--- title: "WhenToHelp Alternative if You Only Need Text Reminders" description: "WhenToHelp builds the schedule ($16–$117/mo by headcount). If your roster already knows the rotation and people just forget, we text them before the shift — $9/mo, 30-day trial, no card." canonical_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/alternatives/whentohelp md_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/alternatives/whentohelp.md last_updated: 2026-09-18 --- # WhenToHelp is a scheduler. We are the reminder text. WhenToHelp is good at the hard part of volunteering: building the week. Volunteers enter when they can help, AutoFill fills the grid, and the Tradeboard covers trades. Hospital auxiliaries, libraries, crisis lines, museum docents — if that is your job, stay there. A lot of churches, food pantries, and thrift stores are not in that boat. The rotation has not changed in years. Everybody already knows Saturday. The broken part is that someone forgets. Paying $54 a month for a scheduling engine to get a text sent is the wrong tool. **[Start a free trial](/signup)** — 30 days, no card. Or keep reading for the honest price math. The meter is helpers, which is their word for volunteers. **1 to 10 helpers is $16 a month**, 11 to 30 is **$33**, 31 to 60 is **$54**, 61 to 100 is **$78**, 101 to 150 is **$97**, and 151 to 200 is **$117**. Paying ahead cuts it: a year at 31 to 60 helpers is $360 rather than $648 month to month. Over 200 helpers their page gives a calculator instead of a number, so that price has to come from them. All of that is on their [pricing page](https://whentohelp.com/pricing.htm), fetched September 18, 2026. What they get right is that the price is the price. Their pricing page says "One Low Price - Everything is Included!" and "There are NO setup charges, add on costs or hidden fees. NO extra charge for multiple locations or departments." AutoFill, the Tradeboard, unlimited coordinators, the mobile version — all of it sits inside the band price. The trial is 30 days with no credit card, no contract is required, and the subscription can be cancelled online at any time, though "No refund given for any unused portion of your subscription." The number to watch is the band edge: thirty volunteers is $33 a month and thirty-one is $54. Deleted helpers stop counting toward the total, and going over the band mid-subscription is handled by a prorated upgrade or a moved expiration date rather than a lockout. ## Lite, and what the notifications actually say There is a free version and it is not a trick. **WhenToHelp Lite** is free for thirty days for anyone, and their comparison page says "we provide extended free use of the Lite version to certain approved charities." Lite caps out at 100 shifts a week, 250 volunteers, and 18 months of past schedule history, and it will not export data, cannot restrict volunteer permissions, and does not keep internal messages past 30 days. Nearly everything else on their grid is checked on both versions: "Email & text message notifications for all users," Urgent Alerts, "Email schedule reminders," the AutoFill engine, the Tradeboard, the bulletin board, and the mobile version. An approved charity that needs a scheduler should apply for extended free Lite before paying anyone anything, including us. There is no nonprofit discount on the Full Version — their FAQ says those prices "are as low as we can possibly make them." Notifications go out by email and by text. Their homepage lists "Automatic email / text notifications." Their features page says "Instant notifications sent via email and text message" and "Send Urgent Text Alert for instant contact with volunteers." Their FAQ says "each user can have as many emails and text addresses as they like." What they publish about texting stops there: no per-message rate on the pricing page, no monthly message count anywhere, and the reminder row on their comparison grid reads "Email schedule reminders" rather than email and text. So texting exists and is included in the band price, and if a scheduled reminder arriving by text is the reason for buying, that is a question to get answered in writing during the 30-day trial — their trial signup page currently reads closed, so email support or use their test drive. Their FAQ says email support "usually answer[s] within minutes," which makes it a cheap question to ask. Volunteers have logins here, and that is by design. A coordinator adds each person and "their sign in information will automatically be emailed to them" — volunteers cannot sign themselves up. From that login they see published schedules, enter preferred and disliked times, request time off, and work the Tradeboard. They can export their own schedule to Google Calendar. There is a "FREE mobile volunteer scheduling app" in their words, which their comparison grid calls "the mobile version." That login is the engine, not overhead: AutoFill only has preferences to work with because volunteers signed in and entered them. ## Deluxe and Pro Deluxe is **$9 a month** ([pricing](/pricing)). Up to 60 volunteers, scheduled shift reminders, two texts per shift. It is not a bulk-text plan and not a per-message credit pack. It reminds people about shifts that are already on the schedule. That is the whole product. WhenToHelp does not have a $9 plan, so that is not the comparison. Their floor is $16 a month for ten volunteers. At 31 to 60 helpers they are $54 a month, and Deluxe covers 60 volunteers for $9 — but $54 buys software that builds the week, and $9 buys reminders for a week somebody already built. Same number of people, different product. Anyone who reads those two numbers as the same purchase is going to be disappointed by one of them. [Pro](/pricing) is $19 for up to 150 volunteers, adds a third reminder per shift, and adds a substitute finder: when someone drops, it texts a bench batch (default 10, configurable), the first YES takes the shift, then it moves to the next batch rather than the whole roster. That is not a Tradeboard and should not be sold as one. WhenToHelp's Tradeboard is a place volunteers log into and browse; the substitute finder is a text going out to a short list of people who never log into anything. Both fill a hole in the schedule. They are different mechanisms for different rooms. [Basic](/pricing) is $3 for email and calendar reminders to 40 volunteers. Every plan starts with a 30-day trial and no card. Volunteers install nothing and sign into nothing. No login, no password, no preferences to enter — a text and an email. That is a feature in some rooms and a hole in others, so here is the hole: no availability collection, no AutoFill, no tradeboard, no multi-location or multi-department scheduler, no twelve configurable schedule views, no drag-and-drop week builder, no time-off requests, no volunteer self-service at all. Every one of those is on WhenToHelp's list and none of them is on ours. We do not build the schedule. We assume somebody already did. So the split is not subtle. A hospital auxiliary, a crisis line, a library, or a museum running docents — anywhere volunteers submit availability and a coordinator needs software to turn that into a conflict-free week — should stay on WhenToHelp, and $54 a month for AutoFill and a tradeboard is a fair price for that work. A church, a food pantry, or a thrift store where the rotation has not changed in two years, everyone knows they have Saturday, and the only broken part is that somebody forgets, is paying for a scheduling engine to get a text sent. That text is what we sell. If you need AutoFill and a Tradeboard, WhenToHelp is the better buy. If you already have the schedule and just need people to show up, that is us. **[Start your free trial](/signup)** — Deluxe is $9/mo for up to 60 volunteers, two texts per shift. No app for volunteers. No card to start. Questions? [info@volunteerreminder.com](mailto:info@volunteerreminder.com). ## FAQ ### How much does WhenToHelp cost? Pricing is by helper count, which is their word for volunteers: $16 a month for 1 to 10, $33 for 11 to 30, $54 for 31 to 60, $78 for 61 to 100, $97 for 101 to 150, and $117 for 151 to 200. Paying a year ahead at 31 to 60 helpers is $360 instead of $648. Over 200 helpers their page gives a calculator rather than a price. Their page says "One Low Price - Everything is Included!" with "NO setup charges, add on costs or hidden fees." That is from their pricing page, fetched September 18, 2026. ### Is WhenToHelp free? Partly. WhenToHelp Lite is free for thirty days for anyone, and their comparison page says "we provide extended free use of the Lite version to certain approved charities." Lite is capped at 250 volunteers, 100 shifts per week, and 18 months of past schedule history, and it cannot export data or restrict volunteer permissions. AutoFill, the Tradeboard, and email and text notifications are on both versions. There is no nonprofit discount on the paid Full Version — their FAQ says those prices "are as low as we can possibly make them." ### Does WhenToHelp send text reminders? Texting is included in the band price, and how far it goes is worth confirming with them. Their homepage lists "Automatic email / text notifications," their features page says "Instant notifications sent via email and text message" and "Send Urgent Text Alert for instant contact with volunteers," and their FAQ says "each user can have as many emails and text addresses as they like." They do not publish a per-message rate or a message cap anywhere, and the reminder row on their comparison grid reads "Email schedule reminders." If a scheduled reminder arriving by text is the reason for buying, get that confirmed in writing — their trial signup page currently reads closed, so email support or use their test drive. ### Does WhenToHelp have a $9 plan like VolunteerReminder's? No. Their floor is $16 a month for up to ten volunteers, and 31 to 60 volunteers is $54 a month. VolunteerReminder Deluxe is $9 a month for scheduled shift reminders to up to 60 volunteers, two texts per shift. At the same headcount one is a scheduling system that builds the week from volunteer availability and the other is a reminder service for a week that is already built. Different products, not a cheaper version of the same thing. ### Are VolunteerReminder 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. If the job is blasting a full roster on short notice, a volunteer management system or a mass-texting product is the honest answer. ### Who should stay on WhenToHelp? Libraries, hospital auxiliaries, crisis lines, and museums with docents — any program where volunteers submit the times they like, dislike, and cannot help, and the coordinator needs AutoFill or a Tradeboard to turn that into a week without conflicts. Same for anyone scheduling several locations or departments in one account. VolunteerReminder does none of that: no availability collection, no AutoFill, no tradeboard, and no volunteer logins at all. ### What happens when a volunteer drops a shift? On Pro, the substitute finder texts a bench batch (default 10, configurable). The first YES takes the shift, then it moves to the next batch rather than texting the whole roster. YES/NO confirm is optional on Deluxe and Pro. WhenToHelp solves the same problem the other way around: the shift goes to a Tradeboard and volunteers log in to pick it up or trade it. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://volunteerreminder.com/sitemap.md) for every public page.