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SignUpGenius vs SmarterSelect: Which is a better fit?

Updated on February 2nd, 2025
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Summary
Key features rated by users
Features selected based on 4,352 reviews from Nonprofit users.
% Fit
Missing features
Feature ratings
For Nonprofits
4.7
Credit Card Processing
NA
Electronic Payments
NA
Donor Management
4.5
Fundraising Management
NA
% Fit
Missing features
Not enough reviews
Feature ratings
For Nonprofits
--
Credit Card Processing
NA
Electronic Payments
--
Donor Management
NA
Fundraising Management
NA
User satisfaction
4.6
User reviews1,988
Ease of use
4.5
Functionality
4.5
Value for money
4.7
Customer support
4.6
4.4
User reviews233
Ease of use
4.1
Functionality
4.2
Value for money
4.5
Customer support
4.5
Price starts from
Monthly subscription
Free version
Free trial
Yearly subscription
Free version
Free trial
Best for

SignUpGenius simplifies the process of organizing events and volunteers by providing online sign ups for nonprofits, schools, sports, faith groups, colleges, businesses and organizations.

Community foundations, private foundations, education foundations, associations, higher education organizations, corporations, etc.

User reviews
pros & cons
1 / 4
View Reviews
1 / 4
View Reviews
Video reviews
Tyler C
Assistant Pastor
5.0

Tyler: My name's Tyler. I'm an assistant pastor at Audubon Drive Bible Church. We're a small church with a small staff of about five people or less. And I would give SignUpGenius a five star rating. We have small group ministry at our church and I typically will use SignUpGenius to coordinate volunteers, it's been really helpful for doing that. So for example, if we've got a party or we've got something that we're planning and we need people to bring meals, I'll create a SignUpGenius, send it out to the congregation and ask them to volunteer for a spot, volunteer to bring a meal, and then it coordinates with me. And then SignUpGenius also allows, they will send an email, a reminder email to the people who signed up. So that takes a lot of the administrative work off me of having to remind people because I know they're going to get that reminder email anyway. It's been really helpful for me. One of the things I like about SignUpGenius has been you don't have to be incredibly technologically savvy to be able to work with it. I don't consider myself a technological guru, but it's actually taken off some of the administrative work off my plate when it comes to coordinating volunteers for different things at our church. And it will even do some of the work for me of reminding people what they volunteered for and it's really user-friendly. So we have a congregation where there are some older folks as well, and it's been good to know that it's user-friendly on both their end and on my end as the one creating the signups in the first place. The only thing that I would say that I dislike about SignUpGenius, and it's really only because I've been using the free version, which has been super helpful for us, but within the free version there's a lot of ads. Which can be expected, but it can be also kind of cumbersome when you're scrolling down to try to sign up and you get ad after ad. I'm sure that would be alleviated if we didn't have the free version, but that would be the one knock that I'd have against it.

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Darla S
Executive Director
4.0

Darla: Hi, I'm Darla. I'm the Executive Director of a nonprofit and I give SmarterSelect a four out of five. We were using online papers for our scholarship application process, and we wanted to go online. So we had also reviewed Academic Works when I was also reviewing SmarterSelect, and Academic Works was more expensive and didn't quite have everything I was looking for. We are a small staff of two, so that means we wear many hats on a daily basis. And as you can imagine, saving time and efficiency is very important for small non-profits, so SmarterSelect offers the Scholarship Matching Questionnaire feature. This 20 question feature allows our applicants to be matched to more than 80 scholarships that we offer. So this was a very valuable tool that really attracted me to SmarterSelect. As you can imagine, matching those students manually was very time consuming. So that was one problem that SmarterSelect helped solve. Another problem that we have is, reaching our college students consistently. They're not very good about replying to emails, so SmarterSelect has the messaging feature. Not only does it offer the email messaging, it has the option for us to text message our students and reach them more quickly. So that's huge for us to make sure we're able to stay in communication with them. And another problem that SmarterSelect solved was, as we were wanting to go online with our application process, and especially during COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to have the students apply online for the scholarships. And as our staff was working remotely, we were able to review and process and communicate with the students. One thing I liked about SmarterSelect was, they offered a free trial. So I enrolled for that and was immediately connected with a technician, I believe his name was Roger. Roger was so helpful. He talked with us. He helped us with the online preparation of our unique programs, helped answer our questions, and the integration of taking our application from paper to online was very customizable. And their customer support really helped us in the initial stages and even throughout. This is year four for us using it and each year it seems like we have different questions and they're always able to help us through that. So the integration has been wonderful. Most scholarship programs are very unique in their own programming and the nice thing about SmarterSelect is that it's very customizable and you can develop the application however you need it to be. You can ask whatever questions that you need to ask and having the Matching Questionnaire as an option to help in the process of matching the student to specific scholarships was a huge selling point for me. And I would highly recommend that if you are in a scholarship program and you have several different scholarships to award with all different types of criteria, SmarterSelect is very workable, very customizable and very affordable.

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User interface
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SignUpGenius

Top Features
20/45
  • Accounting
  • Accounting Integration
  • Activity Dashboard
  • Activity Tracking
  • Attendance Management
  • Budgeting/Forecasting
  • Campaign Management
  • Committee Management
  • Contact Management
  • Credit Card Processing
  • CRM
  • Customizable Forms
  • Dues Management
  • Electronic Payments
  • Forms Management
  • Fund Accounting
  • Fundraising Management
  • Grant Management
  • Member Database
  • Real-Time Analytics
  • Real-Time Reporting
  • Recurring/Subscription Billing
  • Social Marketing
  • Third-Party Integrations
  • Website Management
  • Access Controls/Permissions
  • Alerts/Notifications
  • API
  • Calendar Management
  • Communication Management
  • Customizable Branding
  • Customizable Fields
  • Customizable Reports
  • Customizable Templates
  • Data Import/Export
  • Document Storage
  • Donor Management
  • Event Management
  • Event Scheduling
  • For Nonprofits
  • Membership Management
  • Mobile Access
  • Registration Management
  • Reporting & Statistics
  • Volunteer Management
See All features
Hide Nonprofit Software Features -

SmarterSelect

15/45
Show Nonprofit Software Features +
SignUpGenius
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
SmarterSelect
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
SignUpGenius
  • By Lumaverse Technologies
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 2012
SmarterSelect
  • By SmarterSelect
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 2007
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