--- title: "Planning Center Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Planning Center. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Planning Center is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/planning-center-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [CMMS Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/category/441-cmms/) / [Planning Center](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/planning-center-profile/) / Planning Center Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/planning-center-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/planning-center-profile/alternatives/) # Planning Center User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.7/5 - Total reviews: 1,139 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.4/5 - Customer support: 4.6/5 - Value for money: 4.5/5 - Functionality: 4.5/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 850 reviews (75%) - 4 stars: 249 reviews (22%) - 3 stars: 38 reviews (3%) - 2 stars: 2 reviews (0%) - 1 star: 0 reviews (0%) ### Most mentioned pros - They have great customer support, providing timely answers to specific questions, as well as a database of videos and articles on specific topics. - It integrates well with other programs (i.e. MailChimp), which enables users to be more effective in administrative tasks. - The organized convenience of having almost every form of information about church members using features like groups, checkin, registrations, services, etc. is highly valuable. ### Most mentioned cons - For instance, I've asked about including a "signature" feature on their forms (for parental consent, for example), but the still haven't updated for this feature. - Planning Center sometimes doesn’t recognize a name or email and will create a new profile. - The cost is a little high. And the worship planning platform is really confusing and cumbersome. ## Planning Center customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 1,139 (page 1). ### Church-wide rollout is a success...mostly. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Robert T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2026 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. On the whole, this is still a good product that allows for a lot of leadership and administrative tasks. We've found usage for lots of tasks. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Since my original review, we've rolled out Planning Center church-wide (previously, we'd only used it for leadership tasks). Overall, this has been good and helpful for our congregation; we can communicate easily with the whole church, online giving, event planning, and other activities are beneficial. The program is intuitive - to a point. Some of the back-end work takes some effort to figure out, but there are good resources available to help learn the product. #### Cons The biggest drawback we've found is the directory. Every person must opt-in to have their information public, and there is no option to change that. This has proven to be difficult - we've gotten a lot of people to adopt this, but it's not always been easy. And, for some users it's proven too technically difficult. There are a few glitches that we've noticed among users, depending on which OS they use. So church-wide rollout wasn't quite as smooth as I would have liked. --- ### Planning Center Worth Every Penny - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Kelsan W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I love Planning Center so much that I have incorporated into two different churches that I am part of. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Planning Center was made for churches and by people who work in churches. It is super easy, user friendly, and works well with a variety of different things that are essential in church software. The value of money is great. It is affordable and customer service is awesome! #### Cons For me personally, there’s not a lot of cons when it comes to Planning Center. I think one of the cons is that you have to be specific when looking something up in the Help form for any of the apps within Planning Center. I sometimes wish there was more videos about each app within but it does a good job. --- ### Incredible Software to help Manage your team! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Mitchell H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We love how easy it is to add people to the program, how intuitive it is to create services plans and items and adding people into various positions, and we love how you can upload the music and chord charts for each song so that volunteers can easily rehearse and practice on their own! #### Cons It is a little more on the expensive end of the market; however the features they include mostly off set this. We also wish it could do more. #### Reasons for choosing Planning Center Planning Center has much more features and much more integration options. Plus it is easier to use! --- ### The Obvious Choice for Sunday Morning Team Planning - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Matt B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2026 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered There's a reason Planning Center Services is so ubiquitous in the church world. It's extremely effective in helping to organize your teams and help them prepare each week. They've continued to add more features over the years, and it's only gotten better with each new release. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's extremely effective in scheduling volunteers for Sunday mornings and for equipping them with the resources they need to prepare the week before. #### Cons While it's a very capable and powerful platform, this can also be a little overwhelming for a first time user in regards to choice fatigue. --- ### Planning Center is Highly Effective, but Highly Expensive - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Isaac S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered It's occasionally confusing to set up certain steps/flows, but once the initial startup process is done, it's fairly hands-off to allow the forms and flows to run themselves week in and week out. Reliable software for managing members. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Helps us track our attendees, schedule volunteers and service positions, and allows us to safely and effectively sign-in children and students in-lieu of a headcount. #### Cons Price is significantly higher than it ought to be, simply because they can get away with it. There isn't a ton of high-quality competition in this space, so P.C. can get away with charging what it does. #### Vendor response Hi Isacc, Thank you for the review. I understand you have some reservations about our pricing. We shared a bit more here as to why our pricing did increase, and we are happy to discuss it. Click the '?' icon in the upper-right corner of the screen when you are viewing your List. Send us a message, and our team will be sure to share more. Thank you! Replied October 2025 --- ### The best tool for groups and teams. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Aaron B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It's been a great experience. We never experience error issues; there's always support to help us navigate any questions we have. There's also integration of vital functions like background checks. Planning Center helps keep all our teams communicating and unified. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Planning Center is the most vital tool we use for our non-profit. Through it we manage our teams, income, contacts, registrations, calendar, and service order development. It keeps us moving and on track to accomplish our ministry goals. #### Cons So far, I don't have any issues with Planning Center. I've been using it for over five years, and it's become a daily used tool on my phone and computer. --- ### Planning Center Online is the best out there. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Robert B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Very good. Customer support is good. Product it the best. The value for what you get with Planning Center is very good! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Planning Center offers so much and it all works together. They are the best out there. Service planning, giving, small groups, registrations, church calendar, church app, people, child check in... all working together, amazing! #### Cons Not much, amazing product. We did move to Worship Tools for service planning because it automatically makes our slides in Presenter. But other than that Planning Center is the best! #### Vendor response We are so glad to hear that you have enjoyed using all of our products! Thanks for this review - we appreciate it! Replied April 2025 --- ### Plan on it! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: AL M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We love planning center as it engages everyone involved and gives a variety of people the platform to speak into a series or specific service or event. Many small potentially overlooked details get caught #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Anyone from anywhere can be a part of the service planning and others on the team can view it in real time! #### Cons Sometimes the navigation gets a littel cumbersome and it's hard to find exactly what you are looking for --- ### Good outweighs bad!! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Alicia N. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. The good experiences definitely outweigh the bad. It’s a great app that makes things much easier in life!! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It’s very helpful for our church worship band! We have loved how it helps us manage schedules and team organization! Even just simply for just to have songs on planning center is helpful! #### Cons Probably how inconsistent song edits can be. If I want to change a key of a song, it is sometimes more of a hassle to even try. Maybe it’s improved lately but last I used it, it would just not update my changes. Also, using 2 apps in one can be a pain. Music stand and planning center. It would be nice to have everything work together. --- ### Planning Center is the Gold Standard for Church Management Software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Taylor S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, I whole-heartedly recommend PCO. Once you learn the software, it is easy to use. Their support is quick to respond to any bugs I've encountered. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Planning Center offers a great one-stop shop Church Management Software with great features for Members Database, Events Management, and Calendaring. #### Cons Planning Center has a lot of features, so it can come with a steep learning curve for those who haven't used it before. --- ### Indispensable for Church Management - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Stephen A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, I am very happy with Planning Center. It is indispensable for church management. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It is comprehensive. It incorporates people management, giving, attendance, events, calendar, facilities, everything into one platform that works together. #### Cons There are times where Planning Center Services is not as user friendly as I would like. #### Reasons for choosing Planning Center Planning Center Giving is natively connected to all of the other Planning Center products, which gives it a huge advantage over other giving platforms. #### Reasons for switching to Planning Center Planning Center Giving is far cheaper AND more user-friendly than PushPay; we had switched to PushPay for the Mobile App and got locked into a contract. As soon as it was up we rushed back to Planning Center, which by then had implemented the Church Center App #### Vendor response Hey Stephen - thanks for such a positive review of our products. We're glad to be along for the ride with you. Reach out to support@planningcenter.com if you need anything! Replied February 2025 --- ### Planning Center.. Leaps above Fellowship One.. Still wishing we went with CCB. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Edwin A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It's been really good! The reporting and volunteer management options have really helped us a ton. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The Services product is incredible. We could not imagine better.. after getting it setup that is. The reporting you can do is incredible. #### Cons The giving isn't great and the integrations leave something to be desired. We really wish they would build an actual robust email software so we could stop paying squarespace for this. #### Reasons for switching to Planning Center F1 really became limiting in a lot of factors. #### Vendor response Hi Edwin! Thanks for a solid 5 stars in every category - that's super kind of you! We're also so glad that you're enjoying the Services product. That said, we do want to help with any questions you have about Giving or about Emailing through People/using Mailchimp. You can reach our support team at support@planningcenter.com or by using the "?" in the top right corner of any page where you're logged in. We'd love to hear from you and see how we can help further! Thank you again! Replied January 2023 --- ### Planning Center for Churches - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: John Marc C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: February 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, we enjoy using Planning Center and the apps work extremely well. Everything is customizable and extremely flexible with any kind of organizational system that you may have. They have a great Slack community as well where you can ask for help with any questions you may have. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We really enjoy using Planning Center. It is easy to use, fast, and very intuitive. The different apps help to keep the data separate and they work together really well. We use like how the apps are quick and easy to find the information that we need. #### Cons The only downside that I find is the cost. I feel that it is slightly overpriced. Everything works great but they charge you for for each app separately. In some ways it could keep costs down but it would be nice if there was an option to save when you are using every app they offer. They also charge to track donations which many companies do not. #### Reasons for choosing Planning Center The ease of use and ease of teaching our volunteers and staff to use it was a huge selling point. Also, the lack of a contract played into our decision. #### Reasons for switching to Planning Center The ease of use was a huge selling point for us. Breeze is slow compared to Planning Center and lacks some of the functionality that Planning Center has. #### Vendor response Hey there, John Marc! We're glad to hear that you're enjoying our products and that our Slack Community has been helpful to you and your team. If you have any questions or other comments you'd like to pass along, you can always email us at support@planningcenter.com. We're glad to hear from our customers! Thanks again for the great review! Replied February 2023 --- ### Highly Recommend - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Marcy C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Planning Center has been a wonderful tool for our ministry. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Planning Center helps us keep our teams and services organized #### Cons It can be difficult to jump back and forth between the different modules. #### Vendor response Thank you for the kind review, Marcy! We appreciate the feedback regarding the product switcher. If you'd like to reach out to our support team at support@planningcenter.com, we'd be glad to help review this issue with you. Replied April 2025 --- ### Use it weekly for church - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Natalie J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Food & Beverages - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's user friendly, all volunteers are able to learn and use. Easy to schedule. I love the app, super mobile friendly. #### Cons It does seem to glitch a lot, I have to refresh. Some limitations when scheduling - would like some more customization when scheduling. --- ### Great product - could be optimized more for portable church - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I appreciate that many of the lowest level uses for their products are free. This gives a chance to test and use before full implementation. The best part of these products is the full integration between all the different apps. #### Cons Sometimes the updates happen a bit to frequently on particular apps. This is normally not a problem, but for a setup and take down church, it proves to be difficult as the new workflow needs to be figured out day off. #### Vendor response Thank you for taking the time to leave a review! We appreciate this feedback on the frequency of our app releases! If you run into questions about any feature release, our Support Team would love to help. Send us an email at support@planningcenter.com! Replied January 2025 --- ### Covers all the bases - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Marta P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall we enjoy using Planning Center. The few downfalls are highly outweighed by all of the benefits. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's a great place to keep track of and keep in contact with the individuals in our church. Many capabilities #### Cons There can be a bit of a learning curve if you're new to the program or teaching others how to use it. #### Vendor response Marta, thank you for that high review of our products! We're glad that you are enjoying using them, and we're glad to help with anything you run into as you continue to use the product. Thank you! Replied November 2024 --- ### This is the software you want - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I can't reccomend planning center enough. It's easy to use. It looks good when integrated with our website and digital signage. It encourages collaboration between teams. While it doesn't have an accounting module that kind of thing is best left up to the experts; intuit's products handle accounting much better than any church management software anyway. If you're not already using planning center services, you really should it makes planning worship so much easier and once you see how great that is you'll want to get groups, resources, and everything else and by that time most of your database is already populated and the people module is free. You'll be swapped over to it as your main church management software before you even realize it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is the most user-friendly software. They have more features than you'll ever need and it makes collaboration a breeze. The system always functions as it should and most of the time the development team is several steps ahead, putting out new features that are actually helpful. The fact that they work with groups like renewed vision to integrate with propresenter is incredibly valuable. Everything being cloud based also makes it easy to collaborate between departments on events. Their groups search is easy to use, resolution-responsive and looks great integrated into any website. The kiosk option in their events module makes dynamic calendar-based digital signage really simple. Everyone who has ever resisted adopting planning center at our church has eventually come around to really like it. #### Cons If you have a need for a feature the development team is going to tell you that they may add it one day and never commit to a release. Also they don't offer any training other than videos online - for savvy people this isn't much of a problem because their interface is so user friendly, but if you have staff who refuse to learn things on their own this will deter them from wanting to adopt planning center - though it shouldn't because it is really easy to learn. The pricing model can be somewhat confusing at times and I wish there was more of a discount for people using multiple modules; a large church can get close to spending a thousand dollars a month without much trouble, though I know this is comparable to some other platforms and honestly you get what you pay for. --- ### Comparison to WorshipTeam software - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Daniel S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, I do like Planning Center, but I am really torn, because the "Cons" chew up a ton of my time. In my previous church (5 years ago), I DID use Planning Center and thought it was great. I realize that Planning Center is the "BIG PLAYER", but there are definitely things they could improve to make the experience easier. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros 1. Parts Storage - I can store my keyboard parts, lead sheets, chord sheets all in one place 2. Templates for services is very handy - saves a couple minutes each week allowing me to just add in my songs and any special things happening in the service. 3. Matrix view of plans and people - I do my people planning every 2 months, so it's nice to see 2 months worth of services all on one screen and fill in the blanks. 4. Black out dates - each team member can block out dates that they are not available, so I don't even need to bother asking them 5. Music Stand app - allows all of my musicians to be totally paperless (using an ipad), even my piano player (since I can import her music right into planning center along with my lead sheets from SongSelect). In WorshipTeam, I first have to create a PDF, and I can only create the PDF with Chord charts. I can actually turn pages for all of my musicians simultaneously using a session. 6. Notifications - I love the automatic notifications of members for upcoming services they are assigned to 7. Church Management - great tool for planning nursery workers, sunday school workers, ushers, greeters, etc. And they all get email/text reminders too! 8. Auto import of chord charts from SongSelect is great (too bad it won't also import my lead sheets) 9. I have heard of the ability to automatically create my projection slides from my weekly plan including proper sequence for each song - no mismatch of words between slides and chord charts. #### Cons 1. Transposing songs is PAINFUL! In WorshipTeam, I can transpose with one click. I don't have to manually transpose the MP3 for the song and the chord chart is automatically transposed too. In our church, we have a lot of altos and basses. Rarely do we ever do a song in the original key. 2. Library is self populated. In WorshipTeam, I have the songs I have added to the library, but also all the songs that everyone else has added. So, for contemporary songs, they are usually already in the library for my use all ready to go. When I have a substitute worship leader, they are extremely daunted by the task of adding a song to the library in Planning Center. I don't know if they will ever do it even though I wrote out a procedure for them. 3. Not sure, but I think the storage area is limited in Planning Center. So, if I have created to many alternate keys of songs, I will eventually run out of space? 4. CCLI reporting is more complicated. With WorshipTeam, a report is easily created with one click and I don't have to keep track of anything on a weekly basis. #### Reasons for choosing Planning Center I have used it before, and it seems to be the software of choice for most of the worship industry #### Reasons for switching to Planning Center There was a week where WorshipTeam rolled out a new version that had some problems #### Vendor response Thanks for your honest review, Daniel! Many of the items in your CONS list are things we can help you with. Would you reach out to our support team at support@planning.center and we'll help get some of these pain points resolved! Replied September 2019 --- ### Impressive Church Management Software that is constantly improving - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Darien C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Planning Center is a life-saver for our organization, freeing up our time to focus on the people that truly matter. Planning Center has allowed us to implement robust systems to manage a lot of our administrative work; simplifying our lives and helping keep our teams on the same page. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Planning Center offers a robust set of applications that help create a comprehensive church management platform. Combining the useful features of PC People (such as workflows, forms, database management, etc) with their Service management system (Services), Group management system (Groups), Calendar application (Calendar), Attendance tracking systems (Check-ins), Giving platform (Giving) and event registration platform (Registrations) creates a very robust set of tools that help make church management easy. Paired with the Church Center app (provided with PC People), you also gain access to a consumer facing application where church members can join groups, register for events, give, and even check-in their kids - all from one central hub. All of these separate platforms have their individual strengths, but overall combined they form an integrated church management solution that offers useful features and well-designed software that is constantly improving based on the feedback of their customers. #### Cons Planning Center is a platform that is constantly growing, which of course means that there are always areas of improvement. The beauty of PC is that they are constantly monitoring what is missing, and working on improving in those areas - so anything I list here really are minor issues that will likely be addressed in the near future. Two crucial things that they are missing are a few back-end admin tools, such as a robust security options (such as 2FA) and a simple user management interface. Currently, there is no way to enforce password security for PC users with access to people's personal information, nor is there a way to require (or even implement) 2FA. On top of this, managing people's access levels to different planning center applications cannot be managed from a simple back end admin location - rather to add (or remove) permissions you need to manually visit each separate application, access the users profile, and add/remove the permissions on an application-by-application basis. All this are mere annoyances regarding security, and are things that I believe will be addressed in PC's feature roadmap --- ### A game-changer for any church to spice up their worship planning! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jake T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, Planning Center has been a game changer for our church. It has allowed us to be more prepared, planned and efficient when practicing and performing our worship services. There are a lot of features that we don't use simply because we are a small church but there are a lot of features. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The music database has never not had a song we were performing. If it ever doesn't, not worries because you can add custom songs and lyrics that are automatically converted to a viewable PDF. The worship planning feature is pretty great as well. I love the drag and drop arrangement. I also love how you can add times to each song and item so you can estimate a total duration of your set. The member planning is pretty great as well. I love that you can see in real time which members invited have accepted, declined or have not responded to invitations. You can also add audio files (pads, backing tracks) that you can play on the child application Worship Stand. #### Cons The learning curve for this software is pretty high. After a year of using it, I still find it difficult to add songs on the iPad version. I also find that the program crashes frequently when trying to add music. Battery optimization could be worked on as well as it drains battery pretty quickly. --- ### Planning Center Makes Church Management Easy - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Laura H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. This is fabulous software for a new church. Priced to help you get organized at an affordable price. Lots of opportunities to grow into the various components offered. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The software is priced to let you only purchase the parts you need and priced according to the size of your church and how much you use it. It is such great software to start organizing a church's volunteers, donors, and calendar and can be expanded as your church and your needs grow. #### Cons Because components can be purchased separately the communication between the components is not seamless. If you add an event to the calendar and then add a registration for the event both with show up on the calendar as duplicate entries, for example. The price and flexibility are worth figuring out some of the quirks. Also, the ability to create a report for about anything is great but I wish there were some more pre-made reports for beginner users. For example, I have figured out how to create a deposit slip for a giving deposit but I wish there was just a one step button to create a deposit slip from a giving batch. #### Reasons for switching to Planning Center Planning Center offered more services at a cheaper cost. #### Vendor response Hi Laura, Thanks for your kind words! You mentioned having a bit of trouble with figuring out pricing and using our reporting features. Our Support Team is a great resource for help in that area. Hit the '?' icon in the upper-right of the screen when you are looking at your List. Send us a message and our team will jump in to help. Thanks! Replied July 2022 --- ### Industry Standard for a reason - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Nathaniel T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Planning Center is great, don't get me wrong. If your church has the funds to invest in Planning Center, or if you are already using their other software, it is likely the best solution out there for you. HOWEVER, (and that is a big however) if your church has a ChMS that already offers worship planning, it is likely just fine! I am with a different church now, and we just switched to Pushpay. Their worship planning is very simple and offers SongSelect integration. If you are a small to medium-sized church, looking for worship planning software, I would HIGHLY encourage you to make sure you do not already have access to this in your ChMS, and if you do not, consider switching to a solution like Pushpay where it is integrated. I know ShelbySystems offers this too. But if your budget and situation allows you will be thrilled with the functionality and user interface you find in Planning Center. It is simple enough for volunteers to use and the optional Music Stand app is great for getting music into the hands of your musicians early in the week, and allowing them to have their music on their phone or more preferably iPad/tablet. But if your current system offers an alternative, it is probably not worth the extra to have Planning Center as well. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The simplicity to plan services and schedule volunteers help make it the best! #### Cons Planning Center is the leader in worship planning software and they know it! Planning center is expensive an may not be worth it for your church. Especially if you have another ChMS that already offers worship planning. --- ### Planning Center is the CMS you need! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Crystal K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 5 stars. I recommend it to everyone that is in my same field. ! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I love that it integrates with Stripe for giving and to the church center app so we are able to host all of our events that way. It's seamless to use, easy to navigate, and has great reliability. #### Cons I would love it if via their giving portion, they also allowed selling. For instance, our church has a bookshelf and we sell Bibles, etc but planning center only accepts donations and registrations, not payments for things we sell. #### Reasons for choosing Planning Center Our Senior Pastor was familiar with it. --- ### The best way to keep everyone on the same page - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Simon M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Media Production - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Before we started using Planning Center, all our communication was handled by a one-woman team. Though she was efficient, it was getting difficult to keep up with growing numbers and departments. We were introduced to Planning Center around the time the pandemic hit and it was a godsend. We still have only a couple of people administrating the software side of things, but it has been easier to pool in volunteers; integrated communication has made it easier to create dialogue amongst groups. Coming a traditional use case where we relied on different technologies and disconnected platforms, Planning Center has really helped save a lot of time and effort. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Planning Center came with an easy learning curve. It was just like the other plethora of software products we had used in the past, but all available in one neat, customizable package. We use it to create worship set lists, integrated with ProPresenter, this makes worship planning a breeze. Everyone on the team is well aware of who is and isn't on for a particular week. Communication between teams is also easier. The chances of someone not being in the loop is completely removed. Over time, we have seen that the entire process of managing a growing organization is only getting easier; the scalability of Planning Center is well thought out. #### Cons We do not have features that are missing. But if this changes in the future, we will make an update to this review. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/planning-center-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Planning Center Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice