Questions about Kanbei.

$20 a month, flat, for one organization. There are no per-person charges.

There is no free trial. Subscriptions charge $20 immediately when you subscribe. Checkout is handled on Stripe’s hosted checkout page.

No. You pay $20 when you subscribe, and you can cancel anytime. The demo lets you look around before you sign up, with clearly labeled sample data that is never saved to a real account.

Kanbei is early-stage software, built and supported by one person — me, Daniel. There is no free trial because $20 from day one is what keeps Kanbei going: it pays for the running of the service and for me to personally help every organization that signs up. A free trial would mean supporting orgs that may never pay, and I would rather be honest about that and give every paying org my full attention. If you want to look around first, the demo is free, uses clearly labeled sample data, and never asks for a card.

You can cancel anytime. In Billing, choose Cancel subscription: you will see what you keep and what ends, and you can download your data first. Cancelling itself happens in the Stripe Customer Portal. Cancelling stops future billing. It does not delete your organization — if you want the organization itself gone, delete it in Settings.

There are no automatic refunds for partial months. If you think you were charged in error, email daniel@kanbei.xyz about it.

Your plan is month to month. There is no long-term contract.

No. Only the organization pays — one $20-a-month subscription per organization. Members never pay to be part of an organization, and people who reply to an event link never pay either.

No. Admin seats are unlimited. Make as many people admins as you want — anyone who is an admin can manage the organization. Leaders and members do not. You can change someone’s role in Settings, and the organization always needs at least one owner.

No. Members are unlimited, and so are admin seats. There is no limit on how many people can belong to the organization.

There is no invite email and no public invite link. Instead, the person signs up for Kanbei first. Then an owner or admin adds their email and role in Settings, and they can open the organization when they sign in.

In People, choose Import CSV. Your file needs a header row with these columns: first_name,last_name,email,phone,tags,household. First name and last name are required on every row, and any email given must look like a real email address.

Tags can be separated by semicolons, or by commas inside a quoted cell — for example, "senior, captain". An unquoted comma splits the row into extra columns, so quote any cell that contains a comma.

Before anything is imported, Kanbei checks each row and shows you the problems it found. Rows with problems are skipped, and only the rows that are ready are imported. You can also export your people back out as a CSV file with the same columns.

The demo shows labeled sample data — a made-up club with made-up people — so you can look around before signing up. Demo data lives only in your own browser. It is never saved to a real account, and nothing you do in the demo moves into a real account when you sign up.

A real account saves your organization and your people to Kanbei’s database, so you can sign in from any browser.

Every event has a reply link guarded by a long, random token in the link itself. Anyone with the link can see the event and reply — going, maybe, or cannot make it — without an account and without a password. Nobody can guess the link, but anyone you share it with can open it, so only share it with the people you mean to invite.

Because anyone with the link can read the event, do not put sensitive details in an event description. Keep descriptions to what everyone invited needs to know: what is happening, where, and when.

Yes. On the Calendar page you can download a single event as a calendar (.ics) file, or download the whole calendar as one .ics file, and import it into your calendar app. You can also use the live calendar feed: in Settings, under Calendar feed, copy the feed URL and subscribe to it in your calendar app, and your calendar app will keep up with changes. Anyone with the feed link can see event titles and times, so only share it with people who should see them.

Yes. Kanbei runs in your web browser — on a computer or on a phone — and there is nothing to install. Open kanbei.xyz in your browser and sign in.

Yes — through your organization’s own accounts. An owner or admin can connect the organization’s own email account — Resend, any SMTP host, or Mailchimp — and its own text-message account — Twilio or SimpleTexting — in Settings. Kanbei then sends announcements only through those accounts, when an owner or admin chooses to send them from an announcement. You pay your provider directly for what you send, at whatever that provider charges. Kanbei adds no fee and no markup for using your own accounts — not a connection fee, not a per-message fee. The $20 a month covers Kanbei only; your provider bill is separate and stays between you and your provider. Sends are manual, up to 200 people at a time, and people who have opted out are skipped — except for Mailchimp, where the send goes to the whole audience you select in Mailchimp, so keep that audience clean in Mailchimp.

No. Kanbei keeps track of people, groups, events, scheduling, attendance, and announcements. It does not run votes or polls, it has no AI features, and it does not take bookings.

Your organization’s data is stored securely with our database provider, Supabase.

Payment is taken on Stripe’s hosted checkout page. Kanbei never sees or stores your card number.

In Settings, in the danger zone, type the organization name exactly to confirm, then delete it. Deleting removes the organization and all of its people, groups, events, schedule, attendance, and announcements. This cannot be undone.

Email Daniel, the founder, at daniel@kanbei.xyz for help. You can also use the contact page.

Email: Resend, any SMTP host, or Mailchimp. Text: Twilio or SimpleTexting. You connect your own account in Settings, and you pay your provider directly — Kanbei adds no fee, and the $20-a-month price stays flat.

Mailchimp sends are campaign-based, to an audience you already have in Mailchimp. Kanbei can sync your members to that Mailchimp audience. Kanbei groups and opt-out flags do not filter a Mailchimp audience: the send goes to the whole audience you select, so keep that audience clean in Mailchimp. There is no Mandrill/transactional sending.

No. Constant Contact’s sign-in needs a browser-based OAuth sign-in for each org and has no paste-a-key option, so Kanbei cannot connect it the same simple way.

Your provider bills you directly for the messages Kanbei sends through your account. Kanbei adds no fee for email and text connections, and Kanbei never sees your provider bill. The $20-a-month Kanbei price stays flat.

The organization is. Only message people who agreed to hear from you, and honor opt-outs when someone asks to stop hearing from you. Kanbei respects the opt-out flag on each person’s record and skips people who have opted out, but getting consent in the first place is the organization’s job. Before saving messaging settings, an owner or admin confirms the organization has permission to message the people in its directory, and messages will not send until that confirmation is saved. The one exception is Mailchimp: Kanbei’s opt-out flags do not filter a Mailchimp audience, so the send goes to the whole audience you select — keep that audience clean in Mailchimp.

Every email sent through Resend or SMTP includes a one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom. Mailchimp campaigns use Mailchimp’s own unsubscribe link instead. Test messages do not include an unsubscribe link.

For texts sent through Twilio, yes — replying STOP (or STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT, END, or CANCEL) marks your record as opted out of texts in Kanbei, and replying START (or STARTALL or UNSTOP) opts you back in. The reply must contain only that one word; anything longer, such as “stop giving”, is not treated as an opt-out. This sync only applies to Twilio. If your organization sends texts through SimpleTexting, STOP handling happens at the provider and is not synced back to Kanbei flags — check SimpleTexting’s opt-out list before sending.

Yes. Owners and admins can save reusable message templates and reuse them when writing an announcement, instead of typing the same message again. A template is a starting point — you can still edit the message before you send it, and sending is still manual.

Yes. After a send, Kanbei keeps a delivery report for it: how many messages were sent, how many failed, and how many people were skipped because they had opted out, with a row for each recipient. The report stores no message bodies. A report shows what Kanbei recorded about the send — it does not guarantee that a message was delivered or read.

Yes. Kanbei can sync your members to your Mailchimp audience, so the audience stays in step with the people in Kanbei. Syncing does not change how a Mailchimp send works: a campaign still goes to the whole audience you select in Mailchimp, and Kanbei groups and opt-out flags do not filter it — keep that audience clean in Mailchimp.

No. There is no scheduler and no automated follow-up in Kanbei. Every email or text send is started by an owner or admin, and a scheduled announcement does not auto-send email or text when it appears. If you want a follow-up, send it yourself.

Owners and admins can enter contribution records by hand — who contributed, how much, and when — and record commitments, which are promises to contribute an amount over time. Kanbei does not collect the money itself and does not check with Stripe that a record matches a real payment: contribution records are entered by the organization, and the organization is responsible for them being accurate.

Yes. Kanbei can produce a statement from the contribution records entered for a person, showing what was recorded for them. The statement only covers what the organization entered — if a gift was never recorded in Kanbei, it will not appear on the statement.

Yes, as an option. An organization can set up a recurring contributions Price in Stripe, and contributors can then contribute regularly through the contribution page. Kanbei itself does not set the amount or the schedule, and it does not record recurring payments automatically — the organization still enters contribution records by hand. Setting up the recurring Price is optional, and the $20-a-month Kanbei price is unchanged either way.

Text-to-contribute lets someone text the organization's text number and get the contribution link back by text, so they can contribute through Stripe from their phone. It uses the organization's own text-message account, and the organization pays its provider directly. Kanbei does not take the payment itself — payment happens through Stripe, through the contribution link.

The member portal is a simple view for signed-in members, where a member can see their own information — including their own contributing records and statements — without needing an admin seat. A member only ever sees their own records, not anyone else's, and members cannot edit organization records from the portal.

The Reports page summarizes what is already in Kanbei — attendance and contributing, from the records the organization entered — so an owner or admin can see the picture at a glance instead of adding it up by hand. Reports only reflect what was entered; they do not check anything against Stripe or any other outside system.

Yes. An event can be marked as paid, and the organizer collects payment separately, for example through the contribution link. Kanbei does not verify payment: it does not check with Stripe that anyone paid, and a reply to a paid event does not prove payment. The organizer keeps track of who has paid.

Yes. Owners and admins can print mailing labels from the people list, using the names and addresses already entered for each person. Labels are printed from your browser, with your own printer and label sheets. If an address is missing or wrong in Kanbei, it will be missing or wrong on the label.

Yes. Owners and admins can turn Money, Kiosk, Tasks, and Files on or off in Settings, under Tools. A tool that is off disappears from the sidebar and search results, and its page shows a plain message instead. Nothing is deleted — turning the tool back on restores everything exactly as it was. Money starts on for Church, Nonprofit/Community, and Sports/Hobby orgs, and off for School/Teacher, Studio/Creative, and Small Business/Staff orgs; Kiosk, Tasks, and Files start on for every org.