Plain English summary: The Simple Church Rota is a volunteer scheduling tool for churches. You get a 30-day free trial, then it's £35/year for your whole church. Your data is yours. We don't sell it. You can cancel any time. We'll do our best to keep the service running reliably.
1. Overview
These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of The Simple Church Rota, a volunteer scheduling and rota management service available at simplechurchrota.com ("the Service"), operated from Great Britain ("we", "us", "our").
By registering for or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you are registering on behalf of a church or organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.
2. Eligibility
The Service is intended for churches and faith-based organisations managing volunteer rotas. You must be at least 18 years old to register as the church administrator. Volunteers invited to join a church's rota may be younger, but must have consent from their church administrator.
The Service is available worldwide, though it is designed and priced for UK-based churches. Pricing is in GBP.
3. Accounts
Church administrator accounts
Registering creates a church account with you as the administrator. You are responsible for:
- Keeping your login credentials secure and not sharing them
- All activity that occurs under your account
- Inviting volunteers appropriately and with their knowledge
- Ensuring the data you enter is accurate
Volunteer accounts
Volunteers join via a personalised email invitation from their church administrator. By accepting an invitation and creating an account, volunteers agree to these Terms.
Account security
If you suspect unauthorised access to your account, notify us immediately at . We are not liable for losses caused by unauthorised use of your account resulting from your failure to keep credentials secure.
4. Free trial
New church registrations receive a 30-day free trial with full access to all features. No payment details are required to start a trial.
- The free trial is available once per church — it cannot be restarted by re-registering
- At the end of the trial, the account will be suspended unless a subscription is purchased
- Your data is retained for 90 days after the trial ends, then archived for a further 30 days, before permanent deletion — see section 8 for full details
We send email reminders at every stage — when your trial is ending, when it expires, before archiving, and before permanent deletion — so you always have time to renew and keep your data.
5. Subscription & payment
Pricing
After your free trial, the Service costs £35 per year for your whole church, regardless of the number of volunteers or rota administrators. There are no per-user fees.
Payment
Payments are processed securely by Stripe. We do not store your card details. By subscribing you agree to Stripe's terms of service in addition to these Terms.
Renewals
Subscriptions must be renewed manually — we will send a reminder email before your subscription expires. We do not automatically charge you at renewal.
Pre-launch offer
Churches joining during the pre-launch period (before 1 May 2026, subject to availability) may receive 12 months' access free of charge as a promotional offer. This offer is one per church, non-transferable, and not redeemable for cash.
6. Cancellation & refunds
You may stop using the Service at any time. There is no minimum commitment.
- If you choose not to renew, your account will be suspended at the end of your current subscription period
- Your data is retained for 90 days after expiry, then archived. Archived data is held for a further 30 days before permanent deletion
- You will receive email reminders before archiving and before deletion
- To request early deletion of your data, email us and we will action it within 30 days
Refunds
Because the Service is charged annually and includes a full 30-day free trial before payment is required, we do not generally offer refunds on subscription payments. If you believe a charge was made in error, contact us promptly and we will review it fairly.
Service unavailability
No refund or credit will be offered for periods of service downtime, technical errors, or interruptions outside our reasonable control. We will always endeavour to restore the service promptly and to communicate any planned or extended outages.
Service closure
In the unlikely event that we permanently close the Service, we will provide as much advance notice as reasonably possible to all registered church administrators by email.
If we close the Service, a pro-rata refund will be offered to churches that have had fewer than 3 months of paid access to the Service at the point of closure. Churches that have had 3 months or more of paid access during their current subscription year will not be entitled to a refund, as the cost of the service (£35/year) is considered proportionate to the value received. We believe this is a fair and reasonable position given the low annual cost.
7. Acceptable use
You agree not to use the Service to:
- Violate any applicable law or regulation
- Upload or transmit content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, or discriminatory
- Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any other church's account or data
- Interfere with or disrupt the Service or its infrastructure
- Use automated tools to scrape, crawl, or excessively query the Service
- Use the message centre to send spam or unsolicited communications outside your volunteer team
We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, with or without notice depending on the severity of the breach.
8. Your data
Your church's data — rotas, volunteers, service records, messages — belongs to you. We process it solely to provide the Service.
- We do not sell your data to third parties
- We do not use your volunteers' data for advertising or profiling
- We store data on servers located in the United Kingdom
Full details of how we handle personal data are in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
Data retention
When a trial or subscription ends, the following timeline applies automatically:
- Days 1–90 after expiry: Account suspended but fully intact. Subscribe at any time to restore access immediately
- Day 90: Account archived and access disabled. A notification email is sent
- Days 91–120: Data held in archive. You may still contact us to reactivate
- Day 120: Deletion notice sent — your data will be permanently deleted in 30 days
- Day 150: All church data, volunteer records, rotas, and history permanently deleted
Inactivity alone (no logins for 60 days) triggers a reminder email but does not accelerate the above timeline — the retention clock only starts when a trial or subscription expires.
We send email reminders at every stage: trial expiring, trial expired, 30-day archive warning, archive notification, and final 30-day deletion notice. Make sure your administrator email address is kept up to date.
SMS notifications
The Service includes optional SMS text message notifications for time-sensitive rota events such as swap requests, urgent cover needed, and last-minute cover requests. These are strictly opt-in:
- Volunteers will only receive SMS messages if they add their mobile number to their account profile and enable SMS notifications in their settings
- No SMS will be sent to any user who has not explicitly opted in
- We use a third-party SMS gateway provider solely for message delivery — your mobile number is not retained by that provider for any other purpose
- You can withdraw consent and stop all SMS at any time by removing your mobile number or disabling SMS notifications in your account settings
Standard network message rates may apply depending on your mobile provider. We are not responsible for charges applied by your network for receiving SMS messages.
As the church administrator, you act as a data controller for your volunteers' personal data. You are responsible for ensuring you have a lawful basis to collect and process that data under UK GDPR, and for informing your volunteers accordingly.
9. Service availability
We aim to keep the Service available and reliable at all times, but we cannot guarantee uninterrupted access. Planned maintenance will be communicated in advance where possible.
We are not liable for losses caused by downtime, technical errors, or circumstances outside our reasonable control (including hosting provider issues, internet outages, or force majeure events). No refund or credit is payable for service interruptions of any duration.
We reserve the right to modify or discontinue the Service, or any part of it, with reasonable notice to registered users. In the event of permanent closure, refunds are governed by the terms set out in section 6 (Service closure).
10. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:
- The Service is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, express or implied
- We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from use of the Service
- Our total liability to you in connection with the Service shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim
Nothing in these Terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or any other liability that cannot be excluded by English law.
11. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page and notify church administrators by email if the changes are material.
Your continued use of the Service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.
12. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes arising from these Terms or your use of the Service shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.
13. Contact
If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us: