Planning Center

Avantages

The People Module is the best. I love the ability to update the people/family information on the fly is great. The list feature within the People Module gives you the ability to create lists of all sorts by age, address, interests, service or ministry. It updates automatically ever evening to insure the most accurate data.

Inconvénients

Using the Custom Fields within the People Module was a bit challenging, because it is a custom field it is a bit broad but because the natural of the software you would have a a better solution to record the service or ministry dates & positions a little more easily. The Planning Center help center just tells you to use the custom fields but doesn't give you much help from there.

Avantages

We've been using PC since it was just for event planning. Now it has people management, volunteer signups, and room reservations and more. We would have a VERY hard time doing what we do on a weekly basis if it wasn't for planning center. The team is great to work with and they have integration with Rock RMS now which has helped us as well. I love seeing this product continue to be developed. So many companies make a great product and ride it until it is obsolete. Planning Center has continued to improve as long as we've used them.

Inconvénients

The pricing tiers for extra storage (or the storage in general) could stand to be bumped up as time has gone on and storage has gotten so much cheaper. But I'd rather specs like this get stale than the product itself.

Avantages

Planning Center is a solution that really provides church an "all-in-one" solution to various aspects of church management - from volunteers, to donations, to events.

Inconvénients

Unfortunately, while Planning Center provides a one stop shop with many features, there are competitors with specialized software tools that does a better job at some of those features. We were most interested in donations forms, but found Planning Center's to be lacking in customizability as well as integration with other software API's or something like Zapier.

Avantages

The integration across all church ministries is hugely helpful. We have a church of around 350 members and I don't think we would be able to manage one week without this software. We use planning center for tracking all our members, giving, scheduling, and worship. Being able to keep everything in one place makes things so much easier, and is incredibly beneficial from an organisational standpoint.

Inconvénients

This software is not cheap. We pay for it because it is worth it, and because there isn't really anything that compares. If there was some semblance of competition, I don't think we'd feel that loyal to Planning Center.

Avantages

Huge features that are independently well designed: volunteer management, donation management, events, customer relationship management, workflows for attendees, and especially kids checkins.

Inconvénients

I have very few cons. Planning Center has grown to include a lot of features that have solved cons that I've had in the past. The church center app (attendee facing and giving app) could use some work and is in its infancy. I fully expect improvements based on Planning Center's track record.

Avantages

From managing the flow of service to communicating with five worship teams PCO is the best!
Links with Song Select.

Inconvénients

It would be great if their presentation module didn't require Apple TV and was more robust.

Avantages

It's a great centralized location for communication, planning, scheduling, and sharing. For music teams, it has some great resources for sharing sets, songs, and music sheets, and allows easy communication to everyone participating in the event.

Inconvénients

For administrators, there is a LOT to learn. What should seem like an easy process takes multiple steps, and it's easy to make a mistake or forget the specific area of the application you went to last time to complete a task.

Avantages

The software is really easy to use. It’s a matter of creating an event, selecting the people that are going to participate in the event, and then creating an order/agenda for that event. Since I am a pastor of a church, we put our worship services in this program. So we are able to select the songs, upload them for the worship team to listen to and practice, and then every single participant that we selected will receive an email reminding them they are on the agenda, and it gives them the ability to accept or decline the request. I am able to upload my sermon notes and PowerPoint for the sound team to download in prep for the main service. The fact that we are able to coordinate an entire worship service in this one place allows for efficient planning, and it saves a lot of time.

Inconvénients

The only con that I can think of is that when we first signed up, we had the cheapest package, and eventually we ran out of space. We had to then go back and start deleting previous worship services because of all the files that were previously uploaded. That was an inconvenience that led us to upgrading. Now we don’t have to worry about that.

Avantages

Wide variety of church functions can be managed (Security, Giving, Services, Groups, etc).
Relatively simple administration for admins makes it easy to get an overall picture of church functions.
Makes it easy to involve volunteers within the church in the administration process, such as managing small groups.

Inconvénients

Somewhat confusing for users within the church who are older. Different products offered do not exist together, but in their own silos. This can be confusing for users at first.

Avantages

Gets the job done. Helps schedule volunteers and sends auto-reminders to them. As a church director, I love having something that helps me plan services and schedule volunteers. But it is NOT user-friendly and could be much much better with a few changes.

Inconvénients

Not intuitive at all. Not easy to get used to using effectively; hard to add and edit a person's profile; hard to find the button to send emails; hard to navigate to the correct week; hard to add positions onto your current schedule; just harder than it needs to be in general (and I am a tech guy.)

Avantages

We use Planning Center on a daily basis to schedule ALL our music and media volunteers for our weekend services! It's easy to navigate and plan all of our services via the service outlines. Then we schedule our weekly volunteers - it's all automated so once we plan a schedule, we send a mass notification (that can be personalized) off to all volunteers. Then they accept or decline their availability. It's such a great way to keep track and schedule our weekend services and any other "service" type events that need volunteers and media!

Inconvénients

Honestly, it's been great for our needs so no complaints at the moment!

Avantages

I'm big on details and making sure that everyone is on the same page. With Planning Center, our Worship Team is able to have all the details on the upcoming Sunday set list. It's so helpful to just log in and see what songs we'll be sing with attached music sheets. Planning Center allows worship planning to be super organized and detailed so that nothing is lost in translation.

Inconvénients

The only thing I can say about what I don't like about the software is that when you want to view attachments, it's a direct download onto your computer and that's kind of annoying to me. I'd rather a popup appear or the file open in a different tab.

Avantages

I love that my music is stored here for future use. I love the ease of connecting with my worship team. They can see/hear the music that is chosen! It is perfect for us!

Inconvénients

Sometimes I struggle with different features. There are a few things that aren’t intuitive. Fortunately, the help department has great articles to help!

Avantages

Planning Center has everything a church needs to plan services and organize church attendance. They continue to release more and more options for better functionality.

Inconvénients

There is a learning curve in using the interface. The site functions well but sometimes it can be tricky to walk new users through the site until they can learn it well.

Avantages

Planning Center makes it so easy to plan schedule and disseminate information to all of my teams. I love being able to set notifications to go to different team leaders and keep track of everything from one place. Integrations with MailChimp and Song Select are invaluable.

Inconvénients

Spotify has removed support for integrations and I'd like to see the option to set a default browser in the mobile app.

Avantages

What I like most is that it is an easy-to-use software and phone app that allows me to communicate regularly and with clarity to my team.

Inconvénients

There is little to not like about it. I have used it for over 10 years, and it has never been down or laggy, and is regularly updated to keep up with the demands of worship technology.

Avantages

Planning Center is a really well-thought out and user-friendly site that pretty much provides the end user/musician the tools needed to prepare for the upcoming worship dates. I don't handle the administrative side, but the scheduling & reminders is great at keeping you up to date with your commitments. You can block out times you won't be able to play, and easily respond to the emailed notifications for requests to play.

It also does a great job at showing you the teams you would/will be serving with, and the music files & inline music player to practice. I especially like the ability of the music player to continually wrap a song segment for trying to master parts at a time without constantly hitting the back button.

The mobile app also functions nicely when needed instead of the desktop version.

Inconvénients

I really don't have any cons at all. If forced to offer a suggestion, I would say that it would be nice to know that the mobile app files are not repeatedly downloaded when on your mobile data plan. I don't think that shown but I could be wrong.

Avantages

We use it for scheduling teams, and planning services. It is very user friendly for the "viewers", to update their info, put in block-out dates, view their schedule and accept/decline assignments . I like that there are many options for reports and they are even editable. I like that edits occur immediately and can be seen by all schedulers simultaneously, which makes group scheduling useful.

Inconvénients

Of course, the cost is always an issue, but the functionality makes up for it.

Avantages

Easy to use. Has all the features you need to track separate teams. Easy to schedule or decline availability. Log in is quick.

Inconvénients

At first, it was a little confusing as to where to view information, as the view looked a little busy. Lots of information on screen. It would have been nice to be able to see which sections were available and then drill down from there.

Avantages

It makes scheduling and getting resources to volunteers a lot easier than typical email communication.

Inconvénients

The mobile access version of Planning Center has a few kinks that can only be done on desktop versions.

Avantages

Planning Center is incredible for churches to manage people, services, groups, registrations, giving, etc. We use the full suite of Planning Center software and love all of it. It's not always perfect, but their customer service is usually quick to respond and takes product feedback well.

Inconvénients

It is a bit pricey, but it's worth the cost. Really that's the only downside.

Avantages

It is a great software to use for weekly worship organisations in Church. You can make slides for songs, messages, announcements etc. You can also set when you wanna air certain slides. You can edit as many times you want. It does not change the font size when projected. It also saves previous slides, so you can go back to previous weeks and used saved slides of songs or announcements.

Inconvénients

It does not have a free trial version and also the free version has less features. Also you cannot set timimg on the slides when do you want to project it and change.

Avantages

Planning Center is super helpful to organize volunteers for events. We use it at my church, and as a volunteer, I'm able to easily accept or decline serving opportunities, as well as see who will be serving in various spaces.

Inconvénients

I am not a big fan of the mobile app for this software. I often struggle to find what I'm looking for. It's difficult to navigate and can be frustrating at times.

Avantages

This software offers a wide variety of tools and programs that are incredibly easy to use and useful. My favorite aspect of this product is the simplicity of function combined with an overall attractive and clean interface.

Inconvénients

Back-end customization is limited, but customer support is always able to answer questions and help with back-end changes you'll need made!

Avantages

Planning Center is easy to set up and use as a basic ChMS. It has everything you need under one roof. They also provide fantastic support articles and videos.

Inconvénients

There are nuances throughout the system that make it evident that we will need to switch to another platform once we grow to a particular size. Reporting is not always user friendly and we often find ourselves having to export large amounts of data and sort it ourselves in Excel to get what we want (especially in regards to Giving data). Additionally, the inability to get support personnel on the phone is a pain at times. Having to run support strictly through email can be a huge barrier and waste of time.

Avantages

It is simple, intuitive and does what a planning software for churches should do. The apps are great too that comes with it. I love it that team members can update their information and block out dates they are not available to serve. For a planner,​ this is a dream come true. It helps the team communicate very well and it has revolutionized how our team works.

Inconvénients

On the music part, I wish they had preloaded music like other software​ that do the same. Loading songs can be cumbersome and costly especially buying matching MP3s

Avantages

Planning Center has the best approach to building software for the church. They truely listen to the customer and work to build into the product what we're asking for. The product is also one of the cheapest options on the market for what you're getting.

Inconvénients

They are young so not everything is built in - yet! I honestly don't have much bad to say about them.

Avantages

Overall features and automated emails/text to volunteers was 100% worth it for anything price or ease-of-use issue that I had. Saving time saves me $$$.

Inconvénients

Planning Center was not easy to use initially and took an investment of time to get 'onboarded' to know what to do and how to use it. That said, I'm still sold on how useful this tool is.

Avantages

Helps our church stay on the same page without needing 10 different tools. Everything is easy to use. Always improving and rolling out new features.

Inconvénients

They need bundled discounts for the more apps you add to your plan. They also need a forms app so you can automatically get information to the other apps through the user end.

Avantages

Planning Center has a fantastic platform for planning, scheduling, and running events. Scheduling teams in the matrix view and auto-schedule function make staffing positions a breeze. It's convenient that they keep a history of deleted plans for about 30 days in case you need to refer to them. The songs section makes keeping any files such as PDF's, MP3's, or links organized with the correct asset.

Inconvénients

It can be daunting the learn how to use the software for a new user. I've encountered some issues when trying to print plans such as it not including elements I wished to include. It would be nice if you could see edits a user is making in real-time on the page.

Avantages

It's extremely simple to put together a service, request volunteers to serve, and see who has confirmed or declined for the weekend. Need to call someone? Switch from "services" to "people" and you can easily pull up their information. The staff is great about training those who need it, the interface is pleasing to the eye and it's easy to learn within minutes.

Inconvénients

There's a lot of in-depth features many will miss because they don't know about them. This requires a large amount of training to be able to know every feature at your church's disposal. But it is worth the time investment.

Avantages

We loved having the amount of features that PCO (Planning Center Online) included. They provide various add-ons/modules to fit your needs and goals (e.g. check-in, events, people, services, etc.).

Inconvénients

We didn't like the increase in cost as we added more people using PCO. I think the "rhyme behind the reason" is that a church would be able to afford paying more as the church grows in number. While this might be the case for other churches the price didn't seem to justify the features for us.
Customer support is fast but it's hard to talk to a real person over the phone (email is their preferred support, but I would rather talk to a person personally).

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Planning Center

Avantages

Planning Center has revolutionized the way we communicate with our volunteers and teams. From the most tech-savvy teenager to our oldest retired worship team member, this form of communication simply works for everyone. I love the way you can communicate via different ways.

When we first began to transition to Planning Center, we were a traditional church stuck in the 1980's in many ways, especially in our communications. While it took about 3-6 months to get everyone on the worship team using it (probably a rotating team of 40), now we don't know what we would do without it.

Since then, we have expanded with Planning Center's capability. From our Volunteer Greeters, to other teams (Ushers, Safety), it is a tool that serves everyone, and helps us expand our ministry efforts more efficiently.

Inconvénients

While Planning Center is the industry standard, in my opinion, I would love if they incorporated a capacity to either integrate with an e-mail marketing/communications company (i.e., Constant Contact or Mail Chimp) or offer that service themselves so I don't have to keep email lists in 2 different (sometimes 3) places.

Avantages

Coming from an environment where planning worship was done manually, Planning Center raises the bar. It’s easy to use, always accessible and information communication is immediate and accessible by all.

Inconvénients

I can’t think of anything I don’t like. Maybe having a chat feature would be nice.

Avantages

The integration and management of personnel, as well as the workflow of productions. The software also has many options for customization per production which is very useful.

Inconvénients

At the present time there are no real negatives.

Avantages

I like how easy it is to use, it really does just about whatever a church needs when scheduling volunteer staff. The auto schedule is very nice.
I love how scalable the service is to our needs.

Inconvénients

It is a bit complex. Some things aren't quite were you would expect them to be... But the help center is great and easy to use.

Avantages

Everything! Planning Center is the best software Ive ever used for helping organize church services! We use it every week and Ive used it for almost the past decade exclusively! It has great ways of contacting the teams and keeping everyone on the same page and prepared for the weekend services!

Inconvénients

The only thing Ive ever not loved about Planning Center is planning center resources and that is only because it was a little confusing at first and didn't seem to have a logical system of reserving rooms

Avantages

This is an app that is created to give a large and small medium church the best of plans which help maintain and manage the church and it's entire challenges it might be facing, and it has unlimited functions you might ever think of works with Android and iOS to give you the best and automatic login, group management, attendance tracking, and so on.

Inconvénients

To use this app sometimes is hard because overall people using the app has to login or have account before it can be accessible, there is nothing like visitors chance of getting glance of what it looks like.

Avantages

Using Planning Center has been a huge help for our church so far. We are not currently using the full suite but do utilize the Services section. It allows for easy planning and organizing of the events within each service and then that can be communicated with those involved! If a change occurs, updates can be swift and communication instant. It is a great resource and we hope to upgrade to more of their services if we can get the approval!

Inconvénients

Not a big con because it holds true to any platform, but you do need to have someone who is very organized and on top og things to maintain the information and communicate any updates that occur. Also, the cost of the entire suite can be a little burdensome for smaller churches.

Avantages

I am a worship leader at our church. With his software I am able to review the week’s song set as well as review lyrics. Oftentimes the songs will be performed in a different key than what team members are familiar with. So an audio file can be uploaded. This is great since I always sing harmonies; I can learn the new notes while driving home from work since the app is available on my phone.

Inconvénients

Earlier versions of the app were extremely buggy on the iPhone. It was easier to log into website than deal with the app. However, the current version is a huge improvement. Quite seamless. Not very intuitive with some features. Buttons don’t take you where you figure they would. But the features to listen/view to the files are great. I like the loop/repeat feature on the playback the most.

Avantages

I love the ability to have all parts of the planning process in one place, with mulitple applications that all connect and work seamlessly together.

Inconvénients

I wish there was the ability to connect to third party software. Everything works great as long as you are in the ecosystem but if you prefer another software for one or more functions it gets a bit complicated to use them in tandem.

Avantages

The thing I like most about Planning Center is that it keeps all of our databases connected, and all of our members contact info in one place.

Inconvénients

The thing I like least about Planning Center is that it can sometimes be difficult to find what you need, some of the features are buried within multiple pages, so if you don't know where to go it can be difficult to find something sometimes.

Avantages

The ability to request to schedule people and create time blocks is great! The option to upload documents or links to videos to the weekly schedule is very useful to get the correct information out to the whole team.

Inconvénients

I disliked that there is no ability to set someone as a back up to certain positions. This often leads to someone rejecting a request and the position being empty.

Avantages

Ease of use and ability for multiple users to nagar multiple volunteer teams, worship set lists and giving.

Inconvénients

There is a slight learning curve to implementing the giving platform for the church and to show different volunteers how to access their profile to block out dates etc.

Avantages

It is so good. It has everything you could ask for and more in a church service planning software. You create your order of worship, it integrates with CCLI and song select, you schedule and confirm volunteers, you upload song resources for musicians and you can even use live during the service to communicate with people if needed. I only covered the core program, not to mention the free add on services you get and the premium ones you can buy.

Inconvénients

The price is the only thing that is a con. It is the best and it is worth the money but it is not the cheapest software that can do what it does.

Avantages

It plans our weekly worship and service and lets all involved know what is going on. We can communicate with team members quickly and easily. I also like that the price is on a sliding scale depending on the number of people involved.

Inconvénients

It would be nice to have specific pages for different ministries.

Avantages

The suite of tools in Planning Center are broad enough to give any church the ability to leverage technology to improve their workflows. The services tool is especially effective in managing the scheduling and coordination of volunteers.

Inconvénients

No major things to speak about - the tool functions as expected, and has mobile apps available as well. We truthfully have no complaints about the platform!

Avantages

I love that it’s sort of a one stop for lyrics/chords/mp3. I haven’t used the media feature in yet, but I’m sure it’s neat.

Inconvénients

I wish that the default arrangement/other arrangement tab were able to do a sort of preview if you were to hover the mouse over it.
Maybe this is more on the user side of things, but I also wish that it were able to decipher when there duplicates of songs being added.

Avantages

The services app is what I found the most useful for our church since we manage a few worship teams for services throughout the week, youth group, children worship, main team, etc. It is easy for the leader to schedule people to serve on any given service.

Inconvénients

What did't work for us is the fact that you depend a lot on the people to actually use the platform and here in our case, people tend to forget that they have to block vacations, of even check in to some events and stuff, so that way we came to the conclusion that we were paying for something that people was not really using. Other than that, the experience was really good.

Avantages

Planning center helps keep our church organized. We can collaborate on plans, see everything in advance, and schedule volunteers. The large number of features such as tags or blockout dates make it easy to make sure we schedule people based on availability.

We have also started using ProPresenter, so the link between these two programs is very helpful in creating slides. Everything is stored in Planning Center, and it easily imports in from our slideshow program.

Planning Center giving has made it easy for online donations. Most people don't carry cash or checks around, so having that online donation option is helpful for them. Planning Center was easy to set up and use.

Inconvénients

I don't have many problems with Planning Center at all. Sometimes, the learning curve on advanced functions can be steep, and I may forget the exact steps to do something, but their help guides are there to guide me through. I'm still not sure how to automatically send emails as soon as I schedule someone, but that's a minor issue.