- Starting price
- $10/user/month billed annually
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- Web · Progressive web app · Email · SMS with Plus
- Developer
- Digital Lighthouse Designs LLC
- Launched
- 2022
- Updated
- Aug 9, 2026
The verdict
CareNote understands pastoral care as a workflow rather than a pile of confidential notes. Requests arrive, get assigned, are accepted or rerouted, receive contact, create follow-ups, and return to leaders as accountable care. The Care Action Center, volunteer model, nine named ChMS integrations, and unusually inventive add-ons make it one of the most focused products in this category. The decisive caveat comes from CareNote’s own terms: it is not a HIPAA-covered entity or business associate, offers no BAA, and is not configured for protected health information. Churches can use it well only with disciplined data minimization, role controls, consent, exports, and a separate system for regulated or highly sensitive records.
Try CareNote ↗Opens carenote.app
CareNote is pastoral-care coordination software from Michigan-based Digital Lighthouse Designs LLC. Founder Rev. Donnell Wyche combines long ministry experience—he has served Ann Arbor Community Church since 1999 and was ordained in 2004—with a computer-science background and former work as an IBM solution architect. That combination shows in the product. CareNote is not a generic customer database relabeled for churches. It models what happens after someone says, “I need help”: intake, ownership, contact attempts, notes, risk, follow-up, handoff, prayer, practical support, and accountability.
The project began as a concept in November 2020, moved into development in 2021, entered beta in March 2022, and launched version one later that year. Its public history lists repeated architectural revisions through version six in January 2026. Frequent rewrites can mean migration risk, but they also suggest an operator willing to correct foundational limitations rather than preserve a weak early model. The current product presents care requests, interactions, people and households, tasks, milestones, documents, care groups, benevolence, audit activity, multiple campuses, localization, progressive-web-app delivery, and integrations.
The standout is the Care Action Center. Instead of waiting for a leader to remember whom to call, the system surfaces an Inbox, Risk Radar, Waiting Room, Overdue work, Chaser List, and Follow-ups. Risk Radar highlights people with active care but no recorded contact for 90 days or more. Volunteers can participate through email without a full login; the Plus add-on brings SMS acceptance and “first to accept” workflows. Email-to-request, a Care Number, meal coordination through Care Table, S.H.A.P.E.-based matching, and a morning Daily Beacon extend the workflow beyond the core database.
Pastoral care is inherently sensitive, and the public legal documents deserve as much attention as the feature tour. CareNote’s terms explicitly say the company is not a covered entity or business associate under HIPAA, the service is not configured for HIPAA compliance, no business associate agreement is available, and users must not store protected health information or specially protected health data. That warning sits in tension with natural pastoral scenarios involving hospitals, surgery, chemotherapy, hospice, addiction, disability, pregnancy, and mental health. The correct response is not to ignore the terms; it is to design a church data policy that stores only the minimum pastoral coordination detail and moves regulated clinical information elsewhere.
✓ The good
- Pastoral-care-native workflow - requests move through assignment, acceptance, contact, notes, follow-ups, and completion
- Excellent action center - inbox, waiting, overdue, chaser, follow-up, and risk views make neglected care visible
- Flexible volunteer participation - email-only volunteers can respond without receiving a full paid account
- Nine named ChMS connections - current integrations cover several widely used church database platforms
- Practical extensions - phone and SMS intake, meals, matching, benevolence, households, tasks, and morning digests fit real ministry
- Transparent HIPAA warning - the terms plainly tell churches what the service is not configured to hold
- Founder fit - long pastoral leadership and technical architecture experience inform the product’s unusually specific design
- Accessible entry pricing - small teams can begin at $10 per paid user monthly on annual billing with no card for the trial
✗ Watch out
- No HIPAA configuration or BAA - protected health information and specially protected health data must not be stored
- Privacy policy is overbroad - boilerplate references location, contacts, identifiers, behavioral tracking, and advertising in ways that need product-specific clarification
- Security assurance is thin - no public SOC 2 report, penetration-test summary, subprocessor list, or detailed encryption architecture was found
- AI provider is unnamed - the policy promises no external model training but does not identify every inference processor or retention arrangement
- Cancellation language is tense - immediate deletion language and access through the billing period should be reconciled before termination
- Pricing has moving parts - paid users, free volunteers, extra volunteer bundles, annual versus monthly Core, and tiered Plus require calculation
- No permanent free plan - evaluation begins with a trial and continued use requires paid Core seats
- Highly sensitive pastoral context - even non-HIPAA notes can expose grief, family conflict, immigration, abuse, finances, or spiritual vulnerability
Best for
- Churches whose pastoral-care requests are getting lost across email, paper, and memory
- Care teams that need explicit ownership, aging, follow-up, and leadership visibility
- Multi-campus ministries coordinating volunteers while restricting access by role or group
- Churches using one of CareNote’s nine current ChMS integrations
- Leaders prepared to establish written data-minimization and sensitive-note policies before launch
Avoid if
- Your workflow requires storing protected health information or signing a HIPAA business associate agreement
- You need independently audited security evidence before putting pastoral records in a cloud service
- You want one general ChMS for giving, check-in, worship planning, websites, and every other church function
- Your team will write detailed counseling, abuse, clinical, legal, or case-management narratives without governance
- You cannot export and verify data before cancellation or product migration
What CareNote is
CareNote is a specialized pastoral-care management system. Its core records represent people, households, incoming needs, care assignments, interactions, follow-up obligations, notes, tasks, prayer, documents, milestones, groups, and benevolence. Role and group permissions restrict visibility, while activity and audit views help leaders understand what happened. It can complement a church-management system rather than replacing every operational module.
The distinction from a note app is accountability. A note records what someone remembers after a conversation. CareNote models state: new, assigned, accepted, waiting, overdue, chased, followed up, or resolved. It can identify who owns the next action and who has gone too long without contact. For a growing church, that state model is more important than fancy prose because care failures commonly occur between intake and the next human response.
Why care teams use CareNote: it turns concern into an owned next action
Pastoral teams often care deeply and still drop requests. A prayer card sits on a desk; a staff member assumes a volunteer called; a hospital discharge is buried in email; someone promises to follow up after two weeks and forgets. CareNote treats these as workflow failures that can be surfaced. Assignment establishes responsibility, acceptance confirms it, chasers expose silence, and follow-up dates keep a relationship from disappearing after one conversation.
Software cannot make a call compassionate or a decision wise. It can reduce the administrative fog that keeps compassionate people from acting. The best deployment records just enough context to equip the next caregiver, uses neutral factual language, separates spiritual care from clinical records, and routinely closes or deletes information no longer needed. More detail is not automatically better care. In this category, a smaller trustworthy record is often the safer ministry practice.
Care Action Center: a serious answer to neglected follow-up
The Action Center combines four headline statistics with six operational views. Inbox catches new work. Risk Radar finds active care with no logged contact for at least 90 days. Waiting Room shows requests awaiting a response. Overdue work has missed a due date. Chaser List identifies assignments that need prompting, and Follow-ups collect promised next contacts. These are meaningful distinctions, not cosmetic dashboard tiles.
Churches should tune the workflow to their care covenant. Ninety days may be too long for bereavement, suicide risk, domestic violence, hospitalization, or food insecurity and too short for a low-intensity long-term check-in. Escalation should reach a trained person, not merely produce another notification. Leaders need clear definitions for urgent, overdue, closed, transferred, and unable-to-contact, plus backup ownership when a volunteer is ill or leaves the church.
Integrations and volunteer response: broad reach without buying every person a seat
Current materials name nine ChMS integrations: Planning Center, Church Community Builder, Breeze, ChurchSuite, FellowshipOne, Rock RMS, ParishSOFT, OneChurch, and CHMeetings. Email-to-request turns incoming messages into work. Volunteers can receive assignments and report through email; Plus expands response through SMS and first-to-accept routing. The Care Number can receive calls or texts, while multi-campus and localized experiences support larger or international teams.
Integration does not eliminate data ownership questions. A church should map which system is authoritative for name, contact details, household, campus, membership, consent, care status, and deletion. Test duplicates, renamed people, merged households, opt-outs, departed members, and integration failure. Volunteers should see only the minimum information required for their assignment, and an email or text should avoid sensitive detail that could appear on a lock screen, shared inbox, carrier log, or forwarded thread.
AI reports and briefings: powerful retrieval, high-stakes context
CareNote offers AI-generated congregant briefings and a Care Story, plus an AI Report Builder that translates plain-English requests into a structured database query. Results appear in a table that can be refined, saved, bookmarked, and exported to CSV. The privacy policy says AI output is based solely on account data and that information is not shared with or used to train external AI models. Users can avoid the AI features by not opening them.
A natural-language report can still reveal too much. “Show everyone dealing with addiction” or “summarize marriages in crisis” may be technically possible and pastorally inappropriate for the requester. Authorization must apply to the generated query and every returned row, not only to access to the AI button. Churches should prohibit speculative labels, audit prompts and exports, review every briefing for error, minimize source data, and request the provider’s AI vendor, data-processing agreement, retention, region, and security terms in writing.
Pricing
Core annual
$10/user/month
Core is billed annually at $120 per paid user per year. Each paid user includes three email-only volunteers who can receive and respond to care work without a full login. The standard trial lasts 14 days and does not require a card.
Core monthly
$15/user/month
Monthly billing offers flexibility at a 50% premium over the annual per-user rate. Additional email-only volunteers cost $5 per month for each bundle of five beyond the included allowance.
CareNote Plus
$49–$399/year add-on
Plus requires Core and is priced by total team size: up to five users $49 annually, six to ten $99, eleven to twenty $199, and twenty-one to thirty $399. It adds functions such as SMS response and enhanced volunteer workflows.
Core annual billing is straightforward at $10 per paid user per month, charged annually. A three-person paid team costs $360 per year before add-ons. Monthly flexibility increases that base to $15 per person per month, or $540 for the same three-person team over a year.
Email-only volunteers improve the economics. Each paid user includes three, so three paid leaders could involve nine volunteers without more seat fees. Extra capacity is sold in bundles of five for $5 per month. Confirm whether inactive, seasonal, or duplicated volunteers count and establish a removal process when someone stops serving.
Plus is a flat annual add-on determined by total team size, and it cannot be purchased without Core. The official example for three paid users, two volunteers, and the smallest Plus tier totals $409 per year: $360 Core plus $49 Plus. A growing team can cross a Plus band even when many participants are free volunteers, so calculate the complete roster.
The standard trial is 14 days with no card and focuses on Core. The company says a trial can be extended to 30 days on request and encourages customers to ask about testing Plus. Use that period to import a small synthetic dataset, build roles, rehearse intake-to-close, test mobile email and SMS, export records, and run a tabletop emergency—not to upload years of real counseling notes immediately.
Before cancellation, export everything and verify that attachments, history, relationships, and audit data are usable. Public terms include immediate-deletion language while billing language can imply access through the end of a paid period. Ask support to state the exact timeline for cancellation, account closure, backup expiration, restore, and legal holds in writing before depending on it.
Where CareNote falls behind
Provide product-specific privacy disclosure. Remove or explain boilerplate references to Social Security numbers, real-time location, address books, advertising networks, and behavioral tracking; state which data the present pastoral-care product actually collects.
Publish security assurance. Provide encryption details, hosting regions, subprocessor list, independent penetration testing, vulnerability reporting, access logging, backup and recovery targets, breach notification commitments, and a roadmap toward an external control audit.
Name and contract the AI layer. Identify inference providers, regions, retention, zero-training terms, human access, prompt logging, deletion, failure behavior, and any changes that would require customer notice or consent.
Make the no-PHI rule operational. Add in-product warnings near health-related fields, administrator training, prohibited-data examples, configurable sensitive-word prompts, redaction tools, and a documented path for customers that need HIPAA-capable case management.
Clarify deletion. Reconcile immediate cancellation deletion with end-of-period access, define backup retention, provide administrator-controlled exports and closure confirmation, and support scheduled retention rather than indefinite pastoral history.
Publish granular permission documentation. Show exactly which roles can view notes, attachments, prayer, benevolence, AI briefings, reports, exports, audit logs, phone messages, and cross-campus records, including how permissions are tested after product changes.
Add safeguarding templates. Supply workflows for suspected abuse, self-harm, domestic violence, threats, vulnerable adults, mandatory reporting, and emergency escalation that clearly state software does not replace trained local judgment.
CareNote vs. Notebird vs. Planning Center
CareNote and Notebird are the closest conceptual competitors because both focus on pastoral care, interactions, reminders, and team continuity. CareNote’s Action Center, risk views, volunteer response channels, integrations, benevolence, meal coordination, and AI reporting create a particularly broad care operations layer. A direct trial should compare permissions, mobile speed, data export, support, security evidence, and how each system handles an urgent request.
Planning Center is a mature modular church-management ecosystem. Its People database, workflows, forms, groups, check-ins, services, registrations, giving, publishing, and Church Center experience cover far more church operations. A congregation already committed to it may be able to manage simple care through People workflows and notes. CareNote wins when pastoral care deserves its own queue, ownership, risk, chasers, volunteer responses, and specialized dashboard.
Breeze offers approachable people, giving, events, forms, tags, communication, and volunteer management for smaller churches. It is simpler as one core database and may reduce vendor count. CareNote provides deeper purpose-built care states and can integrate with Breeze when the general system is not enough. The extra product also creates another sensitive database and permission surface to govern.
A secure case-management or clinical platform is the correct comparison when the ministry must store protected health information, detailed counseling records, formal assessments, or regulated social-service data. CareNote explicitly declines that role. Choosing specialized compliance software may cost more and feel less church-specific, but a pastoral brand cannot substitute for the legal and security controls the data requires.
The bottom line
CareNote is among the clearest examples of software shaped by a real ministry workflow. It sees the dangerous gap between receiving a need and ensuring that a person receives sustained care. The Action Center gives leaders a practical way to find waiting, overdue, unaccepted, uncontacted, and promised work. Email-only volunteers keep participation economical, nine current ChMS connections reduce duplicate entry, and the phone, SMS, meal, matching, benevolence, household, and AI reporting tools address situations ordinary task managers do not. We recommend a trial for churches ready to professionalize pastoral coordination. The recommendation is conditional because the records can be among the most sensitive a church owns. CareNote explicitly says it is not configured for HIPAA, will not sign a BAA, and must not receive protected health or specially protected health data. Its privacy policy also needs substantial product-specific cleanup, while public security and AI-vendor assurance remain limited. Establish a data classification, write minimal factual notes, restrict roles, train every volunteer, configure escalation, audit exports, and keep clinical, counseling, abuse, legal, and regulated case details in an appropriate system. Test with synthetic records, request security and processing documents, and export before cancellation. Used within those boundaries, CareNote can help a church remember people better. Used as an unrestricted pastoral diary, any powerful care platform can become a liability.
Alternatives to CareNote
Planning CenterA mature modular church ecosystem whose People workflows may handle basic care and whose other products cover most church operations.
BreezeAn approachable small-church ChMS for people, giving, events, forms, tags, and communication, with less specialized care workflow.NotebirdA direct pastoral-care software alternative centered on interactions, reminders, people, and team continuity; compare permissions and exports closely.
One Church SoftwareAn integrated ChMS with people, workflows, giving, check-in, forms, communications, and broader operational coverage.
Rock RMSA highly configurable open-source church platform that can model care workflows with greater ownership and greater implementation burden.Frequently asked questions
What does CareNote do?
CareNote manages pastoral care requests, assignments, acceptance, interactions, notes, people, households, follow-ups, tasks, prayer, benevolence, meals, risk, reports, volunteers, and related workflows. Its Action Center surfaces work that is waiting, overdue, unaccepted, or missing recent contact.
How much does CareNote cost?
Core costs $10 per paid user per month on annual billing or $15 monthly. Each paid user includes three email-only volunteers; additional volunteers come in $5 monthly bundles of five. Plus costs $49 to $399 annually by total team size and requires Core.
Is there a free trial?
Yes. The standard Core trial is 14 days without a credit card. CareNote says prospects can request an extension to 30 days and should contact the company if they want to test Plus features.
Is CareNote HIPAA compliant?
No. Its terms say CareNote is not a HIPAA-covered entity or business associate, is not configured for HIPAA compliance, offers no BAA, and must not be used to store protected health information or specially protected health data.
Which church systems integrate with CareNote?
Current official materials name nine: Planning Center, Church Community Builder, Breeze, ChurchSuite, FellowshipOne, Rock RMS, ParishSOFT, OneChurch, and CHMeetings. Confirm the fields, sync direction, frequency, and limitations for your exact setup.
Does CareNote use AI?
Yes. It offers congregant briefings, Care Story, and a natural-language AI Report Builder. The privacy policy says account data is not used to train external AI models, but the public material does not name every provider. Request the DPA, subprocessors, retention, and region.
What should a church do before canceling?
Export and verify all needed records and attachments, then ask CareNote to confirm the exact deletion and backup timeline. Public terms contain language that can be read as immediate deletion as well as billing-period access, so do not wait until after cancellation to recover data.
Sources & further reading
More Church Management Software
B1 ChurchA genuinely free, open-source church platform - app, website, giving and check-in on one database - run by an Oklahoma nonprofit. The catch is not the price - it is that the vendor own docs call the native app deprecated.
Involv Chat (church.chat)Involv Chat combines ministry-team messaging, rosters, blocked dates and service scheduling in a focused church workspace—useful when leaders protect volunteer consent and resist turning attendance or gifts data into a spiritual score.
ChurchSoftwareChurchSoftware—formerly StoreHouse—offers an unusually broad church-management core for $0, including giving, check-in, accounting and a shared mobile app, while charging transparently for vendor-heavy extras.
Pastor Notes AppA two-app system that lets leaders publish sermon notes and invite live congregational response while attendees use the free Bible Notes companion—but its pricing math, refund terms and app privacy disclosures need correction before a church commits.
Take RootA low-cost, offline-friendly relationship tracker built specifically for evangelism and discipleship follow-up—more intentional than a spreadsheet, but its old generic privacy policy does not adequately describe the sensitive ministry data the product exists to hold.
Develop.MeDevelop.Me packages course building, cohorts, discussion, assignments, gamification and mobile learning for churches and mission-driven organizations—with unlimited learners on paid plans, but a vague free tier and a 2022 website privacy notice leave procurement questions open.