Our prices are changing from April 2025. We’re pretty certain everyone will be happy about this (for pretty much everyone, the prices will be lower!): you can see all the most up-to-date information on our prices on our Pricing page, and details of the prices from April 2025 are further down this page, too, if you want to jump straight to those: everything on this page is correct at the time of publication (December 2024).
As well as working to reduce the cost of a Three Rings subscription, we’re also changing the way we calculate the cost of subscriptions, so in addition to our main pricing page, we wanted to have a specific page here to answer some frequently asked questions about the upcoming changes, and to give us a chance to explain both why we’re making these changes, and why now.
A little bit of history
Our core goal at Three Rings is to ensure every voluntary and charitable organisation that would benefit
from having access to high-quality online volunteer management tools can do so, and do so at the lowest price possible.
To help keep that possible, we periodically review our prices to make sure that they’re still fair – we’re a not-for-profit company, we’re run entirely by volunteers, and we started way back in 2002 in response to the organisation our founders volunteered for at that time being asked to pay more than their entire annual budget just for a rota management system.
Originally, when Three Rings was just used by Nightlines, it was completely free, and we paid for it out of our own pockets! Then, as we started getting more and more Samaritans branches on board, we grew enough that we had to start charging to help cover the costs of the service – but we’re all volunteers, so mostly those costs are just server bills!
What we’ve also discovered, after spending most of 2024 on a variety of modelling and cost projection exercises, is that our prices can be brought down – sometimes significantly – but also that our pricing structure needs to be made a lot simpler, both so our users can understand it more clearly, and also to help save our own volunteers time working out who goes in which pricing band!
Why are we changing the structure?
What we’ve found over the years, is that using a tiered pricing system – charging organisations with higher income, and more money, a higher rate than organisations with a lower income and less money, is the best way to keep the prices fair for everyone… but at the same time, as we’ve begun supporting more and more organisations, and more and more diverse organisations, that pricing structure has got to be pretty complicated!!
Back in 2007, our pricing structure looked like this:
| Organisation Type | Band |
|---|---|
| Nightlines affiliated with the Nightline Association | N |
| Samaritans Branches (or anyone else) | S |
…but Three Rings kept growing, attracting a wider and wider range of organisations using and benefitting from the system, and that meant our pricing system had to be expanded to try and maintain the balance of fairness for all those organisations. Which meant in 2015 our pricing structure looked like this:
| Organisation Income | Number of Volunteers | Band |
|---|---|---|
| < £50,000 | Up to 20 | A |
| < £50,000 | 21 – 60 | B |
| < £50,000 | 61 – 140 | C |
| < £50,000 | 141+ | D |
| > £50,000, <£200,000 | Any | E |
| > £200,000, <£400,000 | Any | F |
| > £400,000 | Any | G |
…and still Three Rings kept on growing. Particularly as the volunteering landscape evolved across the late 2010s and early 2020s we’ve found the range of organisations we support, and the economic models they operate on have become much more varied. While there was often some variation between the annual income of Samaritans branches, that variation is nothing compared to the range of models that we have to factor in now we’re also supporting foodbanks, volunteer-run libraries, blood bikes, community shops and theatres and museums!
As we tried our best to adapt what began as a very simple and clear pricing structure to fairly match the needs of an increasingly complicated and diverse range of users, the structure itself got messier, until by 2024 our once clear and transparent pricing model looked like this:
| Organisation Income | Number of Volunteers | Band |
|---|---|---|
| < £6,500 | Any | 0 |
| < £55,000 | Up to 20 | A |
| < £55,000 | 21 – 60 | B |
| < £55,000 | 61 – 140 | C |
| < £55,000 | Over 140 | D |
| < £85,000 | Any | E |
| > £85,000, < £200,000 | Any | F |
| > £200,000, < £400,000 | Any | G |
| > £400,000 < £1,000,000 | Any | H |
| > £1,000,000 | Any | J |
Really, at that point it seemed pretty obvious we needed to plan for a fundamental reset.
While you can see how we’ve tried to respond to the ever-increasing diversity of organisations relying on Three Rings by adding new layers and conditions to the pricing structure, it’s probably also pretty obvious that after 17 years of steady evolution and tweaks, the pricing structure had become a bit of a mess. Even though the reason it got so messy was to try and ensure the best deal for absolutely everyone, the end result was something that often seemed confusing and arbitrary – and in particular an organisation that suddenly got an influx of volunteers could suddenly jump up several bands, which sometimes left people feeling they were penalised for having more volunteers (pretty much the opposite of what we want to encourage!)
Simplifying Our Pricing Structure
But, if one of the reasons the old pricing structure became so complicated was because of the sheer breadth of organisations that now use Three Rings, that very growth also gave us an incredible opportunity to make some radical improvements. Together with the fact the system has always been built using extremely scalable, trusted open-source technologies, we could harness that growth to not only make things much simpler, but also to ensure that Three Rings offered even better value.
We’ve wanted to do this for some time (in addition to doing a lot of modelling during 2024, we’ve been working on pricing policies and improvements for some years, although parts of our ambition had tobe pushed back until after the 2022/3 energy crisis had settled down a bit!). After all that modelling and planning, though, we’ve come up with a new pricing structure that meets the key tests we set ourselves for evaluating whether the new model is fair enough to meet our standards:
First – it’s much simpler than the old pricing model, with fewer bands
Second – it preserves (and expands!) our Band Zero for very small or very new organisations
Third – it provides us with a strong foundation to keep developing and improving Three Rings as we’ve always done
Fourth – it rewards our users: your growth, passion, and support for Three Rings brought us to this point, so it’s important that our success is reflected back to the users: under the new model organisation using Three Rings either a) benefits from a price freeze, paying no more than they do now, or b) saves money compared to what they paid under the old pricing model
And Fifth – it eliminates the use of volunteer numbers as a factor in pricing1, so that our organisations don’t get hit with a cost increase just because they’ve grown in size.
You can see the full details of the pricing plan (together with any updates if you’re reading this in some future year that isn’t 2025!) on our Pricing Page, but for the purposes of this explainer page, all invoices issued after the new pricing model comes into effect on April 1st 2025 will be issued against the following rates:
| Band | Organisation Income | Number of Volunteers | Annual Subscription (Exl. VAT) | Annual Subscription (Inc. VAT) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zero | < £6,500pa or <85,000pa | Any or (< 20) | FREE | FREE |
| One | < £85,000 | Any | £145 | £174 |
| Two | > £85,000 | Any | £225 | £270 |
1 The pricing model doesn’t completely eliminate the use of volunteer numbers to calculate prices, of course: an organisation with an annual income under £85,000 and with fewer than 20 volunteers is eligible for Band Zero, but their income moves them up into Band Two if they then expand to have 21 or more volunteers. We’ve done some pretty careful modelling around this and we’re confident this is still the fairest model, because it allows us to expand Band Zero to cover more of our users, including everyone who used to be in Band A.
(Plus, based on the sizes of organisations we currently support and their evolution over time, that there’s very few organisations likely to cross that line on a regular basis!).
FAQs
We anticipate that these changes might induce a few questions (including possibly our favourite, “Why are you lowering your prices?” – it’s because, as volunteers, delivering against our mission as a not-for-profit makes us feel pretty amazing!).
Based on the last couple of times we’ve made significant changes to our pricing structures, back in 2007 and 2014, we think we can anticipate the most common questions, and the answers to those are below.
If you’ve got a question that isn’t covered here, please reach out to us and ask! We’re not trying to do anything sneaky, so if there’s a question we’ve missed or an answer you don’t understand, please do let us know!
When does this change happen?
The change to the new pricing structure will happen on 1st April 2025. Any invoices issued on or after that date will be issued according to the new pricing structure, covering usual 12 months subscription
Who do these changes apply to?
The changes apply to every organisation using Three Rings. They’ll take effect at your next invoice date after April 1st. That means they’ll take effect for you immediately if you usually get invoiced in April, after a couple of months if you usually pay in June, and so on.
Why is this “only” changing on April 1st, why not now?
A couple of reasons! First, April is the start of our financial year, so for us it keeps things really tidy! Second, our terms and conditions ask us to give 3 month’s notice of pricing changes so that people can plan their expenditure more easily. (And third, we also need to make a couple of tweaks to Three Rings itself to make sure it handles migration to the new invoicing system properly!)
After considerable planning throughout 2024, we’re confident that April is the right time for us to make the change.
What if my organisation’s invoiced before April 1st?
You’re fine! If that’s the case, you’ll still be invoiced on our old rate this time, because your renewal date will be within our 2024/5 financial year, so the rates we set for 2024/5 will still apply – but don’t worry, because when you’re invoiced in 2026 (that is, during our 2025/6 year), it will be on the new pricing structure!
Rolling out the changes to each organisation we invoice, in turn, from the start of our financial year means that every organisation is treated fairly, and nobody loses out: every organisation whose subscription renews during our 2024/5 financial year pays (or already paid) at the 2024/5 rates, and then the newer simpler pricing structure kicks in from the start of our 2025/6 financial year, on April 1st.
That means, even if your next invoice date isn’t until March 2025, your organisation isn’t losing out compared to an organisation with an invoice date in May (the organisations that will be invoiced in May 2025 already paid at the 2024/5 rates, the same as you, last May, so they’ll get the new 2025/6 rates first, but once you’ve paid at the 2024/5 rates and “caught up” with the organisation invoiced in May, your next invoice will be at the same rate as them.
This keeps everything fair for everyone, but we know it can look a bit odd at first glance – it’s a quirk of the fact that, because our financial year follows the tax year instead of the calendar year, organisations invoiced in the first few months of 2025 are actually further back in the invoice “queue” than they look on paper!
Does this mean you’re changing what’s covered by our Three Rings subscription?
No, not at all! Although we’re moving to a simpler and more transparent model for our prices, the actual subscription you pay still covers you for everything it always has: twelve months of full access to the whole of the Three Rings system, twelve months of full access to our technical support, and twelve months of full access to any and all system upgrades and improvements we make.
Just as before, we’ll invoice you once a year, on your normal invoice date, and payment of that invoice will cover your organisation’s full access to Three Rings for the next year – the only change is that the model against which we calculate the invoice value is changing, to bring the cost of Three Rings down for as many users as possible.
How can you afford this?
Put simply, by taking advantage of the combination of factors that have always made Three Rings so incredibly scalable and resilient: we are, and always have been, run entirely by volunteers, so our costs are minimal. We’ve built the system on trusted open-source platforms, which helps to keep our overheads down. And, right from the start Three Rings has been designed to allow us to scale up the system to serve more and more users without compromising on stability or security, giving us the power to match the resource demands on the servers powering the system to our actual expansion rate.
As costs increased over the past few years, more and more charities and community organisations sought out Three Rings because they knew we offered the best value for their volunteer management needs: with each organisation that joined, our highly scalable model ensured that Three Rings CIC was in a stronger position.
To begin with, and especially as energy prices shot up during 2021-2023, that stronger position simply meant we were better-insulated against some of the inflationary pressures that impacted other suppliers. Now, as those pressures ease up and we identify more efficient ways of working, that increase in our user base has meant we’re in an incredibly strong position from which to review our costs and deliver savings back to our users. That’s what we’ve always been about, so that’s what we’re doing!
Why are you doing this?
Because we’re not like other companies. Plenty of other organisations would be happy to say that if people are willing to pay £x for their services, then £x must be a fair price. But at Three Rings, we don’t think like that, and we don’t want to.
Of course, we’d agree that if delivering a service and avoiding any compromise on quality means the service must cost £x, then £x is a fair price… but if we can maintain the same high standards that we’ve maintained for the last 23 years, reduce the cost, and save our users money they can then focus on their own charitable objectives, then as far as we’re concerned, that’s the fair thing to do.
After all – we’re all volunteers, and Three Rings CIC is a not-for-profit organisation! We’re not getting any money out of this, we don’t want to get any money out of this, and our reason for volunteering with Three Rings isn’t to see how much money we can make – it’s because we believe it’s important to support volunteering and to empower others to make a difference.
Will my organisation save money from these changes?
Almost certainly! As much as possible, we’ve tried to ensure that organisations will save money as a result of these changes, although (thanks to complicated maths in our modelling!) there are probably just over 100 organisations using Three Rings who instead get a price freeze rather than a price cut: we tried our best to make sure that everyone got a price cut, but because the old model scaled organisations’ subscription fees against their annual income there were some organisations who were already getting such a good deal we couldn’t cut their costs any more – although we’re pretty sure you’ll agree that’s still a nice thing to be told!
What we can say categorically is that no organisation is going to pay more as a result of these changes – almost everyone is going to pay less, and those who don’t pay less, will pay the same as before. (Although, of course, if your organisation’s income suddenly goes up massively, then congratulations, and that might move you into the higher band).
You can see all the pricing information on our Pricing Page, if you want to check.
Does my organisation need to do anything to prepare for this?
We don’t think so! We do advise that all Admins check that your organisation’s annual income is recorded correctly within Three Rings once a year (and, ideally, that we have the right address for you; it really helps when we’re sending you Christmas cards!) – but our volunteers can check your org’s income ourselves if we need to: everything should “just work”
What about my organisation’s dedicated beta server?
This is an excellent question! If you’re one of the organisations using Three Rings who also requests that we run a dedicated beta test server specifically for your organisation, we’ll now be charging you based on two things – one, a cost-per-instance, which covers each branch or section of your organisation (just like we always have), and two, the cost of that dedicated beta server.
In the old days, the cost of that server was effectively shared out among everyone using Three Rings, but as we were going through the models, that felt a bit wonky to us: even if it’s only a few pounds on a subscription cost, it didn’t quite feel right that every organisation should bear part of the cost of a dedicated beta server for one organisation, however important your work! We hope you’ll agree that it’s much fairer to bring the costs down for every organisation (including yours!), but also to make sure the cost of your organisation’s private beta server falls only on your organisation.
Are you still offering Regional or Membership discounts?
No – but the new pricing structure is designed to give everyone a better deal than they were getting even if they previously had a discount (and with the added benefit, that’s a saving that everyone gets to enjoy, not just people with a specific discount).
Plus, the reasons behind the discounts we used to offer don’t really make sense any more – we used to provide one of two types of discount:
Regional discounts, which we offered until 2017, were intended to help minimise our overheads by reducing the amount of volunteer time needed to manually generate and post individual invoices (which made quite the difference even with the price of stamps back in 2012!).
Today, though, we have Three Rings itself generate our invoices, and we’re increasingly using a paperless billing model where invoices are just emailed out. While we stopped offering new Regional discounts in 2017, and continued to honour those already in place for the last seven years, we will cease to provide Regional discounts under the new pricing scheme. Taking this step means we can lower the prices for all our users, including those previously receiving Regional discounts.
We’re still very happy to invoice organisations that choose to pay regionally if it helps cut down your admin, but the financial justification for us giving the discount has faded with time, so rather than provide blanket discounts only to those parts of an umbrella organisation that can group together to pay regionally, we’re lowering prices for absolutely everyone, across the board.
Membership discounts were offers we made in a bid to try and “tweak” some fundamental imbalances in the way the old pricing model worked: in particular, we used to give a discount to community shops who were members of the Plunkett Foundation, because all community shops tend to have a much higher turnover, and so show a much higher annual income, compared to most of the other types of voluntary organisation we support – which used to put them in the higher bands of the old pricing model.
Now we are moving to a new, simpler, and in particular cheaper model, that old imbalance doesn’t exist any more (and it means that community shops or other organisations who aren’t part of a wider membership organisation can benefit too).
Are you keeping the Three Rings 1% Policy?
Yes! For a long time now we’ve believed that if an organisation’s annual income is so small that the cost of their annual Three Rings subscription would be more than 1% of their income for that year, then that cost is too high: as far as we’re concerned, it doesn’t matter how fantastic the software is (and we’d like to think Three Rings is pretty fantastic!), no organisation running on volunteer effort should be spending more than 1% of their annual income just on software.
So, if your annual income is so low that the cost of your Three Rings subscription would exceed 1% of that income, we’ll issue you with a lower invoice, for a maximum of 1% of your income+VAT.
I think my organisation paid for multiple years in advance?
It’s possible – it isn’t normal practice for us (we usually just invoice every organisation for their next 12 months’ usage), but we have occasionally agreed to invoice organisations for multiple years in one go – if so, it’s probably because you had a specifically ringfenced donation or business requirement which meant you asked if we could make a special arrangement for your organisation.
If that happened, it will have been done on the basis of the old invoicing model, but we won’t let you lose out: please get in touch and we’ll work out how much extra coverage any pre-payment might entitle you to under the new pricing model and work out the best solution for you based on that.
Will you keep these prices forever?
We’d love to! (Or at least it’s second-best to finding a way to get our prices lower still!)
In reality, we can’t predict exactly what will happen – while everyone here’s a volunteer giving our time for free to support the goal of enabling volunteering, we do still have some costs (mainly the servers that power Three Rings!): if we face rising costs of our own that we can’t absorb without increasing our prices, we’ll probably need to respond accordingly.
Equally, if prices drop or even more organisations join us, and our modelling shows we can deliver even better value, we’ll be sure to pass those savings on.
We don’t use Three Rings yet… can we?
Almost certainly! This page and the FAQs are written with the assumption that the people most-likely to be reading them are already volunteering with organisations that do use Three Rings, but if you’re reading this and instead thinking “Wow, this is a rota management system that really does put voluntary organisations first!” then you wouldn’t be the first to be pleasantly surprised!
We’ve always believed that all of the organisations who use Three Rings have better things to spend their money on than the software that streamlines their administration (even if that software is as great as Three Rings is), so the lower pricing model we’re talking about here isn’t just for existing customers, it’s for all our customers. That could be you too!
We should note, we only work with charities, non-profits, community groups, and so on – we’re all volunteers ourselves, and we don’t want to give our time and skills to fill up someone else’s bank account: if you’re running the kind of voluntary organisation that’s ultimately out to make shareholders a pile of money rather than to give back to a community, then we’re afraid Three Rings isn’t for you. But otherwise, please get in touch!
This is really kind but can we pay extra / make a donation to Three Rings?
(We know, this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing we’d get “Frequently Asked” – but you’d be surprised!!)
Our answer is always the same, though – while we are (of course!) delighted that you love Three Rings and that we give so much value to the organisations who use our system, our whole purpose is to make sure your organisation has more funds available to fulfil your objectives or give back to your community.
It’s incredibly kind when customers offer to donate or pay extra to support Three Rings, but – genuinely – please use that money to support your own volunteers, or donate to a worthy cause in your area (we usually suggest finding a nearby food bank, homeless shelter, or school Friends group, but it’s up to you.
Feel free to tell us that you’ve done it, though, so we can share in the positivity! And, of course, if you’re really, really keen to give back to Three Rings, you could always ask about volunteering with us – pretty much everyone on the team started out by volunteering somewhere that uses 3R!