ChMS vs Planning Center Comparison

easy of use, event check-in, twexting, online contributions.

needs scheduling module and intergration with planning center online.

Update: Since this was posted, volunteer scheduling was added to the software and has even had upgrades in functionality since then.

Easy to find people. Centralized database, Calendar, and Facility management. Off site backup.

Dated user interface. Lack of media file management (media player for video / music files) . No service planning module (see Planning Center Online). Limited integration with social media, SMS, ect.

Hi Jon, thanks for your review! We hear you on the social integrations and UI. We're continually developing new features and integrations, and working to make the software as intuitive as possible. Keep up with improvements here: http://updates.ccbchurch.com/

Effective. They have been in the ChMS game for a while. They are trying all they know to keep up and add new features. The "Workflow" feature is really helpful

You are only allowed two people to contact them for help. All of your questions have to go through those two staff. This was problematic for our team. We paid a hefty price for a software that had many drawbacks and not having the best and easiest support left me with a sour taste.

CCB was the first ChMS we used as a new church start-up 13 years ago. It met our needs. Check-in was essential as well as online contributions.

Over time we became disappointed by the slow progress in rolling out product improvements. Service planning / scheduling in CCB was inadequate so we used Planning Center. There was no integrated mobile app so we used Subsplash. Process queues and reporting was very cumbersome to use. The merger with Push Pay was the catalyst for us to look at alternatives due to our negative experience with Push Pay when search for a mobile app solution.

Here is a list of the pros: 1. The software is robust. It is comprehensive in its data search and storage capabilities. 2. The software is evolving. CCB is constantly updating and improving upon the software and app. 3. There is an app that allows us to search our congregant information and follow up on processes. 4. The software was transformational to our assimilation guest ministry process. Not...

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Here are some of the cons: 1. The software is so robust you almost need a dedicated position to create calendars, forms, searches, processes, keep the database clean (people who leave, etc...), and train people on how to use it. 2. The software does not do schedules like Planning Center does (not as user friendly and it doesn't connect with Songselect). Honestly, it seems like Planning Center and...

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I love how much you can do with processing data, the conditional searches and Data capturing tools are very good.

It's just not the most intuitive and easy to use software for the common folk, this is where Planning Center smokes Church Community Builder, they have a killer app that I can get volunteers to use easily.

I love the ability to track assimilation and interaction with everyone at all of our campuses. We are able to keep our information accurate for all campuses to view and make changes to. CCB has allowed us to connect with our church family that much easier.

If I could make a few areas more robust I would build out the scheduling and weekend planning to interact more like Planning Center so that we did not feel the need to use two different software programs. The form functionality is great but conditional rules within forms would be awesome! I would also love to see more mass editing/deleting features in areas like forms, process queues, files and mail merges for the master administrator.

Wide array of functions, the best help section and support I've encountered for any software, constant updates,

No CCLI integration in the scheduling and service planning tool

We love that all our data is integrated from our church directory to our forms to our small groups. This has helped us as an organization keep accurate data.

They have been slow to make their software mobile-friendly. Instead of seeing that trend coming, they were behind the curve. They are moving that way now, so that is exciting. We also wish we could merge the capabilities of Planning Center Online into CCB. This is one of the big data silos that remains independent of CCB. We would like to move all our volunteer scheduling into CCB, but beucase of the lack of this capability, we are unable to.

We schedule each service with the roles we need to fill. People usually respond through email to requests. I can see all schedules and who is filling the roles for the week.

It's "choppy." The pages, the features, the options, it's not straight forward, half of our congregation don't really use it. There are lots of features we don't use, cause it doesn't come natural. The latest update I had hoped would improve it a lot but it just doesn't seem as user friendly as planning center when I compared the 2. But we're already with CCB so we don't want to switch, to further confuse those who have learned to use it. I think it's a bit delayed on it's updates and functionality.

Helpful for coordinating teams for services and maintaining member contact info. You can schedule volunteers for your services, host events, publish needs lists, send emails, set block out dates... tons of helpful things for church administration.

It is not very user friendly and requires a bit of maneuvering to do lots of different things. It will require training for users, and even more so for admins.

It's easy to use and the new mobile app is amazing! The tools for scheduling volunteers and planning events really is helpful.

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Church Community Builder is an amazing product for any Church that wants to plan for the future and help support their congregation in the best way possible. It has functions for everything a church would want to do. They are also open to suggestions and always making improvements.

Their form builder and service function aren't quite as good as other programs like Planning Centre and Wufoo. But they have made huge improvements over the past years and are getting close!

This software permitted our church to offer the convenience of online giving for our millenial population. The child check-in process has increased our ability to track kids and create data for growth planning.

I have not found any issues with this software yet. I have been very pleased.

Church Community Builder has endless capabilities such as reserving space in your building, event planning, staff scheduling, giving reports, attendance tracking. And I could go on and on. You name it, CCB does it! It’s a lifesaver.

There are so many features that your older staff can get a little overwhelmed. But with lots of support and training, they will learn it and love it.

Church Community Builder is incredibly user friendly for the most part. From creating forms to scheduling volunteers, it is a very helpful software.

Though it is easy to use, it is still missing key administrative functions. For instance, in scheduling volunteers, there is not an easy way to see the last date a person served. It also lacks any kind of song database for planning music during services.

I liked that the software had a similar look and feel to what we did and that the company is constantly updating to keep current. The diversity of what it covered and the fact that it would be used across the PC/MAC platforms instantly bumped it up our list of option.

While people who use it everyday find it easy to navigate it has been difficult for those that don't get that regular use. With the ease of interaction with a system like Planning Centre it's been a bit of an uphill climb to show how this software can work.

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CCB ties everything we are trying to track, retain, and utilize into one very cohesive product. While there are multiple sections where data points can be collected, you only have to put them in once and they are available throughout the program. Although recording the data is easy, the CCB program helps tremendously to sort and use the data for an unlimited amount of projects and the presentation of the relevant data is very useful. Actually, the CCB Program inspires you with many ways you can use your data that you didn't even think was possible. Plus, it helps us to communicate with all of our attenders in multiple and meaningful ways.

In the past, the mobile side of the software was lacking in usability. However, CCB has really poured a lot of resources in the mobile side over the past 2 years and now it is very usable and graphic.

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Super easy to use and a great suite of apps to meet each ministry need. Having everything synced up, and cloud based is very helpful

It is lacking some features of that the larger ChMS solutions offer but for the price you really can't beat it.

You can house all of your information in one place and the services app is superb.

It seems that the ChMS part of it has alot of room to grow. The People app has some bugs and lacks the features of competitors.

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.

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.

Ease of use for our worship team and scheduling volunteers. App is convenient and user friendly. Making connections is seamless.

We use CCB as our ChMS and we would love for an integration. Currently if a profile is created in Planning Center first, we have to manually enter into CCB as well.

Easy to jump in and learn. All apps have a free subscription level to test the app. This is such a great approach and allows new and existing churches to really "drive" the product before committing. Their support and documentation is by far the best of any CHMS.

This is necessarily bad, but the overall system is still pretty new, so they are still working to add more features and grasp how each app needs to communicate with another.

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.).

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).

Planning Center Online (PCO) is a scalable church or organizational software that adapts with your needs and provides great features that meet nearly all of the organizational needs. PCO offers event organization, people management, resource management, a donation platform, volunteer scheduling, and groups management. All this along with a solid communication platform and several third party integrations make PCO a powerful tool for any church or organization.

There are some features lacking such as built-in texting capabilities or whole-organization integration such as web site and app. The PCO app is not branded and lacks in features but most parts of PCO will integrate into other website platforms such as Wix.

Planning center has many apps, all centered around a common database that serves as the backbone for the entire ecosystem. All the apps reference People, the database app, to add users and administrators to each app. Apps include: Groups: Create and manage small groups. Services: Create service line-ups, worship setlists, and manage volunteers for every team your church has all from one platform,...

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There's so much flexibility with this ChMS that it's hard to know where to start. It's like trying to write a book, and you're staring at a blank page. You know you have something good to write, something worthwhile to say, but you don't know where to start because of the endless possibilities of starting an amazing new journey.

Hi, Hunter! Thank you for your kind words. So glad to hear you're enjoying Planning Center!

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.

What I like most about Planning Center is how they've expanded into a broader church management system and offers many other entry points for managing your whole church. Specifically what I like most about the Services module is the Music Stand app to use my iPad as my music stand with all the chord charts for any service I'm a part of.

The thing I like least about Planning Center is the fairly limited number of people you can add to your services teams before you have to upgrade to the next level. It's my opinion that, since the People portion of the ChMS (Church Management Software) is free, then perhaps there should be a different pricing model for Services so that I don't have to keep archiving people in order to add someone new to a service.

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.

Hi, Cameron! Thank you so much for your kind review. We're delighted to hear that you've had a successful switch and that you're able to use Planning Center as a unified system. Should you soon venture into using our API and have questions navigating through that process, please don't hesitate to reach out to our team for help. All the best!

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Modern software design and incredible dedication to providing users with the best software experience possible. They are easy to communicate with and love to hear what users really want.

Many of the PCO apps are still young and immature (but they innovate fast).

Planning Center is a great all in one suite for a church database. Their customer support is really good. They will respond to your email within an hour. They've had a slack channel that is also helpful for you to learn from others how they are using the software. The majority of their products are great. People, Services, Check-In are best in class in my opinion. Resources and Registrations are good...

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Groups and Giving are what I like least about Planning Center. We had to move on from PC Giving because after 2 years of using it they never added the ability to mass import donations or work with outside vendors. I would have loved to have been able to integrate PushPay with Planning Center. It would have saved us H O U R S. I would have loved to have our members see their entire history of giving....

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Hi Nicholas, Thanks for your review. We've had a lot of changes to our teams in the past two months, and the Giving/Groups team has been split in to two separate teams to help advance both of those products faster. It still might be awhile before Giving has a way to bulk-import payments, but adding the ability to track external payments in September was a step in that direction. It's definitely concerning that you feel our staff is arrogant, so if you would like to contact me directly about experiences that contributed to this feeling, I'll gladly look into it with you. Reagan Helms Support Team Lead Planning.center