





View resources for events






Supported Operating System(s):
Web browser (OS agnostic)About Planning Center
Planning Center by Ministry Centered Technologies is a suite of cloud-based applications that are used to support team leaders and members in planning, scheduling and managing church programs and events. The solution’s “Services” module supports tools to keep media organized. Users can upload and tag media and files to locate the right song or video for your service, then schedule and stay in contact with team members overseeing or participating in that service.
Planning Center provides a “Resources” module that allows leaders to reserve rooms and publish event calendars to manage church resources. The events, rooms and resources have their own calendar feed that syncs with calendar programs, including Outlook, iCal and Google Ca...
View resources for events
Supported Operating System(s):
Web browser (OS agnostic)Average User Ratings
Overall
Ease-of-use
4.5
Value for money
4.5
Customer support
4.5
Functionality
4.5
Likelihood to Recommend
Not likely
Very likely
February 2021
Chris from the Branch (Wildewood Student Ministries)
Company Size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time Used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
Ease-of-use
4.0
Value for money
4.0
Customer support
5.0
Functionality
4.0
February 2021
The standard for church management software
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.
Reasons for Choosing 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.
Reasons for Switching to 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.
Response from Planning Center
Replied March 2021
Hey Chris, thanks for the review! If you're willing, we'd love to see if we can help make pulling reports simpler for you. Shoot some details to support@planningcenteronline.com and we'll take a look!
May 2020
Tyler from Heritage Park Baptist Church
Company Size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time Used: Less than 12 months
Review Source: Capterra
Ease-of-use
5.0
Value for money
5.0
Customer support
5.0
Functionality
4.0
May 2020
So. Much. Better.
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.
Reasons for Switching to Planning Center
PC was a much better experience and more functional for our needs
December 2018
Karen from Center of Praise Ministries
Company Size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time Used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
Ease-of-use
3.0
Value for money
3.0
Customer support
3.0
Functionality
3.0
December 2018
Part of it Works for Us
At this point, it is used in a minimal way, to lay out our order of service and schedule 2 ministry teams out of the 10+ teams that serve at each of our services.
Pros
Makes scheduling and organizing our order of service very simple for the administration team. When an item such as teaching changes from 30 minutes to 40 minutes, the modifications are easy to implement without having to recalculate the time of day from one item to the next. When that same item is moved someplace else in the order of service it's a simple drag and drop and all times for the service are automaticallly adjusted.
Cons
Not a great tool for our volunteers. The scheduling module is a little difficult to train volunteers to use. They all give it a shot but most revert to using excel spreadsheets. Report templates, unless you are an html programmer, aren't flexible enough to give me the layout I am looking for. We tried to use it to check in our children but the unreliability of connecting and printing name tags caused huge delays, aggravated our parents and frustrated the volunteers. I am advised they have resolved that problem, however, due to their prior experience our children's church isn't willing to give it another chance.
Response from Planning Center
Replied December 2018
Hi Karen, Thanks for the review! Our support team is able to help you with some parts of coding those reports if you'd like to reach out to them for help, and give them an example of how you would like your report to look. They would also be able to give you some tips for making scheduling volunteers easier in Services. Sorry to hear that hardware issues were keeping your Children's Ministry from using Check-Ins efficiently. If they're willing to give it a second chance in the future, we'll be glad to help troubleshoot those problems up front.
February 2021
Tanya from The Vineyard Church Pearland
Company Size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time Used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
Ease-of-use
5.0
Value for money
5.0
Customer support
5.0
Functionality
5.0
February 2021
Upgraded our Planning Center subscriptions...what a difference!
We're increasing engagement to and from our congregation. Adding these additional subscriptions has improved the ways we interact with our church community.
Pros
Our church has used Planning Center Services for some time, but we recently made the move to Planning Center Giving and Groups. What a difference for our staff and congregation! This platform is user friendly, very intuitive. The move from our previous software was done with ease.
Cons
If I were to list any cons it would really be nitpicking. We are very satisfied with our overall experience.
Reasons for Choosing Planning Center
Integration with other Planning Center products making it a one stop shopping.
Reasons for Switching to Planning Center
Planning Center - Trust and experience. To upgrade and improve our Giving Platform. To create a more user friendly experience for our community.
Response from Planning Center
Replied February 2021
Hey Tanya - thanks so much for the review! So grateful we've made life easier for your staff and congregation! Don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions. :-)
October 2020
Anonymous
Company Size: 11-50 employees
Time Used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
Ease-of-use
5.0
Value for money
4.0
Customer support
4.0
Functionality
5.0
October 2020
Best service planning software around
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.
Reasons for Choosing 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.