Planning Center

Vorteile

Planning center is always adapting and changing to needs of the client. They take input very well and help problem solve when needed. Their customer service is incredible.

Nachteile

There really isn’t anything that I or any of my colleagues dislike about planning center. Typically if there’s an issue, it’s easily resolved by a call to customer service.

Vorteile

It makes communicating with my volunteers so much easier.

Nachteile

The price is too much for what it offers in my opinion.

Vorteile

We 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!

Nachteile

I 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!

Vorteile

The design, the backend ease of accessibility, the layout. The ease of use for both users and administrators, the amount of features that could be used each week, and also the ability to store files and songs into it.

Nachteile

It was a bit pricey, and also the financial organizing side wasn't ideal. When it came to service flow layout, it seemed a bit awkward looking, like the agenda needed to be updated to streamline and match the rest of the platform.

Vorteile

Ability to choose products a la carte for your organizations personal needs and cost efficiency

Nachteile

Would love to see more personal customization options

Vorteile

I appreciate that many of the lowest level uses for their products are free. This gives a chance to test and use before full implementation. The best part of these products is the full integration between all the different apps.

Nachteile

Sometimes the updates happen a bit to frequently on particular apps. This is normally not a problem, but for a setup and take down church, it proves to be difficult as the new workflow needs to be figured out day off.

Vorteile

The extent of features when it comes to organizing and scheduling teams is fantastic. I find it very helpful that Planning Center tells me how long it has been since a particular volunteer has been scheduled, regardless of what role they were serving. Additionally, the level of functionality on the side of the volunteer is great. They can add blackout dates and respond to serving requests directly within an email.

Nachteile

At times, the menus can be a little clunky, and I find myself having to hunt for specific features. Planning Center's help section is fairly comprehensive though, so this usually fixes the issue for me.

Vorteile

It literally is the backbone of our church planning. You can just about manage everything with it. Literally.

Nachteile

Previously there were some gaps in workflow automations but they are heavily investing in this and coming up with things I didn’t even know I needed.

Vorteile

Planning center is very user friendly. Even if you don't have any experience with building sign ups it takes a minimal amount of time to learn. The products are low maintenance and it's a great way to track volunteers for a non-profit.

Nachteile

Pulling people off waitlists is a little tedious, but otherwise, we really love this product.

Vorteile

I love that you can customize which modules you need. You can try a module for 30 days, you don't pay for large usage unless you need it. They give a grace period, where you can get the small package but if you use it more for one month, you don't have to upgrade. It keeps donor management and people database in the same place, so if someone changes their address, it is changed across all modules.

Nachteile

Reports seem to be difficult to generate accurate results. For example, if you want to generate a report that includes everyone who gave any amount in the past year and attended an event or volunteered. We have tried this report and didn't get back proper results when run by someone other than the giving users. They don't need to know specifics on giving but should be able to add that as a criteria. Also, if someone accidentally deletes a user then there is no way to get them back even if they had giving. There should be a safeguard in place so that only giving users can delete a profile that has giving.I don't like that you cannot use VISA/MC debit for paying,

Vorteile

I love that it integrates with Stripe for giving and to the church center app so we are able to host all of our events that way. It's seamless to use, easy to navigate, and has great reliability.

Nachteile

I would love it if via their giving portion, they also allowed selling. For instance, our church has a bookshelf and we sell Bibles, etc but planning center only accepts donations and registrations, not payments for things we sell.

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Vorteile

Using Planning Center is like having the church volunteer who can do it all. The options in all its planning categories is so robust, our small team is easily able to keep track of volunteers, kids, donations, visitors, and more. We especially love the scheduling and volunteers - the categories are easy for the staff to set up, and easy for the volunteers to understand. The opt-in for volunteers to confirm or decline a role is so easy, the volunteer does not even have to be signed in. This feature makes it so very easy to schedule the workload from week to week, and make sure each member of the team has the help it needs!

Nachteile

I feel that their "groups" function is a little lacking - there's some basic features for setting up groups and protecting host information (such as home address), but I've seen other church group software that provides much more in terms of communication, tracking, etc. Thankfully, Planning Center intends to expand upon this feature, and I trust that they will eventually.

Vorteile

I think this is incredibly easy to use overall. The Scheduling software is what I use most often as I schedule teams for our weekend services. It's intuitive and there are several ways to streamline the sometimes tedious tasks of scheduling the same times every week. Additionally, this software makes it easy to keep track of how often volunteers are scheduled - which is extremely helpful because they are volunteers and I don't want them to burn out.

Nachteile

I think there could be better training on how to use all aspects of PCO effectively. I feel like we take advantage of only 80% of what PCO is capable of doing for us, and a lot of that is simply because there are no simple guidelines for the massive amount of possibilities for building plans and scheduling teams. More in depth training - that is organized and dives into the details would be extremely helpful. Whenever I have time, I test plans and templates using our employees profiles, but it's really time consuming. I'd rather just sit down and study the system - or have easy access to detailed videos on specific topics.

Vorteile

Planning Center offered many great options and could be very detailed.

Nachteile

The software was very expensive. Each module cost additional money. During Covid and after, it became very expensive as income dropped. Unfortunately we got priced out of it. Also, there is no true customer service. It is either via email, or using the knowledge bank. We were not able to actually speak with someone to help answer questions.

Vorteile

I love the fact that we can track how often we use our volunteers. The software is easy to use. We also love the Music stand feature, most of our band uses this feature

Nachteile

Honestly, I have no problems with software, I guess I could cry about the cost, but you get what you pay for.

Vorteile

I've been using Planning Center for many years with multiple worship teams, and it keeps evolving and getting better. I'm an admin with Planning Center for my current church, so I use it quite often. It stores a data base of team members that can be grouped into multiple categories (worship team, audio/lighting tech, sunday school/nursery volunteers, etc). I think PC really shines for scheduling worship services. It stores audio files, video links, and documents which can easily be linked to any new service so your team has the information (music, audio files, videos) they need to be prepared in advance. Your worship team (or for any other aspect of church functions) can be alerted when they are scheduled to serve, and they can accept or reject the invite to serve which will alert the admin so they can make sure that a person for each required position of a service or event has been filled. It can save tons of time for an administrator to put together a team and get them the resources they need. It even links to online calendars so when you accept a position for an event, it can automatically be added to your calendar (in my case Google). Overall, if your church isn't using this, you need to try it - it's a huge time saver!

Nachteile

It can be a little confusing sometimes, and there is way more to it than we use that I wish we could turn off until we need it, but honestly it's still probably the best options out there that we've found.

Vorteile

I love that planning center helps us keep everything in one place! From tracking attendance, tracking people's contact info, and even their giving! It makes it so easy to schedule volunteers and keep up to date on everything all in one place!

Nachteile

One of the only things I don't really like is that there are not a lot of featured built into sending an email to a list. Planning center has figured out a work around to be able to send through Mailchimp to gain some of those lost features, but Mailchimp isn't always the most friendly software to use.

Vorteile

I like how Services and Music Stand work so well together. I also like the seamless integration with CCLI and Song Select. PC has done an excellent job developing integrations that actually seem as though they are part of the native app! Once you connect CCLI and Song Select, you actually don't know you're using them going forward. The same for Faithlife Proclaim.

Nachteile

Music Stand by Planning Center needs more core functionality. For example, you can't mark up the PDF chord sheets to save and recall later (as you can on Music Stand by Worship Extreme). This is a hassle. You also can't mark up the cord sheets and send them out to the band. They have to mark up their own cord sheets. While you can save the PDF chord sheets for each song, mark ups like highlighting and notes on the chord sheet have to marked up each and every time.

Vorteile

Planning Center is industry standard for events for a reason. I thought we could do without it, but I was so wrong! As a team, we use Planning Center every other week for our staff events, and we managed a conference of 1,000+ people using it as well. Even though the event was literally halfway around the world in another country, the team on the other end was just as familiar with the platform and used it weekly for their events. Our mutual familiarity with the program saved the day! The timer helped us keep organized and on-time as we managed 56 speakers over the course of three days. This software is a powerhouse! There's still so much more functionality to get into that I haven't even explored.

Nachteile

Planning Center isn't necessarily the most intuitively designed platform, so there's definitely a learning curve as you get started. Be sure to do the training, or have someone familiar with it show you the ropes. The only thing that nearly tanked our event was the remote connection between the app and the countdown timer for the stage, but I think that was a Wifi issue more so than with the software itself. Overall, it has way more pro's than con's.

Vorteile

Planning center seems to be designed to be easy to use first, and to have all the features second. I appreciate this because a lot of the alternatives end up being too difficult to use, PC is great for the end users.

Nachteile

I guess the only thing is that there are a few features they don't have yet that I would like to see, like more automation and a bit more flexibility on user permission management

Vorteile

Planning center is awesome! We have centralized and organized all of our production planning, volunteer scheduling and service planning in one single platform. It has become part of the every day use of our church.

Nachteile

The hardest thing in planning center was how difficult it was to implement it. Any organization will find a hard time implementing new software that everyone needs to use, but it is much harder when you are dealing with volunteers. Once we got over that hurdle, I can't really complain about anything.

Vorteile

There 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.

Nachteile

The “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.

Vorteile

I like having individual apps for the different functions in PCO. Each module/app is easy to use and setup. Plus they all integrate seamlessly with one another. Workflows for everyday tasks like first time guest follow up, volunteer email/communication, event registration, and attendance is extremely valuable.

Nachteile

After using multiple church management systems, PCO has all the features we need...so not real cons for me.

Vorteile

PC is a very robust system. I love that it incorporates multiple applications into one suite.

Nachteile

I don't like that when I create an event I cannot give someone else access to edit the event. This is actually a big problem when it comes to having events approved and having an assistant make any changes. I wish they allowed you the ability to co-edit.

Vorteile

When we started using Planning Center as our CMS, it made our lives so much easier as it was able to keep track of everything from our members, to events, to groups, and it even integrated with our offering, so it's such a great software that's easy to use!

Nachteile

Planning Center is really easy to use and they provide tutorials, so there's no complaints here!

Vorteile

I've used Planning center for about a year now though I've known of it for years. I don't know how other churches get by without it! It has so many different uses from checking in children, to organizing rooms and supplies for events, to keeping track of attendance for groups, and of course scheduling volunteers for services. It's very versatile and brings order to the chaos of being a volunteer based work space.

Nachteile

It does have some software bugs with their mobile apps. Often, I've scheduled people on the computer, but when I go to the app it will have other people "pending" under the wrong date and when I try to remove them, I get the "oops, something went wrong" message over and over again. It would also be nice if Planning Center Groups had their own separate phone application to make things more versatile for group leaders, that would be amazing!

Vorteile

Probably the best thing about Planning Center is their customer service! Their support team is always quick to respond and happy to help. On the rare occasion that things have gone wrong, they are transparent and thorough in their follow-up.

Nachteile

Some of PCO's mobile apps lack some of the more useful features of the web/desktop versions.

Vorteile

So many options! Service planning and structure and scheduling. Small group organization and sign ups. Safe check in for children and students.

Nachteile

Duplication of profiles when someone signs up with a different email or incorrectly types their email (.con instead of .com haha)
Not being able to precheck children very early. Would be nice to be able to do it a day or two in advance.

Vorteile

This is an amazing support to the organization of our team. The ability to plan events - schedule people for those events - and to contact them automatically cuts our time down so much. It allows us to put energy elsewhere knowing that Planning Center is doing it's job. It has improved our communication and efficiency greatly.

Nachteile

There are some struggles with the layout of the app. It tends to not be as user friendly as it use to be honestly. The recent changes have cause some frustration - even though change is good.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

It did have a ton of versatility built into the system.

Nachteile

Oh my - it would be a very long list. When I was using the product it had very little ability to sync with any app service or any giving service. We are a progressive church and was looking with software that would grow with us and stay current to the times we live in. At the time, that was in no way found here.

Vorteile

I appreciated how easy Planning Center is to use and to add people to. The dashboard makes it easy to view services, add members, and add videos/mp3s/pdfs for the service that members can view. It also has a lot of different products that you can take advantage of depending on your team's needs. Overall, it's a great tool to keep your volunteers and staff on the same page and your team doesn't have to be incredibly tech-savvy to take advantage of it.

Nachteile

I think the emailing system on Planning Center could be a better. It was easy for emails and notifications to get lost or not show up in the primary section of my inbox. Overall though, I really appreciated the easy and versatility of this platform.

Vorteile

Planning center integration for many different purposes within the church. When I first use planning center I was a user at a church where I was involved with worship ministry and the planning of services. I would receive an email saying that I had been scheduled for something and it was easy to respond and also give the dates that I wasn’t available in advance.
Now I Work for a nonprofit that uses planning center people to organize it’s volunteer base.
It easily integrates with mail champ and I love that.

Nachteile

When I originally used it for service planning I didn’t realize how integrated the People section was. The different sections that you can obtain our little confusing but once you figure that out it’s easy to use.

Vorteile

Planning center is most useful for planning services that include songs, charts, speaking times, etc. and delegating roles.

Nachteile

It is difficult to estimate the number of users required ahead of time, so the pay structure is a bit bothersome and when various users (team leaders with edit rights) tried to add new people, they received a message that they'd have to upgrade the number of users. It would be great if there were more email notifications for when a group is close to thresholds, or someway the account administrator could pre-approve increasing the number of people in the system, so when we need to level-up, a team lead could do this rather than having their service planning be interrupted.

Vorteile

There is so much to Planning Center. But there is a learning curve. Once understood, it's invaluable to our organization. The online database of our people is what's most valuable to us.

Nachteile

There's a bit of a learning curve to each add-on. I do wish some of the features were easier to find or figure out.

Vorteile

The most impactful part of this software is the communication to members and the ability to organize and manage volunteers.

Nachteile

I don’t think I can think of anything that needs improvement.

Vorteile

Use this every week - both on the admin and user sides- to add members, create workflows, update info, as well as keep myself on schedule for team rehearsals/church services on the production side of things (we are busy folks!)

Nachteile

Sometimes he system will overbook people on scheduling (when they serve in more than one position) and create duplicate files on the admin side, and not indicate this automatically. Would be easier if it would "catch' the mistakes and auto merge for me.

Vorteile

The Planning Center team must be inside my brain. Everything that I have ever needed within my various roles over the years in the church, planning center was able to address. From service planning, to giving, event registration, facility use schedules to and best church database software. It is everything that you need.

Nachteile

Time to time there are various glitches. Which is pretty common, but they are quick to address.

Vorteile

For churches looking to plan their worship sets and volunteer teams, Planning Center is the best in the business. For worship teams, you can avoid using emails to send out sets and instead send out a push notification to confirm worship member availability. And they can also easily see the order of service, access chord charts, and listen to the songs within the app.

Nachteile

I can't think of anything I don't like, maybe outside of it being difficult to add multiple users to an account.

Vorteile

Planning Center allows for quick and easy scheduling of both volunteers and for weekend service planning. It's most basic functions are intuitive for the regular user and the many volunteers that are likely to interact with it. The software becomes less and less intuitive as you use the moderate to more advanced features. However, their help line is one of the best around. There's rarely a wait time and the tech support is responsive and well trained. It's a good value for the monthly fees as it would take several other services to replicate their many offerings.

Nachteile

When it comes to giving and financials, the software falls short. It simply isn't as well designed as it could be and it requires way too much guesswork, trouble shooting and sometimes even multiple entries of the same data.

Vorteile

Planning Center makes my life easier. From scheduling people, deploying information on groups and events, to giving and giving access to all of that information through an app. LOVE

Nachteile

If there's one thing that sort of gets me, it's some of the pricing. BUT, with that said, I get it. They provide an amazing service and that costs money. We're just a small startup church and can't afford all the bells and whistles we want.

Vorteile

I like the way it allows all of the worship team to see and plan together...learn music = have resources in one place..

Nachteile

I know they are working on it - with the addition of groups - but I wish there was a place to chat and contact other memebers - an easy way to use PCO for everything and not have to use additional log ins like What's App to communicate with teams...

Vorteile

We utilize this software to plan our services, keep track of membership and teams, get notifications out to members, store song files and chord charts, integrate to ProPresenter, and on and on. It is such an integral part of our weekly services and it keeps us on track.

Nachteile

Sometimes creating and managing templates can be a little challenging. Creating teams and managing team members is not as intuitive as I’d like it to be either.

Vorteile

Auto-volunteer contact and reminder texts/emails
Ease of creating assigned roles and positions
Drag-and-drop method for assigning volunteers to a specific role
Custom email/text templates for communication
Rotating schedules can be formed for monthly/weekly/daily volunteers
Information on all volunteers in one place
Integrations with CCLI, ProPresenter, and other softwares

Nachteile

Can be tricky getting from one area to another for planning
Steep initial learning curve

Vorteile

It is so easy to use and makes sending out scheduling reminders so smooth. Having all the songs and service order all in 1 place is perfect.

Nachteile

I cant think of what I’d consider the biggest con of PCO. Most of it functions so nicely.

Vorteile

Services App. I like Music Stand but room for improvement.

Nachteile

People Software...You have to figure out better reports tied to easy feasibility of emailing from reports. This is where Fellowship One has you beat hands down.

Vorteile

I've been a Planning Center user for many many years and it is the standard for planning event services, orders, times, tracking, communication, etc. We use it weekly for scheduling teams, communicating with teams, reminding teams, tracking times through a service, communicating in real time chat, it literally does it all and there is no better solution in my opinion!

Nachteile

The "teams" and "tags" functions can be a little confusing to people at first.

Vorteile

All around the best way to plan efficiently and communicate event details. Very easy to use for whatever it is you need to use it for.

Nachteile

There should be an easier way to connect with users on planning center itself without it also going through each person's email.

Vorteile

I like the ability to upload songs according to their ccli number. The invitation feature when building a team with the ability to accept or decline requests.

Nachteile

Its not very intuitive and there are so many things to explain when training someone how to use it. I also don't like the access needed to add or edit a service. You basically need to be an admin. to add a song.