Planning Center
About Planning Center
Awards and Recognition
Planning Center Pricing
A 30-day free trial is available after which the product is available on module-based pricing outlined below. Calendar (10 rooms, unlimited events) - starts at $14 Check-ins (50 daily check-ins) - starts at $14 Giving (100 monthly donations) - starts at $14 Groups (125 group members) - starts at $14 Publishing - starts at $14 Registrations (20 event attendees) - starts at $14 Services (25 team members) - starts at $14
Free trial:
Available
Free version:
Not Available
Most Helpful Reviews for Planning Center
1 - 5 of 1,121 Reviews
Adam
11 - 50 employees
Used more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
Reviewed December 2020
It's the standard for church software for a reason
Christopher
Verified reviewer
Religious Institutions, 51-200 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed May 2022
Great software!
Overall, we love Planning Center. It's easy to use & the team there is super friendly and helpful when needed. We wish it was more customizable, but overall, we love all of their products and use them frequently.
PROSWe love how intuitive PCO is. It's easy to navigate & use, with very little extensive training required. It's the "Apple" of software. It is seamless for volunteer & attendee management, and it makes sign ups, giving, groups, etc. a breeze.
CONSIt's not quite a customizable as we would like. All solutions are out of the box, and there's not the option to really change or amend things (functionality, reporting, etc.). I also wish the API, specifically for registrations, was open to developers so we could connect that into our main church database.
Reason for choosing Planning Center
Ease of event registration & seamless integration into the People database of PCO. Volunteer scheduling/maintenance is robust.
Vendor Response
Hi Christopher, Thanks for your kind words! You mentioned feedback regarding our lack of customization and API concerns for Registrations specifically. Our Support Team is a great resource for help in that area. Hit the '?' icon in the upper-right of the screen when you are looking at your List. Send us a message and our team will jump in to help! We welcome feedback and feature requests, too. Thanks!
Replied July 2022
Anonymous
11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed 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.
PROSPlanning 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.
CONSWhile 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.
Reason 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.
Tara
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
2
VALUE FOR MONEY
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
2
Reviewed April 2021
Not the most user friendly
Planning center makes it easy to keep church records and maintain a database. Not only can you use it to schedule and email volunteers, but it also has an add on that allows you to background check volunteers as well. It is very helpful to have this tool included in the software. My main complaint about the product is that it is difficult to create teams Volunteers and the service planning tool is awkward when applied to children’s ministries.
PROSThere is a great system for tracking attendance and check-in‘s at Sunday services. It can be a very helpful database for church management with lots of different functionalities.
CONSThe “Services” is not user-friendly at all. The menus are not intuitive, and it takes lots of trial and error to achieve the desired result. This area of the program could use a major overhaul to make it more functional and helpful.
Vendor Response
Hey Tara! Thanks for taking the time to share the review. We're sorry to hear you are running into issues with the volunteer management portion of Services. Our support team is standing by today and ready to assist with any pain points you are running into. Would you be up for emailing us at support@planningcenter.com? We look forward to hearing from you.
Replied April 2021
Josh
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed December 2023
Saves so much time!
I love this app and will continue to keep using it to its fullest potential. It makes our life at our church so much better using this!
PROSWe utilize the services app for managing peoples schedules and Sunday morning flow of service. It makes it a breeze and is such a huge help with saving time for scheduling and also planning ahead to know how to properly plan!
CONSI love everything about planning center. It was such a breeze setting up all of the volunteers at our church. And now they love using the app as well!