Realm

Avantages

Our reasons for using Realm out weigh the reasons not to use Realm. It is a robust system that offers your organization a lot of features, maybe more than you will use. It is simple to use and the features available allow you to implement as you need.

Inconvénients

Some of the products in Realm are not needed but cannot be a la carte. The system can be expensive but they work with smaller organizations to accommodate this.

Avantages

Realm Connect has been a tremendous way for our congregation and staff to communicate and keep abreast of news and events. Our people love the fact that they can not only see their own profiles, but also the online directory of members.

Inconvénients

I have not found anything that I do not like about Realm.

Avantages

Realm has allowed our parish to get into the 21st century of church management! It is so nice having everything in one place and having the ability to provide access to our parishioners so they can see their giving in real time. Realm is opening so many doors for us and we are so happy to be on this path.

Inconvénients

It was difficult to know exactly what to do when I was handed 'the keys'. I took over a lot of the finance responsibilities as well as administrative tasks and I struggled to know where to start.

Avantages

First, it was a really switchover from their previous software. Second, it was amazing for us when COVID hit.

Inconvénients

There were limited role management options when it came to giving permissions to Church attenders. I do think it worked good otherwise.

Avantages

I like the reporting and event section and its not hard to understand

Inconvénients

the check system, because Realm has not created the capability to connect of their check-in system to wireless printers like Planning Center. We use to have Servant Keeper with the pc ...so we updated to make a more streamline look for check without all the cords and pc's. So I have to use 2 databases Planning Center for Check In and Realm for everything else. We had been told before we transfered to Realm that it was in the works to get wireless printers for check in..that was many years ago 7 or 8.

Alternatives envisagées 

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Pourquoi passer à Realm

Avantages

The online database and connectivity with congregants who will use the app.

Inconvénients

Congregants who refuse to use the app. Struggle learning the system from admin side - congregants complain not user friendly. People still having glitches with sign in so they have abandoned using it. To meaning settings required to opt in to notifications.

Avantages

We haven't encountered any glitches in Realm. It works as it is supposed to. Once you get used to how things work in Realm, it's easy to use.

Inconvénients

There are features I requested be added to Realm. These requests have not been acted upon.

Avantages

Realm is a very well constructed CRM system for churches, not surprising consindering how long ACST (maker of Realm) has been in business. It has an integrated donations system. You can buy (which we did) the integrated accounting module, thus eliminating the need to double post donation summary information. Customer support is excellent. Customers get to suggest and vote on enhancements.

Inconvénients

Conversion to Realm should have been easier. I'd like to be able to construct queries like in any database system using parentheses to bracket query logic. It is overkill for many small (under 100 Average Sunday Attendance) churches in my opinion.

Avantages

How great the customer service was and how easy it was to set up.

Inconvénients

There wasn’t anything I didn’t like or had problems with.

Avantages

The Realm system is user friendly
Great Support

Inconvénients

The directory was a little tricky to print, but we received help.

Avantages

The best qualities of Realm allow us to easily track donor gifts and create registration events to which congregation members can RSVP and pay.

Inconvénients

There are occasionally things that are not intuitive and require a call into Realm/ACS for help. The help line does almost always get us a quick answer and help us with our concerns.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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!

Avantages

This software replaced ACS People Suite for our church and allows us to access information from the cloud. Pastors can look up addresses and even navigate to the member's house by clicking on the map in their record. Teachers can enter attendance while sitting in their Sunday school class. Groups can text and email each other within their groups. It is very robust software. They are constantly adding new features and are very responsive to suggestions from customers.

Inconvénients

In the beginning, it was difficult to use as it didn't integrate with ACS On Demand Financial Suite. But they added the ability to import giving information into ACS Financial Suite, which was a big help. We haven't moved to Realm Accounting as of yet, as there are some features of Financial Suite that we use, which aren't available in Realm Accounting at this time.

Avantages

First we love that all of our systems are now in one place. Moving from running ACS OnDemand, AccessACS, and The City to just using Realm has created efficiency. Realm has allowed better care of our large congregation and opportunities for closing the back door. That's what we like most. With nearly 4,000 attenders on a weekend, knowing when people are disconnecting is difficult. With easy attendance through the app for all of our classes/events/offerings, and indications coming to the surface in reports when people begin to disengage, we can intentionally follow up with them for potential ministry opportunity. Along the same lines, being able to have family/individual profiles which really show a complete picture of a person and their involvement, along with what processes they're involved in, what events they've attended, what milestones they've met, and any notes pertinent to pastoral care for them as individuals, we are in a better position to care for our congregation than ever before.

Dashboard reports are great and put a lot of actionable data at ministry leaders fingertips.

Inconvénients

Communication via Realm needs some minor improvements. The ability to share a message with multiple groups is missing at present. The option to reply to an email notification and have the message go back to the original thread in Realm is missing. Those two improvements would make a big difference in communication, as well as the ability to "feature" a post within a group to make it stay at the top of the group's News Feed. Need to be able to turn off ability to comment on a particular post, yet not delete it -- something that's informative in nature, but we're not necessarily looking for responses on.

Emails coming out of Realm need to be more customizable to have the look and feel the sender is going for. Calendar/events in Realm needs some help too. We are not to the point yet where we could use it as the one place to see events, as it's listing all service times and things we don't necessarily want to show in the events listing (things that are a given and don't need to be listed as events -- however they have to be in there so attendance can be marked/entered). A few enhancements need to be made in event registration as well, though it has come a long way.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

Realm is easy to learn how to work it. The videos and instructions provided are very helpful, as well.

Inconvénients

I do not like having to create payroll from scratch and making adjustments for prior payrolls. it is hard to do payroll for two checking accounts, because options are needed to make correct entries. I have to make adjusting entries to correct it after every payroll.

Avantages

We have been using Realm as our church management software since 2016. We were upgrading from a really old software system that we'd been using since the 90s or before. Realm walked us through the transfer which was very involved. And I think our transfer took longer than usual but they held our hands through the process.

But since we've been up and running, it's been smooth sailing. They're constantly updating the software. I haven't had any problems with it. We haven't rolled out the member portion of the software yet. We have an older congregation and getting every logged in would be a challenge.

As a small (under 100 members) Church, Realm has more than met our needs. I believe it's a software we can easily grow with for years to come.

Inconvénients

We opted to handle the personalization of the software ourselves. Well...that hasn't happened. With running a church and everyone wearing multiple hats, we just haven't had time. So, I know we're not getting all the value from the software that we could. That's not Realm's fault. If I remember correctly, it was a cost thing that caused us to do it ourselves. Perhaps Realm needs a customization price for small churches like ours.

Avantages

ACS products perform at the highest level. Realm has all the functionality and ease to ensure all staff are able to use the product. Realm combines all the functions of church administration into one online accessible product.

Inconvénients

The messaging component with church members and staff is glitchy and some members don't receive the messages.

Avantages

We have used ACS products for nearly 10 years and are so happy to leave behind the painful inhouse and shrinkwrapped systems we used to use. Our Realm Consultant is super knowledgeable and helped us determine the best processes,practices and scope for our ministry needs. Support is always available and super helpful. ACS is a true pleasure to work with.

Inconvénients

The Realm team is working on a couple of functions that are important to our operations. They have released weekly enhancements and are quick with workaround solutions. They release enhancements weekly and seamlessly.

Avantages

User friendly for age groups. Allows membership and visitors to remain in contact at moments notice.

Inconvénients

Lack of Social media integration. I would love to the ability to stream directly from the platform

Avantages

Not in any particular order:
1. Cloud-based
2. Communication Feature within Groups - our group leaders are loving this feature and are engaging more and more with participants in their groups. Attendance marking has also increased since converting to Realm
3. Dashboard/Reporting - helping us greatly in doing ministry effectively: reaching the disengaged, cleaning up data, and planning
4. Merging of duplicate records tool - very seamless and love the fact that the duplicates are automatically reported on the Dashboard
5. Pathways - LOVE that we can now keep track of where all of members and guests are in their spiritual journey or with their involvement at our church.
6. Online Giving - we've get over 100 New First-Time giver weekly since moving to Realm
7. Check-In Kiosk - our ministries who use this absolutely love how seamless and efficient the check-in process is now. We transition from ACS Checkpoint. Check-In Kiosk in Realm allows for a much smoother experiencing when checking in for children's church
8. The ACS support team that's been PHENOMENAL and dedicated to seeing us WIN with Realm!

Inconvénients

1. Our church does A LOT of events throughout any given month - currently we've experienced some limitations within Event Registrations (i.e. being able to search for a specific event using keywords/tags). Our end user currently has to scroll down a very long list of events to find the event they want to register for.
2.

Avantages

I like the increased opportunities to privately post and talk with people on a closed social network of other believers. This is way more effective than email, text messaging, and website management. It also gives us an opportunity to facilitate real discussions, prayer concerns, announcements, etc. without advertising to those outside of the church.

Inconvénients

Sometimes the software is a bit glitchy on iOS devices and android devices. There is also no way to copy and paste onto the mobile software. That's a big drawback.

Avantages

Realm helped our church keep track of our finances and funds and it was a simple product to use and get used to.

Inconvénients

There were a bit complex features, but we figured it out once we started to use it more and more.

Avantages

Intuitive. A step up from the City in features. Easy to use. Solid offering for the price but it does not function well on the web.

Inconvénients

Several critical errors. The website version of Realm is divided into two platforms: backend admin and community. Backend stays persistent and responsive even when you navigate away or do not use it for a while. The Community side dies if you move away and takes minutes, if ever, to load pages upon your return. You will notice this on Messages and Events (Community side) but not on Groups and Giving (Admin side). Realm tech support says this is a known issue and WILL NOT be resolved. This leaves the software fundamentally unusable throughout the day. If you can log out or clear your cache, you may get it to start back up but the problem WILL ALWAYS repeat itself. Being told that the problem is what it is - is terrible support and they should not market a product that does not function that they will not fix.