Kreneau: the SignUpGenius alternative

SignUpGenius is a very complete sign-up platform, born in the United States and widely used by schools, parent associations, churches and clubs. Beyond sign-up sheets it handles payments, dues, fundraisers, ticketing, online stores and waivers to sign. If you need all of that in one place, it is a solid tool, and there is no reason to switch.

This article is about the opposite case: you need none of that, and you are only trying to get people to sign up for slots.

A platform, or a sign-up sheet

The breadth of SignUpGenius has an unavoidable flip side. A platform that can take payments and collect signed waivers has to ask you, up front, who you are, what kind of sign-up you are creating, and under which settings. Hence the usual path: create an organiser account, choose a model, work through the setup wizard, pick a theme, configure sending and reminder options.

None of that is unreasonable. But for a simple need - the slots of a course, this month's shifts, the carpool rota - it is a lot of steps before you get the one thing you wanted: a link to share.

Kreneau takes the problem from the other end. One click on the home page creates the sheet, immediately: no registration, no account, not even for the organiser. You add your days and slots straight into the page, and you share the link.

It is a difference of philosophy more than of features: one asks you to declare everything before you begin, the other lets you begin and declare as you go.

Side by side

The table reads both ways. The three rows "payments", "fundraisers" and "waivers" are deliberate absences in Kreneau, not gaps waiting to be filled. If any one of the three is essential to you, the comparison stops there and SignUpGenius is your tool.

What Kreneau actually does

A sheet has a title, an emoji if you want one, and an optional description. It contains days, and each day contains slots.

A slot has a time range, a description, and optionally a minimum and maximum number of participants. When the maximum is reached, the slot marks itself full and nobody can add themselves to it - there is no counter for you to keep.

A slot can also contain roles, up to eight, each with its own name, emoji and capacity. On a course: "trainer" and "trainee". On a school trip: "adult helper" and "child". On a food run: "driver" and "helper". When signing up, the participant picks a role. If you configure none, the slot simply behaves as a list with one overall maximum.

To sign up, a participant types their name and, if they wish, a comment. No account, no password, no email to confirm. Everyone can see who is coming to what, on a phone as well as a computer.

The limits are explicit and deliberately low: 42 upcoming days per sheet and 21 slots per day. Only upcoming days count, so the same sheet can serve all year, and these limits above all stop you building the monster sheet that nobody can read.

How to go about it

1. Create the sheet from the home page. It exists on the first click.
2. Name it and add a description if the context is not obvious to participants.
3. Add your days and slots, with times and capacities.
4. Add roles if a single slot needs several kinds of participant.
5. Duplicate rather than retype. A slot duplicates just below itself, time shifted and roles kept, but without the sign-ups. A whole day and a whole week duplicate too.
6. Save a template if your schedule repeats. A reference week of seven days with their slots, optionally pre-filled from a week you already entered, then up to four weeks generated at once, without the sign-ups. Two templates per sheet, enough to separate the ordinary week from the holiday week.
7. Share the link, and edit the sheet afterwards as much as you need: sign-ups already taken stay where they are.

When SignUpGenius stays the right choice

This needs saying plainly, because getting the direction wrong costs time:

• You are taking money - dues, cost-sharing, ticket sales.
• You need signed waivers or formal parental consent.
• You track hundreds of volunteers across a year, with history and automated reminders.
• You need an audit trail: who signed up when, who changed what.

In those situations, having no organiser account stops being an advantage and becomes an obstacle: with no declared identity, you cannot attach a payment, prove a signature, or keep a yearly history. Kreneau does not try to do that.

When a sheet is plenty

• The slots of a course or a run of classes.
• This month's shifts - reception, distribution, outreach.
• Carpool or snack rotas.
• A club's training sessions, week by week (see how to set it up for a club).
• The workshops and outings of an activity centre, where what matters is knowing who is coming and how many places are left.

What these have in common: the dates are already decided, there is no money to collect, and the real need is for the information to be readable by everyone, right away, including on a phone.

If your context is a school or an activity centre, the case is set out here. For a course, the steps are described here.

If your participants do not all read English

SignUpGenius is built for an English-speaking audience, and its interface is in English. For most English-speaking organisations that is a non-issue, and it should not be dressed up as one.

It becomes real in one specific situation: when the organiser reads English but a good part of the participants do not. A community group in a multilingual neighbourhood, a school with recently arrived families, a charity whose volunteers span several first languages. There, the barrier is not at setup - it is at the moment somebody has to sign up.

Kreneau exists in nine languages, and each participant reads the sheet in their own. And language is not the only barrier at the moment of signing up: in one charity, it was the phone that blocked people, several volunteers being unable to sign up on the old spreadsheet. Since the switch, everybody uses it, with no training at all.

Which one to choose

The question fits in one sentence: do you need a platform, or a sheet?

• A platform. Payments, ticketing, waivers, yearly tracking of hundreds of volunteers. SignUpGenius is built for that, and does it well.
• A sheet. Slots that are already known, people signing up, in two minutes and without anyone - you included - having to create an account. That is exactly what Kreneau does, and all it does.

And if your need sits further upstream - you are working out which date to hold rather than who comes to fixed slots - neither is what you want, but a poll: Doodle and Framadate are compared here.

Your slots are already set and you simply want people to sign up? Try the sheet below, then create your own.