--- title: "SignUpGenius vs Planning Center: Volunteer Text Costs" description: "SignUpGenius meters texts at 150 a month on its entry plan. Planning Center's free texts ride carrier gateways; deliverable ones cost $0.02 a credit plus $5." canonical_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/compare/signupgenius-vs-planning-center md_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/compare/signupgenius-vs-planning-center.md last_updated: 2026-09-18 --- # SignUpGenius vs Planning Center: a signup sheet, a church operating system, and what each costs to text volunteers These two land in the same search results and they are not substitutes, so the first thing this page owes anyone is the distinction. SignUpGenius is a signup sheet: an organizer posts a page with slots on it — nursery Sundays, a meal train, fourteen carnival stations, a Thanksgiving basket drive — and people claim them. Planning Center is a church operating system, and the product churches use for volunteers, **Services**, is a worship planner first: the order of service, the song library with keys and chord charts, rehearsal audio, CCLI reporting, Services LIVE, and the volunteer teams attached to each service time. Their [Services page](https://www.planningcenter.com/services) says over 78,000 churches use it. One of these tools will not plan your Sunday. The other will not run your carnival. So most churches do not actually choose between them, and the ones that do are usually asking a narrower question: which one gets the reminder in front of the volunteer. That is where the comparison is real, because both products treat volunteer texting as a metered extra rather than a feature — SignUpGenius sells a monthly allowance of messages by tier, and Planning Center sells credits out of a different product than the one holding the schedule. Every number below came off their own pages on August 18, 2026; SignUpGenius card dollars, quotas, and tier names were re-fetched September 19, 2026 with no drift; Planning Center Services bands and People texting rates were re-fetched September 18, 2026 with no drift. Worth being precise about the overlap before pricing it. Services does have signup sheets, in the sense that team members can claim open slots on the volunteer schedule, and it auto-schedules from blockout dates, past serving history, and household preferences. What it does not have is the public, no-account, no-app sheet SignUpGenius exists to be, with payments attached. SignUpGenius, going the other way, has nothing resembling a worship plan, a song library, a member database, or giving. The products touch at exactly one point: a coordinator, a list of names, and a Sunday. ## Where each one hurts on volunteer texting **SignUpGenius meters messages, and the entry allowance is 150 a month.** Their [pricing page](https://www.signupgenius.com/pricing), fetched September 19, 2026, lists **Silver at $8.99 a month billed annually** — $107.89 up front — or **$11.99 month to month**; **Gold at $22.49 billed annually** ($269.89) or $29.99 monthly; and **Platinum at $44.99 billed annually** ($539.89) or $59.99 monthly. The row labeled "Text invites/group updates" reads **150 a month on Silver, 500 on Gold, 1,500 on Platinum, and none at all on the free plan**. Email is metered too — 1,000 messages a month free, 2,500 on Silver, 10,000 on Gold, 20,000 on Platinum — which matters more than it sounds like it should, because email is where the texts land when they cannot be sent. Run a normal church rotation against 150. Forty volunteers across nursery, ushers, AV, and coffee, each serving about twice a month, with two reminders per serve, is **160 messages a month** — over Silver's allowance before the month is out, and that is with nobody sending a schedule change. If those same forty serve weekly, it is roughly 320 a month, comfortably inside Gold's 500 at $22.49 and nowhere near Silver's. One caution on that arithmetic, because being exact matters more than being dramatic: the metered row is labeled "text invites/group updates," and SignUpGenius does not publish whether a participant's own text reminders draw from the same pool. Get that answered in writing before buying on the strength of the number. A SignUpGenius text also only lands if the volunteer opted themselves in. Their help center's route is that the participant logs into a SignUpGenius account, opens Settings, goes to the Notifications tab, and checks Text reminders, under a note reading "Reminders, if enabled by the sign up creator, will be sent based on the following settings" ([support.signupgenius.com](https://support.signupgenius.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044846753-How-to-Receive-Text-Message-Reminders-for-Your-Sign-Ups)). For organizer-sent messages the fallback is quiet rather than loud: "If a participant hasn't opted in to receive texts, the message will be emailed to them instead" ([support.signupgenius.com](https://support.signupgenius.com/hc/en-us/articles/29572634848535-Send-Text-Invites)). Texts are one-way, STOP and HELP language is appended automatically, and a volunteer who replies gets an auto-response beginning "Do not reply." Then the ads, which are the other meter. SignUpGenius's advertising row does not read yes or no — it reads **1 ad-free sign up on Silver and 10 on Gold**, with only Platinum clearing ads off everything, and their own note explains that as one sign up ends the ad removal can be re-applied to a different one. A church running nursery, greeters, and a pantry shift on three separate pages buys ads off one of the three for $8.99. **Planning Center has two texting paths, and the free one is the one that quietly fails.** Services can send scheduling requests and reminders as texts through "a free email-to-text service called SMS gateway, which is only available through certain mobile carriers," and the volunteer's profile has to carry a mobile number *and* the correct carrier before anything sends. The sharper detail is in the same help article: "many carriers (such as Verizon and AT&T) have stopped supporting SMS gateway texts, making in-app notifications more reliable" ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/142891-set-up-and-respond-to-text-notifications.html)). Verizon and AT&T are most of the American market. Their own recommendation is to stop leaning on the free text path and use push notifications in the Services app, which works right up until the volunteer who has no app and no intention of installing one. A gateway text that never arrives does not bounce and does not warn anybody. Their own texting overview table scores five products on whether they can send texts, receive replies, avoid carrier restrictions, and cost nothing. **Services is the only row in that table with no check mark under "No mobile carrier restrictions"** ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/144875-texting-in-planning-center.html)). The product holding the volunteer schedule is the one whose texting is carrier-dependent. **The deliverable path is a different product with a meter on it.** Real carrier texting runs through People: **$0.02 per credit**, plus a flat **$5 a month** for a toll-free number, with a credit card on file. The mobile carriers review the toll-free registration in three to five business days, the form asks for the URL of an opt-in consent page, and the whole feature is US-only. A credit is "one text message of up to 160 standard characters to one recipient"; past 160 characters it splits into two, with a 300-character ceiling, and emoji shrink the budget further ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/139180-set-up-text-messaging.html)). Replies are not received — if someone answers, "their reply is discarded, and they'll receive a text telling them that the number cannot receive replies" ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/139182-send-a-text-to-a-list.html)). Those People texts are composed by a person and sent to a list — pick a list, write the message, send it or schedule it. They are not generated from the Services volunteer schedule ([help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/139182-send-a-text-to-a-list.html)). Services can still send scheduling texts automatically over the carrier gateway; what it cannot do is text volunteers automatically and reliably from one product. Then the failure mode that matters most for reminders, in their words: "If your organization does not have sufficient SMS credits at the scheduled send time, the text is not sent, and the message creator receives an email notification." Auto-refill exists and is optional. If it is off and the balance runs low, Sunday's reminder does not go out and the only person who finds out is whoever wrote it. Same forty volunteers, same two reminders per serve: - 40 volunteers × 2 serves × 2 reminders = **160 texts a month** - A reminder that says who, what, when, where, and who to text if you cannot make it runs past 160 characters, so it bills as **2 credits** - 160 × 2 × $0.02 = **$6.40**, plus the **$5** number fee = **about $11.40 a month in texting alone** That sits on top of Services, which is priced by "the total number of people who access the system in any way." The free tier stops at 5 team members; paid tiers are **$15** (20 members), **$32** (50), **$69** (150), **$115** (400), **$179** (1,000), and **$239** at the top. A 40-volunteer roster plus the staff who schedule them needs the 50-member tier, so **$32**. **Realistic all-in for scheduling and reliably texting 40 volunteers: about $43 a month, metered.** The add-on economy around Planning Center is the evidence that churches keep hitting this: [Confirmed.Church](https://confirmed.church/) sells reply-to-confirm volunteer texts at $20, $35, or $60 a month for 500, 1,500, or 4,000 credits, works only with Services, and charges a one-time $15 10DLC fee in the US; [Text In Church](https://textinchurch.com/pricing) is CORE, PLUS, or SUITE on a credit slider — $35, $45, or $60 a month at 501–1,250 credits, then 3¢ per message after the plan limit; [Clearstream](https://clearstream.io/pricing) starts at $35 a month in the US for 1,000 credits and one number. Two products, two different sore spots. SignUpGenius's is an allowance that a weekly rotation outruns on the cheap tier, plus an opt-in step the volunteer has to complete themselves. Planning Center's is that the free path is the one its own docs say may not reach your volunteer, and the reliable path is a second product with a credit balance that can silently fail at send time. ## The matrix, and what 40 volunteers costs The two products as they are published today. The point of the table is how few rows are a genuine head-to-head: | | SignUpGenius | Planning Center Services | |---|---|---| | What it is | A signup sheet — post a page with slots, people claim them; payments, waivers, fundraisers, and event pages attached | One product in a church operating system — worship planning and volunteer scheduling, alongside People, Giving, Check-Ins, Groups, and Calendar | | Free plan | Unlimited sign up pages, automatic confirmation and reminder emails, 1,000 email messages a month, 400+ themes; ads shown, no texts | 5 team members; the People database and reporting are free separately | | Paid price | Silver $8.99 a month billed annually ($107.89) or $11.99 monthly; Gold $22.49 ($269.89) or $29.99; Platinum $44.99 ($539.89) or $59.99 | $15 (20 team members), $32 (50), $69 (150), $115 (400), $179 (1,000), $239 — priced by everyone who accesses the system in any way | | Native volunteer reminders | Automatic reminder emails on date-specific sign ups; text reminders on paid tiers if the participant opted in | Automatic reminder emails; texts only through carrier email-to-text gateways | | Deliverable texting | Metered by tier: 150 / 500 / 1,500 "text invites/group updates" a month; none on free | A separate product — People credits at $0.02 each plus $5 a month for a toll-free number | | Text opt-in | The participant enables text reminders in their own account settings; un-opted-in recipients get the message as email instead | Consent gathered through a texting consent form whose URL goes on the carrier registration | | Replies | One-way; a reply gets an auto-response beginning "Do not reply" | One-way in People — a reply is discarded and the sender gets a text saying the number cannot receive replies. On carriers that still support gateway texts, Services notifications carry accept and decline short links | | Where texting works | Not published on the pages we fetched | US only; international churches are pointed at third-party integrations | | Ads | Ad-supported free plan; ad removal is bundled by tier — 1 sign up on Silver, 10 on Gold, everything on Platinum, re-usable as sign ups end | None | | Recurring rotations | Duplicate the sign up and edit the dates | Templates, the Matrix for scheduling weeks ahead, and auto-scheduling from past serving history, blockout dates, and household preferences | | Worship planning | No | Yes — order of service, song library, keys and chord charts, rehearsal audio, Services LIVE, CCLI | | Collecting money | Yes — 3.95% + $0.95 per card transaction, 1.95% (minimum $1.00) per eCheck | Not in Services; Giving and Registrations process at 2.15% + $0.30 in the US | | What volunteers install | Nothing, but a text reminder requires a SignUpGenius account and an opt-in | Nothing required; the Services mobile app is where Planning Center recommends notifications land | | Trial | Free plan with no expiration and no card | 30 days free, no setup fees, cancel any time | Sources: [signupgenius.com/pricing](https://www.signupgenius.com/pricing) (re-fetched September 19, 2026; no drift vs August 18 / September 10 / September 11 / September 14 / September 18), [support.signupgenius.com](https://support.signupgenius.com/hc/en-us/articles/29572634848535-Send-Text-Invites), [planningcenter.com/services](https://www.planningcenter.com/services), [planningcenter.com/pricing](https://www.planningcenter.com/pricing), [help.planningcenter.com](https://help.planningcenter.com/en/139180-set-up-text-messaging.html) (Planning Center pages re-fetched September 18, 2026; no drift vs September 14 / September 11). Neither one prices the way a coordinator thinks — SignUpGenius by messages and ad-free pages, Planning Center by everyone who logs in — so here is the same 40-volunteer roster, reminded twice per serve, priced across the realistic options: | Setup | Monthly cost at 40 volunteers | What that buys | |---|---|---| | **VolunteerReminder Basic** | **$3** | 40 volunteers, email and calendar reminders, one per shift; no texting | | SignUpGenius Silver | $8.99 billed annually ($107.89 up front), or $11.99 monthly | 150 text invites/updates a month — short of the 160 this roster needs — and ads removed from one sign up at a time | | **VolunteerReminder Deluxe** | **$9** | Up to 60 volunteers, scheduled shift reminders by text and email, two per shift | | SignUpGenius Gold | $22.49 billed annually ($269.89 up front), or $29.99 monthly | 500 text invites/updates a month, ads removed from up to 10 sign ups | | Planning Center Services + People texting | About $43, metered | The $32 Services tier (50 team members) + $6.40 of credits + the $5 toll-free number | | Planning Center Services + Confirmed.Church | About $52 | $32 Services + $20 for 500 reply-to-confirm credits a month, plus a one-time $15 10DLC fee | | WhenToHelp | $54 | The 31–60 helper band; a real scheduler with email and text notifications inside the band price, no published per-message rate or cap | Four footnotes, so the table is not read as more than it is. The SignUpGenius rows buy a sheet, not a scheduler and not a worship planner — they are on the table because a coordinator with forty volunteers and a texting problem really does price them against Planning Center, not because the products do the same job. Both Planning Center rows count the whole Services subscription, which is fair only for a church that would not otherwise be paying for it; a church already using Services for worship planning should read them as $11.40 and $20 of *additional* cost, not $43 and $52. Our own $3 and $9 are scheduled shift reminders for a rotation somebody else built — the right comparison for a weekly roster, the wrong one for mass texting. And [WhenToHelp](/alternatives/whentohelp) is the one row that prices a 40-volunteer roster as 40 volunteers, which is why it is here. ## Who should stay where, and where we fit **Stay on SignUpGenius** if the thing you are running is a sheet. A carnival with fourteen stations, a Thanksgiving basket drive where sixty families each claim a dish, a meal train, an auction, a parent-teacher conference schedule — slot-style sign-ups with many kinds of slots are its home turf, and the free plan handles them with no expiration, no card, and no page limit, which is the strongest free tier in this comparison. Stay if money is changing hands on the sign up itself, because collecting for tickets, dues, or supplies at the same place people claim their slot is something Planning Center's volunteer scheduling does not do. Stay if the volunteer work is episodic rather than a rotation — a different set of people every time, recruited from a link in a bulletin. And stay if $0 is the budget and ads on volunteers' screens are an acceptable trade, because $0 is a legitimate budget. **Stay on Planning Center** if Sunday runs on the worship plan. The song library, keys and chord charts, rehearsal audio, the order of service, CCLI reporting, and Services LIVE are why 78,000-plus churches are there, and nothing on this page substitutes for any of it. Stay if the church wants one system holding the member database, the giving, the children's check-in, and the app people already have on their phones — the integration across those products is the actual product, and we are not a church management system by any definition. Stay if the auto-scheduler is doing real work: filling positions from blockout dates, past serving history, and household preferences is genuinely hard to replace with a spreadsheet. And stay if the texting problem is solvable by a $20-a-month add-on and you would rather buy one than move a roster. That is a reasonable answer, and the add-on market exists because plenty of churches reached it. **VolunteerReminder is the third option, and it is a much narrower one.** [Deluxe is $9 a month](/pricing): up to 60 volunteers, scheduled shift reminders, two texts per shift, sent as ordinary texts and emails to a roster that already exists. It is not a bulk-text plan and not a per-message credit pack. [Pro](/pricing) is $19 for up to 150 volunteers, a third reminder per shift, and a substitute finder that texts a batch of the bench when someone drops — default 10 people, first YES takes the shift, then the next batch rather than the whole roster. [Basic](/pricing) is $3 for email and calendar reminders to 40 volunteers. Annual billing is $33, $90, and $190, every plan starts with a 30-day trial and no card, and volunteers install nothing and log into nothing. Where we are the wrong answer, stated as plainly as the two above. We do not do sheets — no potluck dish list, no carnival with fourteen stations, no meal train, no themes, no waivers, no participant check-in. We do not collect payments at all, so dues, tickets, and fundraisers belong on SignUpGenius. We do not do worship planning, and there is no song library, chord chart, service order, or CCLI report anywhere in our product. We do not hold a member database or take giving. We do not build the schedule; we assume a coordinator already did. And we are not the tool for texting a whole church directory at nine at night about a canceled service — that is mass texting, and People credits or Clearstream is the honest answer for it. What we do is the narrow part in the middle: the roster exists, the rotation repeats, the nursery is the same eight people it was last year, and the only broken piece is that somebody forgets. Keeping both is the normal outcome rather than a compromise — SignUpGenius keeps the sheets, or Planning Center keeps the worship plan and the system of record, and the reminder lives somewhere whose only job is landing on a volunteer's phone without an allowance or a credit balance in the way. If you want the no-shows you already have priced out, our [volunteer no-show cost calculator](/tools/no-show-calculator) does it with no email required. **[Start a free trial](/signup)** — 30 days, no card — or email [info@volunteerreminder.com](mailto:info@volunteerreminder.com) and we will say plainly whether this fits. ## FAQ ### Are SignUpGenius and Planning Center alternatives to each other? Not really, and treating them as substitutes is how churches buy the wrong one. SignUpGenius is a signup sheet: an organizer posts slots and people claim them, with payments, waivers, and event pages attached. Planning Center Services is part of a church operating system and is a worship planner first — order of service, song library, keys and chord charts, rehearsal audio, CCLI reporting — that also schedules volunteer teams. They overlap on one thing only: getting a named person to show up on a given day. A church running a carnival wants the first; a church running a worship service wants the second; a church doing both often has both. ### Does SignUpGenius include text reminders? On paid plans, in a fixed monthly allowance. Their pricing page meters the row labeled "text invites/group updates" at 150 a month on Silver, 500 on Gold, and 1,500 on Platinum, with none on the free plan. The participant also has to opt in themselves — they enable text reminders in their own account settings, under a note reading that reminders will be sent "if enabled by the sign up creator." If someone has not opted in, an organizer's text is emailed to them instead, quietly. Texts are one-way; a reply gets an auto-response that begins "Do not reply." ### Does Planning Center include free text reminders for volunteers? Only over carrier email-to-text gateways, and their own help article now says "many carriers (such as Verizon and AT&T) have stopped supporting SMS gateway texts, making in-app notifications more reliable." The volunteer's profile has to list a mobile number and the right carrier before anything sends. Their texting overview table scores five products on carrier restrictions, and Services is the only row with no check under "No mobile carrier restrictions." Deliverable texting is a separate metered product: People charges $0.02 per credit, one credit covers 160 characters, and a toll-free number is $5 a month whatever the volume. Those People texts are composed by a person and sent to a list — they are not generated from the Services volunteer schedule (https://help.planningcenter.com/en/139182-send-a-text-to-a-list.html). Replies are not received, texting is US-only, and if the credit balance is short at the scheduled send time the text simply is not sent. ### Which is cheaper for a 40-volunteer roster? SignUpGenius, on the sticker, and it is buying something different. Silver is $8.99 a month billed annually — but 40 volunteers reminded twice per serve, twice a month, is 160 messages against Silver's 150-a-month allowance, so the honest tier is Gold at $22.49. Planning Center is about $43 all in: the $32 Services tier for 50 team members, $6.40 of credits, and the $5 number fee. A church already paying for Services should read that as about $11.40 of additional cost, not $43. For comparison, WhenToHelp sells a 31-to-60 helper band at $54 a month with notifications included, and VolunteerReminder Deluxe is a flat $9 for scheduled shift reminders to up to 60 volunteers. ### Can a church use SignUpGenius instead of Planning Center? For sheets, yes; for Sunday, no. SignUpGenius will run the meal train, the carnival, the basket drive, and the parent-teacher conference schedule better and cheaper than anything in a church operating system, and it will take the money for them. What it cannot do is plan a service, hold a song library, transpose a chord chart, report to CCLI, keep a member database, or auto-schedule a rotation from blockout dates and household preferences. A church whose only volunteer need is episodic sign-ups can live on SignUpGenius. A church whose Sunday runs on the worship plan cannot. ### Can a church keep SignUpGenius or Planning Center and still use VolunteerReminder? Yes, and that is the normal outcome rather than a compromise. SignUpGenius keeps the sheets and the payments, or Planning Center keeps the worship plan and the system of record, and VolunteerReminder sends the recurring reminders for the rotations where no-shows are the actual pain. Nothing has to be migrated or switched off, and volunteers do not install anything or log into anything. ### 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. What it is instead of a meter is a predictable bill for normal reminder volume — no monthly allowance to run out of, no credit balance to top up, and no charge for a volunteer replying. If the job is texting a whole church directory at once, a mass-texting product is the honest answer. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://volunteerreminder.com/sitemap.md) for every public page.