ShelbyNext Membership vs Clearstream

Planning Center

Text In Church

PastorsLine

FellowshipOne

Gloo Messaging

Compare ShelbyNext Membership and Clearstream based on features, pricing, verified reviews, integrations & more on GetApp. Find out which software is best for your business in 2026.

Clearstream

Two-way enabled mass texting, integrations with popular ChMS and other 3rd party apps, multi-management capabilities, text-to-join keywords, automated workflows with conditional logic, native apps, live polls, and dedicated short codes.



Tithely Church Management

Breeze is a cloud-based church management software designed to assist small & mid-sized churches in managing events, donations, follow-ups, volunteers, and more.

Try a free 30-day trial of Breeze today and see why more than 11,000 churches love Breeze!

ChurchTrac

ChurchTrac is a church management software with features for membership management, donation tracking, accounting, reporting and attendance management

ShelbyNext Membership offers attendance tracking, events scheduling and automating processes & workflows for churches and other non-profit organizations

Access Controls/Permissions

Accounting Integration

Attendance Tracking

Built-in Accounting

Child Check-in

Contact Database

Data Import/Export

Donation Management

Event Management

Event Scheduling

For Religious Organizations

Member Communication

Member Directory

Member Portal

Membership Management

Mobile Access

Mobile App

Multi-Location

Online Calendar

Online Giving

Pledge Management

Search/Filter

Small Group Management

Third-Party Integrations

Visitor Tracking

Volunteer Management

Website Management

Worship Planning

ShelbyNext Membership

Web-based

iPad

Android

iPhone

Basic

Pastor

In addition to a solid database ShelbyNext has a robust groups feature that really is the hallmark of this software.

Associate Pastor

Events and Publications

The challenge of creating forms quickly that are ready for immediate publishing and use is now solved! If you need to use forms to retrieve information from your members - this is the software that will help you.

The mobile experience is less than great.

Music/Media Coordinator

We could run reports and keep track of volunteer teams.

There are no options for managing volunteers and planning.

Office Administrator

The group communication was the biggest downfall of our Small Groups pastor.  

I'm sure it's evolved since then, however, we found quirks all over the place that didn't fit what we needed.

For that you would need to upgrade to the pricier Shelby Arena.

Finally a way to create and share forms in a simplified way.

Giver, attendee

Office Manager

It is very expensive compared to other programs and they lock you into multi-year contracts that you cannot get out of.  

None of the custom reports we created in V5 came over to ShelbyNext.  

The Shelby Financials is very difficult and time consuming to use it actually caused a Bookkeeper to quit.  

The upgrade from Shelby V5 to ShelbyNext did not go well.  

This is meant more for very large churches.  

Church Management

Forms and Event Registration

Upgrades and Updates

Group Management

Accent Marks and Symbols

Email and Text Communication

Information Management

Report Export

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Mid-size Business

Freelancers

Ministry Brands

Planning Center is an all-in-one church management system made to help you organize information, coordinate events, communicate with your team, and connect with your congregation. 

Use different tools for your ministry needs while keeping everyone informed about what's happening around the church.

Clearstream is a powerful texting software built for churches. Thousands of churches, from new plants to many of the largest in the U.S., rely on Clearstream to better communicate with their members, visitors, and people through texting.

2-Way Messaging

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

Alerts/Notifications

Automated Responses

Campaign Planning

Campaign Scheduling

Communication Management

Compliance Management

Consent Management

Contact Management

Customer Segmentation

Customizable Branding

Customizable Reports

Drip Campaigns

Email Management

Engagement Tracking

Interaction Tracking

Keyword Tracking

Landing Pages/Web Forms

Mass Texting

Message Personalization

Multi-Campaign

Multi-Language

Open Rate Tracking

Polls/Voting

QR Codes

Reminders

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Reputation Management

Role-Based Permissions

Scheduled Messaging

Shortcodes

SMS Messaging

Social Media Integration

By industry, Clearstream reviewers are most commonly professionals in religious institutions (76%). The most frequent use case for Clearstream cited by reviewers is church management (76% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Reviewers indicate that Clearstream offers flexible monthly plans and they appreciate the ability to scale without long-term commitments. Some users say pricing is reasonable, but some reviewers find costs for longer messages and extra credits higher than expected. Some users report that pricing tiers do not always fit their needs, and they feel the overall cost can be prohibitive for larger organizations.

Value for money

The Clearstream integration most frequently cited by reviewers is Planning Center, a church management product rated 4.8 out of 5 for its integration with Clearstream.

Integrations

Clearstream is a church management tool offering key features such as mass texting, member communication, third-party integrations, mobile access, message personalization, and a contact database, among others.

$29/mo

$49/mo

$99/mo

$199/mo

$299/mo

Pastor Lead Elder

It integrates very well with planning center allowing us to keep everything in one system and place and easily add new folks as they visit and to stay in touch with them as they get to know us.  

Communications Coordinator

By only allowing subaccounts to exist with unique phone numbers, we are concerned about overwhelming our congregation with options. But by having all of our staff/leaders use our main account for their communications, we're concerned about muddying what should be a very simple communication system.

Assimilation Department Director

Things we like most about Clearstream is the customer service, user friendly platform, & seeing where each subscriber belongs to in a workflow, list, or tag.

The ability to send out both text messages and email to the entire team to help with scheduling makes it an invaluable tool.

Project manager

While I really appreciate the ability to create workflows and automate communication in Clearstream, it wasn’t as customizable as I initially expected.

Youth Pastor

Instead of having messages split into two or three parts because of character limits, you can simply purchase additional credits and send the entire message at once.

Board Lead

Its really user friendly - we love that multiple team members can be monitoring incoming texts and that we are able to personalize our outgoing text.

I wish I could manually add contacts to a synced Planning Center list. When I sync the playlist from Planning Center, I can't use texting a keyword either for that playlist.

The transfer wasn’t a smooth process as everything had to manually added. And as a portable church, we’d hope they’d have more options for tap tags functionality.

Lead Pastor

Totally understand the costs of doing business, however there could be some flexibility to the credit plan pricing when the additional sub accounts and other features aren't being used.

Senior Pastor

I wish you could build HTML emails directly into clear stream without having to copy HTML code from another source.

Admin

We use Clearstream as a prayer chain and it is often difficult to get the message in one text and uses additional credits if you go over just by one character.  

Groups and Next Steps Coordinator

I've tried many other softwares in order to help me with text communications and CCB has been by far the most effective for the cost.

The number of sub-accounts that you get for the price is much better than other companies and my church will be moving towards a much larger usage.

We love the fact that it filters easily and connects well with PCO by pushing it back to update or create new profiles.

Ministry Support Coordinator

We use Clearstream to send out information to our church, groups, and group leaders.

Ministry Assistant

It integrates with our Planning Center services and allows us to do everything we need, from mass texts to collecting registrations and prayer requests to sending our weekly newsletter.

It is an excellent text communication and planning tool option for church management and follow-up tools.

I wish there were an AI option that could help tailor a message to a specific character limit.

I like that I can text the students in mass but have individual conversations when they text back.

Associate Pastor of Worship

I wish there was some integration with Realm, which is the church database service our church currently uses.

Senior Director of Ministry

I had used clearstream in the past and am happy to know that it will increase the overall engagement in our church with real time responses from people and the ability to know there's a real person on the other side of a text to our church phone number.

Youth Director

Clearstream has helped me to communicate with my youth ministry in an easy and simple ways that were not possible before!!!

This is helping us connect with New Guests and identifying them in an easy non-intrusive way!!!!!!!!

It helps our organization text people that we need to stay in touch with.

We enjoy the option to schedule future communications with the platform.

Communications Director

With a modern, clean, and responsive UI, regular new updates and free features, and a world-class customer service, I have had no regrets or complaints working with them.

Director of Guest Experience

We can text all the parents of our campers, or send just one text to someone to let them know we are praying for them.

Clergy

Sunaccounts make it so you don't send to the wrong lists and list management.

It provides a simple and effective process to get people connected to our church.

Administrative and Executive Assistant

It helps us for our multiple ministries to be able to text each of their respective groups

Church Administrator

A bit more formatting opions for emails would also be useful.

My people now get a weekly email and a text with a link to our email, they have said how helpful this has been!

A fast, effective, and convenient way to communicate with our Church membership and prospective members.

The features are user-friendly, and once everything is set up, it really allows things to run smoothly and efficiently.

Pastor's Wife

This service has allowed improved communication from the staff to members.

Implementing Clearstream that my church has transformed the way we communicate.

We just ordered Tap Tags and are very excited to get these stuck to the chairs in our sanctuary space!

It's so easy to sync and create lists that expedite communication to different groups.

Administrative Assistant

You can ask a question and get a response within 5 minutes.

We are small church that is growing so we do not send out a lot of text messages or polls for the time being, but we plan to in the future!

Technology Assistant

We can view responses and a status of messages sent from the dashboard.

Sr. Director of Creative and Communications

However, we can’t use it for critical communication yet because my understanding is contacts only import to Clearstream if they have a valid phone number attached.

Integrates seamlessly with our church management system.

Sometimes it is hard to make sure the lists are updating accurately.

ShelbyNext Membership vs Clearstream Comparison (2026)

ShelbyNext Membership

Clearstream

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives