--- title: "VolunteerReminder vs WhenToHelp: $54 vs $9 at 40 Helpers" description: "WhenToHelp builds the week — availability, AutoFill, Tradeboard — at $54/mo for 31-60 helpers. We only remind a roster somebody already built, $9. Who stays." canonical_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/compare/volunteerreminder-vs-whentohelp md_url: https://volunteerreminder.com/compare/volunteerreminder-vs-whentohelp.md last_updated: 2026-09-18 --- # VolunteerReminder vs WhenToHelp: a scheduler, a reminder service, and what 40 volunteers costs each We build VolunteerReminder, so this page is not written by a neutral party. What we can do is put every WhenToHelp number next to the page it came from, keep our own claims narrow enough to check, and say plainly further down who should stay exactly where they are. Every figure below was fetched from primary sources on September 18, 2026. Start with the thing that decides most of this. **These two products do not do the same job, and one of them is not a cheaper version of the other.** WhenToHelp is a volunteer scheduler. Volunteers sign in and enter the times they like, dislike, and cannot help; AutoFill — "developed by a team of Math PhDs," in their words — assigns the week from those preferences in one click, "preventing overtime and any conflicts with preferences"; a Tradeboard lets volunteers pick up and trade shifts with each other; volunteers request time off and an approval updates the schedule automatically. Around that sit twelve configurable schedule views, saved schedule templates, drag-and-drop shift edits, conflict analysis, and separate locations or departments in one account ([whentohelp.com](https://whentohelp.com/), [features](https://whentohelp.com/volunteer-scheduling-features.htm)). 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 collect availability, we do not build the week, we have no AutoFill and no Tradeboard, and volunteers never log into anything. Nobody should "migrate" from one to the other in the strict sense, because the two products solve consecutive problems: theirs is deciding who is on Tuesday, ours is making sure the person who is on Tuesday remembers. Two concessions before any pricing, both of which cut against us. **They have a free version that can outlast a trial, and we have none.** WhenToHelp Lite is free for thirty days for anyone, and "certain qualifying charities can also apply for extended free use." The bar is published: a charity with a US 501(c)(3) designation or Canadian Registered Charity status, scheduling only unpaid volunteers, doing community service — granted case by case by their board from an application completed online ([free use for charities](https://whentohelp.com/free-volunteer-scheduling.htm)). Lite is capped at 250 volunteers, 100 shifts a week, 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 comparison grid is checked on both versions, AutoFill and the Tradeboard included ([grid](https://whentohelp.com/grid.htm)). Our plans start at $3 a month and there is no free tier at all. **And their pricing disclosure is better than most of this category's, including on the things we usually attack.** 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" ([pricing](https://whentohelp.com/pricing.htm)). Their FAQ says no contract is required and an unlimited number of scheduling coordinators can be added. There is no per-seat upsell to find, no ad-free add-on to buy, and nothing in this comparison is priced per message. When a competitor's price is genuinely the price, saying so is not generosity, it is accuracy. So the real question is not which is better. It is which half of the work is broken. If nobody can tell you who is on Tuesday, WhenToHelp is the answer and this page ends here. If Tuesday has been the same four people for two years and two of them forget, keep reading. ## Where each one hurts: their texting disclosure, our missing scheduler **WhenToHelp texts, and what they publish about it stops sooner than a buyer needs.** 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. Each address can be set up to receive any number of notifications." Their comparison grid checks "Email & text message notifications for all users" on both the free and paid versions. Texting exists, it is real, and it is inside the band price with no per-message charge — that much is theirs and we are not going to talk anyone out of it. What is not published is the part a coordinator buying for reminders would want. There is no per-message rate on the pricing page, no message count anywhere on the site, and nothing on the subject in their [terms of service](https://whentohelp.com/termsofservice.htm), which mentions email and never mentions text messaging. And the one row on their comparison grid that is specifically about reminders reads **"Email schedule reminders"** rather than email and text, while their features list puts scheduled reminders in the coordinator's hands — "Schedule reminders can be sent any time" — and describes the automatic notifications as event-driven: volunteers get "instant notifications by email or text of shift changes or new open shifts." So a shift change almost certainly reaches a phone. Whether a *scheduled reminder* two days before an unchanged shift does the same is a question their own pages leave open, and it is exactly the question to get answered in writing before buying them for that job. **Getting that answer is harder this week than their pricing page implies.** Every page on their site carries "Start Your Free 30 Day Trial Today — No Credit Card Required," and their FAQ describes signing up for a trial account and letting your volunteers test the system. As fetched today, though, their [trial page](https://whentohelp.com/free.htm) itself reads "New Trials Currently Closed" and "Please check back in 2024," with a button asking to be emailed when trials reopen in place of a signup. That may be a stale page rather than a closed door — but it is the page the trial link points at, and it matters twice over, because their charity application for extended free Lite is "completed online via your trial account homepage." Two things still work regardless: their [test drive](https://whentohelp.com/testdrive.htm) opens a sample account with volunteers and shifts already in it, and their FAQ says email support "usually answer[s] within minutes." Ask them both questions — is the trial open, and does a scheduled reminder go by text — in one email. **On price, the thing to know is that you do not buy volunteers, you buy a band.** The meter is helpers, 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**. Over 200 their page gives a calculator rather than a number, so that price has to come from them. Paying ahead cuts it — at 31 to 60 helpers, $144 for three months, $216 for six, or $360 for a year against $648 paid monthly. The number that surprises people is the band edge: thirty volunteers is $33 a month and thirty-one is $54, and a roster of forty pays exactly what a roster of sixty pays. Deleted helpers stop counting toward the total, and going over a band mid-subscription is handled by a prorated upgrade or a moved expiration date rather than a lockout. There is no nonprofit discount on the Full Version; their FAQ says those prices "are as low as we can possibly make them," which is a more honest answer than most vendors give. **The other cost on their side is not money, it is logins.** A coordinator adds each volunteer and "their sign in information will automatically be emailed to them" — volunteers cannot sign themselves up. From that login volunteers see published schedules, enter preferred and disliked times, request time off, work the Tradeboard, and export their own schedule to Google Calendar. There is no download involved: their mobile page says "There is no need to download an 'app,' instead just go to m.whentohelp.com in your phone browser," at no extra charge ([mobile](https://whentohelp.com/mobile-volunteer-scheduling.htm)). That login is the engine, not overhead — AutoFill only has preferences to work with because volunteers signed in and entered them. But it is also the thing that decides fit. In a hospital auxiliary where forty people have different availability every month, volunteers will sign in, because the schedule they get depends on it. In a church where the same eight people have had the nursery since 2023, the availability engine has nothing to chew on and the login is a password reset request in the coordinator's inbox. **Where we hurt is the whole first half of the job.** We do not build the schedule and we do not pretend to. No availability collection, no AutoFill, no Tradeboard, no time-off requests, no drag-and-drop week, no twelve schedule views, no multi-location scheduler, no volunteer self-service at all, and no data export. Every one of those is on WhenToHelp's list and none of them is on ours. The version of our limits people actually hit is the plan ladder. [Basic is $3](/pricing) for up to 40 volunteers with email and calendar reminders only — no texting at all — so a 40-volunteer roster that wants texts does not pay $3, it pays $9. [Deluxe is $9](/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. [Pro is $19](/pricing) for up to 150 volunteers, a third reminder per shift, and the substitute finder. Annual billing is $33, $90, and $190, and every plan starts with a 30-day trial and no card. One thing about that trial 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. And one straight concession on texting specifically: if the job is telling the whole roster at nine at night that tomorrow is canceled, WhenToHelp's Urgent Text Alert is closer to that job than anything we sell. We are scheduled reminders. Mass notification is a different product and we are not it. ## 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: | | WhenToHelp | VolunteerReminder | |---|---|---| | What it is | A volunteer scheduler — collect availability, build the week, publish it, let volunteers trade | 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 software, from volunteer preferences, with a coordinator supervising | A coordinator, before we do anything; we do not build it | | Availability | Volunteers enter the times they like, dislike, and cannot help, and request time off | Not collected at all | | AutoFill | Yes — one click assigns the week from preferences and flags conflicts | None. Nothing to compare | | Tradeboard | Yes — volunteers log in to pick up and trade shifts, with coordinator approval | None. Pro texts a batch of the bench when someone drops and the first YES takes the shift — a text to people who never log in, not a board they browse | | Volunteer logins | Required, and the point — a coordinator adds each volunteer and sign-in details are emailed to them | None. No account, no password, no app | | Priced by | Helper bands — 1–10, 11–30, 31–60, 61–100, 101–150, 151–200 | Volunteers on the roster — 40 / 60 / 150 | | Monthly price | $16 / $33 / $54 / $78 / $97 / $117 by band; over 200 is a calculator on their page | Basic $3, Deluxe $9, Pro $19 | | Price at 40 volunteers | $54 — the 31–60 band, the same price a 60-volunteer roster pays | $9 on Deluxe, which covers up to 60 | | Paying ahead | At 31–60: $144 for 3 months, $216 for 6, $360 for a year | $33 / $90 / $190 a year | | Free tier | Lite — free 30 days for anyone, extended free for approved charities; 250 volunteers, 100 shifts a week, 18 months of history, no export | None. Plans start at $3, with a 30-day trial and no card | | Nonprofit pricing | No discount on the Full Version — their FAQ says the prices "are as low as we can possibly make them" — but qualifying charities can apply for free Lite | One price list; no separate nonprofit rate | | Notifications | "Email & text message notifications for all users" on both versions, plus Urgent Alerts; included in the band price | Email and calendar on Basic; email, calendar, and text on Deluxe and Pro | | Scheduled reminders | On their grid, the reminder row reads "Email schedule reminders"; their features list says "Schedule reminders can be sent any time" | The entire product — 1 reminder per shift on Basic, 2 on Deluxe, 3 on Pro, sent automatically on a schedule | | Published message rate or cap | None published anywhere, and their terms of service do not mention texting | No per-message charge; volume is shift slots times reminders per shift. A trial account is capped at 200 texts in total | | Urgent broadcast | "Send Urgent Text Alert for instant contact with volunteers" | Not a feature. We are not a mass-texting tool | | Multiple locations or departments | Yes, in one account, with no extra charge | Not a scheduling concept here; we remind whoever is on the rotation | | Coordinators | "Add unlimited other coordinators and set their permissions" — their wording | Not a published per-tier limit | | Mobile | "No need to download an 'app'" — a free mobile web version at m.whentohelp.com for coordinators and volunteers | Nothing for volunteers to open; reminders arrive as a text, an email, and a calendar invite | | Data export | Full Version exports in various file formats and to Google Calendar; Lite cannot export | We publish no data export | | Reminder wording | Not applicable in the same way — coordinators compose messages and alerts | Fixed format today; custom wording is not on any plan | | What volunteers install | Nothing, but they do sign in | Nothing, and no account needed | | Trial | 30 days, no credit card, per their pricing page and FAQ — though their trial page currently reads "New Trials Currently Closed" | 30 days, no card | Sources: [whentohelp.com/pricing.htm](https://whentohelp.com/pricing.htm), [whentohelp.com/grid.htm](https://whentohelp.com/grid.htm), [whentohelp.com/volunteer-scheduling-features.htm](https://whentohelp.com/volunteer-scheduling-features.htm), [whentohelp.com/faq.htm](https://whentohelp.com/faq.htm), and [our own pricing page](/pricing), all as published on September 18, 2026. WhenToHelp prices by helper band and we price by roster ceiling, 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 | |---|---|---| | WhenToHelp Lite, approved charity | **$0** | The full scheduler — availability, AutoFill, Tradeboard, email and text notifications — inside Lite's caps: 250 volunteers, 100 shifts a week, 18 months of history, no export, no volunteer permission restrictions | | **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 | | **VolunteerReminder Pro** | **$19** | Up to 150 volunteers, three reminders per shift, and the substitute finder | | **WhenToHelp Full Version** | **$54** | The 31–60 helper band. Availability, AutoFill, Tradeboard, time-off requests, multiple locations, unlimited coordinators, mobile, and email and text notifications, all inside the band price | Four footnotes so the table is not read as more than it is. **Forty volunteers is the 31–60 band at $54 a month, and that is worth saying plainly.** You are not billed per volunteer. A roster of 31 and a roster of 60 pay the same $54; a roster of 30 pays $33. Paid a year ahead at that band it is $360 rather than $648, against $90 a year for Deluxe. Nobody at WhenToHelp is hiding this — it is the first table on their pricing page — but coordinators who priced a 40-person roster expecting a 40-person price should see the arithmetic before they shop. **The $54 and the $9 are not the same purchase, and reading them as one is how people end up disappointed.** Fifty-four dollars buys software that decides who works Tuesday. Nine dollars buys a text to the person who already knows they work Tuesday. If the schedule is the hard part, the $9 plan does not solve it at any headcount, and no discount makes it solve it. **If you qualify for extended free Lite, that row is the best value on this table and it is not ours.** A US 501(c)(3) or Canadian Registered Charity scheduling only unpaid volunteers for community service can apply for a full scheduler at $0. Anyone who needs a scheduler and might qualify should apply there before paying anyone anything, including us. **This is a product comparison, not a volume one.** Forty volunteers serving twice a month with two reminders each is 160 messages by our arithmetic, and on published terms that number costs nothing extra on either side — WhenToHelp publishes no per-message rate and neither do we. The gap between these two products is what the software does, not what a message costs. If the shortlist also has sign-up sheets on it, the shape is different again. SignUp.com's Starter plan is $9.99 a month with "Unlimited Text (SMS) Reminders" on their pricing page, plus a separate $9.99-a-month add-on to remove ads — an honest ad-free-with-texts price of about $19.98 — and it is a sheet people claim spots on rather than a scheduler. That one is worked through on [VolunteerReminder vs SignUp.com](/compare/volunteerreminder-vs-signup-com). ## Who should stay on WhenToHelp, and where we fit **Stay on WhenToHelp if volunteers submit availability and somebody has to turn it into a week.** Hospital auxiliaries, crisis lines, libraries, museums running docents — anywhere forty people have forty different sets of free hours, the hard part is the assignment, and AutoFill doing it in one click without conflicts is worth real money. Fifty-four dollars a month for that work is a fair price. We do not do it at any price. **Stay if volunteers cover for each other.** The Tradeboard is a place volunteers log into, see open shifts, pick them up, trade with each other, and request time off, with the coordinator approving and the schedule updating itself. Our substitute finder is not a smaller version of that and should not be sold as one: on Pro, when someone drops, we text a batch of the bench, the first YES takes the shift, and it moves to the next batch. Both fill a hole. One is a marketplace your volunteers work in; the other is a text to people who never log into anything. If your volunteers already trade shifts themselves, taking the board away is a downgrade. **Stay if the schedule itself is complicated.** Several locations or departments in one account at no extra charge, twelve configurable schedule views, saved and imported schedule templates, drag-and-drop and quick-add shifts, conflict analysis, hours and shift statistics by day, week, and month, per-coordinator permissions, and a record of who changed what and when. We publish none of that, and a program with real scheduling complexity should not be shopping in our price range. **Stay — and apply — if you might qualify for extended free Lite.** A charity with a US 501(c)(3) designation or Canadian Registered Charity status, scheduling only unpaid volunteers for community service, can apply to keep using WhenToHelp Lite for free, granted case by case by their board. Lite still has AutoFill, the Tradeboard, and email and text notifications; the caps are 250 volunteers, 100 shifts a week, and 18 months of history, with no export and no way to restrict volunteer permissions. If you need a scheduler and you might qualify, apply there before paying anyone anything, us included. **Stay if your volunteers will actually sign in.** That login is what makes their whole model work, and in programs where the schedule changes weekly, volunteers sign in gladly because their own hours depend on it. They also get something from it: their own schedule in Google Calendar, a view of who they are working with, messages, and a mobile version with nothing to download. If your people are already logging in, none of the friction we remove is friction you have. **And stay if you need the data out.** Export in various file formats, Google Calendar and Outlook sync, per-department printing and exports, and keeping internal messages past 30 days are all on their Full Version. We publish no export at all — that is a real hole on our side and worth weighing if anyone downstream needs the numbers. **Where we fit is the narrow case they overserve.** The roster exists, the rotation has not changed in two years, nobody is entering availability because everyone already knows they have the first Sunday, 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 no login for anyone to lose. A church, a food pantry, or a thrift store in that position is paying for a scheduling engine to get a text sent, and the text is the only part they needed. **And where we do not fit, stated as plainly as the six above.** We do not build the schedule and we do not collect availability. We have no AutoFill — nothing assigns anybody to anything. We have no Tradeboard, and the substitute finder is not one. No volunteer logins, no self-service, no time-off requests, no multi-location scheduler, no schedule views, no free tier, no data export, no custom reminder wording, and no mass-notification product. We do not integrate with WhenToHelp either: keeping both is possible — the scheduler stays where it is and the reminders come from us — but somebody has to keep the two rosters in step by hand, and for a schedule that changes weekly that chore is real. The honest version is that a program paying $54 for AutoFill usually does not also need us, and the program that needs us usually never needed AutoFill. 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 you need a scheduler, we will say that instead. ## FAQ ### Are VolunteerReminder and WhenToHelp alternatives to each other? Only partly, and treating them as substitutes is how coordinators buy the wrong one. WhenToHelp is a volunteer scheduler: volunteers sign in and enter the times they like, dislike, and cannot help, AutoFill assigns the week from those preferences, and a Tradeboard lets volunteers pick up and trade shifts. 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 collect availability, we do not build the schedule, we have no AutoFill and no Tradeboard, and volunteers never log in. The overlap is one thing only: getting a named person to remember a specific day. ### What does WhenToHelp cost for 40 volunteers? $54 a month. Their pricing is by helper band rather than by exact headcount, and 40 volunteers falls in the 31–60 band, so a roster of 40 pays the same as a roster of 60 — while a roster of 30 pays $33. The full published ladder is $16 for 1 to 10 helpers, $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; over 200 their page gives a calculator instead of a price. Paying ahead at the 31–60 band is $144 for three months, $216 for six, or $360 for a year. Their pricing page says "One Low Price - Everything is Included!" with "NO setup charges, add on costs or hidden fees." Fetched September 18, 2026. ### Does WhenToHelp send text reminders? Texting is included in the band price, and the scheduled-reminder part is worth confirming with them directly. 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 publish no per-message rate and no message cap anywhere, and their terms of service do not mention texting at all. The one place they get specific about reminders — the reminder row on their comparison grid — reads "Email schedule reminders," while the notifications they describe as instant are event-driven ones about shift changes and newly open shifts. If a scheduled reminder arriving by text is the reason you are buying, get that answered in writing first; their FAQ says email support usually answers within minutes. ### Is WhenToHelp free for nonprofits? Lite can be. WhenToHelp Lite is free for thirty days for anyone, and qualifying charities can apply for extended free use — the published bar is a charity with a US 501(c)(3) designation or Canadian Registered Charity status that schedules only unpaid volunteers doing community service, granted case by case by their board. Lite still includes AutoFill, the Tradeboard, and email and text notifications, and is capped at 250 volunteers, 100 shifts a week, and 18 months of past schedule history, with no data export and no volunteer permission restrictions. The paid Full Version has no nonprofit discount; their FAQ says those prices "are as low as we can possibly make them." One practical note: their charity application is completed from inside a trial account, and as fetched on September 18, 2026 their trial page still reads "New Trials Currently Closed," so it is worth emailing them before assuming either door is open. ### Is VolunteerReminder's substitute finder the same as a Tradeboard? No, and we would rather say so than let the words blur. WhenToHelp's Tradeboard is a place volunteers log into: they see open shifts, pick them up, trade with each other, and a coordinator approves. Our substitute finder, on Pro, is a text — when somebody drops, we message a batch of the bench, the first YES takes the shift, and it moves to the next batch rather than the whole roster. Nobody logs in and there is no board to browse. If your volunteers already trade shifts among themselves, WhenToHelp's version is the one you want. ### 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 — 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 alerting a whole roster at once about a cancellation, that is mass notification — WhenToHelp's Urgent Text Alert is closer to it than anything we sell. ### Who should stay on WhenToHelp? Anyone whose hard problem is building the schedule rather than remembering it: hospital auxiliaries, crisis lines, libraries, museums with docents, and any program where volunteers submit availability and a coordinator needs software to turn it into a conflict-free week. Anyone whose volunteers trade their own shifts on the Tradeboard. Anyone scheduling several locations or departments in one account. Any charity that qualifies for extended free use of Lite, which should be applied for before paying us or anyone else. And anyone who needs data export or per-volunteer permission control, neither of which we publish. VolunteerReminder is the cheaper product, not the bigger one — if you need the week built, $9 does not build it. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://volunteerreminder.com/sitemap.md) for every public page.