---
title: "VolunteerReminder vs SignUp.com: Texts, Ads, Real Cost"
description: "SignUp.com advertises uncapped text reminders, then charges $9.99 more to remove ads. We send scheduled shift reminders for $9. Who should stay put, honestly."
canonical_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/compare/volunteerreminder-vs-signup-com
md_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/compare/volunteerreminder-vs-signup-com.md
last_updated: 2026-09-18
---
# VolunteerReminder vs SignUp.com: a sign-up sheet, a reminder service, and what ad-free texting really costs

<!-- No `#` H1 (the template renders the registry h1) and no FAQ section (the template renders it from the registry so the FAQPage schema mirrors the visible Q&A). Three H2s: the matrix needs its own, per the archetype B brief. No [[TOC]]. -->

We build VolunteerReminder, so this page is not written by a neutral party. What we can do is put every SignUp.com number next to the page it came from, keep our own claims narrow enough to check, and say plainly further down who should stay where they are. Every figure below was fetched from primary sources on August 18, 2026, except SignUp.com plan and ad-free dollars, which were re-fetched September 19, 2026.

Start with the thing that decides most of this. **These two products do not do the same job.** SignUp.com is a sign-up sheet: an organizer publishes a page of spots — nursery Sundays, a meal train, fourteen carnival stations, a pantry shift every Saturday — and people claim them, with group pages, waivers, participant check-in, hours tracking, and payments attached. VolunteerReminder is a reminder service for a roster that already exists: a coordinator enters the rotation once, and we text and email the people on it before their shifts. We do not build the schedule, we do not host a page for people to claim spots on, and we do not take money. Nobody "migrates" from one to the other in the strict sense, because the two products solve consecutive problems.

Two concessions before any pricing, both of which cut against us.

**SignUp.com has a genuinely strong free plan and we have none.** Their help center puts it as "Yes, SignUp's Basic service is completely free. There is no trial period, no credit card required, and no limit on the number of SignUps you create, participants you add, or emails you send" ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/is-signup-really-free)), and the free tier's unlimited email notifications explicitly include automated reminders. Their account-options page lists "Swift scheduling of recurring shifts and conference appointments with AutoFill" and "Automated email reminders" among Basic features ([signuphelp.zendesk.com](https://signuphelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202795780-SignUp-Account-Options)). A church that needs a recurring schedule and email reminders can have both for $0. Our plans start at $3 a month.

**And volunteers do not create accounts on either product.** That is our usual differentiator against sheet tools and it does not apply here: "Participants do not need to create an account to sign up. SignUp is designed to be easy to access from an email link, a shared URL, or a QR code — with no login barrier in the way" ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/how-participants-access-signup)). On this comparison, nobody has to install or log into anything on either side.

So the real question is not which is better. It is which half of the work is broken. If the problem is that you cannot get names onto a page, SignUp.com is the answer and this page ends here. If the names are already on a roster and half of them forget, keep reading.

## Where each one hurts on volunteer texting and ads

**SignUp.com's headline is the strongest texting claim in this category, and it is theirs, not ours.** Their [premium pricing page](https://signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan) puts **"Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders"** on all three paid tiers — **Starter at $9.99, Plus at $24.99, and Max at $49.99 a month** — footnoted "US, Canada and Australia only, standard carrier charges apply." Their help center repeats it as "Unlimited text (SMS) reminders for participants in the US, Canada, and Australia" ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/what-are-the-premium-features)). We make no such claim about our own product anywhere, and we are not going to pretend theirs is worthless. Nothing they publish says how it is enforced, which is a question to put to them in writing rather than an accusation to make here.

One presentation note that matters when you check the page yourself: as fetched today, each tier's price is struck through with the word **Free** above it, under a hero reading "Get a Free Trial of our Premium Planning Service" and a promo code, FREETRIAL, for one month free. The recurring prices are unchanged — $9.99, $24.99, $49.99 — but the first month may be $0, which makes the advice further down about testing their texting cheap to follow.

What the headline does not cover is worth two paragraphs, because it is where a rotation gets hurt rather than a sheet.

**First, who can receive a text.** SignUp.com's texts are opt-in per participant, and the opt-in happens during the sign-up flow: "Participants are automatically prompted to opt into text reminders during the sign-up process." Then the sentence that matters for a roster: "Participants who are already signed up will not be prompted automatically — you need to invite them to opt in," by sending a message from the Messages tab directing them to the My Info screen to enter a phone number ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/sms-text-reminders-for-participants)). A coordinator who assigns the roster — which is exactly what their own recurring-shift article describes an organizer doing ([signuphelp.zendesk.com](https://signuphelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202527014-Can-participants-sign-up-for-a-recurring-shift)) — has a roster where nobody was ever prompted. Uncapped texting only reaches whatever share of a forty-person roster went and completed a two-screen opt-in, and nothing about that share is uncapped.

**Second, how many times a shift gets reminded.** Their reminder setting is one automatic reminder per commitment: "Choose to send participant reminders 1, 2, or 7 days before their commitment. Default is 2 days," with an extra line of text you can append to every reminder ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/how-to-change-email-preferences)). Additional reminders are manual — "You can also send additional manual reminders at any time using the Message feature in your Organizer view" — and their article on that feature is written entirely in email terms, down to the button labeled Select Email Recipients ([signuphelp.zendesk.com](https://signuphelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202752510-How-do-I-send-a-message-update-or-alert-to-participants)). So the uncapped claim is about message volume, not about cadence. Two automatic touches before a shift is not something their published settings offer at any tier, and a single automatic touch two days out is the reminder that a Thursday shift forgets by Saturday.

**Then the ads, which are the second line item nobody shops for.** SignUp.com's free plan shows ads, which is normal in this category. What is unusual is that paying does not remove them: ad removal is a separate add-on at **$9.99 a month** on top of any plan ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/how-to-make-your-signups-ad-free)), which makes the honest price of texts with no ads about **$19.98 a month**, roughly double the $9.99 headline. That monthly total appears on neither pricing page — the monthly cards at [signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan](https://signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan) carry no ad-free line, and the annual-first page at [signup.com/Pricing](https://signup.com/Pricing) prints Starter / Plus / Max at $99.99 / $249.99 / $499.99 a year with no ad-free line either. Ad-free dollars live in the help center.

Credit where it is due, because the add-on is better designed than the metered ad removal on competing sheets: it strips picture and video ads from every SignUp and group page in the account, removes ads from participant email notifications, kills the sponsored-offer checkboxes on the sign-up screen, and — the part worth knowing — it can be bought on a free Basic account with no premium plan underneath it ([signup.com/help](https://signup.com/help/can-i-upgrade-to-ad-free-without-premium)). Nothing else in this comparison lets a $0 account pay $9.99 and have ads gone from everything volunteers see.

**Where we hurt is narrower and easier to state, because the product is narrower.** [Deluxe is $9 a month](/pricing) and covers up to 60 volunteers with scheduled shift reminders, two texts per shift. That is a shape, not an allowance: the volume is shift slots times reminders per shift, so there is no monthly allowance to spend down and no per-message charge, and it also cannot be pointed at anything else. It is not a bulk-text plan and it is not a per-message credit pack. If the job is telling four hundred people at nine at night that Sunday is canceled, that is mass texting and we are the wrong tool.

The version of that limit people actually hit is the plan ladder. [Basic is $3](/pricing) for up to 40 volunteers with email and calendar reminders only, so a 40-volunteer roster that wants texting does not pay $3, it pays $9 for Deluxe — and Deluxe's own ceiling is 60 volunteers, which a mid-sized rotation clears. [Pro is $19](/pricing) for up to 150 volunteers, a third reminder per shift, and the substitute finder: when someone drops, it texts a batch of the bench rather than the whole roster, and the first YES takes the shift before it moves to the next batch. Annual billing is $33, $90, and $190, and every plan starts with a 30-day trial and no card. One thing about that trial that we would rather say here than have you discover: a trial account can send up to 200 texts in total before texting stops and asks you to upgrade. Email is not capped, and the number is sized so a 60-person roster can be reminded three times over, but it is a real limit and it is ours.

<!-- VERIFY: SignUp.com plan dollars leftover re-fetched 2026-09-19 (HTTP 200, no redirect) — no dollar drift vs 2026-09-18 leftover / 2026-09-17 leftover / 2026-09-16 / 2026-09-15 / 2026-09-14 / 2026-09-12. https://signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan still prints monthly Starter / Plus / Max at $9.99 / $24.99 / $49.99 with the FREETRIAL / struck-through-Free framing (do not invent promo claims beyond what that page still shows). https://signup.com/Pricing still prints annual-first cards: Starter $8.34/mo billed 99.99 annually, Plus $20.83 / 249.99, Max $41.66 / 499.99; Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders^ still on paid tiers. Neither pricing page carries an ad-free line. The 2026-08-18 note that "the pricing page contains NO annual price" is stale against /Pricing — keep that distinction: monthly page still has no annual dollars; /Pricing is the annual-first page. Footnote on the monthly page still carries the doubled "only only"; paraphrase it rather than quote so it does not read as our typo. -->

<!-- VERIFY: CLEARED 2026-09-11 twin swaps for the cluster. SignUp.com first-party help center at https://signup.com/help/* (articles stamped "Last Updated June 17, 2026"; index embedded in the pricing page's served JSON, created_at 2026/07/06) is the preferred citation where a twin exists. Mapping (all twins re-fetched HTTP 200 on 2026-09-11): 202399194 -> /help/what-are-the-premium-features; 202414714 -> /help/how-to-make-your-signups-ad-free; 360034696233 -> /help/can-i-upgrade-to-ad-free-without-premium; 202193304 -> /help/sms-text-reminders-for-participants; 202422514 -> /help/how-to-collect-money-with-your-signup; 202400690 -> /help/how-to-change-email-preferences; 202438264 -> /help/when-are-emails-sent-from-signup; new with no Zendesk twin: /help/is-signup-really-free and /help/how-participants-access-signup. This page already cited /help for twins. Reader-facing Zendesk kept only where there is no twin (202795780 Basic feature list, 202527014 recurring shifts, 202752510 the Messages tab). /alternatives/signup-com and /compare/signupgenius-vs-signup-com now match. -->

<!-- VERIFY: THE ANNUAL AD-FREE DOLLAR IS STILL CONTRADICTED (leftover re-fetched 2026-09-19, HTTP 200, no dollar drift vs 2026-09-18 leftover / 2026-09-17 leftover / 2026-09-16 / 2026-09-15 / 2026-09-14 / 2026-09-12). Dedicated Ad-Free articles still print $9.99/month or $99.99/year (2 months free): https://signup.com/help/how-to-make-your-signups-ad-free, https://signup.com/help/can-i-upgrade-to-ad-free-without-premium. Premium-features summaries still disagree: /help/what-are-the-premium-features says "$9.99/month or $99/year"; Zendesk 202399194 says "$9.99/month or $99.00/year". This page still cites ONLY the monthly $9.99 in the body. The live /alternatives/signup-com page cites $99.99/yr from the dedicated Ad-Free /help articles and leaves a VERIFY note on the $99.00 premium-features line — do not invent a third number. SECOND UNRESOLVED CONTRADICTION, kept off the page: refund window is "within the first 7 days" on https://signup.com/faq-premium-subscription and "within 14 days" in Zendesk 202694480. THIRD: reminder lead time is "1, 2, or 7 days" in /help/how-to-change-email-preferences and "anywhere from 1 to 7 days" in /help/sms-text-reminders-for-participants. The body quotes the settings-screen article ("1, 2, or 7"). -->

<!-- VERIFY: the opt-in and cadence argument is the load-bearing claim on this page and every sentence of it is quoted, not inferred. "Participants who are already signed up will not be prompted automatically — you need to invite them to opt in" and the My Info walkthrough are verbatim from /help/sms-text-reminders-for-participants (2026-06-17), corroborated by Zendesk 202193304 (2024-06-04): "If Participants already have assignments, they will not be prompted to enter a phone number again and will not see the text message option." "You can also send additional manual reminders at any time using the Message feature in your Organizer view" is verbatim from /help/how-to-change-email-preferences. The claim that the Message feature is email is DELIBERATELY WORDED AS AN OBSERVATION ABOUT THEIR DOCUMENTATION, not as a statement of fact about their product: Zendesk 202752510 describes only "Select Email Recipients" / "send emails to participants signed up for those spots", and no article in either help center describes an organizer-composed TEXT broadcast — but absence of documentation is not proof of absence. Do NOT harden this into "SignUp.com cannot text a group update." If the operator can confirm either way from a trial account, tighten or drop the sentence. Everything else in that paragraph is safe: their published reminder control offers one automatic reminder per commitment at one lead time, which is a cadence fact, not a volume fact, and it is the honest counterweight to a headline we cannot match. -->

## 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:

| | SignUp.com | VolunteerReminder |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A sign-up sheet — publish a page of spots, people claim them; group pages, waivers, check-in, hours tracking, and payments attached | A reminder service — enter a recurring rotation once, and we text, email, and calendar-invite the roster before each shift |
| Who builds the schedule | The organizer builds the spots; volunteers claim them, or the organizer assigns them | A coordinator, before we do anything; we do not build it |
| Free plan | Unlimited SignUps, participants, and email notifications including automated reminders; recurring scheduling with AutoFill; no card, no expiry; ads shown, no texts | None. Plans start at $3 a month, with a 30-day trial and no card |
| Paid price | Starter $9.99, Plus $24.99, Max $49.99 a month; annual cards print $99.99 / $249.99 / $499.99 | Basic $3, Deluxe $9, Pro $19 a month; $33 / $90 / $190 annually |
| Priced by | Features and organizer seats, not people | Volunteers on the roster — 40 / 60 / 150 |
| Text reminders | "Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders" on every paid tier, US, Canada, and Australia, standard carrier charges apply — their claim | Deluxe and Pro. Scheduled shift reminders, two per shift on Deluxe and three on Pro — not a bulk-text plan and not a credit pack |
| Automatic reminder cadence | One per commitment, 1, 2, or 7 days ahead, default 2; further reminders are sent manually | 1 per shift on Basic, 2 on Deluxe, 3 on Pro, on a schedule |
| Text opt-in | Each participant opts in — prompted during sign-up; anyone already holding an assignment is not prompted and has to opt in from My Info | The coordinator supplies mobile numbers and attests to consent; volunteers get STOP handling |
| Reminder wording | Fixed format, plus one extra line of text or a link you can append to every reminder | Fixed format today; custom wording is not on any plan |
| Replies | Not documented as two-way | One-way for ordinary reminders. On Pro, the substitute finder reads a YES from the bench batch it texted |
| When somebody drops | Re-open the spot and message the group; there is no automated backfill | Pro texts a batch of the bench, first YES takes the shift, then the next batch |
| Recurring weekly shifts | Repeating spot patterns, and an organizer can assign one person a recurring shift; people signing themselves up still pick dates one at a time | The core model — enter the rotation once and it repeats |
| Public sign-up page | Yes — hosted SignUps and unlimited group pages, the core of the product | No hosted page. Deluxe and Pro can embed a widget on your own site showing which dates still need somebody |
| Collecting money | Yes — no platform fee; Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 or PayPal 2.99–3.49% + $0.30, from 2.2% + $0.30 for US 501(c)(3)s | No. Not at all, on any plan |
| Ads | Ad-supported at every tier; removal is a separate $9.99-a-month add-on, buyable even on a free account, covering all SignUps, group pages, and notification emails | None on any plan at any price |
| Waivers, check-in, hours tracking | Waiver and check-in on Plus and Max; participant hours tracking and cross-SignUp reporting on Max | None of it |
| Extra organizers | 1 assistant organizer on Starter, 5 on Plus, 15 on Max, counted per SignUp | Not a published per-tier limit |
| What volunteers install | Nothing, and no account needed | Nothing, and no account needed |
| Trial | Basic is free forever; a promo code on the pricing page currently offers one free premium month | 30 days, no card |

Sources: [signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan](https://signup.com/premium-offer-pricing-plan), [signup.com/Pricing](https://signup.com/Pricing), [signup.com/help/what-are-the-premium-features](https://signup.com/help/what-are-the-premium-features), [signup.com/help/sms-text-reminders-for-participants](https://signup.com/help/sms-text-reminders-for-participants), [signup.com/help/how-to-make-your-signups-ad-free](https://signup.com/help/how-to-make-your-signups-ad-free), and [our own pricing page](/pricing). SignUp.com plan and ad-free dollars as published September 19, 2026; remaining SignUp.com help-center facts as published August 18, 2026.

SignUp.com does not price by volunteer count and we do, so the only fair way to line them up is to fix the roster. Forty volunteers on a recurring rotation, reminded before their shifts:

| Setup | Monthly cost at 40 volunteers | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| SignUp.com Basic | **$0** | Unlimited SignUps, participants, and email notifications, automated email reminders, recurring scheduling with AutoFill; ads on every page and in every notification email, and no text reminders |
| **VolunteerReminder Basic** | **$3** | 40 volunteers — exactly the cap — email and calendar reminders, one per shift; no texting |
| **VolunteerReminder Deluxe** | **$9** | Up to 60 volunteers, scheduled shift reminders by text and email, two per shift, no ads |
| SignUp.com Starter | $9.99 | "Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders" — their claim — to participants who opted themselves in, US, Canada, and Australia; one assistant organizer; ads still shown |
| SignUp.com Basic + ad-free | $9.99 | Ads gone from every SignUp, group page, and notification email, on a free account with no premium plan underneath; still no text reminders |
| **VolunteerReminder Pro** | **$19** | Up to 150 volunteers, three reminders per shift, and the substitute finder |
| SignUp.com Starter + ad-free | ~$19.98 | The like-for-like row: texts and no ads, $9.99 plan plus the $9.99 add-on |
| SignUp.com Plus + ad-free | ~$34.98 | Adds waivers, participant check-in, five assistant organizers, and scheduled locking |
| 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. **This is a cadence comparison, not a volume one** — SignUp.com publishes no message meter, so unlike a metered competitor there is no allowance to run out of on their side; forty volunteers serving twice a month with two reminders each is 160 messages by our arithmetic, and on SignUp.com's published terms that number costs nothing extra. **Our $3 row is a trap worth naming out loud:** Basic tops out at exactly 40 volunteers and does not text at all, so a 40-volunteer roster that wants texting is a $9 decision, not a $3 one. **The SignUp.com rows buy a sheet, group pages, waivers, check-in, and payments,** none of which we sell at any price — they are cheap for what they are, and the $9.99 ad-free row on a free account is the best value on this table for anyone whose only complaint is the advertising. And [WhenToHelp](/alternatives/whentohelp) is here because it is the honest answer for anyone who needs the schedule *built* rather than remembered, and because it prices a 40-volunteer roster as 40 volunteers.

If the shortlist also has SignUpGenius on it, the shape is different again: they meter texts at 150, 500, and 1,500 a month by tier, starting at $8.99 a month billed annually, and lift ads one sign up at a time. That comparison is worked through on [SignUpGenius vs SignUp.com](/compare/signupgenius-vs-signup-com).

<!-- VERIFY: WhenToHelp's $54 is the 31–60 helper band from https://whentohelp.com/pricing.htm, leftover re-fetched 2026-09-19 (HTTP 200, no redirect — no dollar drift vs 2026-09-18 leftover / 2026-09-17 leftover / 2026-08-18 / 2026-09-11) ($16 at 1–10, $33 at 11–30, $54 at 31–60, $78 at 61–100, $97 at 101–150, $117 at 151–200; $144 for 3 months, $216 for 6, $360 a year at that band; "One Low Price - Everything is Included!"; "There are NO setup charges, add on costs or hidden fees."). Their features page advertises text and email notifications and an Urgent Text Alert with no published per-message rate or cap. Do NOT say WhenToHelp has no SMS — that claim is stale research (comp-direct §5, seo-plan §4) and was corrected on the live /alternatives/whentohelp page. Do NOT invent a WhenToHelp per-message price or an "unlimited texts" claim for them. SignUpGenius figures re-verified 2026-09-17 straight off https://www.signupgenius.com/pricing (browser UA HTTP 200, no redirect — no dollar, quota, or tier-name drift vs 2026-09-16 / 2026-09-11 / 2026-09-10 / 2026-08-18; planTitle Free / Silver / Gold / Platinum / Enterprise; planPriceAnnual 8.99 / 22.49 / 44.99; planPriceMonthly 11.99 / 29.99 / 59.99; comparison row "Text invites/group updates" 150/month, 500/month, 1,500/month); they are one sentence and a link, not a third column, because this page is a two-product compare. Do NOT invent a SignUpGenius per-message SMS price. Deputy is deliberately absent: employee scheduling, already on two live sibling pages, and irrelevant to this pair. The 160-message figure is OUR arithmetic on a stated roster (40 × 2 serves × 2 reminders), labeled as such, and matches the live /compare/signupgenius-vs-planning-center and /compare/volunteerreminder-vs-signupgenius pages so the cluster agrees. -->

<!-- VERIFY: our own rows check out against web/src/domain/plans.ts at this commit — Basic $3/$33, 40 volunteers, allowedReminders 1, isSmsAllowed false; Deluxe $9/$90, 60 volunteers, allowedReminders 2, isSmsAllowed true, isWidgetAllowed true; Pro $19/$190, 150 volunteers, allowedReminders 3, isSubstituteFinderAllowed true — and against the live /pricing page re-fetched today ("Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial — no credit card required"). FIVE OPERATOR DECISIONS. (1) THE TRIAL SMS CAP IS DISCLOSED ON THIS PAGE, which no live page does. domain/smsQuota.ts sets TRIAL_LIFETIME_SMS_CAP = 200 and it is enforced in queue/reminderConsumer.ts with a user-facing notice in views/reminders/index.tsx, so it is live, not planned. The last two sibling drafts both flagged "consider whether the FAQ should acknowledge it"; this page acknowledges it in the body AND in the FAQ, because a page whose argument is that a competitor's uncapped headline deserves a closer look cannot itself have an undisclosed cap. It is one sentence and trivially removable if the operator disagrees, but removing it weakens the page. Note the daily anomaly bound (DAILY_CAP_PER_VOLUNTEER = 4, floor 25) is NOT mentioned: it is explicitly not a budget and no legitimate roster approaches it. (2) BATCH SIZE: this page still publishes no substitute-finder batch-size number. The cluster that used to say "default 8–10" / "default 8 to 10" now matches DEFAULT_BATCH_SIZE = 10. Do not add a number here. (3) THE WIDGET ROW says "showing which dates still need somebody" rather than calling it a sign-up form, because routes/widget.tsx exposes only GET widget.js and GET widget/open-days — there is no POST, so nobody can claim a date through it. That matters more on this page than on any sibling, since SignUp.com's entire product is the claiming step; do not upgrade the wording. (4) "The coordinator supplies mobile numbers and attests to consent": domain/consent.ts implements coordinator attestation on writes that introduce a mobile number and STOP is honored via domain/optOut.ts and routes/webhooks.ts, but confirm what is live in production before it goes on a public page. This is the one row where SignUp.com's model is stricter than ours and the matrix says so plainly rather than spinning it — theirs is per-participant opt-in, ours is coordinator attestation. Do not soften either side. (5) "Reminder wording — fixed format today; custom wording is not on any plan" is from plans.ts, where isCustomizedRemindersAllowed is false on all three tiers. It is a real concession to SignUp.com, which lets an organizer append a line to every reminder. Confirm it is still true at publish. Also confirm the public inbound address (info@volunteerreminder.com here; the operator may prefer the on-record Tall Timbers Group address). NOTHING on this page enables the confirm loop, flips reminder_mode, or implies inbound YES/NO is on by default. -->

## Who should stay on SignUp.com, and where we fit

**Stay on SignUp.com if you live in the sheet.** A carnival with fourteen stations, a potluck dish list, a meal train, a teacher appreciation week, parent-teacher conferences, a giving tree — spot-style sign-ups with many kinds of spots are its home turf, and it is better at them than we are because we do not build them at all. Stay if the work is episodic: a different set of people every time, recruited from a link in a bulletin, is exactly the case a public sheet was designed for and the case a roster-based reminder service is worst at.

**Stay if money changes hands.** Collecting for dues, tickets, supplies, or a fundraiser in the same place people claim their spot is a real feature, and the fees are good: no platform fee, Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30, PayPal at 2.99% to 3.49% + $0.30, and from 2.2% + $0.30 for a US 501(c)(3). We do not collect payments on any plan, so there is nothing to compare — if the sign up has to take money, this is not a close call.

**Stay if what actually bothers you is the ads.** This is the strongest single reason on the page to ignore us. Nowhere else in this category can a free account pay $9.99 a month and have ads gone from every SignUp, every group page, every notification email, and the sponsored-offer checkboxes on the participant screen. If your sheets already work and the only complaint is the advertising in front of your volunteers, the fix is $9.99 and it is not us.

**Stay if the advertised uncapped texts hold up when you test them.** We cannot tell you whether they do, and neither can their pricing page. But it is cheap to find out: put ten volunteers on a real SignUp, have them opt in, and watch a month of reminders land. If the texts arrive and the opt-in step is not a problem for your people, no plan of ours will beat uncapped texting at $9.99, and we would rather say that here than have you find it out after switching.

**Stay if you need the parts of their product we simply do not have.** Waivers and participant check-in on Plus, participant hours tracking and cross-SignUp reporting on Max, unlimited group pages, waitlist notifications, custom participant questions, and the Campus Plan's 150 organizer accounts for a K-12 school. We publish none of that. If a grant report or a service-hours requirement depends on the hours tracking, that is a reason to stay put on its own.

**And stay if the free plan is already doing the job.** This is the case we lose most often and it deserves saying plainly: unlimited SignUps, unlimited participants, unlimited email notifications, automated email reminders, and recurring scheduling with AutoFill, for $0 and no card. The reasons it stops working are specific — the volunteers who do not read email, the roster the coordinator assigns so nobody was ever prompted to opt into texts, the one automatic reminder that goes out two days early and gets forgotten, the ads on a page carrying your church's name. If none of those describes you, stay.

**Where we fit is that last list.** 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. [Deluxe is $9 a month](/pricing) for scheduled shift reminders to up to 60 volunteers, two texts per shift, sent from a rotation a coordinator entered once, with the numbers supplied by the coordinator rather than collected one opt-in at a time. Two texts per shift on a schedule is a narrower thing than uncapped texting, and for a weekly rotation it is the thing that decides whether people show up.

**And where we do not fit, stated as plainly as the six above.** We do not build sign-up sheets — no spots to claim, no potluck list, no carnival with fourteen stations, no themes, no waivers, no participant check-in. We do not collect payments. We do not host group pages or a public event page, and the widget Deluxe and Pro can embed on your own site shows which dates still need somebody rather than replacing a sheet. We are not a mass-texting tool. We do not build the schedule; we assume a coordinator already did. We have no free plan, no hours tracking, no custom reminder wording, and no ad-free product, because we have never sold an ad.

Keeping both is the normal outcome rather than a compromise. SignUp.com keeps the sheets, the payments, and the one-off events; the recurring rotation lives somewhere whose only job is landing on a volunteer's phone. Nothing has to be migrated or switched off, and no volunteer notices the difference except that the reminder arrives. If you want the no-shows you already have priced out first, 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. If the answer is that SignUp.com already covers it, that is what we will say.

<!-- VERIFY: do not say "unlimited SMS," "unlimited text," "unmetered," "SMS included," "texts included," or "no credits, no per-message fees" about Deluxe or Pro anywhere on this page. Fair-use is unpublished (competitive-analysis §5.1); volume is shift-slots × reminders-per-shift. Do not invent a fair-use cap and do not put Twilio cost math on this page. WIRING NOTE ON STRING TESTS, and this page is the worst case in the cluster for them: the exact string "Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders" appears in reader-facing copy four times (lede of the texting H2, matrix row, price-table row, and FAQ 2), every instance in quotation marks and attributed to SignUp.com in the same sentence; their help-center paraphrase "unlimited text (SMS) reminders" appears once more; "Unlimited SignUps", "unlimited participants", "unlimited email notifications", and "unlimited group pages" appear describing THEIR free and paid tiers; and the word "uncapped" appears seven times across the body and FAQs, every one of them describing SignUp.com's claim or a reader testing it. Counted at this revision: 15 case-insensitive matches for "unlimited" and 7 for "uncapped" in reader-facing copy, and NOTHING describing VolunteerReminder uses either word. An unscoped not.toMatch(/unlimited/i) WILL fail here, same as on volgistics.ts, whentohelp.ts, and every live compare page — scope it to sentences describing us, the way those required. Twilio is not named, matching not.toContain("Twilio") on sibling pages. An honesty test asserting a "who should stay on X" section exists passes (six bolded stay-put cases); a test asserting the page pitches VolunteerReminder as a THIRD product does not apply, since we are one of the two. -->

## FAQ

### Are VolunteerReminder and SignUp.com alternatives to each other?

Only partly, and treating them as substitutes is how coordinators buy the wrong one. SignUp.com is a sign-up sheet: you publish a page of spots and people claim them, with group pages, waivers, check-in, hours tracking, and payments attached. VolunteerReminder is a reminder service for a roster that already exists — a coordinator enters the rotation once and we text, email, and calendar-invite the people on it before their shifts. We do not build sheets, we do not build the schedule, and we do not take payments. The overlap is one thing only: getting a named person to remember a specific day.

### Is SignUp.com's "Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders" claim real?

It is their claim, published on all three paid tiers — Starter $9.99, Plus $24.99, Max $49.99 a month — footnoted to the US, Canada, and Australia with standard carrier charges applying. We make no equivalent claim about our own product and we are not going to talk you out of theirs. Two things it does not cover are worth knowing before you buy on the strength of it. Texts go only to participants who opted themselves in, and their help center is explicit that anyone already holding an assignment is never prompted — you have to message them and ask them to enter a phone number in the My Info screen, which on a coordinator-assigned roster means nobody was prompted. And their published reminder setting sends one automatic reminder per commitment, 1, 2, or 7 days ahead, with further reminders sent by hand. Uncapped is about message volume, not about how many times a shift gets a nudge.

### What does SignUp.com actually cost with texts and no ads?

About $19.98 a month. Starter is $9.99 and ad removal is a separate $9.99-a-month add-on that sits on top of any plan — it is not on the pricing page at all, only in the help center. The add-on is well built for the money: it covers every SignUp, group page, and notification email in the account, and it can be bought on a free Basic account with no premium plan underneath, which is the cheapest way in this whole category to get ads off your volunteers' screens.

### Which is cheaper for 40 volunteers?

SignUp.com, if $0 counts — their free plan really is free, with unlimited SignUps, participants, and email notifications, including automated reminders. With texting in the picture it is closer than it looks: SignUp.com Starter is $9.99 and VolunteerReminder Deluxe is $9 for up to 60 volunteers with two scheduled reminders per shift, and if you want their ads gone as well the comparison is $19.98 against $9. Our Basic plan is $3 and covers exactly 40 volunteers, but it is email and calendar only, so a 40-person roster that wants texting is a $9 decision here, not a $3 one.

### Who should stay on SignUp.com?

Anyone who lives in the sheet — one-off events with many kinds of spots, a public page people claim from, or a sign up that has to collect money, since we do not do payments on any plan. Anyone whose only real complaint is ads, because $9.99 removes them everywhere, even on a free account. Anyone who needs waivers, participant check-in, hours tracking, or the Campus Plan's 150 organizer seats, none of which we publish. Anyone testing their uncapped texting who finds it holds up. And anyone whose free-plan email reminders are already working, which is a real outcome we are not going to argue with.

### Are VolunteerReminder's texts unlimited on the $9 plan?

No, and we would rather answer that here than let a competitor's headline set the expectation. 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 — the volume is shift slots times reminders per shift, so there is no monthly allowance to spend down and no per-message charge. Two honest limits: a free trial account can send 200 texts in total before texting pauses and asks you to upgrade, and if the job is texting a whole church directory at once about a cancellation, a mass-texting product is the right answer, not us.

### Can we keep SignUp.com and use VolunteerReminder too?

Yes, and that is the normal outcome rather than a compromise. SignUp.com keeps the sheets, the group pages, the payments, and the one-off events; VolunteerReminder sends the recurring reminders for the rotations where no-shows are the actual pain. Nothing has to be migrated or switched off. One honest caveat: we do not integrate with SignUp.com, so a roster that lives in both places needs somebody to keep them in step — for a rotation that changes twice a year that is nothing, and for a roster that churns monthly it is a real chore worth weighing.

## Sitemap

See the full [sitemap](https://volunteerreminder.com/sitemap.md) for every public page.