Scout Suite vs the old way

Everything the old way does, and plenty it doesn't, at one flat price

Scout Suite covers finance, safety, parent access, badges, equipment and integrations for one flat fee per group, with real accounts for districts and counties above it. No per-section stacking, no markup on payment fees, and transparent per-item pricing for anything with a real ongoing cost, like phone numbers and eSIMs.

The real cost difference

Per section versus per group

£60/year

Scout Suite: flat, per group, unlimited sections

One price whether a group runs one section or five.

£150 to £250+/year

The old way: typical cost for a four-section group

Gold tier stacks per section, then Events, Family Portal and other add-ons stack again.

0% vs 1.95%

Platform markup on payments taken

Scout Suite passes payment processing fees through at cost. The old way adds 1.95% on top of the processor's own fee.

Area	The old way	Scout Suite
District and County	No official tier. Counties bootstrap a discount code that funds Gold access per section in exchange for an aggregate stats dashboard, badges completed, events run. No eligibility checks and no visibility into any one group's finances or safety records.	A real organisation account. Invite groups and optionally pay for them centrally, one central billing subscription for everything, with cascading dashboards down to every group underneath. Districts and counties get an actual product, not a discount code and a light stats dashboard.
Pricing model	Priced per section, not per group. A four-section group buying full functionality, Gold plus common add-ons like Events and Family Portal, typically stacks up to £150 to £250 or more a year, and each section renews on its own date, so that's up to four separate renewal cycles to track rather than one.	£60 a year, flat, per group. Unlimited sections, leaders and young people, one renewal date for the platform subscription itself. One price, and one renewal date, for the whole group's core subscription, however many sections it runs.
Payment processing fees	Adds 1.95% on top of the payment provider's own fee on every payment taken through the platform.	Card and Direct Debit processing fees are passed through at cost. No platform markup, by default and in practice. More of what parents pay reaches the group, not the software.
Members and sections	Contact details and multi-leader access are on the free Bronze tier, but flexi-records, offline access and the events register need Silver.	Group-wide records, sections, roles, contacts, consent and waiting lists, all included from day one. Keep the operating picture in one place across leaders and parents.
Parent access	Family Portal visibility into badges, programme and personal details are each a separate add-on, £1 to £2.50 a section a year, on top of whatever tier that section already pays for.	Family portal, consent, invoices, badges and Direct Debit details for every family, included as standard. Parents get a real account without leaders having to buy access to give them one.
Finance and subs	Sending emails and exporting data need Silver. Basic expense tracking, receipt uploads and Gift Aid are Gold-only. Real cashbook accounting, budgets and a one-click annual report need a further £20 a year Accountancy Bookkeeping add-on, though at least that one's bought once per group rather than per section.	Payment schedules, invoices, bank reconciliation, Gift Aid and treasurer reports, in one finance workspace. Move beyond basic admin into end-to-end group finance.
Badges and programme	Challenge, Staged and Core badges are on Bronze, Activity Badges need Silver, and Custom Badges with eligibility rules are Gold-only. Showing badge progress to parents is a further separate £1 a section a year add-on.	Badge requirements, awards, stock, uniform tools and programme activity links, connected from the start. Connect programme planning to badge progress and family visibility.
Events	Not included in any tier, even Gold. A separate £10 a section a year add-on, and their own upgrade page says a section needs Silver or Gold already before it can even buy it.	Event planning, signups, attendance, payments, kit lists and event helpers, part of the core platform for every group. No extra purchase and no tier prerequisite just to run an event.
Group phones and call flows	SMS is sold in per-section credit bundles, from 5.5p a message at the largest bundle, and credits don't pool across a group, each section buys its own. There's no group phone number, call flow or leader-to-leader calling.	A permanent UK group number (from £3/month), leader eSIMs that call each other (from £6/month, or £40/year), shareable call flows and WhatsApp verification. These are separate line items, priced at what they actually cost to run, not bundled into the platform fee. Keep a stable contact number and let leaders communicate on group lines without swapping personal mobiles, with the real cost shown upfront rather than folded into a bigger number.
Travel eSIMs	Not offered.	Search, buy and manage travel data eSIMs for camps and expeditions abroad, from inside the same group account. Priced per eSIM based on data and destination, not part of the platform fee. One less thing to organise separately before an international trip.
Safety and compliance	Risk assessments and accident forms are a Gold-only extra on top of the section fee.	Risk assessments, incidents, consent, retention, breaches and SAR workflows, included as standard. Support trustees and leaders with evidence, controls and audit history.
Menu clarity	The admin menu lists every feature, including paid add-ons and safety items like Accident Forms and Medication History, as identical plain links. Nothing in the menu itself shows what's already paid for and what's an upsell waiting to happen.	Every nav item a leader sees is something their role and subscription actually have access to. No guessing which link leads to a paywall. A leader shouldn't need to cross-reference a separate billing page just to find out what a menu item actually does.
AI assistant	A separate £7.50 a section a year add-on. Their own upgrade page notes the price can change if their underlying AI costs change.	Included in the core platform. Answers questions against your own group's live data and the actual Scout Policy, Organisation and Rules, not a generic chatbot. No extra line item, and answers grounded in your real data rather than a guess.
Integrations	CSV and Excel exports for members and badge records, but no official API and no OAuth apps or SSO. Third parties have reverse-engineered an unofficial API from its own traffic, undocumented and liable to change without notice.	Import from your current system, published API docs, scoped API keys, OAuth apps, MCP AI tools and SSO. Give trusted services scoped access instead of shared passwords, on an API that's actually documented and supported.

See it before you commit

Explore a live sandbox, no account and no card

The old way asks for a real section before you can see anything. Scout Suite's demo spins up a throwaway organisation you can click around immediately.

Platform coverage

Explore the full Scout Suite feature set

From membership and finance through to group phones, call flows and developer integrations, each area has its own deep-dive page.

Everything the old way does, and plenty it doesn't, at one flat price

Per section versus per group

Explore a live sandbox, no account and no card

Explore the full Scout Suite feature set

Group operations

Finance

Programme

Events

Group phones

Call flows

Parents

Safety