Easy to learn and to use. Helps us track everything from giving to attendance, as well as trends. On-line (as opposed to desktop loaded) software keeps the worry out of losing data. Affordable, even for a smaller church.

Realm is extremely user-friendly. I love that they have teamed with Vanco for donations/payments and the payments are recorded directly into the person's record in Realm. The pastor likes to do analytics and uses that feature all the time. I work in the contribution section every week and it couldn't be easier. The "icing on the cake" is the world-class Customer Service. After two quick prompts, a real person answers the phone within seconds. I don't get transferred. The person is very knowledgeable, friendly, polite, and most of all can answer my questions. They will also log onto my computer - with my permission - if that is the best way to help me.

I can't get all the reports I used to get in ACS People. Also, I have not found a way to link different families together (i.e. showing one family is a mother and father to another family). I also wish that Realm Financials would stop pushing back their timeline to include Payroll so we can switch from ACS Financials to Realm for that part of business, also.

I have had a positive experience with Realm. I have not had any questions that couldn't be answered or any tasks that could not be accomplished.

The software is extremely easy to use. I appreciate the Realm help center and Ministry Smart training platform. The software was easy to implement and to train others to use. Switching to Realm went smooth; I had no issues developing my chart of accounts, producing financials, recording a pledge campaign and pledges. Our membership data base stays up to date with the access our members have to the software. Our directory is never out of date.

I have not found any missing features. The software was easy to impliment.

Frustration is the best word that describes my experience with Realm. Frustration on finding information, frustration on looking for help, and frustration even on the help desk. When I write an email, it is almost as if I am getting a computer response telling me only a simplistic response that does not consider my question on the background that I provided. It seems that my complaints fall on unconcerned ears when i express them to the Staff.

I like the ability to use a check scanner with the giving software

There are serious gaps in the way Realm relays information. When certain payments are made online, the software does not notify the Administrator of their receipt. I have to go and look for the payments (such as VBS registrations) without the software telling me that it has come in. Then it does not list the deposits from the registrations, only the individuals that made payment, after I go outside the giving module. Our checking account has been out of balance because of this. Also the giving statements allow very little configuration. The pledge set ups do not allow for change. Nor can you easily go back to a previous screen or report that you had to navigate from. I do not find the software intuitive, and often have to search for long times to get information that I need, The searching seems fragmented and not easily connected. When i edit a previous gift I do not get a notification or ability to print out a report so I can do a journal entry so we can keep our records balanced. The online help is entirely worthless. It lags far behind many other help searches that I use for software. I feel that I am forced to call the help desk. Usually after searching for at least a half hour down many dead ends, the I call the help line and there's another 30 minutes explaining my problem. And another 20 minutes hearing the condescending comments telling me that I have to not expect REALM to preform according to my expectations. It is not seamless, nor is the contribution

It’s great and so much easier than other systems we’ve used. Intuitive and responsive.

It’s easy to use and learn. Love the interface with our website for payment processing.

Difficult to get parishioners to use online although online payments have been better since COVID. Can’t always find or create reports.

Overall, positive! We have used realm for 7 or 8 years and are satisfied.

Organization and efficiency is important to us and this helped with both.

The usability for our congregation. It was difficult to engage the whole congregation. People did not want another app.

Our admin staff is really enjoying using Realm. We're always excited when we discover something new. Makes our jobs easier, better, and more interesting. We are looking forward to launching Realm Connect to our entire church.

Easy to use Ability to add notes to profiles Excellent reports capabilities Pathways!! Groups functionality Communication capabilities

Don't like that so many things come up on my tasks for pathways in particular. If I am a step leader it comes up on my tasks even if I'm not responsible for that step.

Overall, I really enjoy Realm. The ease of use is my number one thing. It has cut my time down by half from the previous software.

I love that Realm is cloud based and can be used anywhere. Everything is in one place instead of having several different programs to pull together.

Other financial software programs offer better ability to edit transaction that have already been processed. In Realm, you have to completely void and reenter it. Church Windows offered greater ability.

People are less likely to fall through the cracks when put on a pathway. Follow up is handled better and more likely to happen.

Being able to look up contact information of our attenders on my phone when I'm away from the office.

When a something is listed on my and a co-worker's task list and the co-worker completes the task, it is still listed on my task list. I have to check with her to make sure she did it before I can take it off of my task list.

We are doing much less duplicate work,

We were using so many different products to do our daily tasks. None of which spoke to the other. Now we have all of our work in one place and we can see the big picture.

Not be able to choose what label you will be printing to or the ability to print on envelopes.

We have appreciated this upgrade from People Suite to Realm.

Our reasons for using Realm out weigh the reasons not to use Realm. It is a robust system that offers your organization a lot of features, maybe more than you will use. It is simple to use and the features available allow you to implement as you need.

Some of the products in Realm are not needed but cannot be a la carte. The system can be expensive but they work with smaller organizations to accommodate this.

I work on our membership records, groups, the Realm app, events, registrations, classes, and even meals. I able to schedule all of these in Realm and push them out to a congregation of over 4,000 with relative ease. As a communications tool for a large congregation, Realm is our software of choice.

I like that, when used properly, Realm allows us to create profiles and provide a 360-degree story of a member's engagement with our church. Births, baptisms, marriages, deaths are dome of the events that we need to tell a member's story. Using the attachment feature allows us to attach all letters, documents, certificates, an communications that allow us to tell these stories. Realm allows us the option to digitally replicate the traditional church records and ledgers that we keep. It allows all of these documents to be easily accessed by out staff. We also find that Realm is critical to our mission when we are preparing for our annual Charge Conference. Being able to pull reports and statistics through setting up custom queries is critical to this mission. I also like that we can add specific attributes, roles, and committee descriptions that apply to the life and the ministries of our church. I taken on a project of digitizing decades of church records and documents and connecting them to member profiles. I would never have been able to accomplish this with such ease and accuracy if I did not have Realm as my primary software.

There is an occasional hiccup where we receive error messages, such as "504 Gateway Timeout" or "Internal Error." These are usually easily resolved when we contact the service center.

This product is not as robust as some of the other big products out there, but it has almost everything you need to get the job done. Many organizations do not need or want all the bells and whistles that those products have, nor the cost they come with. Realm manages people and their contributions with ease. It has the ability to use groups to track attendance and facilitate communication among the groups/ministries of the church. The customization fields allow for tracking needs specific to individual ministries as well. For attendance, there is a check in system that can be utilized that can be set up to provide security labels for children's ministry. It can also be used to check in for Sunday School or other events as well. This is tied to the attendance so that if the check in is utilized, the support staff/volunteer posting of attendance is reduced as well. Then you have the support. If you ever run into a question or issue, there are wikis to help you along. The wikis are not just a long list of stuff, but are set up so that when you click the "?" button, it opens the wiki that is specific to the page you are on, so no more searching for what you need in a long list. If that doesn't help, you always have the support team standing by so you can call and get assistance as well. They are always ready to serve and never talk down to you because you ask a "dumb" question.

I like that the software developers take the time to listen to the users and frequently upgrade the software with features that users need, not what they think we should have. The UI is intuitive and easy to use. The wikis are robust and use lots of pictures so there is not confusion as to what needs to be done. The support team in knowledgeable.

The search engine is not as robust as some other products, but that is improving as the product develops.

Overall our church and it's members enjoy using Realm. We just got it in 2017 so don't have a lot of experience with it. I do think the communication functions will be a big help to us. Your support staff has always been very professional and friendly. I think in 5 years we will be using it as our main communications tool.

The cost is probably the best feature for us as a small church. It also allows our members and friends to donate an online gift and have it immediately posted to the member's statement. It is also very user friendly.

When creating the photo directory with family information, there is no "refer to" for couples who have different last names (i.e., Bob Warren and Karen Fisher, Nathan Kotecki and Garrett Southerland). Access ACS had that feature. When creating a .pdf file of the directory, there is no way to password protect it without running it through a different program. Access ACS had that feature. In the photo directory, there is no way to flag various people (like ordained minister, staff, non-member friend, etc.) The .pdf document created is static, not dynamic (in other words, you can't click on an email address and go straight to an email, nor can you cut and paste phone numbers, addresses, etc.) The mobile app for Realm Connect opens automatically to the "news" feed. Since we don't use the news feed, people who are using the app to get contact information do not easily find that information. It would help if we could choose which feature Realm Connect opens with.

Our experience with Realm has been overall excellent. And if you are a church joining ACS for the first time, you will find Realm's people database and Realm Accounting to be a full-featured option.

This software replaced ACS People Suite for our church and allows us to access information from the cloud. Pastors can look up addresses and even navigate to the member's house by clicking on the map in their record. Teachers can enter attendance while sitting in their Sunday school class. Groups can text and email each other within their groups. It is very robust software. They are constantly adding new features and are very responsive to suggestions from customers.

In the beginning, it was difficult to use as it didn't integrate with ACS On Demand Financial Suite. But they added the ability to import giving information into ACS Financial Suite, which was a big help. We haven't moved to Realm Accounting as of yet, as there are some features of Financial Suite that we use, which aren't available in Realm Accounting at this time.