Camp Playbook is the operations-first platform for day camps, residential camps, and retreat centers. Scheduling, staff, transportation, and events — built and proven inside a real camp before it ever reaches yours.
Beta offer: first 3 camps free for Summer 2026 · No credit card
One platform · One login · One truth
Most camps duct-tape together a dozen tools to get through summer. Camp Playbook replaces the pile — for day camps, overnight camps, and multi-site orgs.
What most camps use today
Why we're different
Every feature on this page runs live at our flagship camp — three campuses, 100+ staff, 10 periods a day. When a director needs something at 7am, it ships by the afternoon. That feedback loop is the product.
From conflict warnings to a mobile day editor — real directors asked, we shipped, camp tested it the next morning. No other camp platform iterates like this.
Heat waves auto-trigger indoor schedules. Running 20 minutes late? Nudge the whole day. Staff out sick? Scored replacement suggestions in one tap.
A clean read-only daily schedule link, installable on any phone, no login gymnastics. Requests flow back to directors through an in-app inbox.
The same scheduling core powers day camps today — and is being extended with lodging, booking, and dining for retreat centers.
Flagship feature
Build a conflict-free weekly schedule for 400+ campers across a dozen divisions in under an hour — then change it live all summer without breaking anything.
The electives problem
Electives eat 5–10 staff and two full days at most camps. Here's how the Playbook takes that to minutes — what's running today, and what's coming.
Build weekly elective slates from your activity catalog or type brand-new ones on the fly. Per-cell electives, multi-instructor assignment, and instructor conflict warnings — running at camp right now.
Import staff interest sheets and match instructors to electives they actually want to teach. In live testing at our flagship camp this summer.
Campers rank choices; a constraint solver assigns the whole camp in seconds with fairness tracking, capacity limits, and a director-review queue for edge cases — then rebalances live when plans change.
Safe & parent-aware Planned
A stripped-down, chat-free, feed-free app. Campers see today's schedule, pick electives, and request swaps — with parent-configurable permissions. No face scans, no biometrics, no required camper devices: directors can always run choice periods from a single shared tablet or a plain call-up list.
The whole platform
Everything below is running at camp today unless it carries a Beta or Planned label. We'd rather tell you what isn't built yet than have you find out in July.
Color-coded weekly grid for every division and group. Click-to-swap picker, cell locks, seeded auto-generation, swim alternation, weekly variety caps.
Full-screen, fit-to-screen live view for the office TV — sticky current-period header, adjustable text size, still editable in place.
Per-cell electives, multiple instructors per activity, slate builder with custom typed electives, instructor conflict warnings.
Edit a full day from your phone — quick-add steppers, merge groups with shared-elective handling, dedupe view.
Import staff interest sheets and match instructors to the electives they actually want to teach — with auto-populated instructor@@elective locks on every generated cell.
Running late or early? Shift the rest of the day or skip a period — synced instantly to every screen at camp.
Generator plans split lunch waves across divisions so the dining hall never overflows.
Per-person, per-week snapshots with one-click restore. Nothing a director or counselor can break with a mis-click — every save is recoverable.
Auto-detects what's actually running each week — repeat cells, uneven variety, staff conflicts — with one-click "Apply to week" to fix in bulk.
Repeat a cell down a day, across a week, or to a whole division. Copy staff assignments with it. Lunch cells always skipped so they never get overwritten.
Camper choice ranking with a constraint solver and fairness tracking — plus auto-rebalance when staff call out.
Learns your camp's patterns and proposes the best week automatically.
Import a full staff roster in seconds, bulk-edit divisions and statuses, find & merge duplicates automatically.
Absence calendar with a weekly outage view and scored replacement suggestions based on role, division, and availability.
Staff submit weekly availability; directors approve in one queue. Clock in/out is always on with auto-created profiles.
Two-way comms — staff request cell changes, swaps, or time-off from their phone. Directors approve in one queue with a live badge counter.
Per-period duty posts — Pool, Hall Duty, Scooters — with a drag-and-drop grid and period-change alerts.
Training modules and completion tracking inside the same app your staff already opens every day.
CPR, WSI, First Aid on every profile with expiry alerts — and auto-flags when uncertified staff land on activities that need certs.
Bulk attendance plus locked headcount projections that feed staffing ratios and bus capacity automatically.
Real-time bus dots with ETA, signal-lost markers, and a driver workflow bar. Every route auditable end-to-end.
Parents open a code-gated map with ETA to their child's stop. Drivers use NFC/QR tap-in for boarding — attendance flows straight into the day's roster.
Heat-index threshold flips the day to indoor plans automatically. Per-period forecast for today, daily summary for tomorrow.
Structured incident logging with repeat-camper flags, per-campus scoping, and full export.
A 149-activity Color War handbook, categorized by type/age/setting, plus a 5-level × 9-week swim curriculum ready to run out of the box.
Per-person size tracking, inventory with net-to-buy math, and vendor PO export.
Scoring engine, team standings, and a live leaderboard for the biggest week of the summer.
Allergy flags, medication logs, clinic visits — with HIPAA-conscious permissions.
Permission slips, e-waivers, waypoint check-in/out, and allergy manifests for every trip.
CSV camper importer with bulk tools, per-campus rosters, and division management.
Custom form builder, session selection, Stripe checkout, capacity-aware waitlists and deposits.
A branded parent app: schedules, announcements, authorized pickup with photo verification, and photo delivery.
Every phone, tablet, and office screen updates instantly. Writes are flushed even if someone closes the tab mid-edit.
Director, leader, counselor, and viewer roles enforced at the database layer. Invite by link, QR code, or email.
New signups land in a pending queue for the director to approve — no self-service creator escalation, ever. Enforced at the database, not just the UI.
Per-campus calendars, rosters, activities, and incidents — with one universal staff pool tagged across locations.
Who changed what, and when — an append-only log across every module.
Add to Home Screen on any device, dark mode, and print/CSV/PDF export across modules. Full data backup & restore built in.
Stripe, Twilio SMS, Mailchimp, Slack, Google Calendar, CampMinder sync, white-label branding, and enterprise SSO.
One platform · Two operating models
Most camp software forces you to pick a lane. We don't — flip the mode per session, per division, or per week.
Morning drop-off, afternoon pickup — running all summer at our flagship camp.
Built alongside the retreat-center engine — same lodging core.
Multi-site management
Our flagship runs three campuses on one account today — each with its own calendar, roster, activities, stations, and incident log, while staff stay in one shared pool tagged across locations.
Expertise, included
Most platforms hand you empty fields. Camp Playbook arrives with the playbook already written — 149 Color War activities, a 5-level × 9-week swim curriculum, a categorized game library, supply lists, and staff training paths.
Enrollment roster, staff list, your current schedule — any format, even a whiteboard photo.
Divisions, activities, curricula, and the games library — adapted to your enrollment and facilities.
Heat waves, absences, schedule changes — the platform adjusts the plan instead of handing you a blank grid.
For counselors & staff
Pick your lane
Run us as your whole stack — or layer us on top of what you already have.
Replace the whole stack and pay ~80% less than CampMinder.
Keep CampMinder (or CampBrain, UltraCamp…) for registration. Run your actual camp day on us.
Plays well with others Planned · 2027
The integration layer ships in Phase 4. Here's what's mapped — CampMinder's API alone is already charted across 35 endpoints.
Until then: CSV import/export works across every module today
Where this is going
Phase 1 shipped ahead of schedule. Here's the honest plan for the rest — dates and all.
Master Schedule + present mode, real-time sync, roles & invites, audit trail, PWA install, print/CSV/PDF export, bus GPS, weather heat-mode, incidents, attendance projections, multi-campus.
Running all summer at our flagship camp: mobile day editor, interest matching, coverage suggestions, counselor request inbox, day-timing nudges — refined daily with real staff feedback.
Online registration with Stripe, waitlists & deposits, the parent portal, photo delivery, bus alerts, authorized pickup, electives solver, and certification tracking — ready for the 2027 sales cycle.
Lodging & bunks with visual floor plans, group booking & contracts, dining & menus, housekeeping queues, integrations (Twilio, Mailchimp, CampMinder sync), white-label, and SSO. See the retreat side →
Head to head
The short version: we're built for operations, incumbents are built for registration. Items marked Planned are on our roadmap — we label ours honestly.
| Feature | Camp Playbook from $499/season |
CampMinder $2,500–$5,000/season |
UltraCamp quote only |
CampBrain annual contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full drag-and-drop scheduler | ✓ Live | Basic | — | — |
| Auto-balanced swim rotations | ✓ Live | — | — | — |
| Real-time live-day adjustments | ✓ Live | — | — | — |
| Live GPS bus tracking | ✓ Live | — | — | — |
| Multi-site from day one | ✓ Live | Enterprise only | Partial | — |
| Modern installable PWA | ✓ Live | Legacy iOS app | — | — |
| Color War / tournament engine | Library ✓ · scoring Planned | — | — | — |
| Automated electives solver | Planned | Manual | Manual | Manual |
| Online registration & payments | Planned | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lodging & visual floor plans | Planned | Partial | ✓ | Partial |
Camps of every size
The software is identical at every tier — you turn on the modules you use and pay for the size that fits.
Two age groups, one field, morning electives. Small scale — but it tracks everything a big camp tracks, with zero spreadsheets.
Runs on StarterMultiple divisions, buses from four towns, two pools, Color War in week 6. This is the scale our flagship camp runs at — daily.
Runs on ProfessionalA YMCA district or franchise: per-site libraries and calendars, shared staff pool, org-level roll-ups, white-label branding.
Runs on EnterpriseRetreat centers & conference camps
Lodging & bunk management, group bookings, dining & menus, housekeeping — built on the exact scheduling core that runs our flagship camp today.
Explore the retreat sidePricing
CampMinder runs $2,500–$5,000 a season. We think great camp software shouldn't cost a bunk cabin.
Small day camps · under 150 campers
Growing camps · multi-division
Multi-location & retreat centers
🎉 Beta offer: the first 3 camps get Summer 2026 completely free — you help shape the roadmap, we handle setup and data import.
Attach your current schedule (Excel, PDF, even a photo of the whiteboard). We'll set up your camp, load your weeks, and send you a live link.
Good questions
Most camps are running the Schedule Configurator within 3–5 business days. We handle the migration — you just point us at your current data, in any format.
Yes — that's the "operations layer" setup. Import rosters via CSV today; we've already mapped 35 CampMinder API endpoints for the bi-directional sync coming in Phase 4. Keep registration where your parents are, run the actual camp day on us.
Everything marked on this page, for the full Summer 2026 season, free for the first 3 camps — plus white-glove setup and data import. In exchange, we want your feedback and a case study.
Live is running in production at our flagship camp right now. Beta is deployed and being tested there this summer. Planned is on the dated roadmap above. We'd rather under-promise than demo vaporware.
No. Full backup export and CSV export across modules are built in today. Your data is yours — leaving should be as easy as joining.
The PWA is built for camp conditions — fast loads, writes are flushed even mid-refresh, and a full offline queue is on the roadmap. Counselor schedule pages are lightweight enough for one bar of signal at the back field.
