It's the standard for church software for a reason

Great Church Management System for Small - Medium Sized Churchs

My title says that it is a great ChMS for a small - medium sized church, that is just because that is the size of the church that volunteer. Planning Center also has the potential to be great for a large church as well. So far we have been very happy with the transition to planning center, my next project is going to be integrating our website with their API so that we can sync the events and other features of Planning Center.

Pros

I like that Planning Center has all of the features that we need integrated into a single suite. Previously, we had 2-3 tools for membership management, communication, and online giving. We have been able to consolidate that down to a single system and saved money.

Cons

The member directory in the mobile app can be a little confusing for some of our members that are not tech-savvy. To overcome this, our technology team has been promoting our digital outreach and making ourselves available to the congregation to assist with getting them setup in the directory and using the mobile app.

Helps me keep track of everything happening across ministries

Pros

This app helps me keep track of all my commitments at church. I love that I can see who else is serving across various roles on a Sunday I'm also working -- I can see which appropriate people to look for when needed. It also helps me learn peoples' names -- my church is big so sometimes I might recognize someone's face but never have the chance to ask what their name was, or I might forget.

Cons

The experience of the interface isn't always smooth. At one point I was involved in multiple churches and wish there was a way to access all the churches at the same time. Currently I'm required to sign out and sign back in, in order to switch to another church.

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.

Worship Planning All In One Location

Pros

This program is essential for our worship planning team. Everything we need each week all in one location.

Cons

Limitation of space and number of users without an upgrade in price

PCO is Helpful

Pros

We are able to manage all of our kids services and classes and communicate with our volunteers.

Cons

We aren't able to set up multiple service schedules on the same plan

Would be lost without pco!

Pros

Easy to schedule and plan services and attach music. Scheduling volunteers and rehearsals.

Cons

Love planning center bits all we use and would be lost without it!

Church Scheduling Made Easy

Overall, we really like using Planning Center. It does what it advertises without complication. If you're looking for a simple to moderate level planner, this one does it without headache.

Pros

My church has used planning center for a number of years now. I love that it easily allows a digital/sharable interface for scheduling events and volunteer work. The calendar interface shows who's on and when, I can reserve days off, and for each event, you can attached files, and an agenda.

Cons

This software is somewhat limited to the planning and scheduler that it was designed for. I could see many ways it could be improved to do more things, such as has an interface for chatting with others.

Affordable software for management!

Pros

Love its versatility and great price for what you get! Love all the functionalities and how you can track and keep a record of meetings, attendance, planning, etc.

Cons

It can be tricky to navigate and learn this software, it takes time to get used to it. I wish it was more user-friendly, maybe a better and simple design to use.

Happy Times!

Pros

I really like the functionality and the planning center. It’s really easy to navigate through the center and get to where I need to go to view upcoming schedules and events and also make any changes.

Cons

All the features in the planning center are very helpful to use for what I need them, for. I cannot find any thing bad to say.

The best platform collaboration for worship

In general, it is a good platform that provides availability, coordination, and planning of all the songs to be presented in the services.

Pros

The speed and coordination in which the praise group and direction of TV, events, or services can share lyrics, and notes of the songs.

Cons

It does not have a trial version, it only has member management available for free, it would be nice to have more modules available in order to have the possibility of testing.

Church management software that scales with your organization

The overall experience with PCO is a good one. It is robust and continually has new, helpful features being added. It is a fantastic tool for tracking and managing people resources, donations, volunteers, and communication. I would highly recommend PCO for any church looking for a full featured ChMs without an oversized price tag.

Pros

Planning Center Online (PCO) is a scalable church or organizational software that adapts with your needs and provides great features that meet nearly all of the organizational needs. PCO offers event organization, people management, resource management, a donation platform, volunteer scheduling, and groups management. All this along with a solid communication platform and several third party integrations make PCO a powerful tool for any church or organization.

Cons

There are some features lacking such as built-in texting capabilities or whole-organization integration such as web site and app. The PCO app is not branded and lacks in features but most parts of PCO will integrate into other website platforms such as Wix.

Exactly what we needed to take our organization to the next level

Planning Center has been a dream for our church. Before we made the move we had a different system for everything and none of them talked to each other in any way. We were scheduling 200+ volunteers 8 weeks out in an Excel spreadsheet. Our previous database software did almost nothing useful and we avoided even using it. Now with Planning Center we're more organized, automated, and streamlined than ever. I know we're not yet using it to it's full potential, there's so much more we can do still and we're excited to see how Planning Center will continue to change, grow, and get better.

Pros

Planning Center apps more than make up for their cost by the time, headache, and agony they save us. They are well designed and regularly adding new features. Planning Center listens to user feedback and is very friendly. They want to see churches empowered and so they listen to users for direction as they're implementing new features. Their help docs are great. The apps themselves are powerful. They may not always do what you want in the way you want it, but there's always a way to get it done. The integrations – Lists, Automations, Workflows, Forms – transform People from a database app into a powerhouse of tracking and automation.

Cons

Some more complicated tasks are not alway simple for PC novices to figure out; they do require some problem solving and hoop-jumping at times but it's still better than going without. Better training docs for getting users or volunteers up to speed for the first time are currently missing. I find myself having to create these based on existing help docs and my own material.

PCO as full ChMS

We have been very pleased with a fully-integrated solution that is continually improving with a great support team at a price that saves us money!

Pros

When making the switch to PCO as our full ChMS I was concerned at first because there is no dedicated implementation process. However, I was amazed by how smoothly the implementation went. It is extremely intuitive and the support team is amazing. The online help is very useful, the support team responds quickly (I think their target is within 2 hours), and the Slack channel helps glean ideas from other users. We saved about $3,000 per year compared to our previous solution and have a better product.

Cons

PCO is not perfect. There is not a perfect solution. I don't think we've found any issues that we can't work around so far and I've really been impressed by the development team and the rolling out of improved features.

Easy to use, but ease of use leads to fewer options, it seems

Enjoy using this product. Although the simplicity does mean soome needed functionality isn't there, it's ease of use and reliability make it an excellent product and value! Can't beat their prices anywhere.

Pros

I like how Services and Music Stand work so well together. I also like the seamless integration with CCLI and Song Select. PC has done an excellent job developing integrations that actually seem as though they are part of the native app! Once you connect CCLI and Song Select, you actually don't know you're using them going forward. The same for Faithlife Proclaim.

Cons

Music Stand by Planning Center needs more core functionality. For example, you can't mark up the PDF chord sheets to save and recall later (as you can on Music Stand by Worship Extreme). This is a hassle. You also can't mark up the cord sheets and send them out to the band. They have to mark up their own cord sheets. While you can save the PDF chord sheets for each song, mark ups like highlighting and notes on the chord sheet have to marked up each and every time.

The only service we need to plan and execute our events

Excellent overall experience, we have never or very rarely had any service issues with the site crashing or anything like that. Just little bugs here and there which are always quickly resolved.

Pros

The seamless integration of various elements and components of our service or event. The ease of adding songs and lyrics, media elements, notes and documentation, organization of all the pieces, easy scheduling of staff and volunteers and ease of communicating to all those involved. The continued innovation and adding of features, listening well to their user base.

Cons

Some of the setup and coding of reports has a big learning curve, and some settings have been hard to find in the past, but the user support is there when we need it.