Overall, the software is so powerful and the staff at Ministry Platform are GREAT.

We love how customizable the software is. It has a ton of available integrations, as well as an open API, which makes it great to integrate with other platforms, when needed. Also, it seems like we can always & endlessly customize/create the Platform to our needs. We love how PocketPlatform is directly integrated with Ministry Platform so we can tailor the user experience perfectly to what we know about them in regards to how they are engaged with our church.

I don't know that I would necessarily mark this is a con, especially since the Next Gen platform is out, but MP is so powerful, that sometimes the power of the system overshadows the need for a really easy user experience. It can be a bit tough or cumbersome to navigate/use without training...we do try to tailor the user roles so they don't see more than necessary. The only other thing would be event registration. There have been many improvements to this software in the event space, but would love it to function more like the ease (& overall aesthetic) of Planning Center Registrations.

We used to have another Church Management System, and after decades of use our actual utilization stayed pretty much stagnant (to the point where our business manager who had much experience with it strongly believed that ChMSs were glorified address books). Since moving to Ministry Platform we have been continuously integrating systems moving our staff away from data entry to ministry. We are a church of around 1,000 and have no dedicated or volunteer computer programmer. Your story with Ministry Platform could be more glowing than ours if you do. If you are in the same boat as us, as long as you have someone interested in expanding your use and can run with it you can be greatly successful.

There are several things that are pros about this software, and in most regards superior to other packages on the market: 1. Customization: This software is almost entirely customizable to the needs of your church. This is a major selling point for Ministry Platform. If you can dream it, you can pretty much do it. 2. Integrations: This software has many out of the box integrations with other packages from mail services, to background check systems, and has a full REST API for custom integrations that many have done or are doing (a few I've seen or used are digital signage, church app integrations with several app companies and authentication for Church Online Platform). 4. Community and Staff: The community is great. The community is good with other software packages, but ThinkMinistry attempts to foster a lot of inter-church communication and collaboration and it shows. We were a church that has used Shelby software for many decades and our experience with community under thinkministry has been superior. The staff are very very friendly and will do whatever they can to fulfill you needs in the situation you church finds you in. Sometimes they cant, but if they can they usually do. A++. 5. "The Grid." Being able to view all related data in a birds eye view without have to run reports saves you time. It isn't always pretty, but the power behind it is immense. 6. Full Access to "Your Data." I'll leave a quote from an employee friend of another ChMS... "We'd never do that."

There are probably a few more pros, but I ran out of space... There are a couple things I wish were better about Ministry Platform: 1. I do miss the integration Shelby has between their Membership programs and their finance programs. Because ThinkMinistry does not have their own Financials software they have to integrate as best they can with what's available. That being said, they have done a great job and work to build most anything your church needs to accomplish your work. 2. Some effects of being extremely customizable software: Some Church Management Systems have better out-of-the-box reports and views. If you are a smaller church with no staff that have a basic understanding of a computer language in their past it may present some difficulties in customizing views and SQL queries. However, this can be overcome by interacting with their Professional Services department who can build pretty much anything you need, and the community interacts at a level that much can be done just in that.

Our Children's team uses it for check-in so this keeps our attendance records for us. On a regular basis we will look up addresses for families, attendance for a child or run a report on who was in a room on a specific Sunday.

There are a few pros that I've come across. 1. You can track giving with Ministry Platform as well as it being a people management tool. So all your churches information can be in one place. 2. There is a way to keep notes on people in the files. This allows team members to see what actions have been taken with different people and any follow up that may need to happen with a person/family.

The biggest con for me is that it requires a lot of training to know how to run reports or even how to look up specific information. And when you do finally figure it out or get trained on how to run a report you have to keep extensive notes to remember how to do it again. This is not a user-friendly or intuitive program to use.

From what I said above, in addition they have an extensive Knowledge Base that is regularly updated and tons of coaching videos and webinars. They support from Ministry Platform is nothing like I have experienced anywhere. They have really come up with what I think is a brilliant plan to do support by assigning each organization 3 single points of contact and those SPoC's are able to do chat support or support tickets and get almost immediate responses. You can also request one on one coaching, we have also hired a coach to physically come to us and meet face to face. They allow the organizations to give feedback and post on an idea board with dreams of upgrading the software and they read EVERY SINGLE ONE and allow other org's to vote on the ideas. I may change my mind and say that their staff and support system are my favorites. They also offer a once a year User Conference that is above and beyond and I always leave so excited for what is coming and also empowered to do my job better - or sometimes even do parts of my job at all that I thought I couldn't figure out with my level of expertise.

I love that it is easy to learn almost everything about Ministry Platform. I say "almost" because I do not know how to write SQL and that has been a lot harder for me to learn but the database is designed with my kind of user in mind. There are short cuts and "easy buttons" for those of us who need to do more complicated tasks but don't know that depth of technology.

That there are no group registration products yet - to make events such as conferences easier to reserve seats. But really that is probably my biggest struggle.

We have integrated MinistryPlatform into several other key systems and processes that used to be completed separated from our church database, such as our website. This has allowed us to remove multiple silos of data and consolidate down to a single source that gives us far more visibility into key processes. We have made many modifications to MP that are specific to our church, and this has allowed us to do our ministry the way we want to do it, rather than conform to a particular approach that our software expects.

There are several things that I love about MinistryPlatform--its almost endless customizability, its ability to integrate with other systems, its long list of useful features--but probably the most significant is the team of dedicated servants of the Kingdom who create and support it. They are a genuine partner in ministry, and we definitely feel like they have our back and understand what we care about, and it shows in their hard work and consistent achievements in improving their product.

MinistryPlatform's primary user interface is not as pretty as most staff users would like; and although for me as a power user it gives me great flexibility to dig deep into our data, it can be overwhelming for more casual users whose objectives are more task-oriented. This is getting much better, however, and I am looking forward to the next major release to improve things even further.

We are still rolling out the product and as such haven't even touched the surface of what MP can do for us. For right now it's still a bit of a lateral move. I know what we want to implement and can't wait to get through the conversion process and start adding value for our parishes in 2023. Our former parish management application was like the wild west in that there was no consistency from parish to parish. And, we've been using it since 1991 so our older staff (70's, 80's and 90's) have to work through some muscle memory. That has made the conversion process a bit bumpy. Although I've lost my cool a few times, our reps are rock steady in their support, their positivity and in their faith in the Lord and all his wonders.

The modern communications options are attractive. We are about 25% through our process of rolling MP out to 95 locations. The idea that we can drop services like mailchimp, constant contact and flocknote is very attractive. We are looking forward to getting through the rollout process at the end of 2022 and implementing website widgets in 2023.

There isn't a report writer which would let you design your own reports. Support has been as obliging as they can be in between converting 10 locations a month in helping us create reports for our staff. We still rely on letters for some of our older parishioners. The ability to merge in a scanned signature is also something we miss but a quick export for a mail merge saves the day. If you are even a little bit paperless these issues won't hinder you.

We were users of Ministry Platform from 2013-2018. We enjoyed the software and the functionality it had. We did find it, however, very difficult to customize for our own needs without the help of a full-time IT person. Customer service was also a little challenging as well as we had to assign SPOC's to be our contact person with the company. Being with a new church management system, I have discovered that assigning people to be a support contact with a company is not that unheard of. Our challenge was that our SPOC's had to go through specialized training before being able to be a contact. We enjoy our new church management system, but I have seen some of the functionality and changes that MP has made (via a friend who know works for the company), and I do like what they are doing and the changes they have made. Ministry Platform is definitely one of the leading ChMS platforms out there, and is one worthy of your consideration.

Functionality. Ability to email out reports with the click of a button.

Not easily customizable without a full-time IT person.

MP is loaded with functionality. There are features that you may not love 100% (no system does this) but you can work with what is offered or customize it. Don't expect to just sit down and start using MP without training, you will not get the most out of it. Take time to get to know it, it will be worth it.

The product has many features and I still have yet to uncover them all. The flexibility makes this all possible.

Tools and Reports need revamping. The interfaces these tools look antiquated and are confusing to use. Event Rooms and Groups has a very confusing display and its not intuitive. Reports are equally outdated.

Our team is very pleased overall. Trace worked at Christ Fellowship when we initially jumped on the MP bandwagon. She set us up well, and created several processes in place that have made our job so much easier and more efficient over the years. I am grateful for the time and dedication she put into this database.

I absolutely love the ACST team and how amazing they are. The database is super user-friendly and innovative. Our team is very pleased with Ministry Platform overall.

Occasionally, we run into minor hiccups that keep us from pulling data as efficiently as we would like. However, when I reach out to MP support I typically find that the development team is already navigating a solution!

I love using MP, the support team is extremely helpful and easy to communicate with.

I absolutely love the ease of using MinistryPlatform. I love the ability we have to customize views based on each ministries needs. I love the dashboard and the ability to see charts and numbers at a glance.

At times creating views can be tricky and not as easy to create when having to pop into SQL mode.

Overall, we are very happy with what we are able to accomplish because of Ministry Platform. It is easily extended to accommodate the most creative and complex requests. We even made custom apps that generated Apple Wallet boarding passes and receipt-paper boarding passes for our airline themed sermon series and used those to check congregants in and award frequent flyer miles. All of the data was stored in Ministry Platform and the apps accessed the data through their robust and easy to use API. We also made thousands of phone calls during the onset of COVID in 2020 to pray with our congregation and see if there were any needs we could help meet. We were able to track those calls and escalate them to prayer requests or pastoral care cases easily because of Ministry Platform. This calling tool was not a native feature of MP, but because it is so easy to customize and extend we were able to get a working reliable system tailored to our specific needs up in a matter of days. It isn't the prettiest system under the hood, but it is the most feature rich and customizable congregant care and engagement system I have worked with in my 14 years in Church IT.

It is the most flexible system we have found, and gives us the ability to accommodate the various creative ideas our staff and ministry leaders dream up. Despite the flexibility, the interface is the same for every record type, so once you understand how it works on one page in the back-end, that translates to every other page of the app. It also has so many automation and notification options that we rarely need to run reports because the information goes to the right people at the right time. There are now charts and graphs that we can add to staff member's dashboards, and when they click a bar or slice of a pie it actually goes to the records that made up that portion of the graph, whether it was number of kids attending that weekend, or number of people who filled out a custom form on the website. Ultimately, the biggest pro is you not only get an overall picture of your congregation's engagement, you can actually do something about it in the form of sending emails, text messages, prompting staff or ministry leaders to reach out to specific individuals, etc.

Although I've heard it has improved, our on-boarding was a little rough and we required additional training once we were live. We also made some poor decisions during on-boarding that I wish we had more help with at the time. The back-end interface is also difficult to train new staff on and it does not have many user-friendly interfaces for our non-technical staff. Because of this, some staff don't want to use the system.

It's the best data management system I have ever worked with and I've been working with databases systems for 20+ years!

We own the data. It syncs with 3rd party software. We can develop within the program. The uses are endless. It's a wonderful product that covers data in many relational scenarios, inquiries, events, groups, family dynamics, personal growth, volunteer vetting, giving, missions, campaigns and more. The reporting side is amazingly easy. A bonus, and now we have come to expect, is how MP actively engages customers with community platform, ticket platform, idea boards and yearly events. MP is continuously updating and developing MP that keeps it current and fresh.

Being so large, it is easy to forget something. Lots of details but they have an amazing knowledge base that is updated continuously, and IM chat with specialists on their customer service ticket program.

With MinistryPlatform, we now have powerful resources for supporting our congregation and feedback on their engagement, which allow us to make informed decisions for helping to create disciples and empower our membership to do the same. Plus, I've never seen a company work so hard to be responsive to user needs, to continually improve itself, and to offer more benefits to its users. This is truly a stellar company and product.

MinistryPlatform is comprehensive, flexible, and solution- & ministry-oriented. - We did not lose one byte (35+ year's worth) of data from our previous church database program, and it was seamlessly integrated into a useable format. - MinistryPlatform was simple enough that all our staff members now engage with our database. (Our previous system was too complicated and frustrating for most of them.) - It's possible to empower our lay leaders to communicate with group participants, track attendance, and add new group members. - Registrations and volunteering are easy to facilitate. - It's simple to setup processes for reviewing data and notifying responsible parties of updates to events or groups. - Getting useful information out in a variety of formats is easy, and when we have encountered any question or problem at all, we have found their support to be unparalleled.

What surprised me was that it took a bit more time to manage, but that was actually for an excellent reason: MinistryPlatform took our previously stagnant data-holding pot and made it a living, breathing resource for helping people and supporting the work of the church.

Ministry Platform is dedicated to their software. They are constantly making improvements and listening to customers (even encouraging customers to submit enhancement requests) to evolve this product and keep up with the times to be top class. Because we can easily keep our data clean and run accurate and reliable reports on anything we have in our system, we have been able to identify areas of weakness/gaps like we never have before.

I love that we have access to all of the data that has been entered into the system at our fingertips. We are not limited by canned reports. It is an impressively customizable database with the ability to write reports that fit our needs.

For users who are not technically inclined, the expansiveness of the software can be overwhelming. With practice they quickly adapt, but the initial learning process can be intimidating.

We now have all of our data in one place from contact information to care needs to financials. It's all in one spot. We are able to limit the security roles for each user so that only those that need access to personal data has it. We are very pleased with our Ministry Platform experience.

I love how customizable this software is. It's great right "out of the box" and so easy to use. The initial training and set up was awesome! Once you learn more about how the database works and what your church needs they are more than willing to help you customize the product. Their customer service is amazing. The community of users feels like a family, they are so helpful.

It's hard to say anything I don't like about this software. I was totally new to the world of managing a database. I knew nothing about coding. But you really don't need to. They help you learn what you need to know and provide opportunities to learn more.

Very very positive. The quality of the software is excellent. The support is timely, accurate and the team is friendly.

I like how it covers most all of the bases you need right out of the box, and what you may need specifically for your organization is usually available through their professional services department. Don't let the learning curve dissuade you from selecting Ministry Platform. It's SO worth it in the long run. It's very flexible and they are always adding features to make it easier to use and even more comprehensive.

The only challenge is the learning curve. It's very logical and methodical. Non-admins will have that difficulty no matter what software you choose. Even people who are slower catching on in the beginning find out they love it when it's accomplished something for them and they see the power of it.

It has been wonderful. They have a GREAT product and a wonderful support team. Their team will be as hands-on as you want them to be and they continually look for ways to make things even better.

The fact that you can customize so many things, from specific quick pages, views, and data. Helps us see trends and focus on reaching out to the right people to make the biggest impact. The tools are easy to use, and they make Ministry Platform way more than "just a database". Plus MP is compatible with so many 3rd party add-ons that can add even more value to the data you have (giving platforms, app/website developers).

Default contacts, when contacts come in Ministry Platform does not even try to match form answers, event registrations, or group inquiries with the correct participant unless 100% of the info matches that person. Even if 98% of their info entered matches a participant it won't assign it to that person, which makes it a more manual entry process still has to be going on 7 days a week to keep up with the info coming in. Instead of being more intuitive, realizing it is the right person with an updated phone number, updating the phone number and assigning to the contact that matches in all other areas. On the plus side, when there are things that we don't like about the platform (excluding this issue), their team does a great job of finding solutions or fixing the issues when reported. They work quickly as well.

Our experience at Living Streams has been a 10/10. The training, support, and implementation was fantastic. We transitioned from a legacy system during a busy season and encountered no issues. Lastly, the staff at Ministry Platform is a joy to work with.

-Ease of use -Comprehensive nature -Resources and support -Reporting

-Communication to event attendees/registrants -Navigation in Events workflow

We have more parishes using Groups and Event functionality for tracking Religious Education since w3e moved to MP. We are tracking Safe Environment compliance in MP; eliminating a separate database previously used to do that. We were very aggressive in our migration from another system and while that was difficult for our team, the MP staff worked with us to make that happen. We have been very pleased with the new tools and enhancements that are being rolled out frequently. MP was a good product when we signed on - now it's even better!

The power of the database. The people with whom we work to adjust the features to best suit our needs. The commitment by ACST to growing a better tool for our end users. That it's truly web-based.

I feel we are still struggling with Sacramental reporting.

This software allows us to customize the user experience to match the exact needs of our organization.

Extendability of the software is unlike any others we research. Support and community offer assistance, coaching and encouragement.

Simpler interface for ministry staff. This is in the works.

I have been using MP for two years and the only benefit I get from it is pulling groups of people and sending stuff to the people.

I like that you can put people in groups and email them. I like that there is a place that you can put all information about people and groups.

This software is not at all easy to use. When you go to knowledge Base to figure out what you need to do it makes no sense and just trying to find on how to use MP in knowledge Base is awful. Trying to get a person to help you is not an option. Like I said you need to be an IT person to figure out how to use this software.

powerful, customizable,

Ease of seeing your data - custom views, notifications, customizable, exportable for further analysis, mass assign

took awhile to get used to sending an email to support instead of picking up the phone BUT it also helped me think through my question so that sometimes i didn't need to email support after all.

Easy donation processing, checkin system, movement & assimilation program, group and organization.

- Extendibility & customization allow us to configure MP to suit our needs - we don't have to be pigeon holed into a specific way of doing things. - Customer support is wonderful - The community surrounding this product is great - from third party developers to other churches willing to give advice - it really sets MP apart from other ChMS.

- This isn't a con per say, but the capabilities of the system mean that it can overwhelm some on staff. A way to ensure this doesn't happen is to have regular staff training sessions, and to limit security roles so that staff can only "see" what they need to - and no more.

Our overall experience with MinistryPlatform has been amazing. The customer service is fantastic. It's easy to use and easy to customize. We are seeing more and more ways to connect information between ministries making its value grow daily.

One of the features of MP is that it is super customizable. We can make the user experience valuable for any of our users by removing or adding features that are specific to their ministry while being able to connect that same information across multiple ministries.

It would be nice to have an integration with MinistrySafe.