--- title: Planning Center Services Reviews meta_title: 'Planning Center Services Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 181 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Planning Center Services works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.7 review_count: 181 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: Church url: https://www.g2.com/categories/church --- # 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 find **Planning Center Services easy to use** , facilitating efficient scheduling and information access for volunteers. (3 reviews) - Users find **Scheduling simplicity** in Planning Center Services, ensuring effective volunteer management with easy access to resources. (3 reviews) - Users find the **easy setup** of Planning Center Services quick and straightforward, enhancing overall usability and integration. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **responsive customer support** of Planning Center Services, enhancing their overall experience and satisfaction. (1 reviews) - Users find Planning Center Services to be **highly effective** for scheduling volunteers and preparing resources efficiently. (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 first-time users facing choice fatigue and cumbersome sign-in processes. (2 reviews) - Users note that while the features are valuable, the service can be quite **expensive** as costs increase rapidly. (1 reviews) ## Planning Center Services Reviews ### 1. Planning center has become one of the best **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love the chord chart creation system, which makes it easy to create a chart and then transpose into any key you'd like. Scheduling people has never been easier and the reminders are super handy. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The music streaming system is sub-par. If there was a way to partner with spotify or apple music, it would be much easier to input songs for the band to learn. As it is, you must upload mp3's, which are becoming ancient technology. Also, by getting rid of Projector seems like a terrible decision to me - this was solving an enormous problem and they dropped out of the market. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Finance/giving, scheduling volunteers, planning services (literally!), disseminating important data and information like chord charts to the band, which ten years ago was near impossible without constantly printing and re-printing charts. Now our charts are on an ipad and are easily transposed to any key we need. ### 2. A must for ministry team management & organization! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I’ve been using Planning Center for years now, and let me tell you...it is a life saver for team scheduling and management! No matter the size of your Ministry team, you need this tool and your team will thank you for it. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The only issues I’ve encountered are some limitations and bugs in the mobile app. It has gotten better over time as they’ve released updates though. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I’ve used it to manage volunteer teams of 30-300+ and what it has done for me is improve organization and clarity of communication. No more messy spreadsheets! ### 3. The best church management software on the market! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 19, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love love love planning center, as an office admin of a church, this makes a large part of my workflow so much easer. It is very organized, and the app to accompany it could not make it easer for volunteers! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Honestly, I have no downsides to this product. Of corse there is a learning curve, like any software, but after that initial setup process you are home free and it makes planning service so easy. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We now have a reliable, connected, one stop shop for all members of our church staff to plan out services and special events. It helps us all be on the same page with our services ### 4. Planning Center is great for planning church services! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like that PC allows individuals to accept or decline services, emails reminders, and keeps everything in one place. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Sometimes it can be difficult for the older volunteers to understand. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Keep the people organized and make sure every volunteer is tagged and on a team. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are revolutionizing the way volunteers are scheduled and notified that they have been placed on the schedule. You don't have to worry if everything is covered because it is incredibly easy to see on the app and website. ### 5. Makes scheduling any church event easy! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** This app notifies me when another user has requested me to work or be a part of an event they have planned in the center and I can accept, reject, and much more. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It will not let me change my profile picture and will just spin and I find the app still shows requests even after I have accepted them. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes connecting with volunteers in my church super easy. ### 6. Planning Center is a major help **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Love how it allows us to plan ahead, see any holes left to fill, or include detailed orders of service **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It is not the easiest for users to navigate sometimes **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are solving how to schedule volunteers for our church services ### 7. Convenient means of communicating responibilities **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The best aspect of Planning Center is the centralized communication. Previously, the administration emailed individual people about their responsibilities. This became clearly tedious and it was confusing to synthesize the responses. On Planning Center, each team member can log on to see their responsibilities for the week, and they can mark days they will be absent far in advance. All this eliminates the need for strings of confusing emails. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The app for this product is not in the best condition. It is not easy for all members to use from their devices. It is not as intuitive as it could be, especially for the older users of this product. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business runs a lot smoother, especially for the administration. Planning Center has cut down on the amount of time spent to plan according to each team member's responsibilities, and has entirely eliminated the need for strings of emails. ### 8. Solid app for church serving **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The mobile app is very useful. If set up right, the Friday reminders before a Sunday serving is really nice. The ability to block dates in advance is easy to use. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Feels like some of the better features need to be implemented and are not out of the box. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Coordination of volunteers. Communication and central scheduling have been achieved. ### 9. All your scheduling in one place **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 22, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I can see where I’m scheduled for multiple services so I can keep track more efficiently. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The mobile app doesn’t have full functionality. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to keep all our service schedules in one place. Eliminating confusion. ### 10. We LOVE Planning Center Services! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michele L. | Independent Entrepreneur, Primary/Secondary Education, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Our church has been using Planning Center Services for many years. As a Resource Team member, we utilize Planning Center Services for all our planning needs. The ability to utilize Planning Center on my mobile device and computer is very convenient, and it's super easy to use and navigate. I like the reminders - just enough - not so many that it bogs down my email. Easy way to communicate with my team leader and other team members too. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** We haven't found anything that we dislike - super easy to use and navigate. That's why we've used it for years! **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** I would highly recommendation Planning Center Services to any other organization, religious or otherwise. Very user friendly and an easy way to stay in touch with your group/team. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication in a super busy world and growing church. Our church is growing by leaps and bounds...Planning Center Services allows us to stay in touch, even when we have so many people and services that staying in touch and getting to know everyone on the team can be hard to do. ### 11. The best way to integrate teams **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hadley A. | Marketing and Outreach, Higher Education, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The most liked feature of this software is the ease of use to integrate teams and schedule individuals for certain assignments **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The one thing I dislike about this software is it's complexities when attempting to form specific and official teams within different departments. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to solve scheduling dilemmas and bring a very clear plan of responsibility for each individual and a timeline for that responsibility ### 12. Great and easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning center is a great software to organize church productions **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It’s a little tough to get set up but ultimately is great! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping our teams schedule organized and efficient! ### 13. Planning Center Services - Best Service Organizer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Services is unrivaled for keeping track of orders of service and volunteer scheduling. They have thought of pretty much everything. You can attach documents, and it keeps track of when people have last been scheduled. It has a good interface, and PCO is extremely responsive to feedback. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I think there is a learning curve when you first start using it. It is not always super logical, but once you get it, it runs easily. The interface if you're being scheduled can be confusing, but everyone figures out how to use it. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solves the problem of scheduling one person too often and also allowing everyone to see the order of service at the same time. ### 14. Fantastic tool for worship **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like that this serves as a wonderful tool for communication, organization, and make work simple and effective. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I dislike the inability to add 'end times' to service elements. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you are considering a move to planning center, I certainly advise you to take that step. This is a fantastic tool that assists the leader in setting up services, and helps the team member in scheduling and communication. A great, proven tool. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Getting my teams on the same page, and giving them a common tool for communication, rehearsal, and scheduling. ### 15. Easy to use! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** This program runs our church on Sunday’s and is super easy to use every week. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don’t like the look of the program. The aesthetics of it look old. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me recruit volunteers and give them specific jobs for the day of the event. ### 16. Easy and efficient. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 05, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The software is intuitive and if you ever need help, they are quick to respond with great assistance. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** They don’t allow you to upload .doc files. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Look into their new app! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing my 70+ people worship team has become easy. It’s easy to communicate and show them what they need to see every week. ### 17. Helpful but lacking in some areas **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Natalie G. | Accounting Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like the ease of being able to schedule and contact multiple people at the same time. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don’t like that there are gaps in the communication/email functions. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Know that it will meet most of your needs but might leave you wanting in some areas. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling and info access across multiple groups. ### 18. In the know **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love planning center because allows a large number of volunteers to stay connected, ahead of schedule, and be prepared for whatever type of service you are doing. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don't love the scheduling specifics. Sometimes if my volunteers are working in our kids department, it won't show up when I try to schedule them for the worship arts area. This can cause conflict in scheduling and your team mates. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you have a lot of moving pieces to implement into your churches services, I recommend getting a PCO account! Its efficient for getting all your team on the same page. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling in advance is huge. People know their schedule and all the details from one place. I love the automated emails and reminders. It keeps all the volunteers and staff on the same page for exactly what is going to happen. ### 19. Best Platform for Worship Service Planning **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pedro T. | Pastor, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Many integrations that allow worship service preparation to be easy for worship coordinators, audio visual team, singers and others involved. Importing songs from SongSelect makes it easy for the audio visual person to just import lyrics in ProPresenter. The detail allowed to give to each participant, notes, attaching of video files, powerpoint slides, art, pictures, etc. Also the ability to import the whole service into ProPresenter once you are done. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The many different offerings that Planning Center has gets confusing with PCO People, Check-ins, Registrations, etc. They integrate well only when you really know what you are doing. It will take time to invest to learn all that planning center online has to offer. In the end its worth it. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** I don’t know of any other worship service platform that can do what PCO does. You can try for free depending on the number of people involved. Give it a shot and then upgrade to the paid version. If you are tired chasing people down to get the service finalized, PCO will help minimize the last minute stressful moments. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Bridging the communication gap between different ministries that participate in the worship service. It cuts out the back and forth emails, text messages and phone calls. Everyone adds their own information into Planning Center and the overall coordinator just goes in to make sure everything is covered. If implemented correctly, PCO will send emails to participants to remind them of their responsibilities. ### 20. [L O V E] Planning Center **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amber W. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The organization, planning, scheduling, that you can customize each person you put it. The ease of ordering your service. That it is so convenient that ANYONE can hand it on their phone. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I dislike the changes from moving desktop to iPhone. Such as buttons and ways to do things. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Just do it. It will make your life way easier. It is worth the money, time and set up effort. If you are using it right you will have no regrets. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We organize our church functions such as scheduling our teams for Children's Ministry, Door Greeters, Praise team, Musicians & Security ### 21. Tremendous Product for Grouo Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lane W. | Musician/Worship Leader/Student and College Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love the ease of managing and communicating with groups. Very easy to use. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There is a learning curve to get the most out of the program. There are so many configurations for group management and clmmuncication. This weakness can be a strength when learned. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Group lists, group communication, scheduling ### 22. Great for churches! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Melissa D. | Project Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 03, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love being able to get a play by play for events. Gives a clear idea of what’s going on each moment. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There have been a couple glitches but I guess that’s to be expected. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Time! This is helping structure time very well. ### 23. Easily organizes all aspects of a church service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew B. | Sr Web Designer, Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** This program easily organizes all aspects of a church service while including all needed information for staff and volunteers. You can transpose musical recordings depending on the key it will be done in, without every leaving the site. From a user experience standpoint, there's various "permissions" that can be granted to each user to prevent them from viewing the wrong information or inputting wrong information. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There's frequent updates that can make even experienced users confused on how to do certain tasks. It can be buggy at times, which is probably why there's frequent updates (especially on the mobile app). **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our entire church services are planned using this program. We have a handful of different teams that use Planning Center as a scheduling tool and the music feature equips our band to prepare to the best of their ability. ### 24. Worship Planner's Dream **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kati C. | Designated Associate Pastor, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 11, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** My favorite features involve organizing our staff/volunteers and music. The scheduling matrix allows me to schedule people for multiple dates at one time, and then the reminders are sent automatically, based on my initial settings. The music can be utilized as a personal database of arrangements and themes. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Sometimes there are almost too many features. The automated file titles put the key at the end, so sometimes my musicians download the wrong key. This can be easily fixed on their or my part, but this is the ONLY barrier. When I started using this software, I discovered that invitations were not being sent because I forgot to push a final send button. Later I found that this feature is meant to let you schedule and then send invitations. Once I realized what was happening, it helped my people, because the invites were lumped into one email. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Take the time to upload your songs like using a music database. It takes more time on the front end, but makes later planning much faster. Use the Planning Matrix option! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have created spreadsheets and reminders for over a decade, wishing it could be easier. About 10 months ago, we invested in using Planning Center to organize musicians and worship music for our new worship team. I love how it keeps me and my volunteers/staff organized! When I first upload the song, I can put tags for tempo and themes. Plus when I schedule a service, I preprogram reminders and rehearsal times. This helps me to set a sustainable practice, so I can pass it on to other leaders. ### 25. Planning Center Services keeps us organized. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Richard B. | Worship Leader, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 24, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** It's simple to assign team members and provide an order of service that includes everything they need (recordings, lead sheets, youtube links). The mobile app is good for team members as well. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The mobile app is not great for admins. Adding a song can be a bit tedious, and you don't have any indication as to the last time the song was sung. This is a problem, as I use previous orders to determine what might work well in the upcoming order. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Make sure to get everyone involved in the software, as adoption is key. Also, get rid of older songs, as they will take up some of your bandwidth. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing and empowering volunteers to lead and serve effectively every Sunday. We've gotten to the point that our band doesn't need a separate rehearsal very often, because of the resources they are provided. ### 26. Very Helpful for Churches of all sizes **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David J. | Associate Pastor, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services makes it easy to schedule worship volunteers for upcoming services. You can setup automatic reminders that go out to each team-member. You can easily create service rundowns. For worship directors, you can link your worship songs into each service with the chord charts, mp3s, and write in notes. You can even transpose mp3s into the key you're doing the song in so your team members can practice in the exact key you'll be playing the song. Fantastic! It's honestly a must for any church! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Sometimes the mobile app can have issues like crashing or not updating correctly. Although I will say Planning Center has done a pretty good job at updating regularly and fixing bugs. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you have questions, or are confused on how to do something, check out Planning Center's video tutorials. Otherwise contact their customer support. They're pretty good and getting back to you quickly and solving your issue. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps make service scheduling much easier and faster. Streamlines communication to all team members (from tech guys to pastoral staff to ushers to vocalists). Our worship teams have had a hard time scheduling a practice during the week. Planning Center Services has allowed us to skip a mid-week practice by encouraging our team to practice on their own. Because of PC Services they will have access to the chord charts and they can practice along with the songs in the key we'll be playing it in. When we get together on Sunday mornings we're already on the same page as if we had a mid-week practice. It's great! ### 27. A must-have for Churches! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hugh L. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I cannot say enough good things about this product. The ability to use across devices (in browser, iOs and Android apps). Integration across the Planning Center ecosystem. Integration across other programs, such as Pro Presenter saves a lot of time. Also being able to integrate the calendar for users into iCal so people that never miss a rehearsal, service, or volunteering opportunity. Push notifications on mobile devices also keep people accountable. The customer service has always been quick and helpful. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The mobile apps are great for the users, but can be fairly limited from an administrative side. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Try this program out. It is a must have for anyone in any sort of management position in a Church. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** This makes scheduling worship teams, service teams, and everything else for months at a time much easier. Yes this is a subscription based service that does cost money, but the amount of man hours this saves is so worth it! ### 28. Extremely helpful, with small areas for improvement. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adam H. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Ease of use, designed specifically for my role (church planning), compatible with all devices. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Small functionality flaws (the inability to send a “general email” with quickness and ease). **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solves all of our communication problems within our organization. We upload everything to planning center. ### 29. Effective but not the most user friendly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah C. | Independent Public Relations Consultant, Public Relations and Communications, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like the amount of information that can be stored and kept - you can really plan for every aspect of a service, and time it down to the second. You can also include a lot of detailed information. This is particularly helpful for the worship team to know what songs - and what versions of songs - are going to be used at any given service. The ability to link particular YouTube versions of songs and include lyrics is so helpful, given that many hymns and popular songs have a variety of versions. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The main dashboard is confusing to navigate. I don't like that the calendar isn't synced with available events, and that your services are broken down by event/team rather than by date. For example, at the top of my dashboard is an event scheduled for February 25 - but at the bottom, an event scheduled for February 21. I would prefer for it to more intuitively go in chronological order. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Services allows for everyone involved in a service to be completely in the know. What songs we are singing, what scripture is being read, and exactly WHEN and where in the service it is happening. This is particularly helpful if you have a guest speaker or someone who is speaking at multiple services, because you can give them the information necessary to make sure your timing stays on point. ### 30. No other program like it **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ben C. | Tech Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like the ability to schedule and communicate with our team in one place. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** There seem to be a lot of glitches lately, along with the site being down for maintenance multiple times per month. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Use their support area. They have a lot of tutorial videos that explain in great detail how to best utilize their product. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Communication with our entire team ### 31. What a tool! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** How much it does to streamline my job for how little money it costs! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** When my volunteers don't accept of deny my requests. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It saves me time and haven't to communicate with my volunteers in many different places. It brings everything together! ### 32. The best solution for planning and scheduling worship services **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael F. | Business Administrator, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Building a set list, adding songs, and scheduling people is a breeze. We plan out our weekly worship services months in advance including what songs we are singing, which band/tech members are scheduled, what series we are in, etc and it's only possible because of Planning Center. Our volunteers all have their own accounts to see when they are scheduled or can set dates when they are or are not available. We can create virtual sign-up sheets to fill holes. We've loved it so much that we are now scheduling all of our ministry volunteers through here. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** While it is very intuitive, there is definitely an on-boarding process you 'll have to go through with volunteers. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Planning Center Services works best when combined with other Planning Center products. We currently only subscribe to Services but they offer an entire church management system now including giving, event management, child check-in, presentation software, and more. Consider using the entire suite. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** An incalculable amount of time has been saved, especially in the scheduling department. There is far less chasing people down to see if they are available. Now they just click a simple Accept/Decline button in their email. ### 33. Planning Center Services keeps our volunteers organized. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew M. | Sr. Pastor, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services helps us keep our volunteers organized and allows us to make sure that each position needed for any given event is filled. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The only issue we have had with Planning Center Services isn't with the software itself, but with some congregants not being tech savvy or slow to adapt to electronic devices. It has gone well, but it took us a little while to change our culture to always be checking on planning center services. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Planning Center Services is a must for our church. We use it every week and has become a large part of our scheduling and organization. The connection between the other planning center modules helps as well. It makes it easy having all of our information in one place. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Services has allowed our church to keep track of our volunteers and make sure that for any given event, from funerals, weddings, to Sunday morning service, we know who is doing what as well as laying out a clear order of service for people to follow. It also allows in a very simple way for people to mark their availability which helps each of our ministries as the plan events and services. ### 34. Need help scheduling volunteers? Look no further **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jon L. | Freelance Photographer, Photography, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The best part about Planning Center Services is the the scheduling matrix. This allows you to see a selection of time and all the volunteers that are available or are scheduled to serve during that time frame. This is extremely helpful when trying to figure out who to fill in for vacated spots. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don't think that there is anything that I dislike about Planning Center Services. There might not always be a best solution to an issue, but you'll have that with any program really. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** If you are look into this program make sure you check out some other planning services too. The majority of all these programs have many of the same features, but you just have to figure out what works best for your needs. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** At my local church we use this program to schedule all our volunteers for Sunday services. It allows us to see all the different parts of our service with all the volunteers able to communicate through the services. We use the media player quite often to rehearse songs and to also figure out our service progression. ### 35. Planning Centre newbie and loving it! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I have found the support team exceptional in their speed of response , attention to detail and overall desire to make the product improve. There have been several changes, based on user feedback, that have improved the product as the company grows. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The reporting features are in the development stage, for the Giving module, and that is too bad. There is a promise from the team that it is getting attention, however, so I am hopeful. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our users have access 24/7 to their own data. Registrations and giving are both improved as a result of using this product ### 36. Plan your services Easy Peasy **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andra V. | Music Specialist, Primary/Secondary Education, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love how Planning center streamlines organization of order of service, song repertoire and materials, and planning. As the leader of services and often a volunteer I love both sides of this. Personal Rehearsal is so efficient. I love how it syncs with my iPhone calendar to remind me of rehearsal times. I love how in music stand that If I make notes on a chart then it is available the next time I play the song. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I have very few things that I dislike about Planning Center. Sometimes charts and media are slow to load but I understand its a high amount of content. I like how the administrator can make all the materials available but I hate how time consuming it can be to either use multiple devices or have to go back and forth between dowloads and multiple programs. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** I wish I could see the charts and have access to the media player inside the same window rather than downloads and using my browser and rearranging them. When there are phrases or chunks of a song that require repetitive rehearsal I have to juggle windows and downloads. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can come to rehearsals totally prepared because I can easily access the materials needed to rehearse on my own. I know exactly how each song goes, play along with the rehearsal tracks, read chord charts, make notes when necessary. I have noticed other musicians come prepared and our rehearsal times are so efficient because people are not having to use that time to learn songs. ### 37. Planning Center has made it possible to administer my church! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tim A. | Lead Pastor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love how easy it is to schedule teams using the matrix view. You can see several months all on one screen and move people around! **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** When you send a request email, you can never be sure whether they read it or not, since they can respond to it without seeing it. This means I can't give important information in that manner. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center helps me delegate tasks and jobs evenly throughout the team. This is good to avoid burn out! The benefits I have seen is there's no need for constant micro managing and asking people to help all the time. ### 38. Planning Center Services is a planner's dream! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jon L. | Audio Technician, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services has very few missing links. Of everything this program has to offer, I like the scheduling module the best. It gives me a great overview of all the people who are available on our teams and who is open for any given service. In a quick glance, I can see gaps who who is available to fill them. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I would say the only thing that I dislike with Planning Center Services is how the media player works. There doesn't seem to be a lot of customization with it. We use multiple tracks (one for vocals, one for instruments), and you can not set it to run just certain tracks in order or skip a track when you are listening to them. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Other than getting some hands on training the system is pretty easy to maneuver through. It is very easy work with. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have found that this has been the best solution to our scheduling system so far. There are other beneficially programs out there, but this has been the best solution for us so far. ### 39. Great app **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2019 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The app helps you to schedule and be scheduled in an organized way. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** You cannot go back to previous weeks of services once they have passed **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Great tool **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Miscommunication. ### 40. Excellent Program for Planning Church Services & Scheduling People **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Audrey R. | Office/Operations Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2017 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Everything. This is an amazing tool. You have to see it to believe it. It's easiest if you start with Planning Center People. Store your people there and then easily add them and all their contact info into Services. You can assign instruments, individual users can set blockout dates, you can send invitations to serve and they get accepted or declined by the volunteers. You can connect it to your CCLI and SongSelect accounts, and import the sheet music, videos, etc for the worship team to download and practice from. It is truly amazing. And it's not just for the Worship Team - any area that you schedule people to serve in. You create the teams, for example: 9:30 Worship Team, 11:30 Worship Team, Security, Ushers, Greeters, Nursery, Cafe, Kids Church...anything you want. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I honestly cannot think of anything I dislike about Planning Center Services. It's so easy to use, and can even be used in multiple ways, for example if you have a small team to schedule you can use a more linear scheduling view but if you have large teams for multiple services, you can create a grid and schedule the whole month at a time. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Try it out! It's free to try - I think once you get a certain number of people that you're scheduling then a monthly flat fee is implemented. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Planning Center Services is our one-stop-shop for scheduling all our teams for all our services. The worship leaders schedule their teams and upload music. The AV guys get the song list and mic setup. Nursery and kids workers confirm the days they are able to serve. It's an amazing organization, planning and communication tool. ### 41. Great Service Planning Tool for Churches **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lewies V. | Consultant & Digital Marketing Expert, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning Center Services - commonly known as PCO or PlanningCenterOnline, is an ultra-powerful tool to plan events and services for churches. It helps communicate the flow of the event, timeline expectations, rehearsal and much more with team members. Create your custom team positions, send groups communication emails to confirm their participation, reminders etc. Track all kinds of skills and data of team members or allow them to tell you when and how often they would like to serve. Load videos, files, chord charts, links to youtube or vimeo, etc. to help communicate effectively with team members. Great integration with the rest of the programs and suite options offered by Planning Center. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Could become a little pricey, but still amazing value. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Event planning and volunteer team communication. ### 42. Planning Center Services **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaac N. | Worship Minister, Religious Institutions, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 07, 2017 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The Planning Center team is always looking for ways in which they can improve the program for their users. They offer helpful videos on how to do just about anything you need to do. Additionally, their customer support is easy to get a hold of, if needed. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I can't say there is really anything I especially dislike about Planning Center Online. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** I would highly recommend Planning Center to any church that utilizes volunteers. It is beneficial not only for the staff person managing the volunteers, but also for the volunteers themselves. Planning Center is nearly essential for a worship team of any size. Through the program, a worship leader can upload chord charts, .mp3s, YouTube videos, and any other form of media for the benefit of his or her worship team members. Planning Center also recently integrated the ability to transpose chord charts and .mp3s for you. This has already saved me an immense amount of time in which I would have to painstakingly re-tab a song (for chord charts) or use Audacity to re-pitch a song (for .mp3s). If you are in a smaller church, yes, it costs some money, but I can confidently say that it is worth the investment for any church of any size. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Planning Center Services to plan church worship services, assign team members to the schedule, and communicate with my team. The ability to set up automated reminders and share files with my team saves me a huge amount of time and frustration. ### 43. Simple. Easy. Powerful. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Planning center is amazing! They are always working on their product, it’s easy to use, and it’s affordable. If you were using your whole Line of products it’s going to allow you to go to the next level. But even if you’re using one or two of their products you were going to be super happy **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I wish it would continue to grow and be taken more seriously. That may come a time, or more powerful features. I’m not sure what would help them go to the next level but in a lot of my conversations people still say planning center as a software that’s not that powerful, what it actually is **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to plan all of our services at church and it ups are communication for everyone ### 44. Planning Center makes it easy to create services and schedule volunteers **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like the ease of the product the best. It's simple to use. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** would like to view full service layouts on mobile version **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling, service flow. The benefits are in everyone being able to view the service. ### 45. PCO from a scheduler's POV **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter G. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** The thing I like the most about PCO is the ease of which you can schedule volunteers across multiple weekends and services. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The UI leaves something to be desired. It auto-filters lists in such a way that it isn't obvious how to undo it. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling and volunteer organization. ### 46. Services is a Must for Large Churches **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** Services allows us to plan and execute our worship services down to the minute. It makes service planning so much easier -- especially when your services involve a lot of team members. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I don't particularly like the Services app. It works well for running your services, but it's difficult to use for planning. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a lot of volunteers, and it allows us to communicate with them about their schedules and availability, and then schedule them for positions. Without Services, we would have to do this through email which is a nightmare. ### 47. Excellent software for churches **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like how it doubles as a database and scheduling software **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** I dislike how emails can be sent accidentally pretty easily **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** It is easy to use on a surface level, but the deeper you dive in, the more it can serve you! Explore all of the tools. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is so easy to know who is available to be scheduled and who isn't. Far more efficient than receiving back several "declines" ### 48. Easy to use but requires training **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I like the scheduling features. We use planning center to schedule when our volunteers are volunteering on certain Sundays. I like that it sends reminder emails to our volunteers. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** It is very comprehensive, not too intuitive and requires a lot of training. **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps us with scheduling our volunteers. ### 49. Great app! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Melissa D. | Customer Service Representative, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** I love the app that's available, it makes communication much more accessible and convenient and I find it more user friendly than the desktop version. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** The desktop version was initially confusing to me but it was easy to pick up. **Recommendations to others considering Planning Center Services:** Take advantage of the phone app! **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing and communicating with several different teams nationwide is simplified dramatically. ### 50. Useful **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Religious Institutions | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Planning Center Services?** You are able to add many files to certain event folders. Each week you can add different plans and customize them according to the theme of the week. **What do you dislike about Planning Center Services?** Hard to learn how to upload files and create week folders **What problems is Planning Center Services solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allowing the worship team to be on the same page each week and giving people easy access to the resources (songs, chord charts etc) for people to use to practice. ## 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?page=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-07+11%3A14%3A43+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=be4ea350-9b76-4b8d-9e08-65ae40543a2a&secure%5Btoken%5D=f487231caca27253cd651a72fe84996672dee6947c470933a9ccd27a7ce0b088&format=llm_user) ## Planning Center Services Integrations - [Checkr](https://www.g2.com/products/checkr/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 - Volunteer Management - Financial Management - Asset Tracking - Expense Tracking - Time & Expense Tracking - Sales Tax Management - Attendance Management - Cash Flow Management - Receipt Management - Purchase Order Management - Membership Management - Invoice Management - Compliance Management - Registration Management - Contact Management - Communication Management - Worship Planning - Attendance Tracking - Visitor Tracking - Forms Management - Website Management **Platform Additional Functionality** - People Management Specific Tools - Event Management Specific Tools - Payroll Management - Cash Management - Pledge Management - Email Management **Agentic AI - Church Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Third-Party Integrations - Accounting Integration - Social Media Integration **Additional Functionality** - Event Scheduling - Multi-Currency - Real-Time Data - Customizable Branding - Data Import/Export - Mobile Access - Customizable Templates - Recurring/Subscription Billing - Bank Reconciliation - Financial Reporting - Real-Time Reporting - Transaction History - For Religious Organizations - Financial Analysis - Budgeting/Forecasting - AI Copilot - Accounts Receivable - Credit Card Processing - Invoice Processing - Electronic Payments - ACH Payment Processing - Customizable Reports - Reminders - Accounts Payable - Reporting & Statistics - General Ledger - Billing & Invoicing - Generative AI - Activity Dashboard - API - Check Printing - Multi-Location - Alerts/Notifications - Member Portal - Child Check-in - Online Giving - Member Directory - SMS Messaging - Contact Database - Online Calendar - Role-Based Permissions ## 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)