Planning Center

So. Much. Better.

Comments: I was the XP at a church that used Planning Center. I went to another church that used one of their main competitors. After 18 months, we are on Planning Center. I'm much happier and the rest of the staff is much happier. I think that pretty well sums it up.

Pros:

When we switched from our previous software to Planning Center, I worked with our staff to see how it was going. The responses I got were always akin to "well, it is frustrating learning a new system...but this is better than what we were on." Basically, in one or two days our staff was less frustrated with Planning Center than they were continually with a system we had been on for three years. As we've been on it longer, the frustrations have decreased and the benefit to our church has increased. Moving to Planning Center has been the best organizational choice we've made in a long time. Oh, and it is about $100 (33%) cheaper each month. And that's on month-to-month vs an annual contract with the old guys. And when our online giving agreement runs out and we switch the Planning Center giving, we'll save another $200 or so a month. And their support is incredible, typically responding within an hour (vs 2 business days on the old platform).

Cons:

To my understanding, Planning Center set out to make a great stand alone tool for Check Ins, a great tool for Registrations, a great tool for Giving, etc...to do this, they set up separate development teams for each module. I understand this, having worked with some tools that started as a great online director or great giving tool or great event tool and tried to expand to do much more. The result is often complicated bloat. I do think Planning Center's model largely avoided this because each thing has to stand on its own. In my estimation, I'd like to see some tweaks to certain modules, but overall each of them accomplishes what I need. The one drawback to this, though, is that the tools don't integrate quite as tightly as I'd like. Everything talks back to their People module, but sometimes it would be good to have them talk to each other a little more. E.g., when we set up an event in Check In, we also have to go into the Calendar module to set up the event to request the room. This can be a bit of a hassle. To be fair, it does seem like they are moving in this direction with new features, so hopefully their biggest weakness (to me) will continue to shrink! But, again...this is minor compared to the frustrations I've had with other systems. I've been on ones that I hated even logging into because I knew I was going to get mad. I genuinely like using Planning Center.

The standard for church management software

Comments: Having used almost every Planning Center product, there is nothing else that I would recommend. Our entire team uses it weekly for worship, planning, check-ins, de-briefing through reports, congregant database, volunteer team emails, and so much more. Planning Center does a fantastic job and only keeps improving.

Pros:

The ease of use is its best feature. Ease in adding people, features, reports, etc. is unmatched in the industry. Also, Planning Center has a modern look and feel that many of its competitors lack. The worship software with the SongSelect integration, planning tools, database, key management, ability to add various media, etc. it is a must-have product for any church that values communication, strategic planning, and excellence. Every Planning Center Product that I have and continue to use remains the standard for church management software.

Cons:

Running reports in "People" is cumbersome and time-consuming to get to the exact information you are looking for. It takes a thorough amount of trial and error to extrapolate the intended data by getting the variables just right.

Alternatives Considered: Rock RMS

Reasons for Choosing Planning Center: The ease of use and enhanced options of Planning Center made it a no brainer. The modern look, feel, and functionality was a welcome change, as well.

Switched From: Servant Keeper

Reasons for Switching to Planning Center: The wide-span options of use in Planning Center made it a clear winner. The overall look, feel, and functionality was an added bonus.

Not the most user friendly

Comments: Planning center makes it easy to keep church records and maintain a database. Not only can you use it to schedule and email volunteers, but it also has an add on that allows you to background check volunteers as well. It is very helpful to have this tool included in the software. My main complaint about the product is that it is difficult to create teams Volunteers and the service planning tool is awkward when applied to children’s ministries.

Pros:

There is a great system for tracking attendance and check-in‘s at Sunday services. It can be a very helpful database for church management with lots of different functionalities.

Cons:

The “Services” is not user-friendly at all. The menus are not intuitive, and it takes lots of trial and error to achieve the desired result. This area of the program could use a major overhaul to make it more functional and helpful.

Best service planning software around

Comments: Around Services and Check ins, Planning Center has been exceptional with customer service and helping us sort through issues. Their tutorial videos are also great. We didn't have great luck with customer service around the financial module, hence the choice to go another direction with our overall database while continuing to use Services.

Pros:

Planning Center Services automates really helpful admin and communication work and allows teams to learn and grow with all of the resources they need. From an administrator's perspective, the ability to schedule and view services in matrix mod and keep track of multiple teams of volunteers with various limitations and requests using the preferences and blackouts is easily worth the monthly cost. Services is the backbone of planning center, and there's good reason that it's the standard in mid-sized and larger churches. The interface is intuitive and easy for volunteer users to figure out, and they do a great job of continuing to innovate features and usability.

Cons:

While the other modules across planning center have great integration, our church found that the finances side lacked necessary features, meaning we are now running a separate database/CRM while still running planning center services. We wanted to be able to add financial information (givings) into the database without the person entering the data seeing previous data - essentially the ability to enter data blindly. I suspect many other churches are running different databases as well as planning center services, and the multi-system approach isn't ideal, so it would be nice to have a more responsive development team as planning center's interface is generally well built and user friendly.

Alternatives Considered: Realm and ChMS

Reasons for Switching to Planning Center: Services fit all of our needs well when it came to service planning and Sunday morning volunteer management, and there didn't seem to be any other products that could compete in terms of functionality and ease of use.

The MUST USE platform for Worship Planning!

Comments: I love using Planning Center and do not plan on switching anytime soon. It has blessed our church and helped me do my job so much more effectively!

Pros:

Planning Center is a wonderful platform to create services, organize your volunteers, and create/edit songs! You are able to add lyrics and chords AND transpose both chord sheets AND .mp3's that you can upload (if you have the right copyright)! Users can easily see their schedules and decline/block out dates they know they will be out of town. You can integrate this with ProPresenter for easy service creation and lead your teams to success!

Cons:

The only thing I wish Planning Center could do is replace the current membership and online giving platform we currently use. It's getting close but for church management it falls just shy.

Alternatives Considered: Elvanto

Reasons for Switching to Planning Center: Planning Center has much more features and much more integration options. Plus it is easier to use!