Overall Clearstream is a great application for the money. If you use planning center to organize volunteers, group gatherings and events, you need Clearstream. Planning Center doesn't have it's own texting platform, and doesn't look to get into that arena. Clearstream is a quick, simple add on with amazing benefits.

seamless integration with with Planning Center account. User friendly experience. Free Keyword. Easy to use dashboard. Incredible customer support.

So, far I don't have any cons. I've only been using Clearstream for 1 month. Everything has gone great and I'm looking forward to finding new applications for the service.

In my view it will be one of the effective software.I love to reccomend others to use.

This is very effective software.it help me alot in my regular activities.i use it everyday.This software work very fast to perform my duties.

This is take huge space.i think they can update their app.it will be more user friendly.sometimes this app not response properly.

So far, it's much easier to use than the platform we used in the past.

I love the integration with Slack and that I can directly reply to a client text through that medium.

Since there is already a preview window on the right side, It seems redundant to "View Preview" before sending. It would be nice to just send.

Good communication but limitations

Ease of use. Accessibility to recipients.

I would like to be able to include images and this doesn't allow that.

Great customer service and love the layout of the software. Glad we signed up.

We got it because we got a landline and still wanted people to text our church. Love that people can text us. Organization is great, customer service quick and love planning center integration.

Wish we had an unlimited option for texts. We have another service we use for mass texts because of that. If that was better we would totally go fully with Clearstream. Maybe a rollover option would be better?

Assigning members to different groups and being able to send relevant messages to those groups.

I don’t have anything that I don’t like about Clearstream so far. I Can say that I don’t really use the Polls Feature much. I like to send a noteform link to our members so they can sign up for volunteer work or notify us if they are interested in an event. It would be great if there were some integration with noteforms where we don’t need to send a full url link in the message.

Amazing software! Super easy to use, and defiantly worth the price!

still needs to be more user friendly on the app

Ease of use. Very user friendly product.

I do not have any dissatisfaction with the product.

Clearstream is so easy to use and is very easy to communicate with parents and students. It has changed our ministry for the better. We’re getting much more participation and communication from our families.

I don’t like not being able to attach pdfs and other documents to email. Because of that, I don’t feel like I can use the service and am not getting my full moneys worth.

Fantastic! I am convinced I made the right choice.

Help is quick and real, not a bot that I can tell. They take my feedback seriously for future potential improvements.

Extra credits to use an emoji in a text.

Clearstream has been faster and easier to use than our previous system and the integration with Planning Center is helping us keep trach of what's going on in our church.

Ease of use and setup was a big thing for us. This product accomplished that. Integration with social media was a huge plus. Integration with Planning Center was a very big deal for us. We can text the church and have them sign up for events simply by replying to the text with a keyword. Very very awesome.

The software is unable to send media like pictures and videos. I have been told this feature is on the feature request list, though. If you run out of credits, it is VERY expensive to buy additional credits for the month.

Great experience! The Clearstream team is also very quick to reply and helpful! Thank you!

I like that Clearstream syncs to our lists so that we can accurately communicate with our congregation and those who are willing to receive text messages. It's also very important to be able to access Clearstream via mobile application, specifically for our Pastor (or any of our users) to be able to quickly respond to replies.

I think it'd be cool if the credits carried over. Some months we hardly need to use Clearstream, and some months we need to use it repeatedly. So it'd be nice to be able to bundle up that way, especially because we are not a giant church who can afford to always pay for something even when not in use.

The interface is clean, beautiful, modern, and user-friendly. I've used 2 other competitors to Clearstream and they are both inferior in terms of look, function, user-friendliness, and support.

Difficult to get a simple keyword due to the fact that many of Clearstream's customers are non-profits and churches, and they all want the same keyword and Clearstream only offers 1 short code for the average customer.

Great

I appreciated the fact that we could create sub account that allowed us to manage the entire organization in one cost efficient provider that easily allowed our organization to leverage quantity to reduce overall costs. I also like that after a congregant signs up for text interactions with us we can schedule additional texts to be sent to them automatically at timed intervals. This allows us to set up texting programs that distributes information in amounts that are easier to consume.

The whole experience has been pain free.

Exceptional. Customer service has been outstanding all throughout the process. I was contacted by a representative as we were learning about this software and I've continued communication as questions have come up while using it. The ease of using this software is much appreciated. It's been a great tool to equip other ministry leaders with. We love Clearstream!

The integration with Planning Center was a big selling point for us in deciding text services. The ease of function between the two platforms has been an amazing blessing. Little did we know how pivotal the timing would be now that COVID has required us to communicate digitally.

I wish you would not be charged two credits after 160 characters. It would be better if any messages under 320 characters were simply charged as one credit.

We use Clearstream to send Prayer Requests and Announcements. We have heard very few negatives from our congregation. Those with a problem do not text, or they only have a home phone. In a congregation of 200+, those issues represent 2-3% of our church. On a grand scale, it has been a great success.

I cannot say enough good things about Clearstream. We had been using a Phone Call system that was becoming quite cumbersome, so we knew we needed to switch. Clearstream made it so easy to implement and have continued success. Our church loves receiving text messages instead of calls that interrupt the day.

The only con we had when purchasing Clearstream was the potential issue with character limits on texts. Thankfully, they mitigated that by implementing "Notes". Now we can send texts, adding a note, without using more credits.

ClearStream has allowed us to easily and quickly follow up with guests and communicate with our congregation via text and build our lists with easy-to-use forms.

Cost is very budget-friendly for the church. Customer support is fast, friendly, and helpful! It is a fairly easy-to-use system (especially in comparison to comparable systems).

It does not integrate as well to our ChMS as we would like, but that is not due to ClearStream’s issues (CCB is inherently difficult to integrate with anything else.)

Initially, I signed on for Clearstream to follow up with new worship guests, but I began sending our weekly texts for prayer requests from the congregation at large and that has been our biggest use of Clearstream. I love interacting with the members of our church via texting and NOT having everything have to run through my personal phone.

Clearstream is easy and intuitive to use both on the computer and in the app. I am grateful for the way I can respond to messages, send messages, schedule messages, and manage my user lists quickly. I also love that I can track interactions with specific messages on the message dashboard.

I would like to be able to edit users info from the app.

Overall, it's been effective, user intuitive & and an amazing resource for our teams - I'm excited now that we're through the Christmas season - to get some of our other departments on board, because I think it will be a great ministry tool for us to use church-wide.

We are still fairly new to Clearstream & we are loving it! What I love most is that is is so easy to use - our volunteers & even our least "tech-savvy" team members have been so impressed at how easy it was to learn & integrate into our current workflows. The customer service has been fabulous as well - quick response times to the simplest & most complex questions - that what a significant factor for us when we were choosing which platform would be the best fit for us. It's also been a huge benefit to us to have sub-accounts & multiple users/Admin per sub-account - this was unique to Clearstream & has been even easier to navigate than we had anticipated.

With any software there is certainly a "wish" factor. So not necessarily what I don't like - but what I would love to see added. One of the only things that CS did not have that some other texting software offered was the option to have email integrations in workflows - which we had had previously with Text in Church & it was one of the only disappointments when we decided to switch over - because our previously established workflows had included this feature. I think that the features we would love to see integrated would be for more friendly "workflows" with our CCB groups rather than via keyword. It would also be amazing if we could somehow pull specific people from an existing CCB group/subscriber list without creating a new one (if that makes sense). i.e. we have a Guest Services Volunteer Group that we have created weekly messages for - but if there were a way to checkmark specific people (those who were scheduled for a particular week) from with an existing list/subscribers - rather than having to type them all in individually. In an ideal world we would have two-way integration with CCB :) Also - I'm not sure what the answer would be, but we have a team of 20+ people managing our prayer request inbox & for the most part it has gone remarkably well. The only thing that got a bit muddled was that the only way to remove a text stream from the inbox was to archive it - thought maybe a "flag" or "note" function could be helpful for us to follow up.

We've got no complaints with Clearstream. Their customer service has been spectacular. We've only had one time where it took them an extended amount of time to reply. Apparently when a hurricane destroys the city your corporate office is in, it gives you a reason to not be open. (grin, smirk, wink) But seriously, great experience.

It is so simple to learn, to use, to implement. The integration with our CMS makes it even more versatile.

I hate having to pay a ton of money to be able to text. But now that the FCA has changed rules on texting, and now that all texting services have to charge more, it turns out to be the best bang for the buck.

Clearstream helps our Church communicate with volunteers, group leaders, and people that are looking to get more involved at NewSpring. The keyword functionality paired with mass and individual messaging has been very helpful.

The ability for an entire team to utilize it from a central hub. Keyword functionality mixed with the ability to text individuals and groups is excellent. The pricing for this service is more reasonable than the mass texting service we were previously using. The integration with Planning Center is helpful as PCO is our database system. Overall, this has been a very effective tool for our church, and we are looking forward to seeing how the continued updates to the software will make communication and organization that much better.

The software has many pros for our organization. A few areas where we have struggled are that the inbox does not tie the response to the original message. Also, with multiple users on the same account, we would like to be able to filter messages and responses by who from our team sent them. A greater ability to filter or tag messages and responses would help us organize things more effectively. Lastly, when sending a message, you have the ability to shorten a URL, however, that feature is not available when responding to a text from the inbox. These are features that we hope are in the works

Customer service has always been great. I always feel very supported every time I reach out. The service is reliable.

- Planning Center integration - Schedule messages - Phone app - Personal replies to mass texts in inbox - Shorten URLs

- Lack of placeholder text in message creation "Hello <>!" = "Hello Trip!" - Easier way to auto refresh Planning Center list with out going through the Account Settings Page... I would love a button that is easy to get to that will refresh the lists

We wanted to explore an additional communication strategy for our church as well as provide a simpler way to run live text-in Q&A events. For the former, Clearstream has been an intuitive and helpful tool for promoting various events and easily getting new people connected with helpful information. For the latter, Clearstream has fully replaced our previous method of using Twilio to facilitate our Q&A sessions.

Love the easy integrations with our other management and communications software (in particular Planning Center and Slack), the ability to schedule texts (and even a series of texts) in advance, and simplicity/flexibility of creating new workflows for keywords via a short code for different purposes/events. We've also found it helpful to create subaccounts and use different long codes for different purposes, which has allowed us to differentiate the program to meet our needs.

The inbox can become hard to organize/manage when you get a flurry of incoming responses. Would also appreciate the ability to simply select existing subscribers from within Clearstream to make a List, rather than needing to import/sync a list.

It's been wonderful and a life saver for our church in a time we needed to share registration links to attend church service during Covid and city/state occupancy requirements. The Customer Service has been outstanding always willing to help, quick response and willing to look into your situation to give the best advice to make the product work best for you.

We love that we are able to communicate in mass in a more effective way. Most people don't use or check their emails regularly so sending weekly emails isn't the most effective. However, texts has allowed us to share information quickly and we've seen greater attendance to worship and church events because of it. Highly recommend Clearstream. I love that it connects with Planning Center and we are looking to utilize it in various ways for our ministry.

I don't like it doesn't autosave your work or you can't save it as a draft to come back and work on it. As someone who wears many hats at a church, you work on things and then get interrupted. Having this feature would be wonderful to start and then come back and finish the text. Also, I have accidentally with my mouse gone backwards on my screen and it looses the work that I've done. I've learned to create the text in Word and then copy it over so I don't loose what I am working on. But think this would be great feature to add.