ChurchPlan vs Planning Center

ChurchPlan combines giving, events, member records, education, liturgies, calendars, and communications in a church app and administration portal. It serves churches and parishes, including dioceses and multi-church organizations. Giving accepts cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, with recurring donations and automated tax receipts; Stripe processes card transactions, and standard payment processing applies without added ChurchPlan fees. People records are unlimited and can connect household family relationships. Churches can publish events, take free or paid registrations, issue QR tickets, and check attendees in by mobile. Education tools cover curriculum and lesson plans, attendance tracking, and parent access to children's curriculum. Essentials is free forever and includes unlimited members, giving, automated receipts, a personalized church mobile app, donation links, and QR codes. Engagement costs $99 a month, billed $1,188 yearly, and adds events and ticketing, announcements, push notifications, and mobile admin search and outreach. Education costs $199 a month, billed $2,388 yearly. Enterprise has annual volume pricing and includes API access, webhooks, custom integrations, and dedicated support. The listed platforms are Android, iOS, and web.

Planning Center is a church ministry platform with products for people management, events, worship planning, donations, groups, and church apps. People centralizes membership information and ministry activity such as attendance, giving, and volunteering. Services supports worship planning, volunteer scheduling, team communication, and rehearsal tools. Other listed capabilities include group management, event registration, child check-in, and SMS messaging. Free plans are listed for Calendar, People, and Services: Calendar includes one room, People has an unlimited database and reporting, and Services includes five team members and 100 MB of storage. The pricing note lists paid access from $5/mo and a 30-day trial; a member limit of 75 is also listed. Services plans include unlimited feature access, teams, service types, and plans, with pricing based on the number of people accessing the system. The Services app supports iOS and Android phones and tablets, but not Windows devices. Integrations include SongSelect, PraiseCharts, Checkr, Mailchimp, Zapier, and third-party tools; an open API is also available. Planning Center states its products suit churches of any size.