Easy to learn and to use. Helps us track everything from giving to attendance, as well as trends. On-line (as opposed to desktop loaded) software keeps the worry out of losing data. Affordable, even for a smaller church.

Realm is extremely user-friendly. I love that they have teamed with Vanco for donations/payments and the payments are recorded directly into the person's record in Realm. The pastor likes to do analytics and uses that feature all the time. I work in the contribution section every week and it couldn't be easier. The "icing on the cake" is the world-class Customer Service. After two quick prompts, a real person answers the phone within seconds. I don't get transferred. The person is very knowledgeable, friendly, polite, and most of all can answer my questions. They will also log onto my computer - with my permission - if that is the best way to help me.

I can't get all the reports I used to get in ACS People. Also, I have not found a way to link different families together (i.e. showing one family is a mother and father to another family). I also wish that Realm Financials would stop pushing back their timeline to include Payroll so we can switch from ACS Financials to Realm for that part of business, also.

Our overall experience with Realm has been great, we truly enjoy using this product; our senior members love using the Realm app for their giving and enjoy the accounting module.

Our church transitioned to Realm July 2018, one of the initial reasons we switched was because of the people side, the ability for our congregants to create and manage profiles, as well as, the ability to give and see/manage their giving, the ability to view and print their own statements. We also appreciated other features such as check-in and pathways. The accounting module made the entire process so much easier the placement of the modules and ease of use, the ability to track giving using the dashboard as well as attendance and membership. The transition was easy we discussed the modules we needed and what information to transition and the representatives did everything else. It was a very seamless transition.

Currently, there is not a lot that is disliked about this product, but there is always room for improvement, there are some additional features I would love to see in the accounting module that allows for even more ease of use. I have submitted those ideas and so far one of them has happened and they are working on the other.

Overall, it has been exceptional! I would highly recommend!

Realm is user friendly and if there is something that I can't figure out, the customer support is amazing!

Integration with ACS would be helpful. I haven't used the Accounting feature however, I was told that everything would go to Accounting and ACS would phase out. I haven't heard good things about the Accounting option and the fact that ACS hasn't been phased out, makes me leery of that option.

While I am disappointed in its current messaging/ministry/engagement portion I cannot speak to the entire program. Since it is touted as a software that addresses all these church needs, I find it lacking on the ministry side. It seems more like this was added on rather than being an integral and integrated portion. My hope and expectation is that this capability will improve with time as the concept of a single system is very much needed.

The most favorable thing about this software is it intended as a single system for Church Management as well as ministry and group support. From the promotional videos it appears there is a very dynamic and interactive church management portion of the software to which I do not have access.

I can only comment on the ministry portion since I am not church staff and have no access to that portion. As an end user involved in leadership of several different ministries I was looking for this part of the program to be user friendly, attractive and engaging output, and easy to communicate and interact with group members. In its current format it does not support this type of need. It is a good membership listing but offers no analytics or graphical capabilities to the end user and really no ability to interact with the church. A standard e-mail system, which it should replace, is much more functional. The architecture of this portion of the software is very simplistic but not very simple. Finding where you need to go is difficult and getting back to where you previously were is equally difficult. There is a chat portion which is a nice idea but it tends to draw the user away from the program. The event posting has an RSVP but you can’t see all the names of those responding, only 1 or 2, and then the number of responders. There is minimal text formatting available. You can’t change font. or sizes, no bullet or number list, no centering. You can send a picture but it must be at bottom of message and will not accept a link. You can copy and paste but not pictures. You cannot change coloring of fonts or background.

The customer service has been good, and their demo was reasonably well done, though their app crashed for their employee multiple times. I asked some tough questions about features that they said they were still building, and they admitted that they really couldn't compete with planning center in terms of a service planning module, but other things seem pretty good. My preference would have been Planning Center overall, but our finance people pushed us towards Realm because of some of the options on that side, so I'm living with it and trying to figure out how to manage my volunteers and services in planning center while keeping our main database and pathways on Realm. It's not ideal, but Realm doesn't seem bad per say. One oddity was that Realm's marketing pitch included the fact that they were a family business. I love families, but "family business" to me is a point against when I'm dealing with a software development company - as a user I want excellence of design and programming with great customer service, not friendly staff who are also designing software. That being said, we haven't had any significant issues or feature limitations yet!

Because we were previously on ACS, it was easy to import previous data. The online interface is much friendlier than the old version, and it generally has good features and capabilities, but as with any database/CRM, it's all in how you set it up and implement use. Overall, it's a solid choice.

Being a Planning Center Services user who's dabbled in other Planning Center products, I prefer the integration and user interface of planning center. Overall Realm feels more PC than Mac - sturdy, but not as pretty and at times a bit frustrating with the number of clicks you need to do to get to where you want to go. It's functional, but it feels like it'll take longer for people to learn how to set things up and do things properly, which will impede good rollout and ultimately depth of functionality because of that.

Overall Realm is a good a product. It was first rolled out to small churches and it shows that. It seems that the programmers and decision makers still look at the small churches instead of larger churches when adding features.

It is a communication tool as well as a database. They keep improving Realm. Ease of finding duplicate entries. Customer support is the best in the industry.

There are many features that larger churches need to use the software the best and Realm does not seem to be in any hurry to provide those features. They make larger churches figure out work arounds which is never good. Difficult to get the needed reports for our auditor each year. Contributions is not done by the best practices for debits and credits. They line through entries when a charge back is made at the bank instead doing a debit, which shows a money trail for audit purposes.

Tech support is very helpful if you just need basic help in making something work. They don't seem to know the "big picture" to make suggestions or improvements on what you are asking. However their developers are very accessible, so I like that I can reach someone else with a question or when I need guidance on setting up something.

It is very user-friendly and easy to train new employees on it. Being a new product, they are constantly updating and improving on the features. It was developed from years of software experience, so it is very relevant in everyday church use.

Several of the newer releases address needs we've been asking for, but they are done in a somewhat complicated way. It addresses the need, but not as directly and simply as I would like. I feel like they need to take a step back from some new features and refine and improve what they currently offer.

We enjoy the products ability for us to track giving, children/youth that are registered to track for attendance. We track worship service attendance that is required by our Diocese and of course giving is imperative and the system allows us to do this an efficient matter.

The best part of the feature that all religious institutions could benefit from is the giving module. The online giving is very easy and user friendly and processing of the gifts is very easy for the administrators of the church. We recently rolled out groups and have a BETA group using it. They are very excited about the capabilities and have added their own members and published documents for them to use and communicate. We use the product for event registration and that process has been easy as well, it is intuitive and provides a lot of options for tailoring to particular event needs.

Currently the serving module needs to be built out more for us to fully utilize it. We are trying to avoid having the serving team send emails back and forth about coverage and needs. We also would like more customizable features when it comes to background color and newsletter type communications.

We all enjoy Realm and what it can do for us and our church. We do not use the Financial piece, but hope to someday in the future.

This software is now used by our entire staff. We all speak Realm language and we keep our teams trained.

Probably how some of the reporting exports are not all the same. The opportunity to expand on queries and customize downloadable data would be great. Another thing is that there isn't a calendaring program that replaces Facility Scheduler. To have this all in one place would be good.

Compared to our previous ChMS, Realm is very good, and the frustrations are surpassed by a solid experience and feature set.

Realm does almost anything you would need a church management software suite to do, and does it well: tracking attendance, giving, financial transactions; keeping family and sacramental records; providing good communications and volunteer coordination features. It even integrates with ConstantContact and the web interface is intuitive and keeps improving.

Realm does so much so well--but it isn't good at anything out of the box. For instance, each household in Realm must have a "head of household" --an antiquated notion of family dynamics that isn't necessary. The structure of reports--and what reports are available by default--are limited and can be frustratingly to customize on the fly.

It has been a good experience so far. Helped us manage the church much better than before.

One window church management tool that brings all aspects of church life together -- well almost all.

Sometimes confusing for users when it comes to privacy management and notifications.

I work on our membership records, groups, the Realm app, events, registrations, classes, and even meals. I able to schedule all of these in Realm and push them out to a congregation of over 4,000 with relative ease. As a communications tool for a large congregation, Realm is our software of choice.

I like that, when used properly, Realm allows us to create profiles and provide a 360-degree story of a member's engagement with our church. Births, baptisms, marriages, deaths are dome of the events that we need to tell a member's story. Using the attachment feature allows us to attach all letters, documents, certificates, an communications that allow us to tell these stories. Realm allows us the option to digitally replicate the traditional church records and ledgers that we keep. It allows all of these documents to be easily accessed by out staff. We also find that Realm is critical to our mission when we are preparing for our annual Charge Conference. Being able to pull reports and statistics through setting up custom queries is critical to this mission. I also like that we can add specific attributes, roles, and committee descriptions that apply to the life and the ministries of our church. I taken on a project of digitizing decades of church records and documents and connecting them to member profiles. I would never have been able to accomplish this with such ease and accuracy if I did not have Realm as my primary software.

There is an occasional hiccup where we receive error messages, such as "504 Gateway Timeout" or "Internal Error." These are usually easily resolved when we contact the service center.

This product is not as robust as some of the other big products out there, but it has almost everything you need to get the job done. Many organizations do not need or want all the bells and whistles that those products have, nor the cost they come with. Realm manages people and their contributions with ease. It has the ability to use groups to track attendance and facilitate communication among the groups/ministries of the church. The customization fields allow for tracking needs specific to individual ministries as well. For attendance, there is a check in system that can be utilized that can be set up to provide security labels for children's ministry. It can also be used to check in for Sunday School or other events as well. This is tied to the attendance so that if the check in is utilized, the support staff/volunteer posting of attendance is reduced as well. Then you have the support. If you ever run into a question or issue, there are wikis to help you along. The wikis are not just a long list of stuff, but are set up so that when you click the "?" button, it opens the wiki that is specific to the page you are on, so no more searching for what you need in a long list. If that doesn't help, you always have the support team standing by so you can call and get assistance as well. They are always ready to serve and never talk down to you because you ask a "dumb" question.

I like that the software developers take the time to listen to the users and frequently upgrade the software with features that users need, not what they think we should have. The UI is intuitive and easy to use. The wikis are robust and use lots of pictures so there is not confusion as to what needs to be done. The support team in knowledgeable.

The search engine is not as robust as some other products, but that is improving as the product develops.

Overall our church and it's members enjoy using Realm. We just got it in 2017 so don't have a lot of experience with it. I do think the communication functions will be a big help to us. Your support staff has always been very professional and friendly. I think in 5 years we will be using it as our main communications tool.

The cost is probably the best feature for us as a small church. It also allows our members and friends to donate an online gift and have it immediately posted to the member's statement. It is also very user friendly.

When creating the photo directory with family information, there is no "refer to" for couples who have different last names (i.e., Bob Warren and Karen Fisher, Nathan Kotecki and Garrett Southerland). Access ACS had that feature. When creating a .pdf file of the directory, there is no way to password protect it without running it through a different program. Access ACS had that feature. In the photo directory, there is no way to flag various people (like ordained minister, staff, non-member friend, etc.) The .pdf document created is static, not dynamic (in other words, you can't click on an email address and go straight to an email, nor can you cut and paste phone numbers, addresses, etc.) The mobile app for Realm Connect opens automatically to the "news" feed. Since we don't use the news feed, people who are using the app to get contact information do not easily find that information. It would help if we could choose which feature Realm Connect opens with.

We are comparing PowerChurch, Servant Keeper and Realm. Of the three, Realm is the most robust, organized and simplest to jump right in without a lot of training. We can track records in our Adult Spiritual Education program. We can track visitor outreach. We can track attendance collectively and individually. Gift entry is awesome! You must enter a batch first, meaning the full dollar amount of your deposit; then you enter individual gifts against that dollar amount. If the final figures do not match, you know immediately that you have a data entry error. Can't tell you how much I love this feature! Also, they have a super robust wiki site that explains every facet of their software. The info is broken down into bite-sized, easily digestible chunks. It is presented through a combo of pictures, videos, and text. Very well laid out; easy to navigate. I found things in the free demo that made no sense to me. The help button to me to the wiki site where I was able to easily get my question answered. I rarely use the help on other software programs because it's confusing and not worth the effort. By contrast, I spent over an hour each with the folks from PowerChurch and Servant Keeper to get help making sense of their software. All 3 solutions are highly customizable. But, Realm is the most organized. For example, our education program includes 2-3 years of classes. I need to track students through classes and know when they've finished. Both PowerChurch and Servant Keeper allow me to create a customized tracking system. But each makes use of multiple screens that take some effort to navigate between. Because this info is entered periodically (not daily), I'm concerned my volunteers will need to retrained every time they use it. Realm offers a solution where everything is on one screen. No complicated navigation. Can't guarantee a volunteer won't need retraining, but they'll only have one thing to learn and remember with Realm. It's the right price point for a church of our size. The ONLY reason for the 4-stars overall is that the accounting module is extra and I cannot find the cost for it ANYWHERE on their site. Very frustrating! Also Realm does not integrate with MailChimp. Just Constant Contact (my least favorite email solution). If it weren't for the data conversion, we'd be able to get started for under $200! You can't beat that kind of value. The only reason we wouldn't go with Realm is that I get outvoted. :)

Sending messages quick, keeping reach of giving for management stand point and being able to have one location for everything you need.

Initially setting this up was a little of a hassle from when we migrated. But the customer support was super amazing and helped so much!

Great experience overall with Realm. No issues with the program or the customer service. When there have been issues with the program, the Realm teams have fixed them. The issue of nursery, classes, etc. check in does not effect my experience with Realm. I know they are working on getting that particular area upgraded for their cliental.

Transferring data and setting up new procedures to Realm was easy. It has made a huge impact on the time I spend working on the accounting and people side for our church. Transferring to Realm was a huge benefit to not only me as the administrator of the church but to our members and visitors.

Realm does offering a check in system for nursery, classes, etc. but not user friendly. Set up is difficult and requires to many devices to work. Currently we are using another system that only requires a tablet and wireless printer.

It has been great!! The support staff is unbelievable people are using it for group communications as intended.

I love the way Realm integrates our membership database, grouping, and tracking with a social media type of platform. Actually allows our members to use it for effective communication! It is ground-breaking and we love it!!

I wish the financial software was capable of handling our book-keeping needs, but thankfully, we are still able to use ACS Financials for that.

I love being able to keep our members together on one place, look them up, and send them messages. It's easy to keep everything going on at the church together. I use it for events, for pathways, and to send messages to people. I was in charge of children's ministry until recently and the check-in was great!

- Messages and Topics are available as push notifications from the app - Huge improvements from it's predecessor program, The City - For larger churches, easy searches focusing on specific members or parameters - Giving to a church is easy - The Kids Check-In is initiative and easy to pick up for parents - Easy to create events that require registration and payment

- There is a learning curve for the average user - There is a time lag between messages sent via laptop/desktop and the app - The larger the church, and the more you use Realm, you will need to dedicate a significant amount of time to the software to keep it humming.

I'm not pleased with the inadequacy of the software. It's very basic and does not run reports that the Vestry and Clergy need. I find myself having to merge several excel spreadsheets to get the info I need for email merges, etc.

I was not part of the integration and am having a hard time find something positive to say about Realm. It's unsophisticated as far as software goes, the reporting system is very simple and the results are inconsistent and I often find unexplainable errors.

When running queries, I would LOVE it to be more complex. You cannot run a giving query and get email addresses. Also, i've noticed households in queries when they dont match the criteria - I find a lot of mistakes.

Realm has allowed us to move away from a printed directory and allow all to have access to communicate with one another. It also allows members the ability to check their giving records at their convenience.

Easy to use for members and staff; cloud-based means you can access it from anywhere! We are still growing into attendance and check-in functions but look forward to using them.

Easier group functions could be useful! When we first transitioned they didn't have payroll so we aren't currently using Realm Financials.

Much better organization in the office. A tool to connect church members, and assist church leadership.

The interface is pleasing and fairly intuitive. The customer service is excellent. The tools available are very useful for our church. I appreciate the customized fields in the system that allow me to change certain terminology to better match our church.

There are bumps in the road sometimes with updates, whether it's an unexpected consequence, changed features, or having to teach volunteers a new way to use the software. I also appreciate how much Realm listens to customer feedback, but sometimes wish improvements could be made faster.

I love the integration between all different areas such as financials, attendance, and groups. I also am a huge fan of the app that allows me to quickly search for and contact church members. Reports pull easily and there are a ton of customization options throughout the various areas.

There are a couple features such as people being able to sign up for and see events without an account that are still missing. There are also times that setting up an event or pulling a report can be confusing at first, but their team is awesome at responding quickly and helping you figure out what you need to do.

What we had before ACS/Realm did not group families together and Realm does. So looking up a child with a different last name has changed so much for us. That made a big difference for a lot of things. We are using more and more of the features all the time.

I like the ease in which information is entered and edited. I like that you can search for a report and then when you have the results you are looking for you can save it and use it over and over. Editing the parameters of the search is also understandable.

That we don't have Finances on it yet. Will be glad when we do.