MemberCairn vs TroopTrack
TroopTrack has helped units manage rosters, events, and money since 2008, and at $99 a year it is one of the better-known names in Scouting software. So here is the fair question: what would you actually get by choosing MemberCairn instead?
The short answer: TroopTrack manages the families you already have. MemberCairn puts an AI assistant on the work of winning the next ones and keeping the ones you almost lost.
Your assistant writes your site, drafts a reply whenever you ask, and on the Guide plan answers new families on its own. You see every conversation and set the limits it works inside.
Four moments no roster tool touches.
Every family your pack gains or loses passes through the same four moments. Management software, TroopTrack included, was never built for any of them.
A family finds you online
With TroopTrack
A unit website with a contact form. Submissions email a leader, and what happens next is up to whoever checks that inbox.
With MemberCairn
A clean site your AI assistant writes from a few questions, with an interest form that starts a conversation instead of landing in someone’s personal Gmail.
They email a question at 9pm
With TroopTrack
It waits for a volunteer to see it. Busy week? The family hears back Thursday, or never.
With MemberCairn
On the Guide plan, your AI assistant answers in minutes, in your voice, with your real meeting times and dues. You see every conversation.
They join
With TroopTrack
A leader adds them to the roster by hand. The welcome is whatever someone remembers to send.
With MemberCairn
MemberCairn welcomes the family and guides their first month: what to bring, who their den leader is, the form they still owe. Nobody chases a checklist.
They quietly stop showing up
With TroopTrack
The roster still lists them. You find out at recharter.
With MemberCairn
MemberCairn notices the drift while the family is still recoverable, flags it, and drafts the check-in for you to send.
TroopTrack has a database. MemberCairn has an assistant.
TroopTrack stores what you type into it. That is a fair description of every unit-management tool in this category, and it is where the comparison actually ends: nothing in TroopTrack writes anything, answers anyone, or notices a thing. Here is what your AI assistant does instead, starting on the free plan.
Writes your website from a short conversation
Not a blank template and a weekend. Answer a few questions about your pack and your AI assistant writes the home page, the interest form, and the getting-started page, ready for you to change anything you like.
Every plan, free included
Writes the reply to the 9pm email
A parent asks what a den is and whether it is too late to join. Ask for a draft and the reply comes back in your voice, with your real meeting time and dues already in it. You read it and press send.
Drafts: 10 free, 50 Organizer, unlimited Guide
Answers new families on its own, in minutes
On Guide you stop pressing send. Your assistant carries the whole back-and-forth that wins a family, day or night, inside the daily limits you set, and brings you in when a message actually needs a person. Every conversation is there to read.
Guide plan: answers on its own
Guides a new family through their first month
What to bring, who their den leader is, the dues and the form they still owe. Your assistant writes the whole first month once, you edit anything you like, and from then on it goes out at the right moment to the families who still need it.
Guide plan: sends on its own
Notices the family going quiet
Three meetings missed and no reply to the last two messages. MemberCairn marks the drift while the family is still recoverable and writes the check-in, months before recharter would have told you. Sending it is your call, because that message should come from a person who knows them.
Guide plan: watches on its own, you send
Reads a volunteer’s receipt for your treasurer
Someone buys the derby track lumber and emails a photo of the receipt. The vendor, amount, and date are already filled in when your treasurer opens it, so the job is one look and one click instead of an evening of retyping.
Guide plan: read before your treasurer sees it
This is not a feature TroopTrack does worse. It is a category it does not enter, and neither does anyone else selling to Scouting units. That gap is the entire reason MemberCairn exists.
Everything above is written by AI in your pack’s voice. Below the Guide plan you ask for a draft and send it yourself. On Guide your assistant answers families and runs the first month on its own, inside the daily limits you set, and every conversation is there for you to read or step into. The one message it always leaves for you is the check-in with a family drifting away.
Same jobs, every week. One of you is still doing them by hand.
A roster tool does not shorten this list. It just gives you a tidier place to record that you got through it again. Here is the same week, run both ways.
Every interested family: a 15-minute reply, written three times over before anyone joins.
Ask for a draft and it comes back in your voice, with your real meeting times and dues already in it. Drafts: 10 free, 50 Organizer, unlimited Guide
A volunteer fronts the cost of the derby lumber, and the receipt lives in a text thread until someone retypes it.
They email a photo. The vendor, amount, and date are filled in before your treasurer opens it. Guide plan: read before your treasurer sees it
The same dozen questions from every new family, answered from scratch each time.
Answered from your real meeting times, dues, and calendar, the same way every time, however late it is. Guide plan: answers on its own
Every pack-wide reminder: 20 to 30 minutes, a stale address list, and a risky reply-all.
One clean message to the pack, a den, or a few families, from a list that stays current on its own. Organizer plan and up
Nothing on the left is TroopTrack failing at its job. It is TroopTrack doing exactly its job, which was never this one.
The right side is written by AI in your voice. Below the Guide plan you ask for it and send it yourself. Typical for a 30 to 80 family pack.
Side by side, plainly.
| Feature | MemberCairn | TroopTrack |
|---|---|---|
| A real website families can find | Your AI assistant: Written for you by AI from a few questions | Website builder you fill in yourself |
| Full lead tracking, first hello to joined | Free, every family who reaches out | Contact form emails a leader; no pipeline |
| Drafts the reply to a new family’s email | Your AI assistant: In your voice, whenever you ask | Not offered |
| Answers a new family’s email for you | Your AI assistant: On its own, in minutes, day or night (Guide) | Not offered |
| Welcomes each new family and guides their first month | Your AI assistant: On its own, at the right moment (Guide) | Not offered |
| Flags a family going quiet and writes the check-in | Your AI assistant: Watched for you; you send (Guide) | Not offered |
| One shared inbox for every pack message | Not offered | |
| Announcements and newsletters | Included with Organizer | |
| Event RSVPs | ||
| Collect event fees and dues online | Free on every plan; families pay at the moment they RSVP yes, by card or bank | |
| Chases the families who said yes but have not paid | The reminders go out on their own (Guide) | Not offered |
| Reads an emailed receipt into a reimbursement | Your AI assistant: Read for your treasurer to approve (Guide) | Not offered |
| Advancement tracking | No, on purpose. Scoutbook owns that job. | Yes, but it does not sync with Scoutbook, so records are entered twice |
| Works on a phone | Built phone-first, no app to install | Native apps, the most common complaint in its own community forum |
| AI anywhere in the product | Your AI assistant: Throughout: it writes for you, and on Guide it answers on its own | Not offered |
| Your data, exportable, always | Never gated, on any plan | |
| Free plan | Free forever, no card | Not offered |
| Price | Free, then $99 or $299 a year | $99 a year or $10 a month |
Where the sparkle appears, your AI assistant is the one doing the work. Asking it to draft comes on every plan including free (10 a month, 50 on Organizer, unlimited on Guide); the rows that say Guide are the ones it carries on its own.
TroopTrack details reflect its published features and pricing as of mid-2026.
When TroopTrack is the right call.
If your unit's biggest need is deep advancement record-keeping inside the same tool as your roster, TroopTrack does that and MemberCairn deliberately does not. But hear the whole trade before you take it: TroopTrack's advancement records do not sync with Scoutbook, and advancement only officially counts once it is in Scoutbook. Ask around your district and you will hear the stories: a unit tracked everything faithfully in a third-party tool, the transfer back never quite happened, and a Scout's rank stalled months later while a volunteer reconstructed records. Nobody wants to be the leader explaining that one. We think those records belong in the official system, entered once, so MemberCairn leaves advancement in Scoutbook on purpose.
Both tools collect money online. The difference is where the ask lands: MemberCairn puts the fee on the RSVP reply itself, so a family pays at the moment they say yes, and collecting is free on every plan, including Free.
And if your pack's real problem is growing and keeping families, no management tool, TroopTrack included, even enters that race. Answering the 9pm email, welcoming the new family, catching the fading one: that is the work MemberCairn was built for, and it starts free.
Start free. Compare with your own pack.
The free plan gives you a real website, an interest form, and a shared inbox in about ten minutes. No card, and your data is always yours to take with you.
Your AI assistant sets it up with you and writes in your voice. Nothing goes live until you say so.
