- Starting price
- $10/mo
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- Responsive web · Progressive web app · Planning Center and Breeze imports
- Developer
- Undershepherd by SolaSites
- Launched
- 2024
- Updated
- Aug 16, 2026
The verdict
Undershepherd keeps pastoral care from disappearing into memory, notebooks, and scattered messages without becoming a full church suite. Its price and focused workflow are appealing. Because notes may reveal health, grief, abuse, addiction, belief, family conflict, and counseling details, churches need strict minimization, access, consent, safeguarding, retention, export, and breach procedures before adoption.
Try Undershepherd ↗Opens undershepherd.app
Undershepherd is a pastoral-care relationship system for pastors, elders, and care teams. It stores people, custom fields, documents, interactions, life events, tasks, dates, and reminders so important conversations and follow-up do not depend on one leader’s memory.
The responsive web app can be installed as a progressive web app, while native mobile applications are described as forthcoming. Imports can bring in spreadsheets or data from church systems such as Planning Center and Breeze, with white-glove help included in paid plans.
Current pricing starts at $10 per month for one user. The public pricing page lists a multi-user starting point of $9 per user monthly, with annual and larger-team discounts; the company has also published lower bands down to $7 per user for ten or more users.
We reviewed current features, pricing, imports, faith commitments, comparisons, scholarship, and public privacy claims without storing real pastoral records. We did not independently test permissions, encryption, backups, audit logs, exports, support, mobile behavior, incident response, or data deletion.
✓ The good
- Focused scope - people, interactions, events, tasks, and reminders serve actual care work
- Approachable price - a single pastor can begin for $10 monthly after a no-card trial
- Unlimited core records - published plans do not meter people, fields, interactions, events, or tasks
- Import assistance - white-glove migration reduces friction from spreadsheets and church systems
- Affordability posture - team discounts, refunds, and scholarships support smaller ministries
✗ Watch out
- Extremely sensitive content - pastoral notes can expose religion, health, abuse, and family information
- Not a full ChMS - giving, attendance, groups, communications, check-in, and service planning live elsewhere
- Security proof is limited publicly - assurances need technical and contractual evidence
- Mobile transition - the current PWA may not meet every native offline or notification expectation
- Documentation risk - free-form notes can become excessive, subjective, or legally harmful
Best for
- Pastors replacing notebooks and personal memory with consistent follow-up
- Small care teams needing assigned tasks and shared relationship context
- Churches importing member data from Planning Center, Breeze, or spreadsheets
- Ministries ready to define what may never be written in a pastoral-care system
Avoid if
- You need a complete church management, giving, check-in, or communication platform
- Your team cannot implement role-based access, retention, safeguarding, and incident procedures
- Leaders intend to record speculative, diagnostic, confessional, or unnecessary private detail
- Policy requires security certifications or deployment controls the vendor cannot document
What Undershepherd is
Undershepherd is an organizational aid for pastoral relationships, not a counseling record system, medical chart, safeguarding case-management platform, confessional archive, emergency service, legal privilege guarantee, church directory replacement, or substitute for knowing people face to face.
The church remains responsible for consent, data minimization, accuracy, access, corrections, retention, deletion, subpoenas, mandatory reporting, crisis escalation, pastoral handoffs, staff departures, exports, and distinguishing spiritual care from licensed clinical treatment.
Why pastoral care needs memory without surveillance
A missed hospital follow-up or forgotten anniversary can communicate neglect, and care work distributed across a team needs continuity. A focused system can hold commitments, dates, and appropriate context more reliably than personal inboxes.
Good memory is not exhaustive surveillance. Record only what supports the next faithful action, separate safeguarding cases into approved systems, restrict intimate detail, let people correct basic facts, and delete notes when their pastoral purpose ends.
People and custom fields: structure only what the church can protect
Profiles can hold member details, documents, dates, and custom fields, creating one care-oriented view of important relationships. Imports help establish the database from existing records.
Classify every field by purpose and sensitivity. Avoid diagnoses, rumors, political labels, inferred sexuality, undocumented accusations, confession detail, and information copied merely because another system contains it.
Interactions and life events: concise notes with accountable access
Pastors can log conversations and significant events so later follow-up has continuity. Shared visibility can help another authorized caregiver respond when the primary pastor is unavailable.
Use factual, respectful language and record action rather than speculation. Define private versus team notes, corrections, audit history, pastoral privilege limits, safeguarding escalation, and when an entry must be removed.
Tasks, reminders, and imports: operational help needs clean ownership
Tasks and date reminders turn care observations into assigned follow-up, while Planning Center, Breeze, and CSV imports reduce duplicate setup. White-glove migration is included.
Prevent silent failures with named owners, due dates, reassignment, escalation, and completion definitions. Reconcile imports, deduplicate households, restrict documents, and remove stale source data after migration.
Pricing
Single User
$10/mo
One user with unlimited people, fields, interactions, events, tasks, reminders, and data import.
Multi-User
From $9/user/mo
Discounted care-team access; current calculator and annual terms determine the final rate.
Free trial
14 days
No credit card required; access pauses afterward unless payment is added.
Small church or scholarship
Contact
Need-based discounts and a free-year scholarship route for under-resourced pastors.
One user costs $10 per month after a 14-day trial that does not require a credit card.
The current multi-user pricing begins at $9 per user monthly, and vendor comparisons describe deeper per-user reductions for larger teams. Verify the live calculator and annual discount.
Core counts for people, fields, interactions, events, tasks, and reminders are presented as unlimited, and white-glove data import is included.
A 30-day refund policy, small-church assistance, and scholarship access for under-resourced pastors reduce trial risk, but privacy review still comes first.
Where Undershepherd falls behind
Publish a detailed security center with architecture, audits, encryption, backups, recovery, logs, subprocessors, and breach history.
Document granular field, note, document, team, and congregation-level permissions with immutable audit records.
Provide church-configurable retention, legal hold, deletion, correction, and complete export controls.
Add explicit safeguarding workflows that keep high-risk cases out of ordinary pastoral notes and preserve mandatory-reporting procedures.
Clarify native-app delivery, offline behavior, notification privacy, mobile device management, and remote session revocation.
Undershepherd vs. CareNote vs. Notebird
Undershepherd emphasizes simple people, interactions, events, tasks, and imports at a low per-user price. CareNote serves a similar pastoral-care niche. Notebird is longer established and includes care workflows and reporting for churches.
Choose Undershepherd for streamlined affordability, CareNote for its particular volunteer and care structure, or Notebird when its reporting and mature workflow fit better. Verify current features directly.
Pilot each with fictional records: create a sensitive note, restrict it, assign care, change a staff role, export a person, honor deletion, recover from error, and inspect the audit trail.
The bottom line
Undershepherd addresses an overlooked part of church operations: remembering people well. Its narrow scope, low price, unlimited records, imports, and task workflow make it approachable for a pastor or small team that finds a general ChMS too broad. But pastoral data is not ordinary contact data. It can expose the most vulnerable moments of a person’s life. Adopt the tool only with a written note standard, least-privilege roles, safeguarding separation, short retention, staff exit procedures, reliable exports, and verified security evidence. Used with restraint, it can support care; used without governance, it can turn compassion into an enduring risk.
Alternatives to Undershepherd
CareNotePastoral care records, follow-up, tasks, and volunteer collaboration for churches.NotebirdChurch pastoral-care platform with notes, workflows, reporting, and team visibility.
Planning Center PeopleChurch database, forms, workflows, lists, and broader suite integrations.Breeze ChMSAccessible church management suite for people, groups, giving, events, and communications.A protected minimal spreadsheetLow-cost option only when access, retention, audit, backups, and sensitive notes are tightly controlled.Frequently asked questions
How much does Undershepherd cost?
A single user is $10 monthly. Multi-user pricing begins at $9 per user, with annual and larger-team discounts.
Does Undershepherd have a free plan?
No permanent free tier is listed, but there is a 14-day no-card trial and need-based assistance.
Can it import church data?
Yes. It supports CSV imports and advertises automatic imports from Planning Center and Breeze with white-glove help.
Is there a mobile app?
The web app is responsive and installable as a PWA; native app-store versions are described as forthcoming.
Is Undershepherd a full ChMS?
No. It focuses on pastoral relationships and follow-up rather than the full church operations stack.
What information should pastors avoid?
Avoid unnecessary diagnoses, rumors, confession detail, undocumented allegations, and any data without a defined care purpose and protection.
What should a church verify before subscribing?
Verify permissions, audits, encryption, backups, breach notice, retention, deletion, exports, safeguarding, and staff deprovisioning.
Sources & further reading
More Church Management Software
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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.