Counter Club is made by the Not a Chain team, so this comparison is our own. Every fact about another product links to that product's own page.

The verdict

Stamp Me is the bigger kit: several stamp cards, a Birthday Club, lapsed-customer messages, Scratch & Win games, free push notifications and tap-to-stamp hardware, all run through the Stamp Me app your customers download. Counter Club is one card that lives on the customer's mobile number, with nothing to install, and its texts are counted inside the monthly price rather than charged one by one. Pick Stamp Me if you want those extras and your regulars will happily install an app. Pick Counter Club if you want no app at the counter and a text bill that does not grow with every send.

The facts side by side

	Counter Club	Stamp Me
Cheapest paid plan	Regulars, A$24 a month, No GST. Up to 500 members, email campaigns	Lite, A$49 a month ex GST, A$53.90 inc GST. Single location, unlimited users
Plan that can text	Local Favourite, A$69 a month, No GST. Unlimited members, 2,000 campaign messages by text or email, the shop's own sending number	Pro, A$79 ex GST (A$86.90 inc GST), or Elite, A$199 ex GST (A$218.90 inc GST). SMS is switched on by request
What a text costs	Nothing extra: each recipient is one campaign message inside the plan's allowance	8 cents (AUD) per message in Australia, charged for every message sent, delivered or not. GST on texts not mentioned
Free plan	Free for up to 50 members. The price is not money: you consent to marketing emails and calls from us and our partners. No campaigns go out on Free	No free plan. A 30-day trial that starts when you publish your first card; no credit card needed
What the customer installs	Nothing. The card is their mobile number, confirmed once by a texted code	The Stamp Me app. With Stamp Business switched on, a member code can also be saved to Apple or Google Wallet
How a stamp is given	Staff press Stamp on the member's row	The customer taps a StampPod or Stamp Tag, or scans a OneStamp, in the app
Cards per shop	One card, one reward	Multiple stamp cards; up to 2 published programmes, then a one-off A$15 for each extra
Text length and sender	Up to 300 characters of your words, sent from a number that is your shop's alone	Up to 130 characters, sent from a generic phone number with your business name in front and "Reply STOP to opt out" added
Automatic messages	None: no birthday message, no lapsed-member message, no scheduling	Birthday Club and Lapsed Customers listed on the plans
Email campaigns	On both paid plans	Not listed on its pricing page
Contract	Monthly, cancel any month	No lock-in contract, cancel any time

Stamp Me's pricing page shows SMS against every plan, marked with a note, while its help centre says SMS messaging is available on Pro and Elite. We have used the help centre's wording.

What texting costs, worked through

A shop with 300 members that texts the club twice a month sends 600 texts.

On Stamp Me Pro, that is A$86.90 for the plan including GST, plus 600 texts at 8 cents, A$48, so about A$134.90 a month. Stamp Me's help page does not say whether GST applies to the text charge.
On Counter Club Local Favourite, it is A$69 a month. The 600 texts use 600 of the 2,000 campaign messages, and no GST is charged.

A shop that sends one text a month to 150 members pays about A$98.90 on Stamp Me Pro and A$69 on Counter Club. If email is enough, Counter Club's Regulars plan does it for A$24.

Length matters too. Stamp Me caps a text at 130 characters. Counter Club lets you write up to 300 characters and adds your shop name and the opt-out link around them, and a long text still counts as one message per member. The help article on writing a text that fits explains how it is assembled.

The app question

Stamp Me's help centre describes the customer's side plainly: members download the Stamp Me app and join your programme through it, collect stamps as they buy, and see the reward in the app. Some regulars will be glad of that. Others will say no to one more app at the till, and a regular who will not install it cannot join.

Counter Club asks the customer for less. They scan your QR, type an Australian mobile, enter the six-digit code that arrives by text, and add a first name and an email only if they want to. There is no account, password or download. The trade-off is that Counter Club has no customer-side screen at all: no balance to check on a phone, no Wallet pass and no push notification. The member's card is a row on your Members page, and they hear from you only when you send a campaign. How joining works in full is on join at the counter. If the app is the sticking point, six stamp card tools that need no customer app are compared on one page.

Who sends the text

Stamp Me's texts come from a generic phone number with your business name added at the front. Counter Club's come from a mobile number set up for your shop alone and included in the plan, so a STOP reply lands against your club and nobody else's and is acted on at once. Both put a way out in every text. Be clear about what the number is for, though: Counter Club acts on opt-out replies, but any other reply is not shown in the dashboard yet, so it is not a way to chat with customers.

Where Stamp Me is the better choice

You want more than one card, say a coffee card and a lunch card. Counter Club runs one card per shop.
You want automatic birthday and lapsed-customer messages. Counter Club sends nothing on its own; every campaign is written and sent by you.
You want unlimited push notifications to members who have the app, which Stamp Me's help centre lists as free on Pro and Elite.
You want customers to stamp themselves with a tap on a StampPod, rather than staff finding them in a list.
You want games such as Scratch & Win, or a dedicated account manager, both listed on its plans.
Several staff need their own logins. Stamp Me lists unlimited users; Counter Club has a single login per shop, which staff share.
You want member data and reporting. Counter Club shows stamps and joined dates, not last visits or trends.

Questions

Do Stamp Me customers need the app?

Stamp Me's help centre says members download the Stamp Me app and join the programme through it. Once Stamp Business is switched on, a member can save their member code to Apple or Google Wallet and show it without opening the app.

What does a text cost on Stamp Me?

Its help centre lists 8 cents (AUD) per message in Australia, on Pro and Elite, once SMS has been switched on by request. Messages are charged when sent, whether or not they are delivered, and each can be up to 130 characters.

Does Counter Club charge per text?

No. A text and an email each count as one campaign message inside the plan's monthly allowance, which is 2,000 on Local Favourite. The sending number is part of the plan. The allowance resets on the first of each month and does not roll over.

Can I run two cards on Counter Club?

No. One card per shop, with one reward written in your words. You can change the target or the reward later, and codes already earned keep the reward they were earned under.

Can I try either one first?

Stamp Me offers 30 days from when you publish your first card. Counter Club has no trial of its paid plans; instead the Free plan runs the full card for 50 members, paid for by the marketing consent above, and you move up when the club outgrows it.

How we checked

Stamp Me's plans, text charges and app requirements were read on its pricing page and help centre in October 2026. Stamp Me lists its prices ex GST, so we added 10% to show what a sole trader pays. For Counter Club we used our own pricing page and help articles.

Counter Club vs Stamp Me