After aware3. What to move, and where.

The aware3 brand dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet) on March 1, 2024, and churches that ran their app, online giving, and text messaging on aware3 are being migrated onto the FACTS stack. The standalone product is gone: aware3's legacy text-to-give plan was $109/mo before the migration (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026), and the decision in front of every aware3 church now is whether to follow the vendor's migration or choose the next platform itself.

Givebear fits churches that treat the shutdown as a chance to choose their own platform: a giving page live this week, a kiosk in the lobby, recurring gifts and event registration in the same donor records, and month-to-month plans with prices published on the website.

Compared with aware3, Givebear's kiosk for the church foyer is a 21.5-inch touchscreen with a built-in Stripe card reader, sold once at $999 to $1,099 (wall mount or battery floor stand) with no per-kiosk software subscription.

Export donor records and giving history from the aware3 dashboard while access still works, and write down every active recurring gift: donor, amount, fund, and billing day. Then inventory what the shutdown breaks: the text-to-give number and keywords donors have saved in their phones, app deep links in old emails and bulletins, and QR codes printed on pew cards. Each one needs a new destination before the old one goes dark.

Before cutover, list every place a donor can reach aware3: website buttons, email footers, printed QR codes, and event pages. Repoint the ones you control; a printed code that sends donors to aware3 keeps working only as long as aware3 keeps that page up.

aware3 priced its tools as church software with a recurring bill: the legacy text-to-give plan alone was $109/mo before the brand dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet) on March 1, 2024 (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026). That is $1,308 a year for one giving channel, before card processing, and it bought an SMS keyword and a mobile giving flow most donors touched a few times a month. Churches being moved onto the FACTS stack should ask for the replacement pricing in writing before the next renewal, because a forced migration is also a repricing moment: do not assume the old plan's terms carry over to the new owner's catalog.

Givebear prices it differently. The platform starts at a flat platform fee from 1.9% to 5.9% depending on plan (one rate online, at kiosks, and on memberships), plus Stripe card processing at cost, with no setup fee and no monthly minimum, and the kiosk is a one-time hardware purchase ($999 to $1,099 depending on mount) with no subscription attached to the device. The job aware3's text-to-give did, letting a donor give from the phone in their pocket, is handled by a QR code pointing at the church's giving page, which has no monthly charge of its own.

Get five answers in writing before the migration date: what the giving stack costs under FACTS pricing after the first year, how long the new contract runs, whether your text-to-give number and keywords transfer or retire, whether donors must re-enter card and bank details on the new system, and where your years of aware3 giving history land. The vendor running the migration has every incentive to make the move feel automatic; the church carries the fallout if recurring givers silently lapse because a saved payment method did not survive the cutover.

A forced migration is a practical moment to compare platforms because donors already face a new giving interface, staff must learn new admin screens, and printed QR codes may need replacing. Givebear's plans are month to month and pricing starts at a flat platform fee from 1.9% to 5.9% depending on plan (one rate online, at kiosks, and on memberships), plus Stripe card processing at cost, with no setup fee and no monthly minimum. Contact and historical-gift CSV imports are available, while recurring-payment transfers require a provider-specific assessment before a cutover can be planned.