ACS 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

ACS

3.9

(126)

Pricing

Starting at $279.95 per month

About ACS

ACS Technologies’ church management software applications enable church staff to manage member records, contributions, events, small groups, volunteering, check-ins and more.

Members and leaders can facilitate relationships with one another using calendaring, scheduling, registration and attendance tools within the small groups and event management modules. The built-in communication tools allow church staff to send bulk emails to members. It also offers accounting tools to manage the flow of finances and keep a record of payments made.

At the same time, ACS’ contributions module tracks and organizes giving and tithing data, supporting one-time and recurring gifts, online and offline donations and automated contribution statements for tax records. With integration with the church accounting module, staff can maintain accurate spending and budgeting by fund, department, committee or project.

And with iOs and Android apps for mobile devices, church members and staff can quickly find contact information while in the field.

ACS Screenshots

ACS Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $279.95 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$279.95

per feature, per month

No plan information available

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ACS Features

Popular features found in Membership Management
Application Management
Communication Management
Dues Management
Email Marketing
Event Management
Member Directory
Member Portal
Membership Renewals
Payment Processing
Promotions Management
Registration Management
More features of ACS
Accounting
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
ACH Payment Processing
API
Asset Tracking
Attendance Management
Attendance Tracking
Bank Reconciliation
Budgeting/Forecasting
Built-in Accounting
Child Check-in
Committee Management
Donation Management
Electronic Payments
Event Scheduling
Financial Management
Financial Reporting
Fund Accounting
General Ledger
Member Database
Membership Management
Member Types
Mobile Access
Mobile App
Multi-Location
Online Calendar
Online Giving
Payroll Management
Pledge Management
Small Group Management
Third-Party Integrations
Volunteer Management
Website Management

ACS User Reviews

Overall Rating

3.9

Ratings Breakdown

39%

29%

22%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

3.5

Value for money

3.6

Customer support

4.5

Functionality

3.8

Corey S.

Verified reviewer

Education Management

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2018

I used ACS in my previous job as a Finance Manager for a church

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I really liked the ease of use and the features that ACS offered for church and school management. Also, ACS's customer service and development teams were incredible.

Cons:

At times, the wait time for customer service was rather lengthy, especially around peak seasons like in February and March near tax time.

Verified

Reviewer

Religious Institutions

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2018

Bulletproof, contains all the core functionality, but dated

Crucial information that aids in caring for our church family.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I love that this software has been refined and is extremely reliable and fast. Efficient data entry and keyboard functionality. Powerful reporting. Covers the basics of what a ChMS should offer with ease, speed and power.

Cons:

This software is dated. It's "cloud" based, but lacks lots of modern communication tools such as text communication, easy email distribution and remote web-based functions like small group attendance, and volunteer management. In all honesty, ACS is so big and has so many add-on features, it can probably do all of these things, but it's hard to know all of the functionality because it's not easily explained anywhere (and I've been a user for 12 years). Also, it's reporting process is not difficult for someone with some background in reports, but it's far too complex for an average pastor or lay-leader to use - which requires a database person to run reports. Also, no customizable dashboards, etc. So, it will probably do most everything you want, but you'll need a ChMS expert to figure it all out and run the reports...

David S.

Verified reviewer

Religious Institutions

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2020

Not Easy or Quick to Use

The old ACS system is just much too dated and expensive for current usage. ACS does have a new product called Realm that is supposed to be much easier and more flexible to use. I have looked at some of the demos for Realm and it does look like a vast improvement. If a church were to consider using ACS, I would encourage them to either specifically look at ACS' Realm product or go with another vendor entirely.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

The best aspect of ACS is that it can hold and track a massive amount of diverse data. You can track all of the things you would expect in a database like names, contact info, birthdates, etc. As a church, you can track the first time someone attended, when they got baptized, and other random bits of info you may want to keep.

Cons:

The traditional ACS system is incredibly difficult and cumbersome to use. Its computer app interface looks like it was made 20 years ago; it is not aesthetically pleasing. It requires hours and hours of training to learn how to use (they hold training sessions at different locations throughout the year and have various online helps). Running what you would think would be simple reports is not easy (I have had to pull together updated reports that have members names and addresses to do mailings. I have had to call ACS to have them walk me through how to do such reports as doing so is in no way intuitive. Also, using the computer app program to login to ACS takes several minutes to log into, which can be frustrating if all you are trying to do is look up a phone number (they do have a webbased platform where you can log in, but its function is not as robust in what it can do as the computer-based app, which as I said is slow and cumbersome).

Verified

Reviewer

Religious Institutions

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed September 2018

A Great Product Overall with World-Class Customer Service

ACS is a church software product with several different suites to choose from. I found the People Suite, then Realm, extremely helpful in keeping member records, and the Financial Suite gives the church the reports and information needed for making budget decisions.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

ACS Realm is a simpler version of ACS People Suite, and much more intuitive. The implementation was smooth and the transition fully backed by their wonderful customer service. I also love getting a live, knowledgeable person on the phone within a few seconds of calling. Payroll is also very easy in ACS Financial Suite.

Cons:

The Financial Suite is not intuitive, but mistakes have gotten easier to fix due to upgrades. The church is still waiting to switch to ACS Realm Financials, as payroll cannot be done there, despite well over a year of promises that it is happening soon. It would be helpful for Realm input of donations to flow to the Financial Suite. Also, ACS People Suite gave options for certain reports that cannot be run in ACS Realm.

Verified

Reviewer

Religious Institutions

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed October 2018

ACS for First Church

Pledgers who are not attending.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Reports, tracking a stewardship campaign over several years, customer service is tops.

Cons:

Uses a software that doesn't convert excel spreadsheets into a functional spreadsheet. The columns do not keep the formulas. Therefore you have to make the formulas in a new column. Multiply steps for reports. Should have more reports that are already set up in the software.

Verified

Reviewer

Religious Institutions

11-50 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed October 2020

There are better options

To be fair, it's been a few years since I have spoken to ACS customer support and they were friendly and tried to be very helpful at the time, but it wasn't a good experience. We had issues with updating older versions of the software and trying to make it work within our own bylaws and Canadian law, which wasn't on ACS as a software manufacturer, but it didn't help the overall experience. There seemed to be a disconnect between how we were (poorly) implementing the software and struggling with teaching staff and the way in which the ACS team communicated to us and told us to get excited about functionality that never worked in our context because of difficulty of implementation. Thankfully, there are better software options out there today - including Realm, which we transferred to from ACS and have had better luck.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

If you spent a lot of time setting things up and were using it daily, ACS seems to have the capability to have good functionality. I've been in two different organizations where that wasn't the case, and heard similar things from other users, which meant ACS was something that I used only when I really couldn't get someone else to do the thing I needed, or I really needed to find a piece of information. It seems to be a great place to store all kinds of information.

Cons:

The user interface was difficult, making learning it (and teaching it to church staff who are often technically slower) very difficult. Because people never learned it, it was used poorly and data was sometimes out of date, making the whole database only really functional for the financial side of things and we never managed to get the use out of it that we often hoped and tried for. Overall it was a frustrating piece of software when we had to engage with it and people would create their own systems and spreadsheets as work arounds.

Andrew H.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

11-50 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2019

It's reliable yet dated church management software

We have been ACS users for probably close to 10 years and it works, it does work. However, we are in the process of switching to The Rock and, although it's much more powerful, The Rock also requires a greater size management team with technical programming proficiencies. When choosing your management software, you'll pay for it one way or another. In my opinion, ACS is a great solution for small to medium size churches...say up to 2000 people.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

ACS is a fairly reliable and robust church management software useful for, among other things, managing your general ledger, giving, kids check-in, and people database. If you're a musician, I could tell you that it's like a Shure SM58 vocal microphone...you can drop it 100 times and it still works great...but other mics sound better...and may cost more.

Cons:

It is very much out of date according to today's standards. It seems to prefer a large amount of bandwidth for our kids checkin machines running ACS for checkin...it technically isn't a ton of data, but ACS really seems to prefer having a big pipe for it, network wise. ACS is fairly limited in who can and should have access to different parts of it. My biggest complain, though, would be that ACS just hasn't kept up with the development side of their platform to match the technology that everyone is used to using in 2019.

Nicholas S.

Verified reviewer

Religious Institutions

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2018

Look elsewhere for a ministry database

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

There are several desirable features with this software. A primary one is the high amount of customization. However, this customization is only available to administrators and people with understanding of coding.

Cons:

Immensely outdated and not functional. While using this software, I felt I put more work into using the software than actual results it gave. I would steer clear of this software if you're looking for a simple, user-friendly and intuitive experience.

Verified

Reviewer

Religious Institutions

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2020

Legacy ACS Suite is Not Your Beat Option

Excellent customer service. Realm product is am improvement. Financials package is still an industry leader.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Robust, lots of functions, built with churches in mind

Cons:

Clunky, slow, old interface, can't adapt to ongoing demands of changing churches

Verified

Reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

11-50 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2019

Budget friendly

Overall, the service performs what you need it to do at a lower budget cost, but it could offer more in terms of functionality and appearance.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It is very easy to set up multiple users and customize what they can access at any given time. I also liked how you can have multiple windows open at a time even if they were from different access "suites."

Cons:

The service as a whole is difficult to use. I have found the process to find multiple reports very time-consuming even when you know what you are looking for. The service is not as straight forward to use as I had hoped. You also are not able to customize how the reports look which I would have appreciated when sending reports to clients.

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