Send it as a text. Nobody has to install anything.
Causly runs volunteer sign-up sheets and sends announcements, reminders and schedule changes as real text messages. Sign-up sheets are free, for as many events as you want. Text alerts are $29/mo, and every slot on a sheet can point at its own text list — so a reminder about Friday goes to Friday's list instead of to your whole organization.
No credit card for sign-up sheets. Text alerts are opt-in, and any message can be stopped with a reply.
Coming from GroupMe or Remind?
GroupMe is ending SMS mode.
It began in August 2026 and rolls out one person at a time: the next group message you get by text starts your own seven-day countdown. When someone's week is up, if they were reading the group by text and never installed the app, they stop receiving it.
What groups are doing instead →Remind texts for verified school accounts.
Remind's help centre: to send SMS through Remind Chat you must be a verified member of a verified K-12 educational institution in the United States. Booster clubs, packs, troops, leagues, and PTA volunteers on a personal email address usually are not.
What those groups are doing →Everything a volunteer coordinator actually does on a Tuesday night
Sign-up sheets
Publish shifts, booths, bake-sale slots and conference times on a public page. Volunteers open the link, pick a slot and leave a name, email and mobile number — no account, nothing to install — and get an email confirmation with a cancel link, up to a daily limit. Unlimited sheets, unlimited slots.
The roster, ready for the day
A coordinator hub with live counts, the full roster, a CSV export, and a print-out for the folding table. It updates as people sign up, so the sheet on your phone and the sheet on the table say the same thing.
Text alerts and reminders
“Still need two people for Friday.” “Practice moved to 5:30.” Sent as a text message, so there is nothing for anyone to install and no notification to scroll past.
A text list for each slot
Each slot can point at its own text list, so you can remind, reschedule or thank Friday's crew rather than all 240 families. Sign-ups join that slot's list, and a number starts receiving once it confirms by reply.
Opt-in, and easy to leave
A number that joins from a sheet or by texting your keyword gets one text asking it to reply YES, and nothing else until it does — so a mistyped digit gets that single message and nothing after it: it sits pending on your roster and no announcement is sent to it. Any message can be stopped with a reply, and a stop is not limited to one keyword or even to one organization: we record it against every entry that number has anywhere on Causly.
Write it now, send it Thursday
Queue messages ahead in your organization's own timezone. Links are shortened and click-tracked, so you can see how many taps each link got.
Aren't Spond, Band and TeamSnap free?
They are, they're good, and if one of them fits your group you should use it and not pay us anything.
All three publish a way of reaching someone who never installed their app, and it's worth being straight about that. Spond's help centre says you can use it without the app and “notifications will be sent to your email”. TeamSnap sends alerts “by push notification (if enabled on their device), or email” — and notes on the same page that alerts are “available for teams on the Basic plan or higher”. BAND has no open help centre to link, so we'll point at what we actually read: its App Store release notes described a “Send SMS/Email Notification” option for people outside the group when we read them on 8 September 2026 — release notes roll off, so check it yourself if BAND is the one you use. Either way, the question isn't whether a message goes out.
It's what we send. An announcement goes out as a text message to each number on your list that is subscribed and hasn't replied STOP: it lands on the lock screen of the phone that number belongs to, and it asks for no app, no account and no invitation accepted first. A number that signed up on a sheet is not subscribed until it replies YES to the one confirmation text, so a family who typed their number and stopped there is not texted. We're not going to tell you what any of those three do instead — their own pages are linked above, and each of them answers it differently.
That's a smaller difference than “their messages don't arrive”, and it's the true one. The honest test is one question: when you send something at 6am that everyone has to have seen by 8, do the families who never opened your group's app see it in time, however it reaches them? If they do, use the free app. If they don't, that gap is the only thing we're selling.
So use both: keep the group chat for chatter, and send the eight messages a year that someone has to actually see as a text. Causly's sign-up sheets are free either way.
And one thing worth checking about “free” among sign-up tools specifically: whether the page your families open, and the confirmation email they get, carry advertising. Causly's carry none, on any plan — including Free.
Free for sign-up sheets. One flat price when you need to text.
Per organization. Cancel any time.
Free
Everything you need to collect sign-ups and run the day.
- Unlimited sign-up sheets and slots
- A public sheet page with no advertising on it
- An email confirmation with a cancel link for each sign-up, up to a daily limit
- Coordinator hub: live counts, roster, CSV export and print-out
- Unlimited organizers on the account
Pro
1000 message segments a month, per organization — one organization never spends another's. A segment is up to 160 characters of plain text; one curly apostrophe, em dash or emoji — the characters a phone inserts for you — drops the whole text to 70, and most emoji count as two of those 70, so 35 fill a segment. A longer text uses more than one.
- Everything in Free
- Text alerts, reminders and announcements
- Every slot can point at its own text list
- Opt-in keyword subscribe, confirmed by reply
- Scheduled sends in your organization's timezone
- Shortened links with click tracking
- Collect payments from a text — straight into your own Stripe account, no extra platform fee
- Invite your whole board; everyone sends under the organization's plan
Need more?
Higher volume, a nonprofit or district-wide arrangement? Tell us what your organization needs and we'll price it.
- Everything in Pro
- Higher monthly send limits
- Priority support & onboarding
- Volume & nonprofit pricing
Built for your kind of organization
Booster clubs, packs, troops, leagues, choirs, room parents — if you keep a roster and a calendar, this is the shape of it.