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Planning Center

Planning Center

Overview

What is Planning Center?

Planning Center in Carlsbad offers modular church management applications, providing CRM, tithe management, event registration and attendance, and volunteer resource scheduling.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Planning Center has become an invaluable tool for churches and non-profits, providing efficient solutions for managing events, …
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Pricing

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Calendar

14+

Cloud
per month

Check-ins

14+

Cloud
per month

Giving

14+

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.planningcenter.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Planning Center?

Planning Center in Carlsbad offers modular church management applications, providing CRM, tithe management, event registration and attendance, and volunteer resource scheduling.

Planning Center Competitors

Planning Center Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(29)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Planning Center has become an invaluable tool for churches and non-profits, providing efficient solutions for managing events, coordinating schedules, and streamlining operations. With its user-friendly interface and customizable features, users have found it easy to plan and coordinate attendance. The software's attachment capabilities have proven helpful for planning purposes within the system, allowing users to conveniently share documents and keep everyone on the same page. While some reviewers have suggested updates to improve usability, overall, Planning Center has been praised for its comprehensive and user-friendly nature.

One of the key advantages of Planning Center is its ability to serve as a central hub for organizing and communicating church activities across different ministries. Users rely on this software to schedule and manage volunteers for music, children, and youth ministries. It is also utilized to coordinate worship services, sermon series, and special events, ensuring that all team members are well-informed and aligned. Additionally, Planning Center's database management capabilities, event management tools, small group ministry features, and charitable giving management functionalities are highly valued by users.

The affordability of Planning Center makes it suitable for small churches while also offering potential benefits for larger churches. The software not only saves time but also improves organization and communication within church communities. By overcoming communication issues within teams and providing access to all necessary details, Planning Center ensures that everyone involved in church activities is on the same page. Furthermore, its supportive community and dedicated Slack community allow users to seek help and find answers to their questions.

In summary, Planning Center offers a comprehensive solution for managing events, coordinating schedules, and streamlining operations within churches and non-profit organizations. Its user-friendly interface, attachment capabilities, customization options, and supportive community make it a powerful tool for organizing various ministry activities. Whether it's scheduling volunteers or coordinating worship services, Planning Center provides the necessary features to simplify processes and improve efficiency.

Easy to use and navigate: Users find Planning Center easy to use and navigate, making it simple to respond to scheduling requests and block out unavailable days in advance. Many reviewers appreciate the platform's intuitive and user-friendly interface, which allows them to easily donate, schedule volunteers, and access all desired tasks through mobile devices.

Robust options in planning categories: Planning Center offers robust options in all planning categories, allowing small teams to easily keep track of volunteers, kids, donations, visitors, and more. Reviewers highlight that the comprehensive suite of features offered by Planning Center is a major advantage for event management, with almost every feature necessary for a church available regardless of one's position.

Seamless integration and accessibility on mobile devices: Users appreciate the seamless integration between different components of Planning Center as well as its accessibility through mobile devices. They praise the modern tools provided by Planning Center and acknowledge the deep understanding of the unique environment that churches operate in. This makes it convenient for users to access and perform all desired tasks while on the go.

Difficult to Use and Learn: Some users have found Planning Center to be somewhat difficult to use and navigate effectively. They mention that there is a lot to learn about the software, which can take a significant amount of time and effort. The options and steps in Planning Center can be overwhelming and easy to lose track of.

Cost Structure: The cost structure of Planning Center has been a concern for some users who feel that it is slightly overpriced. Users mention that the separate charges for each app and tracking donations could be a drawback compared to other companies. Additionally, some churches find the cost of different apps and their capacities daunting.

Customer Service: The customer service of Planning Center has been mentioned as an area that could use improvement in terms of responsiveness and helpfulness. Some users feel that better training documentation would help users and volunteers get up to speed more easily with the software.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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David Calvert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planning Center for scheduling and managing all volunteers in music ministry, children's ministry, student ministry, and our security team. We also use Planning Center's Giving app for charitable giving management, their People app for database management, their Groups app for our small group ministry, their Registrations app for event management, and their Check-Ins app for children's ministry check-in each week. These products are an integral part of our interaction with congregants and volunteers on a weekly basis.
  • Volunteer Management
  • Scheduling
  • File Hosting
  • Communication tools
  • Automated reminders
  • Groups' Communication Tool
  • Giving app scaled access for volunteers
  • Church-wide communication tool
  • Song-reporting integration with CCLI
If you are a music/worship leader in a local church, Planning Center will be your absolute best friend. It changed the way I interact with my team, our songs, and our order of worship each week. If you are involved in a small church with a limited budget or you have very few volunteers, Planning Center may offer more than you need.
  • Automated reminders
  • Scheduling tools
  • File hosting services
  • Mobile apps
  • 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
Planning Center provides more integrated people management than FellowshipOne or CCB at a better monthly price. Planning Center Giving is more competitive than Pushpay and also available at a better rate. Planning Center Services is hands-down the standard for worship planning in contemporary church environments, and no other platform has reached their level of service and experience (Worship Planning, etc)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a church, we use Planning Center on a weekly basis. It helps our Worship Pastor coordinate with the entire Sunday service team about song selection and the timing of events within services, and it clarifies responsibilities of who is doing what during a worship service. Though it is predominately used by our Worship Team and Sound Crew, others use it as well (such as myself, the Youth Pastor). It is especially helpful in our annual Youth Conference, wherein we have several sessions and we need to clearly state who is doing what during these sessions.
  • Easy to use app
  • Helpfully displays order of services/events
  • Provides instant collaboration among several users
  • Could improve the "timing" tool (as in, adjusting the time when events start)
  • Could add personalization options (as in, the ability to upload a logo for an event)
  • Could add a "copy and paste" feature (maybe there is one, but I haven't seen it)
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).
  • Collaboration among many users
  • Ease of arranging events within an larger event
  • Ability to access the tool from one's phone or tablet (the app)
  • Planning Center has helped us put on quality worship service every week
  • Planning Center has allowed us to put on an annual youth conference with excellence
  • Planning Center has promoted teamwork and collaboration among our volunteers
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.
Church Community Builder, Pushpay, Todoist: To-Do List & Task Manager, Wix
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planning Center is used as the hub for our worship team. We use it to schedule volunteers; allowing them to communicate their availability as well. We also use it as a tool for planning services, preaching schedules/sermon series, and special events. It allows us to coordinate with volunteers, get them the information they need, and make sure we're all on the same page as a staff.
  • Volunteer coordination with blockout dates.
  • Fantastic repository of resources.
  • 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.
Planning Center is very scalable for use in both small and large applications. If you're already using ProPresenter, it integrates well, saving time. It really shines with the added Music Stand app for use by team members for practicing on their own time. If you have a very small or limited team without the need for advanced scheduling, another more "basic" option could be more suitable.
  • Reliable and consistent scheduling options for volunteers. Keeps them happy and us staffed.
  • Better communication makes for a better planned and executed service.
  • Breeze
I've used worshipteam.com for worship resources, which has a few advantages. It's much easier to transpose music sheets AND audio recordings with a click making for an easier practice session. Planning Center does not provide an easy-to-use function like that (though they do offer a transposing site: transposr.com). That being said, it's the only selling point for another product. Planning Center far outweighs that "con" with so many pros. Advanced, but intuitive scheduling and ability for volunteers to add "blockout dates" is invaluable. Matrix view allows for easy scheduling for months at a time. The ability to integrate with Breeze (or similar church management programs) is a plus. We use ProPresenter which integrates with Planning Center making Sunday setup very easy.
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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