A CharityTracker Alternative for Food Pantries
Short answer: CharityTracker, from Simon Solutions, is case management software for nonprofits — churches, human-services agencies and whole community networks that share client records to avoid duplicated assistance. It is priced per user: $20, $40 or $60 a month. PantryPOS is built for food pantries and priced per location: $39 a month with unlimited staff and volunteers. For a pantry with more than one or two people logging in, that difference adds up.
What CharityTracker offers
CharityTracker was created in 2006 in Florence, Alabama, by community leaders and developers working on Hurricane Katrina relief, and is part of the Simon Solutions family. It serves community nonprofits, churches and ministries, human services, housing, disaster recovery, local government and more, and says it has 3,900+ existing networks you can join. Its strength is collaboration: agencies in a network see each other’s assistance records, post requests and bulletins, and refer clients, which cuts duplicated help.
Published pricing (per user):
- Basic $20/month per user ($216/year) — case management, reports, area-wide bulletins, daily backup.
- Plus $40/month per user ($432/year) — adds barcode scanning, client IDs, digital signature capture, file uploads, requests and referrals, outcomes.
- Pro $60/month per user ($648/year) — adds kiosk mode and remote intake, SMS broadcasts, appointments and scheduling, customizable assessments, an API.
There are no onboarding fees, a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and community-wide pricing for coalitions. Its FAQ says that for HIPAA compliance each staff member or volunteer must have their own login. Reports export to CSV/Excel. For food banks and pantries specifically, CharityTracker points to its sister product, Oasis Insight, a version built for pantry intake, dietary needs and reporting.
Where PantryPOS is different
Per location, not per user. Because CharityTracker charges each staff member or volunteer a seat, five people on Basic is $100 a month, and five on Plus (the tier with barcode scanning and signatures) is $200. PantryPOS is $39 a month for the first location with unlimited staff accounts and volunteers, $29 for each added location up to ten, and a 30-day free trial with no card.
Built for a food pantry. CharityTracker tracks assistance to a person across many kinds of agency. PantryPOS tracks a pantry’s whole day: household intake with proxies and signature capture, appointments with reminders and a waitlist, client-choice checkout, and the food — FIFO inventory with expiration warnings, lot and barcode recall tracing (a supplier recall produces a list of the households that may have received it), cold-chain temperature logs, per-item waste, and donation tax-receipt letters. It keeps the TEFAP records a monitor asks for — who picked up (the household or a named proxy), each eligibility declaration as it was on the day, a printable signed distribution log, and TEFAP stock reconciled lot by lot — with each State’s TEFAP rules on screen. It also schedules volunteers and keeps working offline.
Your data. PantryPOS exports clients, visits, inventory and reports to CSV at any time, and imports your existing client list from CSV with help mapping the columns, at no charge.
CharityTracker vs PantryPOS at a glance
- Made by — CharityTracker: Simon Solutions. PantryPOS: an independent software maker (0xpi).
- Pricing — CharityTracker: $20/$40/$60 per user per month. PantryPOS: $39/month first location, unlimited users.
- Trial — CharityTracker: 14 days, no card. PantryPOS: 30 days, no card.
- Setup fee — neither charges one.
- Focus — CharityTracker: case management and duplicate prevention across a community network. PantryPOS: running a food pantry, including inventory and TEFAP records.
- Inventory, recalls, cold chain — PantryPOS: built in. CharityTracker: not listed in its plans.
- Data out — CharityTracker: reports to CSV/Excel, API on Pro. PantryPOS: CSV export of clients, visits, inventory and reports, plus API keys.
When CharityTracker is the better choice
If your pantry is one ministry among many in a town that already shares a CharityTracker network — churches, a ministerial alliance, the county social-services office — joining that network lets you see what help a family has had elsewhere and refer them on, which PantryPOS does not do across unrelated agencies. It is also the better fit if your work is broader case management (case notes, assessments, outcomes over time) rather than food distribution. If you are a food pantry with several volunteers and you want inventory, recalls and TEFAP records without paying per seat, PantryPOS is built for that.
Frequently asked questions
How much does CharityTracker cost?
CharityTracker publishes per-user pricing: Basic $20, Plus $40 and Pro $60 per user per month ($216, $432 and $648 per user per year), with no onboarding fees, a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and community-wide pricing for coalitions. Each staff member or volunteer needs their own login.
Is CharityTracker made for food pantries?
CharityTracker is general case management for nonprofits, churches and community networks. For food banks and pantries, its maker Simon Solutions offers Oasis Insight, a version built for pantry intake, dietary needs and reporting.
Is PantryPOS an alternative to CharityTracker?
For a food pantry, yes. PantryPOS is $39 a month per location with unlimited staff and volunteers, and covers intake, appointments, checkout, FIFO inventory, lot-level recall tracing, cold-chain logs, volunteer scheduling and TEFAP records. CharityTracker is the better fit for sharing case records across many agencies in a community network.
Can I move my client list from CharityTracker to PantryPOS?
CharityTracker says its reports export to CSV/Excel. PantryPOS imports a client list from CSV, and the PantryPOS team helps map the columns at no charge.