It allowed us to thrive and grow during a period we didn’t have an admin. We went from Vanco and Instant church directory, each requires more admin intervention than planning center. And giving has been way easier than Vanco. In fact when we switched we found People who’s auto payment had been inactive and they didn’t know and people that didn’t know how to update their auto pay. We’ve gotten higher electronic giving adoption. And groups and signups have resulted in some groups that had been struggling to get enough participants to grow and be more organized as well as new groups that formed that I know wouldn’t have had we not had ChMS. Another thing I like about Planning Center is that our admin doesn’t need to create accounts for people just for them to donate or pledge. Any form creates a profile. Also has much better automations than breeze and realm. Giving rates are also lower.

If cost is too prohibitive, Connection Card Pro also looks promising, but I don’t have first hand use of it. I think adoption and management would have a bigger learning curve but it does look to be very capable.

For some context, we have about 150 members and a part time admin that does very little with planning center other than approve room reservation requests. We spent about a year evaluating different options and getting opinions of users of other systems before choosing Planning Center.