Blackbaud Church Management vs. Rock RMS

I believe this system was overpriced and under-supported. From experience, it is very clunky and lacking features that churches would find helpful. There are no scenarios for which Blackbaud Church Management is well suited. It is not appropriate for churches. I would avoid it at all costs. They were also not willing to assist in moving to another system.

Incentivized

Rock RMS is a great CMS for churches passionate about technology and innovation. It requires advanced developing skills to operate, which can be a challenge - but there are several partners available for contracting work. Successful usage of Rock RMS opens up the door for endless possibilities - from dynamic and beautiful websites, automations that serve both internal (staff) and external (customer) needs, and unending possibilities for innovative solutions!

• Very customizable
• Content channels are powerful
• Web and mobile app integration

• Not geared toward churches
• Missing much functionality
• In my opinion, horrible and incompetent support
• No ongoing support for their system

Incentivized

• Group Scheduler is missing some key features
• Event registrations aren't the most user friendly
• Security permissions are a challenge as we grow

In my opinion, you will need to have developers on your team, or partner with contractors in order to get Rock RMS set up properly and keep in maintained. I think you will also need to have Rock RMS Super Users who can troubleshoot bugs and handle basic requests from internal staff. There are also several functions that every day staff use which are very user friendly (i.e. Group Viewer, content channels, Group Scheduler, communication templates.)

In my opinion, Blackbaud was by far the worst experience we have had with any church management system. We initially moved away from Shelby Systems to FellowshipOne. In an attempt to consolidate church management and accounting into a single system, we moved from FellowshipOne to Blackbaud Church Management to accomplish this. Both FellowshipOne and Shelby wer far superior systems.

Incentivized

In my experience, Rock RMS is much more customizable, robust, and community focused than PCO. Planning Center's sweet spot is music management and volunteer scheduling, but I think Rock RMS outshines PCO with its integration of web sites and mobile apps, automations and jobs, workflows, and its focus on community. There are tons of free and paid plugins for Rock RMS, as well as multiple Rock RMS partners to choose from.

• A negative ROI
• Difficulty in moving data to another system
• Caused a lot of extra work to fix all the errors that came in implementation

Incentivized

• Fosters amazing data insights!
• Fast and efficient!
• New innovative solutions always being added!