Comparison

Better Impact alternative for NZ and Australian charities

If you're running your volunteers off a spreadsheet and pricing your first real system – or you're already on Better Impact and looking at renewal – this page sets the two platforms side by side on the things that are actually public: pricing, how you buy, what the price is based on, and what each product is built for. Where Better Impact doesn't publish an answer, we say so rather than guessing.

See PurposeTech pricing Read the Pink Ribbon case study

Two different buyers search for a Better Impact alternative

Better Impact and PurposeTech overlap, but they are not aimed at the same programme. Working out which one you run answers most of the comparison before the table does.

Ongoing, credentialled volunteer programmes

Hospital companions, museum and gallery guides, library and parks programmes, university placements – rostered week after week, with training records, background checks and multi-year hour histories to keep. Better Impact has built for this since 2000, and IHC New Zealand and four RSPCA state branches are among the organisations running it. If this is your programme, Better Impact is a reasonable choice and PurposeTech does not claim parity.

Appeal days and campaign volunteering

Street appeals, collection days, clean-ups and one-off community campaigns – a few thousand people mobilised across a lot of sites in a short window, usually coordinated by someone doing three other jobs, on a budget that needs a published price before a sales call. This is the organisation PurposeTech is built for, and it's where the rest of this page focuses.

If you're still on a spreadsheet, you are probably not choosing between two systems yet – you are deciding whether a system is worth it at all. Our volunteer spreadsheet guide covers what a spreadsheet does well and where it starts to cost you, before you price anything.

Where Better Impact is the established choice

A fair comparison starts with what Better Impact is genuinely good at. It has been building volunteer software since 2000 from Hamilton, Ontario, and its Volunteer Impact product carries real depth for continuous programmes: online training with video, quizzes and a document library, background-check integration and electronic signing from the Growth tier up, multi-level oversight and location-based permissions, SSO and a REST API on the top tier. It states ISO/IEC 27001 and 27017 certification and HIPAA compliance across all modules.

Its public review scores are also higher than ours – Capterra 4.8/5 across 27 reviews, G2 4.7/5 across 138, and the #1 ranking in G2's volunteer-management category for 2026. PurposeTech has no published aggregate rating to put against that. If you run a credential-heavy programme, or your procurement requires formal security attestations today, Better Impact is the more established fit.

PurposeTech vs Better Impact – the facts side by side

Every row is sourced (references below the table). Where Better Impact does not publish an answer, the row says not published. Better Impact's volunteer product is Volunteer Impact; Get Connected is the platform it acquired with Galaxy Digital in March 2026 and now owns. Figures last checked 3 September 2026.

Dimension	PurposeTech	Better Impact	Src
Published pricing	Yes – NZD 59/month or NZD 500/year (Starter), NZD 299/month or NZD 3,000/year (Growth), on /pricing	Not published – three tiers (Foundation, Growth, Impact) shown with no dollar figure, behind “Book a Demo”	1, 2
How you buy	Self-serve signup online	Demo request, then a quote	1, 2
Free trial or free tier	14-day free trial, no credit card to get started	Not published – no free tier appears on any pricing page reviewed between 2019 and 2026	1, 2, 3, 4
Was pricing ever published?	Yes – published continuously on /pricing	Yes, previously – a public per-volunteer pricing calculator was still on the pricing page in November 2024 and had been removed by May 2025	3, 4
Last published rate	Current NZD rates, published	US$8.00 per volunteer per year (Standard Edition) on the archived November 2019 calculator; Enterprise ran on a sliding per-account rate from US$12.75 to US$11.03 per volunteer	1, 3
What the price is based on	Participating volunteers only – Starter includes 500, Growth includes 1,500	Active volunteers plus an admin-seat cap per tier – Foundation up to 500 volunteers and 3 admins, Growth up to 1,000 and 10 admins, Impact unlimited. Billed on “Accepted” and “Inactive” volunteer profiles	1, 2
Billing currency	NZD, published	Not published today. The archived calculator stated “All prices are in US dollars”, with separate regional sites for AU, CA, NZ, UK and Ireland	1, 3
Founded / headquarters	2021, New Zealand	2000, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada	5, 7
Ownership	New Zealand owned and operated	The Brydon Group, a US private-equity firm, took a strategic investment in December 2024. Better Impact acquired Galaxy Digital, maker of Get Connected, in March 2026	5, 7, 8
Scale	Largest deployment: 8,000+ collectors across 1,000+ sites in a single-day street appeal	Combined post-acquisition claim: 80,000+ organisations, 400+ volunteer centres, 600 million+ volunteer hours logged	8, 12
Public review scores	No published aggregate rating on Capterra or G2	Capterra 4.8/5 from 27 reviews; G2 4.7/5 from 138 reviews, ranked #1 in G2’s volunteer-management category for 2026	9, 10
Security certifications	No formal certifications – security practices published on /security	ISO/IEC 27001 and 27017 certified, HIPAA-compliant across all modules, database encryption, 2FA and SSO	6, 13
Data hosting	AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2)	Not published – no AU or NZ data-residency claim found on the .com.au or .co.nz regional sites	6, 13
Volunteer training modules and background checks	Not published as a product feature	Online training with video, quizzes and a document library, plus background-check integration and electronic signing, from the Growth tier up	2, 11
Appeal-day collector and site tooling	Core product – collector shift booking, area coordinators, real-time site coverage	Not published – no appeal-day-specific tooling found in the feature pages, FAQ or case-study library	11, 12
Campaign micro-sites	Yes – white-label campaign pages and forms	Not published – no landing-page or micro-site builder found in the feature pages or FAQ	11, 12
AI email drafting	Shipped feature – AI drafts volunteer emails from a prompt	Not published – no named AI drafting feature found in the public product pages	11, 12
Named NZ customers	Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, Child Cancer Foundation, Sustainable Coastlines, Assistance Dogs NZ Trust	IHC New Zealand, which moved to Volunteer Impact in 2020. Australian users include Heart Foundation Australia, RSPCA NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, St John Ambulance Queensland and SA, and Foodbank WA and Queensland	12, 14

Sources (last checked 3 September 2026):

Archived rates are historical figures from the Internet Archive, not Better Impact's current prices, and its current prices are not published – confirm directly with Better Impact before budgeting.

Where PurposeTech is purpose-built

A price you can put in a budget today

Starter is NZD 59 a month or NZD 500 a year and includes 500 participating volunteers; Growth is NZD 299 a month or NZD 3,000 a year and includes 1,500. Both are on the pricing page, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card needed to start. Billing is participation-based – you only pay for volunteers who participate in a shift.

No cap on who can log in

Better Impact's tiers limit admin seats as well as volunteers – 3 on Foundation, 10 on Growth. A charity with a handful of area coordinators can hit that ceiling long before it hits the volunteer count. PurposeTech's plans are sized on participating volunteers, and no admin-seat cap is published. That's a difference in model, not a verdict – it just changes which number decides your tier.

Built for appeal days, not adapted to them

Single-day mass mobilisation – thousands of collectors, hundreds of sites, area coordinators, real-time coverage maps – is PurposeTech's core production use case. No appeal-day tooling of that shape appears in Better Impact's public feature pages or case studies, whose named sectors are hospitals, museums, libraries, parks and universities. See the street appeals product for the full feature set.

NZD-billed, hosted in Australasia

PurposeTech is built and supported in New Zealand, bills in NZD, hosts data on AWS Sydney, and is designed to support NZ Privacy Act 2020 and Australian Privacy Principles requirements. It holds no formal certifications – the practices are set out on the security page so you can judge them yourself.

What Better Impact reviewers say

Better Impact reviews well – 4.8/5 on Capterra and 4.7/5 on G2 – and the praise below is typical of the set. The criticism that recurs is narrow: cost against a charity budget, and building reports. The quotes are reproduced verbatim with platform and date; read the full reviews before drawing conclusions.

“The system has been easy to setup and use and manage by people with a wide range of technical skills.”

Verified Reviewer, National Manager, Non-Profit – Capterra, 9 January 2021

“Better Impact has given us a volunteer management system that in my opinion is second to none.”

Greg H., Work Placement Officer, Government – Capterra, 12 April 2023

“The cost was rather high for us as a charitable organization. We ended up cancelling.”

Lisa B., Operations Manager, Health & Wellness – Capterra, 10 April 2024

“I struggle to generate reports, there are too many options, it is confusing.”

Jen R., Center Manager, Non-Profit – Capterra, 18 August 2020

The cost review is worth a second look: it carries a five-star rating. The reviewer rated the product highly and still gave price as the reason for cancelling. That is the question to take into your own renewal – not whether the product is good, but whether the price fits the budget you actually have.

Proof point

The Pink Ribbon Street Appeal runs on PurposeTech

Breast Cancer Foundation NZ has partnered with PurposeTech since 2021 to run the Pink Ribbon Street Appeal – 8,000+ collectors across 1,000+ collection sites each October, with self-service shift booking, area coordinator tools, and real-time nationwide coverage tracking.

8,000+

Collectors per year

1,000+

Collection sites

5 years

Partnership since 2021

Read the full case study

Also comparing Rosterfy? Read the Rosterfy comparison or see all comparisons.

Better Impact alternative FAQ

How much does Better Impact cost?

Better Impact does not publish a price. Its pricing page lists three tiers – Foundation, Growth and Impact – with volunteer and admin-seat limits but no dollar figure, behind a “Book a Demo” request. It did publish rates in the past: a public per-volunteer calculator was still on the pricing page in November 2024 and had been removed by May 2025, and an archived November 2019 version of that calculator quoted US$8.00 per volunteer per year on the Standard Edition. PurposeTech publishes its pricing: Starter is NZD 59 a month or NZD 500 a year, and Growth is NZD 299 a month or NZD 3,000 a year.

How many staff can log in on each plan?

Better Impact caps admin seats by tier: 3 on Foundation, 10 on Growth, unlimited on Impact. If you have area coordinators, branch managers and comms staff who each need access, the seat limit can decide your tier before your volunteer numbers do. PurposeTech prices on participating volunteers – Starter includes 500 and Growth includes 1,500 – and publishes no admin-seat cap.

Is Better Impact still an independent company?

Better Impact was founded in Ontario in 2000 and ran without outside investment for around 24 years. In December 2024 The Brydon Group, a US private-equity firm, took a strategic investment. In March 2026 Better Impact acquired Galaxy Digital, the maker of Get Connected, so Get Connected is now a Better Impact-owned brand rather than a separate vendor. If you are comparing the two, you are comparing two products from the same company.

Is PurposeTech a direct replacement for Better Impact?

It depends on what you run. Better Impact has 26 years behind it and real depth in ongoing, credential-heavy volunteer programmes – hospitals, museums, libraries, parks and universities – with online training modules, background-check integration, electronic signing, and ISO/IEC 27001 and 27017 certification. PurposeTech does not claim parity there. For street appeals, collection days and campaign-shaped volunteering run by NZ and Australian charities that want published NZD pricing and self-serve setup, PurposeTech is built for exactly that.

Where is volunteer data hosted?

PurposeTech hosts volunteer and campaign data on AWS in Sydney (ap-southeast-2) and is designed to support NZ Privacy Act 2020 and Australian Privacy Principles requirements. It holds no formal security certifications; its practices are published on the security page. Better Impact states ISO/IEC 27001 and 27017 certification and HIPAA compliance, but does not publish an AU or NZ data-residency claim on its regional sites – worth asking about directly if hosting location matters to your board.

Can I try PurposeTech before committing?

Yes. PurposeTech has a 14-day free trial and no credit card is needed to get started, and you can sign up and set up a campaign yourself. No free tier appears on any Better Impact pricing page reviewed between 2019 and 2026, and the current route is a demo request.

Thinking about switching?

The cheapest way to compare is to try the product. Pricing is published, the trial is 14 days, and no credit card is needed to start – so you can put PurposeTech next to your current quote before your renewal date.

Start a free trial View pricing Book a demo