# Planning Center Groups Reviews **Vendor:** Planning Center **Category:** [Church Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/church-management) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 24 ## About Planning Center Groups Group management for Churches ## Planning Center Groups Reviews ### 1. Easy Group Creation and Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kayley H. | Creative Project Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2026 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Planning Center Groups makes it easy to create and manage groups. It was also straightforward to implement and integrate into our church’s small-group experience. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** Nothing specific comes to mind. Overall, we’ve had a good experience using Groups. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Groups has made it easy for us to see which small groups are available and who is participating in each one. It also integrates smoothly with the rest of the PCO platforms. ### 2. Like a Group Menu for your congregation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Easier for people to get connected to others in the church and find a group that fits their schedule and location. They don't have to contact anyone over the phone, they can just use their app to join a group. Also current groups are able to communicate with each other in there instead of using external software or the dreaded text chain. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** Nothing i dislike, but it can be frustrating for the end-user if there are no community groups available to join. that's on our end in needing to recruit more group leaders, but it is a reality and it can be a bad look. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** I would recommend enabling this feature with the other suite of PC products. It's better if you are fully integrated with all PC products than to use this as a standalone product. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problem solved was the ease in which someone could find and join a group. This tool does make it more simple. ### 3. We use PCO Groups across the board at all of our campuses. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lauren N. | Marketing Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** I love that it integrates with Church Center and that you can have users take attendance, etc. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** We're a multi-site church, and you can only assign one campus to a certain group. It would be helpful if we could tag two campuses. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** It's easy to set up, easy to administer, and pretty easy to train people to use. Go for it. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a complete solution for all of our group leaders and pastors to manage groups. ### 4. BEST CMS OUT THERE **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chad W. | Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Works seamlessly with other Planning Center applications. Plenty of options and app provided for church members to communicate with each other through PCO. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** Needs a few more features to make it as robust as it could be. Does require some training for new users, but their tutorial videos are very helpful. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** All of the group attendance and emails for the church are sent using groups. ### 5. Groups are good **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 25, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** It connects with the database so it is easy to add people into the groups. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** The events from registration don't sync well with groups. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communicate with grops individually. ### 6. Good, but it gets tricky if you have a lot of groups **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** The app works as intended. People can join groups (either public or private), leaders can text and email their members, and tracking assistance is a great bonus. As always, Planning Center support and team are always ready to help. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** This may not be an issue to most churches, but it was a dealbreaker for us. Long story short, our church encourages every member to open and lead a small group themselves, so they can preach the gospel in their neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. This mean that we have a lot (1000+) of active small groups. While each leader could manage their group once it exists, creating them, sorting them, and finding them was like finding a needle in a haystack. The app has some filters, but none of them was tailored towards our needs. Reports are good, but they only give a very general overview. Again, we need a way of filtering and reporting on a more specific level. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We really wanted to use groups and tried it for a while (we use almost every other PC app), but this is definitely not designed to be used in the way we intend to do it, so we had to stop using it. Not because the app is bad, but because it is a match for us. I wouldn't recommend it blindly (like I would Check-ins, for example). I'd need to ask some questions beforehand, but I wouldn't have problems recommending this to any church after explaining our experience. ### 7. PCO Groups is the Way to GO **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** I can have members all in one place and contact them without using separate software. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I haven't found anything yet that I dislike. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** PCO Groups is a great resource to use for organizing groups in a few different ways. Check out Planning Center Univerisity Video Tutorials for a clear picture. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows us to see all our different groups in our church, some public and some not, divided into categories/ministries. All align with the primary database to see everything a person is involved in from their personal profile in People. Very Cool! ### 8. Planning Center Groups - Great asset for your church! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sheryl S. | Office Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2020 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** It's easy to use and is a great way to keep our groups organized! We can use it for a variety of groups. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I would like to see the ability to email our groups through the church center app. Also, you can't put someone in a group without that individual having the ability to see that group on their church center app. Some groups we would like to use for church staff only and wish we could disable the ability for individuals to see that they are "in" that group. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** Planning Center Groups is so easy to use. If you are already using Planning Center, you need to also be taking advantage of Groups! Staff, Deacons, Youth Groups, Small Groups, Bible studies...the possibilities are endless! **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** There are many ways we use Groups - our growth groups, staff, elders, Bible study groups, children's ministry leaders, etc. We can take attendance, email, and add resources (such as our weekly Growth Group questions). Also, having the Church Center app allows you to view your group details and instant message those in your group. ### 9. The best way to stay connected in your church **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kyler S. | Production Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2020 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** I love having the ability to create groups for people and have a secure place for them to connect together and have all the information they need. Also being able to send out mass info to the right people who are always selected ahead of time. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** The interface can sometimes get frustrating to use and get used to, especially with 3 other planning services being similar but different at the same time. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** If you are already using another Planning center service, it is definitely worth switching to a convenient place of having everyone in one location, without the need to import information to other services and websites. This will save so much time for you and your staff. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Contacting all the people involved with groups at our church like staff, volunteers, and other services. ### 10. Planning Center Groups Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alesha H. | Worship Director , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** What I love the most about Planning Center Groups is that I can put teams of people I manage into specific groups, I can then communicate via email with that specific group, I can create meeting times for those groups, and it makes it so much easier to manage my teams, also I love that the names and photos of the groups are customizable! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** The only think I dislike about Planning Center Groups is that once in a while, one or two team members won't get an email I send, because their email address isn't considered valid, but I've only run into this once or twice, and could have even just been a fluke in the system. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** If you're unsure of whether or not this program would be beneficial to you, I'll tell you, it will be! You won't regret using it. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm solving the issue of organization! Rather then keeping it all organized on a document or notebook, I can literally make and name a group, and put all my teams into it, it makes it SO easy to keep my teams organized. ### 11. Planning Center Groups has been great so far! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miranda M. | Children's Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** What I like best about Planning Center Groups is the ease! We've used other software before that was so difficult to use, track data, and explain to users. Planning Center Groups is so user friendly and allows us to track all attendance in all the groups. You can even create events per group and chats within the members of your group. It makes communication to all your group members incredibly easy and we love it! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** What I would like to be different in Planning Center Groups is that when someone wants to join a group it makes them create an account. However, if they already have an account in another Planning Center product, like Services, it doesn't just pull their information from there. So, when that happens we have a lot of duplicates. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** If you're thinking about trying out Planning Center Groups, I highly recommend it! You won't regret it. We do create a form via Planning Center People for small group leaders to sign up. Then we use that information submitted to create each group. Once you add leaders to the group they can edit all the group's information. The ease of use is fantastic and unmatched! **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Groups is solving a lot of our communication issues within the groups. Also, it has been so helpful in being able to tracj how many active, current group members we have per semester of small groups. It's so much better than "paper and pencil" and it helps us run reports and keep track with church members who want to take any next steps in getting involved in our church. ### 12. Effective and efficient for Scheduling and planning services. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charleigh P. | Charleigh Pafford , Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 05, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Planning center is very clear about teams and it's great for adding links to things you may need! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** Most often, the issue isn't ever with the app itself, but in the way the admin approaches the use. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** This is great for worship and Volunteer teams! **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning center is great to keep large groups of people in the know with little hassle. ### 13. Ease and organization **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Planning center makes it easy and efficient to organize and fulfill the needs of my group. There's many options for my church. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I wish it were easier for my members to sign up and create and account. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** I now can schedule well and my team has an easier time knowing when they are scheduled. I also like that I can put all of the files in one place. ### 14. Great way to organize small groups at a church. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew B. | Sr Web Designer, Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** As a group leader at my church, Groups makes life so easy. We can keep an updated list of every member's info (email and phone), I can attach documents, images, and videos for everyone to access for our meetings, as well as take attendance to track which events have the most impact. The group information section is also super helpful for potential members to find a group that fits their location, schedule, and age bracket. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** There is no app for this program, which would be super convenient. The ability to jump onto the app to take attendance or add an event would be much easier than having to open a computer and login. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Groups streamlines the small group experience across our entire church and gives us a central hub for current and prospective members to explore a group that would fit their lifestyle. It also gives our people a space to access anytime to view information and resources regarding our small groups. ### 15. Great small group management for churches of all sizes! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zack S. | Sound & Media Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** It's a very easy to use system with a user-friendly UI that makes managing small groups or ministry groups a breeze. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** It would be nice for there to be a bit more customization for the pages that the congregation sees. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** Use the free trial and check it out! **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a way to make our small groups available to browse and join online, and we've seen an increase in small group attendance because of it. ### 16. Planning Center Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Planning Center makes it so easy to keep volunteers organized with templates, teams, and automatic reminders. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I haven’t found a ton that I dislike, but when you’re trying to edit teams or songs and such, the navigation of it all gets a bit finicky. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We schedule our volunteers on a weekly rotation, and PCO makes it very beneficial and easy to keep track of that. I create 5 different teams for the 5 different Sunday’s we may have and then just plug in volunteers according to their tag. ### 17. Train people first **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Homer P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** It's very easy to add people to groups and communicate changes and updates to them. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** The UI is not intuitive enough. It requires training people on how to utilize it. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** Schedule training for your leaders before you implement this solution. It is difficult to train them on the fly, after going live. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We started with Planning Center Group to enable our group leaders to manage their resources, attendees, volunteers and schedules more efficiently. While it appeared that the creators and developers asked a lot of questions and tried to address potential concerns, it wasn't as easy to learn as we'd hoped. ### 18. Great group organization!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter E. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** There are several features I think are significant. First, it’s easynto update geoupsnonnthe backend. We can add, remove and adjust groups and their info with ease. Second, the public group directory makes it super easy for members of our church to find a group that suits them and sign up or communicate with the leaders. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** There are a ton of ways to “tag” a group and I think that is a bit confusing. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Prior to using PCGroups I was constantly the bottle neck for info or how to get in touch with leaders. Now people can click the site and directly access that info. It frees me to actually do my work. ### 19. Easy group management on sliding cost scale **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Audrey R. | Office/Operations Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2017 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** I love how easy it is to get going with PC Groups. Especially if you're already using PC People for people management, they work together seamlessly. When you begin with Groups, it comes with several example groups already set up so you can see the options available for how to use this module of Planning Center. It's easy to look at a sample group and then model your groups setup after the samples. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** It has a lot of features, which is good, bit since this is a newer product from PC, there probably aren't alot of helps out there. You have to figure it out yourself or contact PC's (excellent) support team. If you have LOTS of groups (like more than 15 or so) you'll want to put some thought in advance, into how to categorize them for easy browsing. Also, thus module costs Per Person in it. A person can be in multiple groups and you only get charged for them once, but this is not a good format for managing email lists, or groups of people that don't get regularly updated. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy Group setup and management, by admin or group leaders themselves; super easy interface for adding members to groups, or having them submit a request to be added to a group; love that a whole set of Web pages is built for you based on what you set up for your grouos, and the external Groups page is super clean and easy for end users to browse groups. ### 20. Planning Center Rocks **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** md F. | test, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Planning center is super easy to use, and I can use it on all my platforms which helps when I am not in front of a computer. I like that all of the platforms are integrated and work seamlessly. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I just like that sometimes when I have a document up and I scroll down that it goes too fast. I would like to be able to adjust the sensitivity of the scrolling. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** This is the easiest system that we have had so far **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** The most important thing that we solve is that we are able to send everyone the documents they need before we actually physically meet together. This saves a lot of time because then we can expect employees to show up ready to work. ### 21. PCO groups **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lorena S. | Envelope Secretary/Financial Admin Assist, Non-Profit Organization Management, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** It's very easy to add people to groups and to manipulate the data surrounding them **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** Reporting is a feature the team is working to develop. I'm happy it is a priority. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are are much easier to see connections between people in the organization b now that group tags are added ### 22. Planning Center makes my planning easier **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Collin K. | Tax Intern, Accounting, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 02, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** It is very organized and I am able to be very specific in the details of how I plan things. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** Sometimes people do not accept the invitations which can cause a headache. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** You should use this software. It drastically improved our organization and got people on the same page. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has helped our business to organize and plan and schedule meetings between people. It also lets us organize the time of meetings, what the meetings are about, and you can share them. ### 23. Planning Center Groups **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2017 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** Planning Center Groups allows us to create landing pages for each of our groups, and it's easy for users to contact group hosts to find out more information. I appreciate the security options that are available, as well as the calendar, and group communication options. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I would appreciate more opportunity for groups to interact with one another through this service. For example: A group leader can email the group, and they can email back to him, but there's no way for group conversation between all with the way that messaging is currently setup. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Groups:** I think it has great features and can be customized for many different ministries. I appreciate that this piece is optional, and that Planning Center Online doesn't require you to take a bulk package, but that you can choose the pieces you need for your church. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** This allows our church groups to be organized in connection with People, our church member database. It replaces the previously cumbersome attendance lists, and keeps everything in one place. ### 24. Planning Center: Groups Accessibility **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Groups?** I like the ease of creating groups directly through Planning Center: People lists as well as searching for people and creating new groups. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Groups?** I dislike the calendar feature with its inability to interact with other groups calendar and not involved in Planning Center: Resources. It also doesn't have an app for easy on-the-go access. **What problems is Planning Center Groups solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using it to track and communicate with our student and parents groups at our Church. - [View Planning Center Groups pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/ministry-centered-technologies-planning-center-groups/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-29+16%3A41%3A05+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=0e0a2c63-e376-49d7-bce5-746afa7fd39d&secure%5Btoken%5D=771ed33e8a02b61338415ae2dd2587feeed71ac596eeecd5e176b61f49d63cb4&format=llm_user) ## Planning Center Groups Integrations - [Planning Center Calendar](https://www.g2.com/products/planning-center-calendar/reviews) - [Planning Center People](https://www.g2.com/products/planning-center-people/reviews) ## Planning Center Groups Features **Platform Basics** - Membership Tracking - Donation Management - Congregation Communication - Worship Management - Event Planning - Church Accounting **Platform Additional Functionality** - People Management Specific Tools - Event Management Specific Tools **Agentic AI - Church Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance ## Top Planning Center Groups Alternatives - [Text-Em-All](https://www.g2.com/products/text-em-all/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (815 reviews) - [DialMyCalls](https://www.g2.com/products/dialmycalls/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (966 reviews) - [TouchPoint Church Management Software](https://www.g2.com/products/touchpoint-church-management-software/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (195 reviews)