ShelbyNext Membership vs Clearstream

ProPresenter

Planning Center

ChurchTrac

ProPresenter is a live presentation & worship application designed to help churches & schools manage & display lyrics and other media in real time, improving engagement. It allows users to control & handle presentations from a centralized screen & present content via one or more outputs.

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.

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

FellowshipOne

Servant Keeper

Realm

Church Windows

Tithe.ly

Tithely Church Management

Subsplash

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.

There are no options for managing volunteers and planning.

Office Administrator

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

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

Music/Media Coordinator

We could run reports and keep track of volunteer teams.

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

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

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

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!

Chmeetings

ChMeetings is an all-in-one Church Management Software trusted by 7,000+ churches. Manage members, events, giving, volunteers, child check-in, and more. Includes a member portal, branded mobile app, and built-in church accounting.

Lead Pastor

Anyway, it is unfortunate that I have to reach out to support to adjust a subscriber who has opted out accidentally.

Operations Manager

Their tutorial videos are well-produced, and if I have further questions beyond those, their customer support is extremely responsive, knowledgeable, and friendly.

Ministry Support Staff - Connections

The customer service has been fabulous as well - quick response times to the simplest & most complex questions - that what a significant factor for us when we were choosing which platform would be the best fit for us.  

Send mass texts and emails to your church, have two-way conversations, follow up with workflows, and create text-to-join keywords, QR codes, a custom landing page, and more.


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 (78%). The most frequent use case for Clearstream cited by reviewers is church management (76% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Some reviewers appreciate Clearstream’s transparent pricing and say the flexible plans scale with their needs. Users report good value for the features offered, but some reviewers find costs add up quickly, especially for high-volume messaging.

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 an SMS marketing tool with key features that include mass texting, member communication, third-party integrations, mobile access, contact database, message personalization, and more.

Clearstream

Gloo Messaging

Text In Church

EZ Texting

PastorsLine

Textedly

Flocknote

Rock RMS

MinistryTracker.com

Elexio Community

$29/mo

$49/mo

$99/mo

$199/mo

$299/mo

Confusing and costly credit system

Their extra charges to buy additional credits is a little high and to be honest, I don't understand why the credits we purchase for our monthly plan do not roll over.

Marketing Executive 

I find this to be confusing and it is very easy to blow through your credits if you have a large list of people to text and respond to.

59% of reviewers feel negative about Clearstream’s credit system. Some users report frustration with credits not rolling over monthly, making it easy to lose unused credits. Reviewers indicate that sending longer messages or including media quickly consumes credits, leading to higher costs, especially for large groups. They find the pricing structure confusing and wish for clearer explanations. Some reviewers say budgeting is difficult due to unpredictable credit usage, and they dislike the need to purchase additional credits at what they feel are high rates.

Efficient mass communication tools

Pastor of Administration

Clearstream helps us communicate with everyone in just a few simple steps.

Campus Pastor 

Clearstream has greatly improved our communication with our teams and members.

99% of reviewers feel positive about Clearstream’s communication capabilities. Reviewers indicate that the platform allows them to quickly reach large groups, streamline messaging, and reduce manual effort. Some users say the system is easy for non-technical staff to use, and they appreciate being able to communicate both broadly and individually. They find the tool helps keep teams and communities informed, organized, and engaged, and they value the ability to receive responses, making communication more interactive and effective for their organizations.

Strengthening church connections

Administrative Operations Director

Clearstream so far has been a game-changer in helping us stay in contact with new and old attendees of our church.

96% of reviewers feel positive about Clearstream’s impact on church congregation engagement. Some reviewers find it simple to connect with members, automate follow-ups, and target specific groups within their church. They appreciate seamless integration with church management systems, which they say saves time and unifies communication across ministries. Users report that the platform deepens relationships by enabling regular, relevant contact, and they value its effectiveness in reaching both new and existing attendees, especially during critical times like service changes or lockdowns.

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.

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.  

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.

Preaching Minister

I appreciate the planning center integration, as I can message from ClearStream to planning center lists or message straight from planning center.

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.

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.

Each ministry uses it to stay in touch with notifications about upcoming events and needs.  

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.

Campus Connections Director

External integrations are a bit complicated. Although I had a hard time on the external side, Clearstream offered no speed bumps or hindrances.

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

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.

Covocational Church Planter

I wish the phone app had more functional features where I could try to resend a message that failed to send.

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

Communication Mgr.

We are always looking for new ways to share church information and updates with our members while being good stewards of the resources God has provided.

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

Our old contact management system was failing because not everyone was receiving the texts and emails that we sent out.

Associate Pastor of Worship

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

ShelbyNext Membership vs Clearstream Comparison (2026)

ShelbyNext Membership

Clearstream

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives