Planning Center Reviews

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.

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.

I love Planning Center. I have worked in several churches and have started planning center from the ground up on several occasions. Every feature is very intuitive. It was so easy to learn and set-up. I have been an administrator as well and love the ability to view what others in the system do. It is great at sending email reminders. There are so many features you can customize for your own ministry situation. It transposes chord charts for you. What I am describing is just Planning Center's Services platform because I am the most familiar with that part. There other applications are useful and helpful as well.

It is truly had to think of a con. The smallest complaint I have is minor. I download the chord charts I make in Planning Center chord chart maker as pdfs. When I have gone to a new system, I can only upload the pdf...I cannot change the song's key or arrangement in the chord chart maker as I could before in the prior system. But again, that's minor.

The simplicity to plan services and schedule volunteers help make it the best!

Planning Center is the leader in worship planning software and they know it! Planning center is expensive an may not be worth it for your church. Especially if you have another ChMS that already offers worship planning.

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.

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.

It is mostly all in one. Worship planning, calendars, church directory, people management; it's all there and it's all done well.

Really the only con about planning center is the hefty fee as add more features.

It is the most user-friendly software. They have more features than you'll ever need and it makes collaboration a breeze. The system always functions as it should and most of the time the development team is several steps ahead, putting out new features that are actually helpful. The fact that they work with groups like renewed vision to integrate with propresenter is incredibly valuable. Everything being cloud based also makes it easy to collaborate between departments on events. Their groups search is easy to use, resolution-responsive and looks great integrated into any website. The kiosk option in their events module makes dynamic calendar-based digital signage really simple. Everyone who has ever resisted adopting planning center at our church has eventually come around to really like it.

If you have a need for a feature the development team is going to tell you that they may add it one day and never commit to a release. Also they don't offer any training other than videos online - for savvy people this isn't much of a problem because their interface is so user friendly, but if you have staff who refuse to learn things on their own this will deter them from wanting to adopt planning center - though it shouldn't because it is really easy to learn. The pricing model can be somewhat confusing at times and I wish there was more of a discount for people using multiple modules; a large church can get close to spending a thousand dollars a month without much trouble, though I know this is comparable to some other platforms and honestly you get what you pay for.

1. Parts Storage - I can store my keyboard parts, lead sheets, chord sheets all in one place
2. Templates for services is very handy - saves a couple minutes each week allowing me to just add in my songs and any special things happening in the service.
3. Matrix view of plans and people - I do my people planning every 2 months, so it's nice to see 2 months worth of services all on one screen and fill in the blanks.
4. Black out dates - each team member can block out dates that they are not available, so I don't even need to bother asking them
5. Music Stand app - allows all of my musicians to be totally paperless (using an ipad), even my piano player (since I can import her music right into planning center along with my lead sheets from SongSelect). In WorshipTeam, I first have to create a PDF, and I can only create the PDF with Chord charts. I can actually turn pages for all of my musicians simultaneously using a session.
6. Notifications - I love the automatic notifications of members for upcoming services they are assigned to
7. Church Management - great tool for planning nursery workers, sunday school workers, ushers, greeters, etc. And they all get email/text reminders too!
8. Auto import of chord charts from SongSelect is great (too bad it won't also import my lead sheets)
9. I have heard of the ability to automatically create my projection slides from my weekly plan including proper sequence for each song - no mismatch of words between slides and chord charts.

1. Transposing songs is PAINFUL! In WorshipTeam, I can transpose with one click. I don't have to manually transpose the MP3 for the song and the chord chart is automatically transposed too. In our church, we have a lot of altos and basses. Rarely do we ever do a song in the original key.
2. Library is self populated. In WorshipTeam, I have the songs I have added to the library, but also all the songs that everyone else has added. So, for contemporary songs, they are usually already in the library for my use all ready to go. When I have a substitute worship leader, they are extremely daunted by the task of adding a song to the library in Planning Center. I don't know if they will ever do it even though I wrote out a procedure for them.
3. Not sure, but I think the storage area is limited in Planning Center. So, if I have created to many alternate keys of songs, I will eventually run out of space?
4. CCLI reporting is more complicated. With WorshipTeam, a report is easily created with one click and I don't have to keep track of anything on a weekly basis.