# Planning Center Services Reviews **Vendor:** Planning Center **Category:** [Church Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/church-management) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 181 ## About Planning Center Services Planning Center Services is a worship service planning and volunteer scheduling software for church teams. With Services, you can: 1. Create an order of service with every detail planned out with timing: songs, media, custom notes, and much more. 2. Share the services plan so everyone is on the same page. 3. Organize volunteer teams for every ministry: worship, children’s, youth, events, facilities, etc. 4. Schedule teams in advance and send requests to volunteers. 5. Communicate with your volunteer teams via email, text, and the mobile app. 6. Equip musicians with rehearsal tools to help them practice, including a mobile media player and an app for sheet music. 7. Transpose songs into custom arrangements. 8. Import lyrics, chord charts, and audio files from ReheasralPack, SongSelect, and PraiseCharts. Learn more and sign up for a 30-day free trial. ## Planning Center Services Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Planning Center Services, facilitating smooth scheduling and integration with other apps. (3 reviews) - Users find the **effortless scheduling** of volunteers in Planning Center Services highly effective and user-friendly. (3 reviews) - Users find the **easy setup** of Planning Center Services straightforward and efficient, enhancing their overall experience. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **responsive customer support** of Planning Center Services, enhancing their overall experience and satisfaction. (1 reviews) - Users find the **high effectiveness** of Planning Center Services in scheduling volunteers greatly enhances their preparation process. (1 reviews) - Users find Planning Center Services to be **efficient and easy to use** , seamlessly integrating with other essential tools. (1 reviews) - Features (1 reviews) - Helpful (1 reviews) - Integrations (1 reviews) - Software Integration (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **complex interface** overwhelming, particularly due to choice fatigue for beginners and a cumbersome sign-in. (2 reviews) - Users note that the **expensive pricing** can be a hurdle, despite the value provided by the features. (1 reviews) ## Planning Center Services Reviews ### 1. Easy to use and integrated church database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jennifer F. | Children's Pastor, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 23, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center is an easy-to-use system with applications for all the areas I need, and they’re all connected. The information entered for each person is available across the other modules, which makes it simple to keep everything consistent. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** One of the challenges of Planning Center is that not all the functions can be done from a phone and must be completed on a desktop or laptop computer. That can be frustrating when you are trying to do things on the fly. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** For our Kids’ Ministry program specifically, it integrates our check-in system, our emails to parents, and all of our database information into one complete system. I can easily move back and forth between each module without any hassle. ### 2. Using Planning Center Is A Must! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Music | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2026 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** What I like best about Planning Center is how easy it is to use. I can find charts, music links, schedule, all at my fingertips. It's pretty consistent as far as performance so no real complaints there. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** From time to time (and not all the time) it doesn't always integrate well with the the music links to say the YouTube platform, but overall it does and there's usually a work around. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center solves many things for me, though I would not call them problems. To have what I need to prepare for a music rehearsal on one App is epic. The biggest benefit is the amount of time I save using it. ### 3. Highly Effective Volunteer Scheduling and Weekly Prep Resources **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matt B. | Senior Product Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2026 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** It’s highly effective in scheduling volunteers for Sunday mornings and providing them with the necessary resources to prepare for the upcoming week. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** While it’s a very capable and powerful platform, it can also feel a bit overwhelming for a first-time user, especially when the sheer number of options leads to choice fatigue. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** There’s a reason Planning Center Services is so ubiquitous in the church world: it’s extremely effective at organizing teams and helping them prepare each week. Over the years, they’ve continued to add more features, and with each new release it has only gotten better. I can't imagine going back to busy text threads and shared Dropbox links with my worship team. ### 4. User-Friendly Hub for Church Service Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2026 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love that Planning Center Services provides a one-stop shop for all organizing. It is very simple and user-friendly, which makes it easy to use. I particularly value the 'People' feature as it helps us keep tabs on so many different details of people's needs, involvement, and contact information. Additionally, the initial setup was pretty easy, although it does take some time to do it effectively. Overall, I am very likely to recommend Planning Center Services to others, giving it a rating of 10 out of 10. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I'd like to have a single mobile app for all of Planning Center's functions. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I find Planning Center Services to be a one-stop shop for organizing our church's service planning, publishing, and event registrations, which simplifies our workflow. ### 5. Must get software for your church! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Doug G. | IT / Innovation Analyst, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2025 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** It's so easy to navigate and offers many futures. we Use it everyday and it offers many integrations that work great with other systems. It easy to implement and you will not regret your decision. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The app portion still needs work, it is very basic and they should work on this as this can be a winner feature. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** CMS, forms, app, giving, it a one stop do all software for your church. ### 6. Great for Volunteer Scheduling, but Sign-In Needs Improvement **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brenna M. | Underwriting Intern, Financial Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2025 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The product as a whole allows planning and scheduling for volunteers, and easy access for the volunteers to utilize the features. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The sign-in process can be cumbersome at times. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing volunteers ### 7. Great tools for every church **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** We've been using Planning Center People for many years almost daily. It is easy to use and serves our small church so well. It is very quick to implement and keep up to date. It also connects well with other services we use for text, email and pastoral care. We've never had an issue, but customer support is responsive. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** For the modules we use there is not really a downside. It's free and that's great! If you added all the products would be a little overwhelming for a small congregation. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center People serves as our church membership database. ### 8. Planning Center has it ALL! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christina S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center has made themselves a one-stop shop for most all of our platform needs. The fact that they integrate with so many other applications is exceedingly helpful. It seems that every time I think to myself, "Man, I wish Planning Center did xyz" I turn around and they have an update adding XYZ to their line-up. I am so grateful for all we can do within the Church Center App and the back end of PC. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There are a few things that haven't worked as smoothly as Planning Center does overall. I don't like that the Messaging function for Groups only works through Church Center and not through the backend Groups tab. Opposite issue with Resources. Resources can only be added through the admin side, but it would be so helpful if Resources could be added through the app side. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Tracking group engagement, calendar planning, resource management, first-time guest workflows, serve team scheduling, communication with serve teams... like ALL THE WAYS we could need help, PC is helping. ### 9. Upgrade Your Ministry Volunteer System! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tanisha T. | Project Manager, North America Leadership Development, Customer Success, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 03, 2024 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love that it integrates all volunteers, scheduling and allows easy communications and sharing of information. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Not really a downside, but proper tarining is a must. There are so many things that can be done, it's very beneficial to train in order to properly implement to the larger team. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solves the issue of managing scheduling and roles of volunteers. Assists with intake of new partners, visitors, etc. Forms can be created and distributed easily with QR codes. ### 10. Planning Center User for nearly 20 years **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike Q. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 05, 2023 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** This is hands down the best way to manage worship service outlines, volunteer schedules, charts, music tracks, and realted files! It also is a great way to manage the songs we use and how often we use them. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There is a bit of a learning curve, especially with building and assigning teams, etc. But they have very helpful tutorial videos. Navagating the different features can be a bit convoluted as well. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me communicate with the worship service volunteers and manage their schedules. It also helps them stay on task with letting me know when they are or not availaible ### 11. Large Church Features for All Churches **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris D. | Lead Minister, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2023 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Scheduling members for services, coordinating events, automating background checks, and managing small groups are all great features we use regularly. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The cost scales fairly quickly, though the features are worth it. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our congregation uses planning center to communicate all events and activities to our members. We've found that the automated emailing features and the scheduling platforms have made our monthly service list more manageable. ### 12. Setting a High Bar for Planning Church Worship Gatherings **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David C. | Pastor for Creative Arts, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** All of the tools are built for worship leaders and planners to effectively and efficiently schedule volunteers and resource them with everything needed for a successful gathering for worship. All of the automation in scheduling reminders and all of the ways to customize the plans are vitally important for our workflow. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The current pricing breakdowns seem arbitrary, and there isn't a good pricepoint for our specific church size. We actually use a legacy plan that was a better fit, but if we ever make a change we will get stuck in the new pricing breakdowns. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Services helps us schedule volunteers for our large group gatherings, security team, welcome team, children's ministry, and student ministry. It is a hub for sharing resources for songs, sermons, videos, and any other elements for our worship services. It has automated scheduling tools that save our volunteers time, and the database of volunteers makes communication simple and easy. ### 13. We Love Planning Center! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brooke K. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center has the BEST customer service. They respond to each and every feature request, and they take their time when helping customers. They are committed to making their software better and more usable for the users that are actually using it. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don't have a downside to Planning Center. I love all of their products that I use, and wish I could use all of their products. I love all of the ways they are connecting each of the individual modules - calendar with registrations and groups, registrations with checkins, etc. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** They solve the problems of having to use multiple systems to manage our church database, communications, and media. This makes it easier for myself and the rest of our staff to complete tasks sooner, and love people more. ### 14. In-depth service planning made easy **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Johann S. | Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Centre Services has an absolutely incredible UI, making the abundance of information that needs to be incorporated in planning an effective service (band members, serving teams, media, speakers, order of events) so intuitive to bring together and coordinate. Scheduling all the different role players is also a sinch and makes a huge difference in administrating service planning. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The price can be fairly hefty as it scales over a certain amount of users. We have a multi-site model, and the cost for volunteers in each serving area makes the database balloon quickly. Also, the mobile app can be very resource-intensive on older phone models. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need to do weekly planning and coordinating for our Sunday services (and other church events). This involves both the ordering of music, media, speakers, expressions and announcements as well as each of the people involved in these areas in terms of their availability and task. We are able to coordinate whole teams of tech, worship, serving, preachers, hosts, and kids ministry volunteers into well-designed ministry flows and service schedules. ### 15. Works so great for our organization! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jayson M. | Kid's Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services helps our team stay organized and on track. It allows our worship services to flow seamlessly, as we can coordinate and organize who is doing what in our weekly services. It also helps us send out reminders to those who are participating in our services and allows us to place individuals into teams/groups that work together! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** My one pet peeve with Planning Center Services is that you do not have full functionality on a phone web browser. I was in a spot where I did not have a computer, so I tried to pull up the service plan on my phone web browser, and it did not have the same full functionality as it does on a normal desktop. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Services solves the problems of coordinating. It often falls on one person to make sure everybody knows what they are doing and when they are supposed to do it, but Planning Center helps ease the burden off of one specific person. ### 16. Time and Resource Saving Product-- Used Everyday **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christopher M. | Sr. Marketing Manager, Production, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 10, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Their services product is pretty much the de facto worship scheduling/planning/organizing software on the market. No one else comes close. What people find out much later is that they have a forceful suite of powerful tools that make church management easy. I have been a user (at various churches) for 10 years and I don't see a way to use something else in its stead. I love the product and their support is so helpful. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Not much. The only thing I have experienced is the software is comprehensive enough that volunteers sometimes get lost in it and don't use it to its full capabilities. I find the best users are highly-engaged volunteers, digital natives, and ministry professionals. Once learned, even the most hesitant volunteer feels confident in the value it brings to their ministry efforts. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling, organizing, preparation, and community engagement. ### 17. PCO Helps our church stay organized and running efficently **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rob C. | Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The way everything is integrated together. I like the user interface and the back end sections. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The only thing we would say is there is no grouping discount when you use multiple parts of pco. as a non profit we need to be careful what we spend. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** PCO has helped us keep track OF PEOPLE through their PEOPLE app ### 18. Love having this for preparation for my involvement on a worship team. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brandie F. | Registered Dental Hygienist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** It is straightforward to use, and I am pleased with the app and pc version. I especially love the ability to loop the media parts that I need to hear more of in order to learn it correctly. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It would be nice if the leader posts a youtube video; it does not take so long to load. Also, having the ability to listen to the audio would be a plus. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you are in charge of leading a worship team, I highly recommend using the Planning Center. It is a beneficial organized tool that keeps everyone that is part of the band and sermon on the same page as well as the sound engineer. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping the worship team organized and helping us practice and be prepared without having to take up so much time. I am grateful that my leader uses this so he can record separate parts and I can practice along with the media. ### 19. Planning Center Services **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Danny G. | Media Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** PC Services allows us to schedule many volunteers throughout our campuses easily and simultaneously. Also, you can prepare for different call times for other areas within the church. Now that you can connect your song select account with the planning center, this gives us the ability for the worship team to practice with the music beforehand. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** If there was anything negative to say about the software would be that it's hard for newbies to computers to be able to jump right in and know which buttons to push to get what they need. There are multiple avenues within the software to get to the same screen to make changes, and this becomes confusing on cumbersome at times. Even for the administrators. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** This has solved our problem with organizing our service for all people to have a copy of each service's layout. Also, we are no longer relying on a confusing excel sheet to schedule our volunteers because this is all contained in the same software as our layouts and charts. ### 20. Perfect for tracking trends and communication **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cassandra H. | KidsMin Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 03, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I can send out emails to my team very easily. They have some general templates or you can create your own. Planning Center is so easy to use and you can do SOOO much with it. I use the calendar to align my ministry with the rest of the church, services to create my order of services as well as schedule people and so much more. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Every once in a while there are glitches and it takes a while to get pages loaded. Also, there seems to be quite a bit of issues with printing name tags each week. It doesn't always communicate with the printers. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can keep track of all of my kids and volunteers so easily. I use PC on my computer, tablet and phone. I am able to send background checks to new volunteers to make sure our kids are in safe hands. I can easily communicate with anyone in our planning center system. ### 21. Great Room management system **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 03, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Easy to use. Can print a report of the rooms being used and by whom for the week or however you choose. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Can't customize some of the fields the way we want, such as, add a contact person who does not have administrative rights. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has solved our double booking issues and knowing who used the room last or who used equipment last ### 22. Team Organization at it's finest **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh S. | Media and Communications Minister, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** One of the best features of Planning Center is the ability to schedule events while making the entire outline of the event. This allows you to plan out timing, arrangement, and order, all while attaching media and files to each part of your event. The other amazing feature of Planning Center is the ability to create teams of people and then being able to pull from these teams to assign people to certain tasks and jobs on your event outline. Then you can message them through the service and they can accept or decline the offer. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It is hard to find something negative to say about Planning Center. It isn't the most intuitive software so sometimes you have to do some digging or research to be able to accomplish what you want to; however, that is a minor inconvenience considering all the benefits you get. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center solves the problem of organizing a team of workers around a particular event, communicating with those workers the plans and details of this event, and getting confirmation of those worker's commitment and acceptance of their part in the event. ### 23. Streamlines service planning across teams **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicole W. | Freelance Writer/Editor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love that you can put all of your service information in one place and every team member can log into to view it. It is more efficient but also creates continuity amongst all teams, audio/visual, band, vocals, etc. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It's great that you can import chord charts directly from SongSelect however you can't alter them at all. They said this is a SongSelect decision, but it still makes the program less efficient. If I want to double column the chord charts so they are only one page I have to manually upload them. It also won't let me import lead sheets or add sequence (song order) to the chord charts which would be really helpful! However, their chord chart editor is really great once you get the hand of it and Worship Together let's you import most songs for free and you can edit them however you want. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you have a large enough team or group of volunteers this could really save you some time, but everyone has to be diligent to use it in order for it to work. Service planners need to get information out in a timely manner, and you've got to teach (if necessary) and coach your team to actually log in and view information, confirm schedule, enter block out dates, etc. Otherwise, it's not working for you at it's highest potential. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's much more efficient! It not only streamlines your service information but keeps it professional and removes the burden of communication as you can email people through the system and they can login and see everything they need for their role. ### 24. Works great **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lindsey T. | Administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** It's nice to easily see if a profile has a cleared background check **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Checkr doesn't meet requirements for California **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning center is a great database for our church ### 25. Versatile and efficient way to communicate. This puts things in one place. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karoline R. | Director or Media/Communications, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 07, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The fact that so many things are in one place. Once people create an account, they can do so much with it in this one place. Being able to access everything in an app is the cherry on top. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Once you use an event, you almost have to archive it and start over as a new event if you need to make any changes or if the event isn't offered consistently. Being able to put a memo line when people donate would make things a bit easier on our end. It would also be amazing if children with school grades entered changed automatically every year; they have to manually be changed each August. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Having everything in one place has made things so much easier for us. You can check in, pay for events, make an offering, and register for a program in one place. I love how easy it is to make forms and ask exactly what you want. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Putting everything on an app made everything streamlined. Now you go to one place, instead of at least 3. Administration also has the information digitally, instead of keeping up with sign ups in different parts of the building. We also love that you can pay for trips, events, etc. on the app and not have to write a check or hope that your cash makes it safely to the office. ### 26. Planning Center is Helpful **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kelly T. | Kid's Pastor and Event Coordinator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Our whole staff uses Planning Center and we love it. It allows us to all keep track of what is supposed to happen for all of our services down to the minute. We keep track of all our songs, transitions, and slides through planning center. It also is highly utilized by our worship team to put the keys and tracks of the songs to learn for that Sunday. I love that the whole staff can access Planning Center to keep on the same page. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I do not enjoy using the PC app for the IPhone because it can be complicated to understand. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** The App could be better. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center shows when a volunteer is schedule in another department which is helpful so that you are not double booking. ### 27. The Only Church Management Software You Need **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah N. | Church Administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center provides an intuitive program to organize the people and resources needed for weekly services and special events in one connected software. The training available is thorough and clear, and the customer service is the most responsive, polite, and helpful I've ever encountered. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There are a few clunky aspects, particularly duplicating service types - however, Planning Center does a great job of constantly updating based on customer feedback. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** As you consider Planning Center, check out their training and how-it-works videos and take advantage of the free versions of each application to test it before you purchase. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Planning Center has completely changed how our church plans worship services and special events. The ability to have all involved parties communicating on one platform with access to the same resources without multiple email chains is a huge benefit to our church. ### 28. Extremely Helpful **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kurt S. | Senior Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The interface and design are very user-friendly. From my research, I would say the most cost-effective option in its category that still does what it claims to with relative ease. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I am not a fan of some of the limitations it has with tagging and filtering member data. While it probably works best for most use cases, at my previous jobs in business, I dealt with more robust CRM solutions that had more options. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center allows us to help store and retrieve our members' data in an efficient way. We also use it for tracking attendance and to facilitate our online giving. ### 29. An adequate resource for centralizing the planning and resourcing of our services **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I appreciate the fact that I can have minimal hands-on time to make this platform work. It is team-driven, and populated by various area-specific leaders. We are probably minimalist users, but it serves us well for every contingency we have in planning services. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Most team members agree that it's reasonable enough to use, though there are a few elements that we don't find to be all that intuitive. Despite that fact, there is no perfect program out there, and this one serves well enough for our needs. Probably the biggest negative is that it is not an attractive looking layout, which is important when trying to drive our volunteer staff to use this resource. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** PC has centralized the planning focus for our worship service events, and is a reasonably serviceable way to connect leaders, volunteers, and staff. ### 30. Best way to plan a service and share with teams **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lisa S. | Reading Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like that I can choose songs easily, arrange songs as needed, quickly create a Sunday plan, share with my teams, and connect it to MusicStand for performing. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There are a few learning curves with the program. It took me a bit to figure it all out. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Instead of copying service plans for every member, I put them into Planning Center and my praise team can see the order of service, see the music and hear the music with one app. ### 31. Great application for managing church schedules! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tahleen L. | Graduate Assistant to Director of Recruitment and Admissions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 29, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services allows us to easily schedule and manage ministry teams and service opportunities within the church. It's database is straightforward and easy to use, making the transition to this program from the previous program we used incredibly easy. The program is very clean, streamlined, and user-friendly. Since transitioning to this application, we have been able to track and organize teams more effectively and efficiently. The program also comes with a mobile application which has been a great addition to what we do. The app is also very user-friendly and easy to use and allows members to see when they have been scheduled as well as sends them reminders about their upcoming commitments. Since implementing this, we have found a decrease in no-shows, and less and less volunteers being confused or forgetting to show up when assigned to a position. The company's Support is also wonderful. With prior organizations we have used, getting help right away has not always happened. However, this team is available and responsive, making answering questions incredibly easy. Highly recommend if you are looking for a program to help organize services and ministry opportunities within the church. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** At this point, we are very happy and satisfied with the software. In terms of pricing, it is not the cheapest option available (especially for larger ministries and organizations). Additionally, setting up the program did take a bit of time as we were not able to export our database from the prior software we used for scheduling. The only other hiccup we ran into is that there is a large population in our church that is not as tech-savvy. Because of this, we had a little extra work on our end to teach people how to use the app and set up their accounts. To do this, we set up teams of people to be available before and after services to teach and walk people through the steps if they had questions. Now, the program is a normal part of our church organization and management - and has been rather easy for this group of people to adopt. Overall, I would say that Planning Center Services is efficient and worth the money. We look forward to using this software more and more as our church grows and possibly adding on other applications and programs the organization offers. Would definitely say it is worth the work and few extra dollars. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** For those looking to schedule and organize ministries within your church, I would say look no further. You are able to track people with this and better schedule and plan out your services. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Services helped us in terms of scheduling and planning the various services we have going on here at the church. We can easily track volunteers and ministry needs and opportunities. With the software, we are also able to add users so ministry leaders are able to go in and schedule their own teams. This has helped us delegate much work, and eliminate any confusion or miscommunication. The program provides a clear and clean way for us to schedule and organize our services. ### 32. Great program for worship planning and volunteer scheduling **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris J. | Associate Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center is the go-to program for worship planning and volunteer scheduling. It is full of features that can help keep you organized and helpful information at your fingertips. On the one hand, it is perfect for planning the flow of your worship service. You can lay out every element of your service and attach any document or bit of information that will be helpful or necessary for that part of the service - music charts, content notes, mp3s, sermon notes or outlines, etc. On the other hand, it is fantastic for scheduling volunteers. Templates make scheduling your volunteers a snap. Once scheduling invites are emailed out to the volunteers, they can accept or decline the invitation as necessary. You'll know exactly who is available, who is not, and where you need to find subs. We use Planning Center to schedule all of our volunteers in every ministry, not just the worship team. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center has other modules available for things like small groups and finances, but we use it just for worship and scheduling volunteers. We have not tried the other features and us a different program for that. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center helps us keep our worship services and volunteers organized. It is super easy to plan out as many weeks ahead as you like and get volunteers on the schedule far ahead of time. Planning Center also makes it super easy to communicate with volunteers either individually or as a team. Volunteers also have lots of control of their schedule and can include Block-Out dates when they are not available to serve, and utilize sign-up sheets as well. ### 33. It is a great software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kim M. | Office Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2022 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like the friendliness of the customer support. They have been so helpful at every step of the way and the software does its job well. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don't like that each aspect is separate. It is confusing to the user, and there is no central place for an admin to use. Also, it does not filter duplicates very often. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Services are helping with data managements, giving, volunteer & service scheduling, and event registration. ### 34. Excellent Church Data Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Larry H. | I, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 28, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** We switched to Planning Center a few years ago and I am very impressed with the evolution of the product to stay current. Responses to tickets and the SLACK community are top-notch. I would highly recommend them. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There is not much to dislike. They address issues if they appear **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using the different modules makes features customizable monthly without a long-term contract. ### 35. Ever expanding Church Management System **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Holden C. | Director Of Operations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center is constantly listening to the users and improving their products. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** You cannot call someone and talk to them. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Budget-friendly all-encompassing Church Management System that covers all aspects that a Church needs. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed an inventory management system and Planning Center Calendar had this feature built in. ### 36. Planning made easy **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brandon B. | Student Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love that I can set up multiple different departments and schedule all of my people while still providing detailed descriptions of what is going on and needs to take place for them. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I can’t think of anything I dislike about planning center. Everything about it helps us be better, even the app. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Use it to its full potential Be a better a planner and use the best resource that is out there for your team. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling solutions. It helps us communicate better with our many different teams and provide information about what is going on during the day and what is required of them. It allows our team to block out dates they can't serve so we can be more efficient in planning. ### 37. New update are amazing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 13, 2021 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Love the people management. Loved how they updated the way it works. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I wish I could text people. That's the most frustrating thing about it. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Management of our worship team. ### 38. Essential Piece for Success **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh H. | Worship Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 23, 2020 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services is what I rely on to equip and prepare my team every week for our weekend services. I can give them access to everything they need in order to be ready to put their individual pieces together in rehearsal. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The learning curve takes a bit to get used to. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you want to give your team the upper hand and move the quality of your worship to the next level, employing PCO Services is essential to your success. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing resources to my team to adequately prepare for worship. ### 39. Excellent Event Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Micah H. | Student Ministry Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2020 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love the ability to create a clear flow that has team integration and edibility. The mobile vs website are both excellent UI's and our team scheduling and event time management abilities are incredible. The integration with other planning center family products is also a huge plus. I uses services in connection with people and with Calendar and Registrations to help streamline my organizations events. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Sometimes the mobile app can get buggy and you have to log out and log back in but overall it's a great experience. There's also a little bit of a learning curve initially for my volunteer teams. I've found having a training for new volunteers is essential. I've found having an onboarding training for team members to be helpful. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Best advice would be to buy into the entire family of products. They work best together. Plan a solid team training and spend plenty of time with the software before introducing it to your team. The planning center support team is excellent and there is a large community of people willing and able to help with anything you might beed in terms of trouble shooting or questions upon implementation. This software works especially well for event planning and church services. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it primarily for planning church services and scheduling volunteer teams for those services. This is an easy to use tool that let's me get all the resources my team needs to them quickly and efficiently. ### 40. Planning Center Services is a ministry life saver and community builder! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric R. | Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The best thing about Planning Center Services is the platform's ability to organize our team. It's so easy to communicate with our volunteers, plan our services, and customize the options to fit our church. I've used Planning Center Services in multiple churches over the past 12 years and I couldn't imagine leading a team without it. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The least helpful thing about Planning Center Services is learning how to use it. They have created online tutorials to help guide you in discovering the best tools to use, but I had to learn it over time. Once I got the hang of it, it was such a huge tool we used to build our volunteer teams. There's just a big learning curve in getting there. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Some of the main problems that Planning Center Services are helping us solve are scheduling our volunteers, communicating with them on a regular basis, and creating a "run sheet" of each service which tells people what is happening during the service. This helps keep everyone on the same page. One of the benefits is that everything is customizable and easy to change from week to week. ### 41. Easy volunteer scheduling **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David R. | Pastor of evangelism, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 25, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The volunteer layout of the app is super easy to use and very customizable **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The program gets expensive, if you have lots of people on the database **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing and scheduling of our volunteer teams for a Sunday morning ### 42. Planning Center solves some problems, but isn't an all-in-one solution **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2020 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The ease in which you can get a team all on the same page when it comes to service flow and times in which they are scheduled is great. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There's a lot of effort being poured into being a ChMS and honestly there's just not enough flexibility with the system to fully customize it to your organization. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's great to get your team on the same page. Being able to share files with them, song attachments, etc. is great. ### 43. The Absolute Best **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel A. | Student Minister, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** What don't I like? Planning Center Services meets every need I have with worship planning. I am able schedule services and people months in advance, print out every song I need, customize uploaded songs to fit the key that we are playing it in. Seriously, I don't think I could do ministry without Planning Center Services. It is a God send. Planning Center Services is the best product for church ministry, without a doubt. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I honestly can't say there is anything I have been displeased with. Everything about Planning Center Services fits every need I have perfectly. I could not image how they could possibly make this program any better for their churches and users. It is simply perfect. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED. I couldn't recommend this product with higher praise. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been able to plan out everything I am doing in a church service down to the minute. It helps me be more organized than I ever could before and helps me communicate with my teams better than I could on my own. I do not know how people do ministry with out planning center services. It is the perfect program for church ministry. We have more volunteer retention rate because of it, we are able to see what songs we have been doing too often, and we can see how we can improve our service itself. It is the absolute best product in church ministry. Period. ### 44. Essential Tools for Church Musicians and Leaders **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Elijah N. | Private Music Teacher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Being able to keep track of musical performances and staying organized with worship teams rehearsals and set times. Consistent communication between pastors and team members each week to align songs with teaching topics. Music Stand is especially essential for singers to have lyrics and musicians to have charts for new songs that are less familiar. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Sometimes it is a little difficult to find a new function the first time and some tools, like adding new songs to a library are not available in the mobile app. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Start small and slowly build what you think you will need for your organization. Mostly using the worship team service tools are fantastic but expanding into children ministry tools and classroom teaching can be the next step for implementation. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping players organized each week and making sure everyone has music ready to go during services. Music Stand is really great for pulling up music quickly and changing charts. ### 45. Planning Center Services for Youth Ministry **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steve C. | Youth Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 26, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love how this resource helps everyone involved in a church service be on the same page all at once. I also love how easy it is to change the order of events in a church service and everyone will be notified all at once. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Honestly, there is nothing that I dislike about the Planning Center app. It does exactly what I need it to do, and I am very thankful for it! **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you're in ministry, and you're looking for a helpful tool to coordinate multiple people involved in putting on a church service, then Planning Center Services is for you! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center helps the multiple people involved in putting on a church service to all be on the same page all at once. This app also helps us in putting on our annual Youth Ministry Conference, in which we are able to serve over 100 individuals. All in all, this app helps us produce a quality product! ### 46. If you're planning church services without Planning Center you need to stop hurting yourself! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marc Alan S. | Lead Pastor, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** This is the best SAAS I have ever used in any field. Cloud-based, you can share planning responsibilities with many people, none of whom need to be in the office -- which is the way churches work. Volunteers can plan, share resources, see their role, sign up for participation, and coordinate service elements. Musicians can find the resources they need for preparation. Preachers can share their topics and scriptures and other resources with everyone involved in planning. It's like the best possible staff meeting, in so far as everyone can get the info they need, and there's no need to attend a meeting at all. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Nothing. This tool is excellent. They have been developing it and continue to be responsive to concerns or questions. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you are planning church services, there is no other option that can help you as much, **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Coordinating volunteers and keeping service planning people on the same page. ### 47. PC Services is a world changer for my organization!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miranda M. | Children's Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 13, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I LOVE Planning Center Services! We are a church of about 500 with several different ministries and services campus wide. Planning Center Services allows us to stay up to date with all of our Serve Team members and helps them to stay up to date and in the know with what to expect at each service. Scheduling people has never been easier. And, all of our members use the Planning Center Services App and LOVE it! It makes life so easy and help filter out questions on what to expect for services and events and who's doing what. It clears up any muddy water! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The only, and I mean ONLY, con to Planning Center Services is the permissions each person has. I would love to see an update where I can change not just permissions, but change in detail what each person could see and do. Like, I have some staff members who need to be able to do certain things, but they don't need to see every plan. But, there's not a "Permission" where I can pick and choose what they do or see. There's just blanket permissions that you can choose. So, I would like more options when it came to that. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** You can try it free for a month! DO IT! Don't wait another minute. Especially if you're a church looking to organize your services and work thru emails and such. This is a win 110%! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** There used to be so many problems when it came to each Serve Team members' responsibility. Who was singing what songs. what songs were in what key. Etc. Planning Center Services alleviates ALL of that. There is no more question now. People log into the app or on the computer and can see every file for every song and details for who is singing and doing what. It has made our organization SO much better organized! ### 48. Great tool for keeping track of church volunteers! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 10, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center allows organizers to easily create and manage volunteers can be organized into teams (for example, Greeters, Worship, Ushers, etc). Organizers can also add an Order of Service so that volunteers are aware of the schedule for the day. Media files and YouTube videos can be added for the worship team's songs. Volunteers are able to customize their preferences (how often they want to be scheduled) and also add blackout dates for dates that they are unable to volunteer. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I cannot think of anything I dislike about the app. I have been using it for about 3 years and it works great! The app does what it is supposed to do and rarely crashes. On a rare occasion, an uploaded file will not open, but simply restarting the app has always fixed this problem for me. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Excellent app for organizing and scheduling church volunteer teams! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** My church uses this app to organize volunteer teams. This replaced using a shared GoogleSheets document, which was often edited accidentally and not accurate. Some of the most beneficial features include allowing users to add blackout dates for when they do not want to be scheduled and the ability of users to upload files. ### 49. The Best Service Structure And Volunteer Management Tool Out There **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Micah H. | Associate pastor of worship, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Easy of use - MATRIX view to look ahead and manage plans. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Sometimes the mobile app is a little glitchy in terms of loading but all in all its great. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** This software is incredible for managing service flow and volunteers. Nothing better out there. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication to multiple large volunteer teams. Volunteer scheduling. Service Planning. ### 50. Planning center is fabulous!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brianna G. | Kids Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love planning center. Whether we are scheduling songs or planning events, this program helps keep everything on track. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Using planning center audio gets messy sometimes. Songs won’t play when they’re supposed to or it skips around. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Getting volunteers & staff organized is a big win! ## Planning Center Services Discussions - [Is planning center free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-planning-center-free) - 2 comments - [How do you use planning center services?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-you-use-planning-center-services) - 1 comment - [View Planning Center Services pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/planning-center-services/reviews?filters%5Bcompany_segment%5D%5B%5D=179§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-02+19%3A39%3A43+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=1d58ba62-95b0-431d-a3ac-8189db49934e&secure%5Btoken%5D=9f65744691349cb99fa98a17ae297c9bdc73f9b396f056dd35c492a092a9ea04&format=llm_user) ## Planning Center Services Integrations - [Checkr](https://www.g2.com/products/checkr/reviews) - [Clearstream](https://www.g2.com/products/clearstream/reviews) - [ProPresenter](https://www.g2.com/products/renewed-vision-propresenter/reviews) ## Planning Center Services Features **Platform Basics** - Membership Tracking - Donation Management - Congregation Communication - Worship Management - Event Planning **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 Services Alternatives - [Breeze ChMS](https://www.g2.com/products/yourgiving-inc-breeze-chms/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (127 reviews) - [ChurchStaq](https://www.g2.com/products/churchstaq/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (117 reviews) - [Realm](https://www.g2.com/products/realm/reviews) - 4.1/5.0 (30 reviews)