An Oasis Insight Alternative: PantryPOS vs Oasis Insight
Short answer: Oasis Insight (by Simon Solutions) is a client intake and reporting system priced from $20 per user per month. PantryPOS is priced per location — $39 a month for the first, with unlimited users — and adds the food side: checkout, FIFO inventory, recall tracing, temperature logs and offline mode. At Oasis Insight’s published starting rate it costs less for one user and PantryPOS costs less from the second user on; Oasis Insight also offers simultaneous-user and volume pricing on request, which it does not publish.
What Oasis Insight offers
Oasis Insight is designed by Simon Solutions and describes itself as a client intake and reporting solution for food banks and their partner agencies. It covers client intake, distribution tracking, agency monthly feeding reports, SNAP outreach and a CSFP module that its site labels new. Pricing starts at $20 per user per month; each person needs their own login (shared logins are not allowed), and paying annually by check takes 10% off. For organizations with many volunteers or staff it offers a simultaneous-user pricing option, and volume pricing, on request; those prices are not published. There is a 14-day free trial for one user with no card required, and the trial can be extended on request.
Its CSFP page lists Basic, Plus and Pro tiers at $20, $40 and $60 per user per month with no contract, a required one-time CSFP set-up fee, and features across the tiers including barcode scanning and client IDs, a kiosk and client intake portal, client scheduling, digital signatures, SMS broadcasts, area-wide alerts and bulletins, an agency directory and electronic agency referrals. Food banks named on its home page include the Greater Boston Food Bank, Atlanta Community Food Bank, East Texas Food Bank, Feeding America San Diego and Central Texas Food Bank. The pages we checked do not describe inventory, point of sale, temperature logs or an offline mode.
Where PantryPOS is different
Per location, not per user. PantryPOS is $39 a month for the first location, $29 for each added location up to ten, and less beyond that, with unlimited staff and volunteer accounts. A distribution day with five volunteers at the check-in and checkout tables costs the same as one with two.
The food, not only the client. Oasis Insight centres on intake and reporting. PantryPOS includes unlimited staff accounts, clients and volunteers, a client portal with pre-orders and a waitlist, client-choice checkout, FIFO inventory with expiration warnings, lot and barcode recall tracing, cold-chain temperature logs, donation tax-receipt letters, volunteer scheduling, TEFAP/USDA reporting with the records a monitor asks for (who picked up, every eligibility declaration, a signed distribution log, TEFAP stock reconciled by lot), each State’s TEFAP rules on screen, a civil-rights complaint and training log, and an offline mode. A supplier recall produces a list of the households that may have received it (what to do in a recall), and fridge and freezer readings are logged with alerts (temperature logs).
Food bank reporting. PantryPOS produces the TEFAP monthly report and collects the household details Feeding America’s Service Insights asks for, with a de-identified export (what Service Insights tracks).
Price compared, from each vendor's published pricing
- 1 user — Oasis Insight from $20/month; PantryPOS $39/month.
- 2 users — Oasis Insight from $40/month; PantryPOS $39/month.
- 5 volunteers with their own logins — Oasis Insight from $100/month at its per-user rate; PantryPOS $39/month.
- Free trial — Oasis Insight 14 days (one user, extension on request); PantryPOS 30 days. Neither asks for a card.
These Oasis Insight figures use its published starting rate of $20 per user. Its simultaneous-user and volume pricing are quoted on request and not published, so a pantry with many volunteers should ask Oasis Insight for a quote before comparing.
When Oasis Insight is the better choice
If one or two staff do intake and reporting for a food bank network, and you do not run shelf inventory or client-choice checkout, Oasis Insight is focused on exactly that job, has a long record (Simon Solutions reports over 24 million assistance records added since 2007), and costs less at that size. It is built for the food bank side too: its site describes producing every monthly agency report at the click of a button and broadcasting bulletins to every partner agency. If your food bank already uses Oasis Insight with its partner agencies, ask it first. If many volunteers need logins, or the shelf is where your problems are — inventory, client-choice checkout, recalls, temperature logs — compare PantryPOS.