Church Community Builder vs. Rock RMS

Church Community Builder is ideal if you are seeking to connect your church members to your pastoral staff and to one another in an effective way. If you are looking to plan major events (like our church's 25th Anniversary Service, for example; or our annual Marriage Conference), then Church Community Builder will be incredibly helpful to you! Church Community Builder is also helpful for distributing items like membership applications and mass emails.

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!

• Helps church members connect with one another.
• Provides church leaders with church members contact info readily and efficiently.
• Helps register attendance at retreats and other church events and functions.

Incentivized

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

• "Processes" option can sometimes be a bit confusing
• Mass communication process (via email) is a bit confusing
• Mass communication process (via text message) seems to be lacking

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.)

Far and away, Church Community Builder is an incredibly superior product to PowerChurch. PowerChurch did not nearly feature all of the useful tools that Church Community Builder offers. Church Community Builder's greatest advantage over PowerChurch would be its accompanying Lead App, which allows me as a Pastor to easily pull up the contact information of any church member simply from my iPhone - PowerChurch didn't offer anything even remotely that useful. Choosing Church Community Builder was a clear no brainer.

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.

• We have seen increased connection between pastoral staff and church members
• We have been able to more effectively put on excellent church-wide events
• We have been able to systematize our membership application process (and also keep a better paper trail)

Incentivized

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