Why GatherSafe
Built for church security.
Not adapted for it.
General PTT apps like Zello were built for delivery drivers and construction crews. Church security teams have fundamentally different needs — and a fundamentally different budget reality. GatherSafe addresses both.
Cost savings
Zello charges per person.
We charge per church.
Zello Plus is $15 per user, per month. GatherSafe starts at $29 per organization — your entire team, unlimited growth, one flat rate. The larger your team, the more lopsided the math gets.
20-person team
You save
$281/mo
$3,418 per year
75-person team
You save
$1,066/mo
$12,934 per year
200-person org
You save
$2,871/mo
$34,762 per year
When your team grows, your bill doesn't.
On Zello, every new volunteer you add costs you $15 more per month. On GatherSafe, adding the 51st team member costs the same as adding the 5th — nothing extra. For a volunteer-run security ministry, that changes the economics completely.
Zello Plus pricing: $15/user/month as listed on zello.com · GatherSafe billed per organization, not per user
Purpose-built
What general PTT apps don't understand about church security
Command Structure
Mirrors how church security actually operates
Your security director needs to hear everything. Your parking team doesn't need to hear the children's wing team. GatherSafe's lead-group model gives leadership a unified feed of every sub-team while keeping each team's channel private — exactly how a well-run church security program works. Zello's flat channels don't understand the difference.
Emergency Protocols
A layered alert system, not one flat panic button
Zello Plus has its own panic button: press and hold, and it sends a 10-second audio clip and your location to one channel with high-priority delivery. GatherSafe's panic button sends an Emergency-level alert routed through your lead-group/sub-group hierarchy instead of one flat channel. For situations that don't call for a full panic response, leaders can trigger tiered Attention/Warning/Emergency alerts to chosen groups instead. And for the most severe events, dedicated Active Shooter and Evacuation alerts broadcast to your entire organization — bypassing group boundaries entirely — using Apple's Critical Alerts entitlement to override silent mode and Do Not Disturb. Every alert level tracks who has actually acknowledged it.
Congregation Privacy
Communications your congregation trusts you to protect
Security teams discuss threat descriptions, medical conditions, and information about vulnerable individuals. That's a serious privacy responsibility. GatherSafe encrypts messages at rest with AES-256-GCM — only your team can read them. Zello encrypts data in transit with TLS, but Zello holds the keys. If their systems are breached or subpoenaed, your communications are exposed.
Documentation
The incident log you'll need after something happens
After a serious incident, your leadership, insurance carrier, and potentially law enforcement will ask what your team saw, when, and where. Zello's emergency mode keeps a recording of channel activity during the alert itself, but there's no structured incident report — no photos, no severity level, no status tracking, nothing for the routine incidents that never trigger an emergency alert in the first place. GatherSafe's encrypted incident reports, with photos, GPS coordinates, and timestamps, cover every incident, not just the ones that escalate to a panic alert.
The bottom line
Zello is a capable walkie-talkie app built for general-purpose teams. Church security is not a general-purpose problem. Your team protects people who gather in faith — and they deserve a tool built with that responsibility in mind. GatherSafe costs less than a single Zello seat, and it was designed specifically for the work you do.
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Your congregation deserves better protection
Join security teams across the country who chose purpose-built tools over generic apps. Purpose-built for how church security teams actually operate.
Starting at $19.99/month · iOS & Android