Planning Center vs. Realm

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Planning Center
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Planning Center in Carlsbad offers modular church management applications, providing CRM, tithe management, event registration and attendance, and volunteer resource scheduling.
$14
per month
Realm
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Realm is a church management system from ACS Technologies, designed to create real ministry opportunities by making it easier for your church family to connect with each other throughout the week.N/A
Pricing
Planning CenterRealm
Editions & Modules
Calendar
14+
per month
Check-ins
14+
per month
Giving
14+
per month
Groups
14+
per month
Registration
14+
per month
Services
14+
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Planning CenterRealm
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices increase based on the number of members and attendees.—
More Pricing Information
User Ratings
Planning CenterRealm
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Planning CenterRealm
Likelihood to Recommend
Planning Center
Planning Center is incredibly helpful if you are in the business of putting on events, performances, or productions. In such situations, Planning Center will help you coordinate with a large group of people, clearly showing who is expected to do what during the order of a service. If you are planning a major event (a wedding service, a major birthday party, a work event, or any kind of production), Planning Center will foster both teamwork and clarity. The only scenario I can envision Planning Center not being helpful would be a more laissez-faire type of event, (like a "come and go" reception).
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ACS Technologies
In my current project, I am saving the full model into the Realm Database. it takes very little time to integrate into our existing project. So it helps us to save a lot of time and easy to fetch data and CRUD operation with any type of data. and according to our need, we can modify it as well.
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Pros
Planning Center
  • Volunteer Management
  • Scheduling
  • File Hosting
  • Communication tools
  • Automated reminders
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ACS Technologies
  • Tracking attendance
  • Running reports, both financial and membership-related
  • Nursery check-in
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Cons
Planning Center
  • Adding files to an item on a playlist can be hard to find outside of that set.
  • Previewing songs on import gives very limited info - can be hard to find the correct one.
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ACS Technologies
  • As it has all type of necessary feature which should have any Data base.
  • If we can save full structure in Realm easily then i think it will be good for developer.
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Support Rating
Planning Center
I've not needed to use Planning Center support. In the few instances that I would have thought would "require support," tips and notices popped up on screen letting me know what was happening. There are very VERY few issues that I've found with Planning Center. The interface has been intuitive and powerful, so I've not needed to use their support service.
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ACS Technologies
Our transition to Realm was fantastic. We had a rep do two days of training with staff. She also provided us with a step-by-step plan for our rollout to the congregation. In addition to the fabulous customer service team, the "help" section of the Realm website is useful--it includes written answers and also video tutorials/webinars. The search function in the help section is built effectively.
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Alternatives Considered
Planning Center
At one point, I was presented with both Asana and Trello as helpful tools to facilitate teamwork and collaboration amongst a large group of people. However, when it comes to putting on productions/services/events, Planning Center just seemed to have everything we need. I have never really once given thought to moving on from Planning Center. I'm sure Asana and Trello have much to offer, and I did briefly consider the, but Planning Center (for what we needed) was a grand-slam, home run.
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ACS Technologies
From my experience Realm is fatter than SQLite. Realm has less Query and is easy to understand. even new developers also can use it In his/her project. It has a good document so a new developer can read and understand and apply it to the project. SQLite is old and not so easy to understand. we need to add a third-party library to easily use SQLite.
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Return on Investment
Planning Center
  • Planning Center Services has become an irreplaceable part of our Sunday gathering preparation
  • Planning Center Music Stand is an invaluable tool for rehearsal and performance of songs each week
  • Planning Center Giving helped us establish easy ways for folks to give online during COVID and beyond
  • Planning Center Registrations helped us navigate attendance issues during COVID, and has always been our go-to for gathering information for Events
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ACS Technologies
  • This is not my area (finance), but efficiency increased when we moved from Church Windows to Realm.
  • Formatted reports are a huge plus--no need to create a merge document for handouts to be in a usable format.
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