# Page 6 | Planning Center Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra > Page 6 - Is Planning Center the right Donation Management solution for you? Explore 1137 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/76708/Planning-Center/reviews --- Planning Center 4.7 (1137) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated March 13th, 2026 # Page 6 - Reviews of Planning Center ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 126-150 of 1137 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use KD Kati D. Worship and Women's Pastor Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Planning Center has stream-lined our whole church volunteer base." April 15, 2019 4.0 We love Planning Center and it has revolutionized our church's organization. Pros We can literally keep all our church info under one umbrella. We schedule all of our volunteers for worship, coffee ministry, early childhood, sound, kid's wing... everything with Planning Center. We would be lost without Planning Center. We are able to see when our volunteers are scheduled in other departments. We use the kid's check-in app. We have even recently used the "Registrations" app for some of our sign-ups, it's a little pricey but pretty efficient. We run so much of our church with Planning Center. Cons It definitely sometimes has weird glitches where some volunteers will not receive emails sent to them all time, or worship team members getting unscheduled. We are not entirely sure if it's Planning Center's fault or some weird planning center fairy messing with us. Review Source Response from Planning Center April 16, 2019 Hi Kati! Thanks for sharing the love. We are are so happy it has helped you and your ministry. We did notice you mentioned some volunteers will not receive emails sent to them. If you notice this happening we'd recommend writing in to our support at support@planning.center and we'd be happy to look into any issues you are having. We want our software to help you and your ministry be the best it can be. So if you have any hiccups, don't hesitate to reach out. We look forward to hearing from you! Nasko L. Chief Operating Officer Food Production Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Planning Center Will Take Some Planning" February 17, 2022 4.0 Pros It is easy to use for scheduling team members for their events and shifts but it has some visual limitations in terms of how much info/data you can see on the screen. It has a great feature of drag-and-drop of team members into slots for teams/events. It also has a great feature for sending out messages and alerts, including reminders for upcoming events that team members are scheduled. Cons It has some limitations for what can be displayed on a screen and moving across multiple events is somewhat limited. Review Source MH Michael H. Lead Pastor Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Easy to use, but ease of use leads to fewer options, it seems" January 2, 2021 5.0 Enjoy using this product. Although the simplicity does mean soome needed functionality isn't there, it's ease of use and reliability make it an excellent product and value! Can't beat their prices anywhere. Pros I like how Services and Music Stand work so well together. I also like the seamless integration with CCLI and Song Select. PC has done an excellent job developing integrations that actually seem as though they are part of the native app! Once you connect CCLI and Song Select, you actually don't know you're using them going forward. The same for Faithlife Proclaim. Cons Music Stand by Planning Center needs more core functionality. For example, you can't mark up the PDF chord sheets to save and recall later (as you can on Music Stand by Worship Extreme). This is a hassle. You also can't mark up the cord sheets and send them out to the band. They have to mark up their own cord sheets. While you can save the PDF chord sheets for each song, mark ups like highlighting and notes on the chord sheet have to marked up each and every time. Alternatives considered [WorshipTools Presenter](https://www.capterra.com/p/170168/Worship-Extreme/) Reason for choosing Planning Center Connection with Services and other PC products. Review Source Response from Planning Center January 15, 2021 Hey Michael - Thanks for the review! Music Stand actually does come with the ability to save and recall personal annotations! Check out this article for more info on doing that and don't hesitate to reach out if you run into problems with that. https://pcomusicstand.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000253707-Add-Annotations-to-Files Lyndale H. Pastor Religious Institutions Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Best Church Management for People" October 18, 2022 5.0 Pros This program is great for people management and connection. Makes tracking people easy. Volunteer management is incredible. Cons Really no complaints. Reporting features take a bit to learn but still good. Reason for choosing Planning Center Best people management Review Source JS Jacob S. Operations Director Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "The Best All-in-one ChMS" February 27, 2020 5.0 We started using Planning Center 10 years ago for our service planning. A few years after that, we migrated our kids' check-in system to Planning Center, then our Groups. Now we are transitioning away from CCB and PushPay to go all-in on Planning Center for every aspect of our database management. Pros Planning Center's interface is intuitive, attractive, and friendly to users who are intimidated by traditional technology applications. Planning Center just works, which cannot be said for the majority of players in the world of church management software. Lists are powerful and integrations flexible. Mobile apps are robust. Cons There are still missing pieces in the Giving App, especially as it relates to importing previous contributions and handling non-deductible transactions. But Planning Center is constantly evolving, and I am confident that within a couple of years their donor management will be up to full spec. Switched from [ChurchStaq](https://www.capterra.com/p/211982/ChuchStaq/) CCB has not kept up with the times. It was a powerhouse in 2010 but has not evolved to meet the needs or feel of software in 2020. Review Source Kellianne M. Auditor Government Administration Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Good for just about everything except giving" February 5, 2019 4.0 Overall this is a great church management program for church functions, music, scheduling, kids checkin and church congregant databse management. Where they fall apart is on the giving management side. Year end reporting does not allow to exclude statements under $250, ststements are not labeled with donor name on all pages making it extra time consuming to ensure all pages go to the right donor. Giving via ACH for donors can take up to 10 days to clear their bank account making for a huge lag in receiving donor funds. I would rate the giving platform 2 stars and the rest a 4 out of 5 Pros Databse use, services and team scheduling and planning, resource usage, kids checkin Cons The giving platform is really lacking in reporting features, time to give via ACH, year end statements and payment bank deposit tracking Review Source Response from Planning Center February 8, 2019 Thanks for you kind words and honest feedback! If you'd like to walk through any of the issues you are running into or submit a feature request, would you be up for contacting our support team, here: support@planning.center. Or through the helpdesk of the app. We take feature requests very seriously and we'd love to hear what you'd like to see change! Benjamin B. Worship Pastor Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Central to Our Church" November 5, 2020 5.0 Planning Center has amazing customer service has always offered wonderful products specifically tailored for ministry use. Pros We use Planning Center for absolutely everything in our church. Whether acting as our church member database, service itineraries and scheduler, check-in systems for children’s ministry, or registering for events, Planning Center provides an extremely reliable platform that is user-friendly for all of our staff and volunteers! They have wonderful customer service and are constantly adding new features to their platform. Cons I don’t know if any cons with using the software. Planning Center does a great job of staying ahead of the game and fixing bugs before they become major problems. Review Source Response from Planning Center January 8, 2021 Hey Benjamin - Thanks for the review! So glad to hear Planning Center has been useful in your ministry. Please reach out if you have any questions! Doug W. Vice Chair - Board of Trustees Religious Institutions Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Really good church database" January 25, 2019 5.0 What a pleasure to work with a software team that genuinely wants to solve your problems! Pros PCO is a very full-featured church operating system (except no integrated accounting). It makes so much of the work of church management easier and better integrated. Online registrations, meeting materials, giving, and so much more. Their support staff is also amazing. They respond to questions and problems very quickly, and have resolved some technical issues very promptly. Cons Wish that you could set security at a more micro basis. Users have either full permission to the selected modules, or no permission. It would be nice to select functions within modules for permission, for example in Giving, it would be nice to give the counting team the ability to enter a batch, but not finalize it, or not release a finalized batch for further editing. Review Source Response from Planning Center January 29, 2019 Thank you for your review Doug! In regards to permissions, specifically in Giving, we plan to introduce additional levels of access down the road. We don't have an exact ETA, but this is on our roadmap of future updates! You can stay in the loop on new Giving features from our announcements page here: https://bit.ly/2x3Rsyv Chris R. Production Tech Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great planning and scheduling software for churches of any size" February 24, 2021 5.0 Planning Center has been great. Our church users a few of the products (well, we did prior to COVID) for service and check-ins, and our experience has been great with all of them. Pros I have been using PCO for years at various churches and on events outside of church. It makes it really easy to schedule volunteers and to collaborate on the event schedule. If the service is well scripted, running PCO Live for timers to keep everyone on schedule is amazing. There are also plenty of additional Planning Center tools to help churches with managing all aspects of their church all from one platform. Cons The pricing can be a bit daunting, especially for smaller churches. There are some features that could be a bit more discoverable or easier to use. As a technical person I like the evergreen approach that Planning Center takes to be constantly iterating and improving the UI/UX of their software, but some changes can be quite jarring, especially for infrequent users. Review Source Response from Planning Center March 1, 2021 Thank you for your kind words! We would love to hear more feedback with regards to which features could be more discoverable/easier to use. If you would, please send us an email at support@planningcenter.com to continue this conversation. Thank you! BV Brandon V. Next Generation Pastor Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Planning Center is THE standard when it comes to Church Planning Software for good reason!" October 3, 2017 5.0 Planning Center allows me to keep all of my teams and schedules organized with very little headaches along the way. I use Planning Center multiple times each week and use it to keep track of a large database of volunteers. Within seconds I can see what areas we are weak in volunteer wise and schedule accordingly. I have had very little issues with Planning Center, but anytime I need help, their customer service teams are phenomenal. Pros Planning Center allows me to keep all of my teams and schedules organized with very little headaches along the way. I use Planning Center multiple times each week and use it to keep track of a large database of volunteers. Within seconds I can see what areas we are weak in volunteer wise and schedule accordingly. I have had very little issues with Planning Center, but anytime I need help, their customer service teams are phenomenal. Cons On rare occasions there are features that are difficult to navigate. For example, I was recently changing someone's availability within their profile and the dropdown for possible service times wasn't showing the service times it should have. There was a menu I had missed that changed this dropdown to be correct. The Planning Center team fixed the issue for me quickly and taught me how to do it myself in the future so I am definitely not complaining, I would just say there is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to navigating all of Planning Center's options. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Office Administrator Religious Institutions Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Planning Center: Excellent Church Database" October 31, 2018 5.0 After the learning curve, you will find that Planning Center helps meet your church needs and will significantly increase your productivity within the church! Pros Planning Center is the perfect business software for our church's needs. We have now implemented the Resources tab into our church and its excellent for reserving rooms/vans. We have one mass calendar that allows us to never overlap. Our ministry leaders love using the service portion to update our schedule and worship services. Members have the chance to approve or decline their volunteer positions which allows our leaders to know if our Sunday's are properly staffed. Sending emails through the database are extremely simple. We are also a very diverse church and I love the demographics and people status feature. Cons It was a significant learning curve to understand how to implement the software. I can't even say this is a true con though because with any encompassing software, it will take time to learn all the ins and outs. The only true con is that we are only allowed so many check-in's in one day until the price increases. Since we are a church, we only use check in on Wednesdays and Sundays which leaves 5 days for us to not check anyone in. Even though we are not touching the weekly check-in quota, we would still have to pay more for the two days that we do. Review Source Response from Planning Center November 5, 2018 Thanks for your review! Check-In's limit is a daily limit, and the unused check-ins don't roll over to the next day. So there's not a "weekly check-in quota." Planning Center Support DB Deborah B. Administrative Assistant Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "BEST web-based software for worship planning" October 3, 2019 5.0 We've been using Planning Center for about seven years. I don't think we've ever had an issue with the product. I've never had a need to contact customer service. It does what it is supposed to do, and it makes this aspect of my job as the administrative assistant of a worship department of a large church much easier. Pros Planning Center is extremely easy to use. I can very easily do everything I need to do. When I train new people on Planning Center, it is one of the easiest products to train someone on. It is very intuitive and easy to figure out what to do even if you don't know how to do something. Cons My only issue is sometimes the app is a bit finicky. For whatever reason there always seem to be a bunch of extra roles that need filling on the app only. I try and delete them, but I can't. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app, but still have issues Reason for choosing Planning Center I wasn't part of the team who made the initial decision to switch. Review Source Response from Planning Center October 4, 2019 Hey Deborah, Thanks for writing an honest review for us! I noticed that you mentioned having some issues with the mobile apps. You may have already done this, but if you haven't, would you mind sending in a support ticket to support@planning.center. If there is an issue with the app we want to make sure that we can get that fixed for you! Thanks! Patricia S. Writer & Designer Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Manage Events Like a Boss" February 23, 2019 4.0 Planning Center is just like it sounds - the center for your event planning. Whether you're running a full-service event with all the bells and whistles like we were, or just want a nice run of show and the ability to assign people to event teams - you'll be able to do what you need to with this software. It's a no brainer if you need to manage people and timings. Pros Planning Center is industry standard for events for a reason. I thought we could do without it, but I was so wrong! As a team, we use Planning Center every other week for our staff events, and we managed a conference of 1,000+ people using it as well. Even though the event was literally halfway around the world in another country, the team on the other end was just as familiar with the platform and used it weekly for their events. Our mutual familiarity with the program saved the day! The timer helped us keep organized and on-time as we managed 56 speakers over the course of three days. This software is a powerhouse! There's still so much more functionality to get into that I haven't even explored. Cons Planning Center isn't necessarily the most intuitively designed platform, so there's definitely a learning curve as you get started. Be sure to do the training, or have someone familiar with it show you the ropes. The only thing that nearly tanked our event was the remote connection between the app and the countdown timer for the stage, but I think that was a Wifi issue more so than with the software itself. Overall, it has way more pro's than con's. Review Source SF Shaun F. Pastor Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Planning Center ... makes ChMS easy" August 16, 2023 5.0 Pros They listen to their users! They love feature requests and actual implement many of them! Cons The only "CON" is getting every staff member to buy in and actually use it. Review Source Response from Planning Center August 16, 2023 Hi Shaun! Thanks for your kind words! Please let us know if you need any assistance while using Planning Center. We are here to support you and your staff! JH Josue H. Musician Entertainment Used the software for: 2+ years ### "The Perfect App for Churches and Worship Teams" April 12, 2022 5.0 Love using Planning Center and I do not see myself using any other app for my organizations. Pros I love this app sooo much. I have been a user and also an admin on the app. I am able to schedule my teams for Sunday without having to message people individually about their availability. The calendar sync is great. I love that my teams can have the chord charts and also have the mp3 all in one place so that they know what to practice and I can add notes to it all. Cons This app is perfect. I have not run into any issues. The app even syncs well with Onsong which is a HUGE plus. Review Source GS Gabriel S. Director of Operations Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "This is the gold standard for church management. " February 6, 2020 5.0 We mostly use the Services product so my experience with their other products is pretty limited. It has become absolutely indispensable to us however. We use it to schedule team members for our music and production teams, map out service structure ahead of time, Store, practice and schedule song files, and more. Without PCO we would have a disaster on our hands. Pros \- lots of great features. I’ve been using Planning Center for years and I still learn something new every week. - So. Many. Integrations. PCO will integrate with literally hundreds if not thousands of other faith-based platforms making it super easy to connect it all together. - modular pricing. You pay for what you use and leave the rest. Great for smaller churches because of this. - overall value for your dollar. These products are awesome and well worth the cost per month. You can even choose to not pay a dime and use limited versions of each product to test out. Cons \- learning curve. There is a LOT here, and it can take a while to learn the ropes. On-boarding new members can take time and patience. It’s gotten much better over the years though! - no more cons that I can think of! Why are you looking at cons! Go buy Planning Center! Review Source JW JOY W. Fundraising Coordinator Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "User Friendly" October 27, 2023 5.0 Pros I love how easy it is to access and customize events, registrations, payments, etc. Easy tracking and management. Can sort the registration lists a variety of ways. Can add manual payments and registrations. Can access people information, household information, attendance records, etc. Love it! Cons I guess what I like least, is the fact that payments towards an account are split equally for registrants in the same household. Our situation with fundraising is that sometimes one registrant in the household partakes in a fundraiser, while another does not. When I post a manual payment, it posts to the household total due instead of just one registrant or the other. We also sometimes have donations come in for one registrant or the other and I would like to be able to post it to just one of their accounts instead of both. Review Source Response from Planning Center November 1, 2023 Thanks for your kind words, Joy! You mentioned issues with manual payments and households. Our Support Team is a great resource to help look into this more with you. Hit the '?' icon in the upper-right of the screen. Send us a message and our team will jump in to help! Ryan B. Administrator Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Best Church Management Option" October 28, 2019 5.0 Overall, it's really helped us manage our church. We use it for scheduling, groups, workflows, emails and tons more and it really works exceptionally well for us. Pros Planning center seems to be designed to be easy to use first, and to have all the features second. I appreciate this because a lot of the alternatives end up being too difficult to use, PC is great for the end users. Cons I guess the only thing is that there are a few features they don't have yet that I would like to see, like more automation and a bit more flexibility on user permission management Alternatives considered [FellowshipOne](https://www.capterra.com/p/230779/Fellowship-One/) Reason for choosing Planning Center Ease of use Review Source Rachel W. Communication Coordinator Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great solution for volunteer coordination" January 8, 2019 4.0 Pros It was very easy to create a calendar with available dates and blocked dates for church volunteering abilities. It was easy for church leaders then to create volunteer teams based on these calendars. Cons Though it was nice to be able to note how many times a month I was willing to serve, I wish there was a greater ability to make this unique for each team I was serving on. For instance, instead of saying that I was only willing to serve every 6 weeks overall, I would prefer to have been able to say on Team A, I was willing to serve 2 times a month, on Team B, I was willing to serve weekly, and on Team C, I was able to serve 1 time a month. Also, it would have been nice to be able to specify serving with different people depending on the team. For Team A for instance, I'd like to serve with my husband, but on Team B, I needed to actually serve opposite weeks as my husband. Review Source Response from Planning Center January 11, 2019 Hi Rachel, Thanks for writing an honest review with lots of great ideas! If you haven't done so already, would you mind sending in those ideas to us so that we can track them as a feature request? You can send us an email at support@planning.center. Thanks! VR Verified Reviewer Executive Pastor Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Planning Center as a one stop solution for Churches" August 15, 2018 5.0 Overall Planning Center is the best one stop solution for the church in my experience. Pros Planning Center really does just about everything you could ask it to do from managing services, to groups management, to people database, to check ins, to registrations, and so much more. It really is one of the best out there for user experience and as a one stop solution for the entire church. Cons Planning Center isn't cheap, but you get what you pay for. There are a couple of things that you have to learn work arounds for as well. Like sending second invitations. The program is designed to have people sign up for service opportunities and to manage themselves. There are work arounds to have your leaders do this as well, but it takes a little getting use to. Review Source BP Brianna P. Worship Director Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Transformative technology" May 5, 2022 5.0 Pros The implementation of Planning Center at my church was unbelievable. It created a hub that brought so many areas together. As the worship director, using planning center was a life saver. Instead of having multiple platforms for charts, lyrics, scheduling...etc. I could do everything in one place. It saved me time and effort planning worship sets and scheduling volunteers to play in the band. Additionally, it was a great area to track giving, have a directory, and send out mass communications to church members. Cons There isn't anything that I disliked. If you are on the edge about using planning center, just go all in. DO train people to use it so others know how to utilize the technology. Review Source AM Avery M. Musician Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Planning Center makes leading worship simple" August 20, 2021 5.0 I had to learn this program basically day 1 of receiving the role of Worship Leader at my church. It took an hour or so, but once I figured out how to work everything, it became more fluent with planning services. I LOVE how we can store songs in different keys. It makes planning much simpler and helps keep everything flowing nicely. Really love this product Pros I love the easiness of this program. The interface takes a bit of time getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, you excel pretty quickly. What I love about it is the simplicity of it. Whether I'm on my phone or on a computer, it still feels the same. They did a great job with implementing on both sides of the spectrum to make a intuitive program to help with services on the go. Cons The interface change they did in August isn't something that I truly liked. They changed up a few things. It's not too difficult right now, but I really got used to how the old interface worked before they changed it. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Media and Communications Minister Religious Institutions Used the software for: 2+ years ### "A must have for any church, organize you volunteers and staff where they serve" March 21, 2018 5.0 Pros I love the ability with the Service portion of Planning Center. With that, we have all the info of our volunteers for each ministry saved in one place and are able to schedule them where needed. The fact the members can mark their availability and accept or decline an invitation to serve has streamlines the whole process and greatly reduced the time it takes to ask people to serve. You can create different teams of people. different events and plan. It is a must have for any church wanting to utilize people in the most efficient way. Cons The only complaint I have had is sometimes people new to the app have a hard time figuring it out. As soon as I am able to walk them through it they seem to be able to figure it out. Review Source HG Henry G. Production Lead Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "The planning tool you'll never turn away from" June 18, 2020 5.0 Our experience as a church with planning center has been off the charts. We went from planning cervices on a spreadsheet to having a centralized place where everyone can access weekly service plans, make edits and schedule their volunteers. It also helped us import our database and we have started using other services like registrations and groups. It honestly works very well for us. Pros Planning center is awesome! We have centralized and organized all of our production planning, volunteer scheduling and service planning in one single platform. It has become part of the every day use of our church. Cons The hardest thing in planning center was how difficult it was to implement it. Any organization will find a hard time implementing new software that everyone needs to use, but it is much harder when you are dealing with volunteers. Once we got over that hurdle, I can't really complain about anything. Reason for choosing Planning Center Planning center seemed to be the most self explanatory from all the other softwares we were comparing it to at the time of purchase. I also knew of a lot of other churches that were using it at the time. Now virtually every church that I know uses it. Review Source Tracy J. Associate Pastor Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Every church needs Planning Center" March 15, 2018 5.0 This has made my everyday tasks easier and has significantly improved the organization of our church. It has also allowed me to use data collected to analyze trends within our organization and form strategies to effectively meet our goals. Pros Apple said it first, "There's an app for that!" When it comes to church management, Planning Center has an app for almost everything! I like that we can use ONE system for multiple needs: kids' check-in, event registrations, volunteer scheduling, and more! Cons Running reports or creating lists using the data collected can be kind of tricky at first. It would be nice if Planning Center offered some basic reports that could be run without having to customize and set them up yourselves for those not naturally gifted in analyzing data. Review Source Talk to a Capterra advisor for free and get results within 15 minutes.