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Comparison

What else your board could buy

A board comparing options deserves the real numbers rather than a table built to make us look good. So here is the whole field, priced from each vendor's own published page, with the places we lose marked as clearly as the places we win.

The field, priced for a sixty-piece ensemble

Sixty active members, one ensemble, one board, ordered cheapest first. Annual billing where a vendor offers a discount for it, because that is what a board would actually choose.

Cost of ensemble management options for a sixty-member ensemble, first year and each year after
Option What it is First year Each year after Priced by
Spreadsheets and a shared inbox Google Workspace for Nonprofits, free to eligible 501(c)(3)s, plus a volunteer's evenings $0 $0 Nothing
Muzodo Rehearsal and gig availability scheduling. No dues, donors or board records $110 $110 Flat, per group
BandBliss Events, dues, attendance and seating for ensembles. Young product $228 $228 Roster tier
Choir Genius Long-established choral platform. Deep features, older stack $264 $264 Flat, all sizes
Choir Concierge All features on every plan, unmetered storage, choral focus $289 $289 Roster tier
Springly General nonprofit administration: accounting, donors, members. Nothing musical $540 $540 Flat tier
Backstage Baton Community band software, unlimited members, optional $99 concierge setup $567 $468 Flat, per ensemble
Wild Apricot Membership and website platform for associations. 2 GB storage on every plan $713 $713 Per contact in the database
Chorus Connection The established name in choral management. Dues, ticketing, attendance $820 $720 Per person who logs in
Rehearsal Letter founding rate Your own deployment and database, board administration included, migration done for you $1,350 $600 Roster band
Neon CRM A real fundraising CRM. Implementation billed separately from $349 $1,537 $1,188 Flat tier
Rehearsal Letter The same thing at the standard setup fee $2,100 $600 Roster band

Prices read from each vendor's published pricing page in September 2026 and rounded to the dollar. CutTime, which absorbed Charms, quotes privately and could not be included. Where a vendor charges by person, sixty members is assumed to mean sixty logins; where it charges by contact, a database of a hundred names is assumed, which is conservative for an ensemble that keeps alumni and donors.

What that table says about us, plainly

We are not the cheap option and the table does not pretend otherwise. There are three things worth saying about the gap rather than around it.

Where we are more expensive

In the first year, against almost everyone. A board looking only at sticker price will see $1,350 next to $228 and stop reading. The difference is the setup fee, and the setup fee is not a software charge — no other vendor has one worth mentioning because no other vendor does the work.

It buys a deployment provisioned in your name, your logo and colors applied, your existing spreadsheets read and imported, your domain and sending email configured and authenticated so notices do not land in spam, a public recruitment page, and a live session with your board. Bought as consulting hours, that is not an unusual number. Bought as a line in a software comparison, it looks absurd. Both of those are true at once.

Where we are cheaper

Every year after the first, and increasingly as an ensemble grows. Chorus Connection prices by the number of people who log in, so a hundred-voice chorus pays $960 a year where our sixty-one-to-a-hundred band pays $840. Wild Apricot prices by contacts in the database, so every alumnus and past donor you keep costs money — and every plan caps storage at 2 GB, which a scanned library of parts eats quickly.

We price by active players only. Alumni, non-playing board members and prospective members are free, and the number is fixed at renewal rather than climbing mid-season.

Three years, which is what a board actually votes on

A setup fee amortises and a subscription does not. Same sixty-piece ensemble, three seasons, everything included.

Three-year total cost for a sixty-member ensemble
Option Three-year total What it does not include
Spreadsheets and a shared inbox $0 Any of it, once the person who built it steps down
Backstage Baton $1,269 Donor letters, grant figures, minutes, migration
Springly $1,620 Sections, parts, attendance, repertoire, programs
Wild Apricot $2,138 Anything musical, and storage past 2 GB
Chorus Connection $2,260 Board records, program printing, your own database
Rehearsal Letter, founding rate $2,550 Text messaging, payment processing, a native app
Rehearsal Letter, standard $3,300 The same three things
Neon CRM $3,913 Everything about running an ensemble, plus training billed hourly

Over three years the founding rate lands within about $300 of Chorus Connection and roughly $1,300 above the cheapest credible tool. That is the honest size of the decision: it is not a large sum of money, and it should be decided on what the ensemble needs rather than on the difference.

Three things the table cannot show

  • Board administration. Every music tool handles roster, attendance and events. Almost none handle minutes, officer handover, donor acknowledgment letters, audience counts in grant-report shape, or an audit log that survives a change of officers. Springly and Neon do that but know nothing about sections or parts. Running both is how ensembles end up with two systems and a Drive folder.
  • Whose database it is. Most of the field puts your ensemble in a column of a shared table. Yours is a Postgres schema belonging to your ensemble alone, with direct read access on request and a full export any time you ask, including on the way out.
  • Who does the work. Every price above except ours assumes a volunteer sets it up, imports the roster, and figures out email authentication on a weekend. Sometimes that volunteer exists. Often the reason a board is shopping at all is that they just left.

Buy something else

When we are the wrong answer

We would rather say this here than forty minutes into a walkthrough. If one of these describes your ensemble, the product named beside it is a better use of the money and we will say so on the call.

You need a rehearsal schedule and nothing else

If the actual problem is who can make Thursday, Muzodo does that for $110 a year and does it well. Do not pay us to solve a scheduling problem.

You have under twenty-five members and no dues

A small ensemble without money moving through it will not recover a setup fee. BandBliss is free up to twenty-five members and Chorus Connection is free up to ten users. Start there and come back when the roster or the paperwork grows.

Fundraising is your main event

If a development director runs multi-channel campaigns and major-gift pipelines, that is a CRM's job. Neon CRM is built for it. We track gifts, designations and annual statements properly, but we are not a fundraising platform.

You want to charge dues inside the system

We keep the ledger and link out to whatever you already use to take payment. We do not sit between your ensemble and its money. Chorus Connection and Join It process payments directly if that is the requirement.

You need it on Tuesday

Setup runs about two weeks because a person does it. If the concert is Saturday and the roster is on fire, a self-serve tool with a free trial will get you further this week than we will.

Your volunteer is happy with the spreadsheet

Then the spreadsheet is free and it works. The question worth asking is what happens in the season after that person steps down — but if the answer is comfortable, keep the money.

What is left, after all of that, is a narrow description: an ensemble with a real board, real dues, real donors and a roster large enough that losing track of it costs something — and nobody with a free weekend to rebuild the whole apparatus. That is who this is for.

Where these numbers came from

Every figure above was read from the vendor's own published pricing page in September 2026, not from a review site. Prices change and ours is not the only one that will. If you find one of these out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

Next step

Ask us which one you should buy

Half an hour, no obligation, and a straight answer. If one of the products above fits your ensemble better than ours does, we would rather tell you than sell around it.

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