has to decide which volunteers are worth a reminder. - **No ads. Ever.** Not on the sign-up page, not in the reminder, not on any plan, from $3 a month up. - **Nothing for volunteers to install or log into.** Reminders arrive as an ordinary text or email — no app, no account, no password. Your Tuesday regular with the flip phone is covered without doing anything at all. - **Recurring rotations are the core model.** Set the weekly schedule once; it repeats, and so do the reminders. No sheet to duplicate every month. - **Nobody has to opt in a week early.** Volunteers you put on the roster get their reminders on schedule, including the person who joined on Wednesday for Saturday's shift. - **Carrier registration (A2P/10DLC) is handled for you at the platform level** — the compliance step that gets do-it-yourself texting from a personal phone or a Google Voice line silently blocked. You never register a brand or campaign yourself, and no carrier or number fees land on your bill. Texts go out over the platform's registered number, and a volunteer who replies STOP is unsubscribed across the platform. Worth being blunt about what the $9 is not, because a flat price invites the wrong idea: **Deluxe is not a bulk-text plan and not a per-message credit pack.** It sends scheduled reminders for shifts already on the rotation — two per shift. If the job is texting your whole mailing list at nine at night about a canceled event, that is a mass-texting product and we are not one. If the job is Saturday's crew remembering without anyone chasing them, that is this. **[Pro](/pricing) is $19 a month** for up to 150 volunteers, a third reminder per shift, and the substitute finder: when someone drops out, it texts a batch of your bench — you set how many people are in a batch and how long it waits — and the first YES takes the shift. If nobody answers, it moves to the next batch. It does not blast the whole roster, which matters when you do not want six people's phones going off for a shift one of them already took. Curious what the cancellations you already get are worth? Our [volunteer no-show cost calculator](/tools/no-show-calculator) puts a dollar figure on them, no email required. ## How do SignUpGenius and VolunteerReminder compare? | | SignUpGenius | VolunteerReminder | |---|---|---| | Ads on volunteers' screens | Yes on free; removal starts ~$108/yr | Never, at any price | | Text reminders | 150 / 500 / 1,500 a month by tier | Scheduled shift reminders on Deluxe ($9/mo) and Pro ($19/mo) — two per shift, not a bulk-text plan | | Text opt-in | Each participant opts in; un-opted-in recipients get email instead | Volunteers are on the roster; reminders go out on schedule | | Recurring weekly shifts | Sheets duplicated per event | The core feature | | Filling a last-minute gap | Repost the sheet and hope | Substitute finder (Pro): bench batch, first YES takes the shift | | Volunteer accounts or apps | Web sign-up pages | None — text and email only | | Payment collection | Yes | No | | Entry price with texts | ~$8.99/mo [reported], 150 texts/mo | $9/mo flat for scheduled shift reminders | Sources: [Capterra SignUpGenius pricing](https://www.capterra.com/p/135392/SignUpGenius/pricing/), [SignUpGenius cost resource](https://www.signupgenius.com/resources/signupgenius-cost), [SignUpGenius text-reminder support doc](https://support.signupgenius.com/hc/en-us/articles/29745866112663-Receive-Text-Message-Reminders). ## What does each tool cost at real roster sizes? Monthly cost to remind a roster by text: | Roster size | VolunteerReminder | SignUpGenius | SignUp.com | WhenToHelp | Deputy Lite | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 40 volunteers | **$9** (Deluxe, covers up to 60) | $8.99+ [reported], 150 texts/mo | $9.99, +$9.99 ad-free [reported] | $54 | $200 (40 × $5) | | 150 volunteers | **$19** (Pro) | $22.49+ [reported], 1,500 texts/mo at the top tier | $9.99, +$9.99 ad-free [reported] | $97 | $750 (150 × $5) | Four honest footnotes on that table: - **VolunteerReminder** at $9 and $19 is scheduled shift reminders — two texts per shift on Deluxe, three on Pro. It is the right comparison for a weekly rotation, not for mass texting. - **SignUp.com** lists paid tiers from $9.99/mo and advertises text reminders as uncapped, but removing ads is a separate $9.99/mo (or $99/yr) add-on on every paid tier — so the honest ad-free-with-texts price is about $19.98/mo, not $9.99. The uncapped claim is theirs, not ours, and we cannot tell you how it is enforced in practice ([signup.com pricing](https://signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan), [ad-removal add-on](https://signuphelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202399194-What-are-the-premium-features)). The [full SignUp.com math](/alternatives/signup-com) is on its own page. - **WhenToHelp** advertises email and text notifications as included in the $54 (31–60 helpers) band price, with no published per-message rate or cap; their comparison-grid reminder row still reads "Email schedule reminders" ([whentohelp.com/pricing.htm](https://whentohelp.com/pricing.htm), grid fetched 2026-08-18). - **Deputy** is employee scheduling, not volunteer software. Lite is $5 per user per month, so those are per-user totals (40 × $5, 150 × $5) against a stated $30/month minimum spend ([deputy.com/pricing](https://www.deputy.com/pricing)). Our plans, for the record: **Basic $3/mo** (40 volunteers, email and calendar reminders, no texting), **Deluxe $9/mo** (60 volunteers, adds scheduled text reminders and the public sign-up widget), **Pro $19/mo** (150 volunteers, adds the substitute finder and a third reminder per shift). Annual billing is $33 / $90 / $190 — about two months free. Month-to-month, no setup fee, and every plan starts with a **30-day free trial and no credit card**. Full breakdown on [plans and pricing](/pricing). ## Who should stay on SignUpGenius? Plenty of organizations, honestly. - **One-off events with lots of item slots** — potluck dishes, auction donations, carnival stations, a meal train. Sheet-style sign-ups are SignUpGenius's home turf and it is better at them than we are. - **Anyone who needs payment collection** attached to a sign-up. We do not do that at all. - **Anyone who needs a $0 tool and can live with ads.** The free plan is real — no expiration, no card. If ads on your volunteers' screens do not bother your community, it costs nothing, and $0 is a legitimate budget. If that is you, stay put. Come back if the same names start covering the same shifts every week. ## How do you switch — or run both? Most organizations do not have to pick. Keep SignUpGenius for the carnival and the potluck, and use VolunteerReminder for the weekly rotation where reminders and no-shows are the actual pain. Export your sheet or send us the link, and we will help you turn it into a roster and a repeating schedule. Your volunteers do nothing at all — the next reminder simply arrives as a text. **[Start your 30-day free trial](/signup)** — no credit card. Or send us how your rotation runs and we will tell you honestly whether this fits: [info@volunteerreminder.com](mailto:info@volunteerreminder.com). ## FAQ ### How many text reminders does SignUpGenius include? A fixed number per month, by tier: Capterra's listing shows 150 texts a month on the entry paid tier, 500 on the mid tier, and 1,500 on the top tier. Each participant also has to opt in individually before any text reaches them; if they haven't, the message is emailed instead. ### Are VolunteerReminder's texts unlimited on the $9 plan? No. Deluxe is $9 a month for scheduled shift reminders: up to 60 volunteers, two texts per shift. It is not a bulk-text plan and not a per-message credit pack. The difference from SignUpGenius's 150-texts-a-month entry tier is the shape of the price: one flat plan for the reminders a weekly rotation needs, rather than an allotment you spend down. ### Do volunteers have to create an account? No. Volunteers never log in, install anything, or set a password. Reminders arrive as ordinary texts and emails, which is exactly why they get seen — including by volunteers with a flip phone and no email. ### Is there a free plan? No — plans start at $3 a month. Free tools in this category tend to pay for themselves with ads on your volunteers' screens, and we would rather charge you $3 and show them nothing. Every plan has a 30-day free trial with no credit card. ### What happens when a volunteer cancels at the last minute? On Pro, the substitute finder texts a batch of your bench — you set how many people are in a batch and how long it waits — and the first YES takes the shift. If nobody answers, it moves to the next batch rather than texting the whole roster. ### Can we keep SignUpGenius for events and use VolunteerReminder for weekly shifts? Plenty of organizations do exactly that. SignUpGenius is better at one-off sheets with lots of slots and at collecting payments; we do the recurring rotation and the reminders. We are a reminder service, not a platform, so nothing has to be switched off. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://volunteerreminder.com/sitemap.md) for every public page.