Festival day volunteers
Two hundred people you will never see again, claiming tent shifts and parking duty from a public link. A sheet was made for that scale, and we are not trying to replace it there.
A SignUpGenius alternative for dragon boat crews
A sign-up sheet doesn’t know which side you paddle.
SignUpGenius fills a list of identical slots in click order, and it does that well. A boat is ten pairs on two sides with a weight balance to hold and a stroke pair to set. The sheet sees none of it, so you still sort the boat on paper in the parking lot.
Free for crews up to 30, waitlist included. No credit card required. Paddlers never pay.
What a sign-up sheet sees
20 slots, 17 taken
Slot 1
Slot 2
Slot 3
Slot 4
Slot 5
Slot 6
Slot 7
Slot 8
Slot 9
Slot 10
Slot 11
Slot 12
Slot 13
Slot 14
Slot 15
Slot 16
Slot 17
Slot 18
Slot 19
Slot 20
Twenty names in click order. Sides, weight and the stroke seat are still yours to sort by hand at the dock.
What DragonSignUp sees
A boat
Drum
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
7
8
8
9
9
10
10
Steer
Left 1,412 lbRight 1,398 lbOff by 14 lbStroke pair set
Left filledRight filledOpen the waitlist fills itSides and weight balanced in the draft. Edit what you want, print it, take it to the dock.
Week three
Sheets are for events. Crews are for seasons.
A sheet tells you who is coming. It cannot tell you where they sit. One week of a season, side by side.
With a sign-up sheet
- SunRebuild the sheet. Twenty slots for Thursday, names retyped from last week’s. Two practices a week for four months is thirty-odd of these.
- ThuThe sheet comes back full. Twenty names in click order. You sort sides, weight and the stroke seat on paper in the parking lot.
- SatRegatta. Three heats, three lineups, drawn by hand between races. A late sub means redrawing the boat.
With DragonSignUp
- SunNothing. You posted the weekly practice in April and every date already exists. Paddlers joined once and stay on the roster.
- ThuThe roster fills itself. The draft lineup balances sides and weight and flags anyone on their off side. You edit a seat or two and print it.
- SatRegatta. One lineup per heat, built from any crew in the club. A late sub swaps one seat.
Sixteen weeks
What a season asks of you
Two practices a week and two regattas. That is 32 rosters to fill and 34 boats to seat, and on race day the seating changes heat to heat.
One season · 32 practices · 2 regattas · 34 boats
Each mark is a boat someone has to seat
Practice Regatta, several lineups in one day
SignUpGenius does more than people expect. You can set recurring dates, send automatic reminders and run unlimited sign-ups on the free plan. If your crew is coping with it, you are not doing anything wrong.
It will generate those 32 dates in one pass. Its own help pages say a sign-up spanning several months “can get long” and suggest hiding past dates or duplicating the sheet each month. That is candid, and it tells you what a season inside a sheet feels like.
The 34 lineups underneath are still yours to build, every week, from a list of names in click order.
Clubs that run a general team app instead of a sheet have the same gap. The TeamSnap comparison covers that side.
Feature by feature
SignUpGenius against DragonSignUp, a sheet against a roster
Compared against SignUpGenius Gold, the first tier that includes a waitlist. Rows are grouped by what a crew does across a season.
| For a dragon boat crew | DragonSignUp | SignUpGenius |
|---|---|---|
| Getting people on the water | ||
| Practice sign-ups | Yes Seat counts per boat. Post the weekly practice once and every date is created. | Yes Recurring dates and unlimited sign-ups, free plan included. |
| Waitlist | Every plan Free included. Promotes the next paddler the moment a seat opens. | Gold plan and above, at $29.99/mo. |
| Waitlist notifications | Email on every plan, plus a text for paddlers who turn texts on. No limit on texts. | Texts are metered: 150 a month on Silver, 500 on Gold. |
| Reminders | Emailed before every practice and race. | Yes Included on the free plan. |
| Getting the boat right | ||
| Boat seating chart | Yes Drafts a lineup balanced by side and weight, flags anyone on their off side, and lets you edit every seat. | No Slots have no side, no seat and no order. |
| Regatta lineups, race by race | Yes A separate lineup for every heat, pulling paddlers from any crew in the club. | No |
| Printable lineup | Yes A seat-by-seat manifest for officials, printed from the boat itself. | Export the sign-up list. You draw the boat yourself. |
| Paddler details that matter | Side, weight and stroke eligibility held on the roster all season. | Custom questions, 2 on Silver and 5 on Gold, asked again on every sheet. |
| Running a crew, not an event | ||
| A crew roster that persists | Yes Paddlers join once from an invite link and stay on the roster all season. | Participants are entries on a sheet, not members of a crew. |
| Member directory | Yes Paddlers keep their own contact details current. | No Contact details live on each sign-up. |
| Several crews in one club | One account Every crew on one season calendar, each with its own manager. | Separate sheets. Extra admins are gated by tier, 10 on Gold. |
| Off-water events and volunteer slots | Yes Dishes, shifts and tasks as sign-up slots, the same as a sheet. | Yes This is what it does best. |
| What it costs | ||
| Ads | None On any plan, free included. | Ads on free accounts. Silver removes them from one page, Gold from ten. |
| A 30-paddler crew with a waitlist | $0 The free plan holds a full boat and its subs. | $29.99/mo on Gold. |
Pricing
SignUpGenius free plan against DragonSignUp free plan
“We’re on the free plan and it’s fine.” Most crews reading this pay SignUpGenius nothing, so compare free against free. Prices in USD.
Full boat, free
DragonSignUp Free
Every feature, sized for one crew.
$0/yr
- Up to 30 members and 2 admins
- Waitlist with automatic promotion and unlimited opt-in texts
- Seating charts and regatta lineups
- Roster and directory, no ads
SignUpGenius Free
Unlimited sign-ups.
$0/yr
- Recurring dates, reminders, 400+ themes
- No waitlist, no seating, no roster
- Ads on your crew’s page
Covered by hand
The gap between the two free plans, per season.
34 boats
- Every seating decision, on paper
- Every cancellation, chased by text
- Every lineup, drawn by hand
A SignUpGenius alternative only earns the switch if it costs nothing and saves the Sunday-night rebuild. If you would rather pay your way out, the waitlist alone puts you on Gold at $29.99 a month, about $360 a year. On our side it stays free under 30 paddlers, or $144 a year on Pro for a club of up to 75, with seating included either way. DragonSignUp bills monthly.
Try it on one Thursday
Move one practice over
You don't have to migrate a season to find out. Pick next Thursday.
- 1
Create the crew and post one practice. Set the seat count. About two minutes.
- 2
Send the invite link to your paddlers. They add themselves, so you retype nobody, and their details stay on the roster for the rest of the season.
- 3
Let the waitlist do Thursday. When someone drops, watch the seat fill without you.
Team events and volunteer slots for your members live in DragonSignUp too, so the banquet, the pot-luck and the regatta shifts move over with the practices. The public festival crowd, two hundred strangers claiming tent shifts, can stay on a sheet.
Fair is fair
When SignUpGenius is still the right tool
We would tell you to keep it for these, and plenty of clubs run both.
Fundraisers and public events
Public pages, donation drives with a progress bar, and waivers and medical forms collected at registration from people without accounts. SignUpGenius has years of polish there.
The rest of your club
If the banquet, the raffle and the board meetings already run through SignUpGenius, leave them there. Move the practices and the lineups and keep the sheets.
From crews on the water
In their words
“Dragon SignUp has streamlined what used to be an involved process. There are so many advantages, my favorites include: the ability to sign up for multiple days at once, the clarity in paddle side preference, and the elimination of accidental double sign ups.”
Move one practice over and see.
Free for crews up to 30, waitlist and seating included, no ads. One invite link sets up the whole crew in under 5 minutes.