Courtyard vs Sift

Courtyard is a private online directory for churches, schools, homeschool groups, and other member communities. It organizes people by family and gives administrators tools to manage access, oversee edits, and add other administrators with editing or settings permissions. Members can update their own entries, while the dashboard highlights recent changes, upcoming birthdays, and member locations on an interactive map. The service can produce PDF photo, directory, and monthly birthday printouts, with custom fields available for print and export. Existing directories can be imported from Excel, CSV, Word, or text files, including CSV exports from membership databases. Courtyard says subscriber imports are free; the usual target is 24 hours, with some taking up to a week. Android, iOS, and web are listed platforms; the iPhone app also supports offline directory access. Plans start at $9/month for 1–29 families, and a 30-day trial is available. There is no free plan. Every plan includes email and phone support.

Sift helps organizations find colleagues, map reporting relationships, and understand how work is distributed. Its searchable people directory filters profile data by skills, roles, and other information. An automatically updated org chart uses company people data to show formal and informal reporting lines. Profiles can include skills, experience, projects, interests, pronouns, name pronunciation, and languages. Sift aggregates employee data from multiple systems into one profile, using prebuilt identity connectors and SFTP workflows. Listed integrations include Workday, UKG, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace, Okta, Ping Identity, CSV files, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Access is available in browsers, Windows and Mac desktop downloads, and iOS and Android apps, as well as through an API. Sift says customer data is encrypted at rest and in transit, segmented between customers, and regularly tested by third parties for penetration vulnerabilities. It also says it completed a SOC 2 Type 2 audit and is GDPR compliant. Plans start at $150 a month, billed annually, for 20 users; a 14-day trial provides access to Sift Complete. Sift does not offer native messaging or chat.