All Planning Center Reviews
1-25 of 1,087 Reviews
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Adam
Company size: 11 - 50 employees
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
December 2020
It's the standard for church software for a reason
Cameron
Verified reviewer
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: Less than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
June 2021
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.
Reasons for choosing Planning Center
We were already using the Worship Planning features and the rest of the suite integrated really well.
Reasons for switching to Planning Center
Churchteams was having issues delivering communications to our members, the interface also had some issues. We wanted a more robust system.
Response from Planning Center
Hi, Cameron! Thank you so much for your kind review. We're delighted to hear that you've had a successful switch and that you're able to use Planning Center as a unified system. Should you soon venture into using our API and have questions navigating through that process, please don't hesitate to reach out to our team for help. All the best!
Replied June 2021
Dorothy
Company size: 1 employee
Industry: Arts and Crafts
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
January 2023
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.
Response from Planning Center
Hi Dorothy! Thank you for your kind words. You mentioned having a bit of trouble with the user interface. Our Support Team is a great resource for help in that area. Hit the '?' icon in the upper-right of the screen. Send us a message and our team will jump in to help!
Replied January 2023
Karen
Company size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
3
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
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.
Replied December 2018
Mike
Company size: 51-200 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
October 2022
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
Response from Planning Center
Hey, Mike! Thank you so much for taking the time to review Planning Center. We've tried to make Planning Center an effective tool churches can use for doing ministry each week. We're delighted to hear that Services has been a tool you've benefited from. We wish you the best as you continue Kingdom work.
Replied October 2022
debbie
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
5
January 2023
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
Response from Planning Center
Thanks Debbie for the review! Our team is always happy to look into any issues you are running into with scheduling. You can reach out to us at support@planningcenter.com, and we'd love to help you today.
Replied January 2023
Hilary
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Marketing and Advertising
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
December 2022
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!
Maizy
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
4
FUNCTIONALITY
5
January 2023
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.
Anonymous
Company size: 11-50 employees
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
December 2022
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.
Response from Planning Center
Hi! Thanks for your kind review! We'd love to know if you ever have issues with the design. Contact us through the helpdesk in our products or open a ticket by emailing support@planningcenter.com. We look forward to speaking with you in the future!
Replied January 2023
Amanda
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Hospital & Health Care
Time used: Less than 12 months
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
January 2023
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.
Response from Planning Center
Amanda, thank you for such kind words - we're so glad you're finding our products useful! If you need anything else, reach out to us at support@planningcenter.com and we'll be glad to help!
Replied January 2023
José
Verified reviewer
Company size: 1,001-5,000 employees
Industry: Oil & Energy
Time used: Less than 6 months
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
December 2022
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.
Sean
Company size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
September 2019
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.
Reasons for choosing Planning Center
Lots of great features without feeling or looking like 'bloatware'. Easy to use and easy to figure out more complicated tasks through their intuitive help pages.
Reasons for switching to Planning Center
Difficult to use, complicated features and rules for communication, did not have great integrations at the time. Required much more than general web or computer experience to use effectively for the average pastoral or administrative team.
Luke
Company size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: Less than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
February 2020
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.
Reasons for choosing Planning Center
FellowshipOne is owned by Ministry Brands, which if I'm not mistaken is a for profit company that has been buying up church software companies. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, we were much more comfortable with Planning Center and their model. We quickly got to know the people and their heart to help churches.
Reasons for switching to Planning Center
Elexio was terrible to work with and was basically useless in comparison. No one wanted to use it. It was clunky and only did a couple of the things we now do with Planning Center. Elexio also had cost us as much or more than we now pay for Planning Center while providing a fraction of the value.
Dave
Company size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
July 2021
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.
Reasons for choosing Planning Center
We gave CCB/Push Pay an opportunity to convince us to stay with them. Rock RMS seemed a bit over our head because we don't have dedicated IT experts on staff. Shelby seemed like a good product but we got the feel that our experience would probably be similar to CCB. PCO is very intuitive, easy to implement, fully-integrated, has great resources and support, is frequently pushing out improvements, and saved us money.
Reasons for switching to Planning Center
The primary catalyst for our decision to look at other options was the merger with Push Pay. I had a negative impression of Push Pay when we were looking at mobile app solutions. CCB did not offer a fully-integrated solution. Also, some of their features were cumbersome to use (process queues & reporting). They promised a lot but were slow to roll-out improvements.
Michael
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
3
January 2021
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.
Reasons for choosing Planning Center
Connection with Services and other PC products.
Reasons for switching to Planning Center
Connection with Services and other PC products.
Response from Planning Center
Hey Michael - Thanks for the review! Music Stand actually does come with the ability to save and recall personal annotations! Check out this article for more info on doing that and don't hesitate to reach out if you run into problems with that. https://pcomusicstand.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000253707-Add-Annotations-to-Files
Replied January 2021
Matthew
Company size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
July 2019
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.
Reasons for switching to Planning Center
PCOs cloud based service is so much easier to use and collaborate with all our different teams. Clearly a lot less clunky to use than a single user document based software.
Darien
Verified reviewer
Company size: 11-50 employees
Industry: Religious Institutions
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY