Connection Card Pro Check-Ins vs Excellerate

Connection Card Pro Check-Ins helps churches record attendance for children, students, and adults at services, classes, small groups, and events. Staff can check people in using a computer, tablet, or mobile app, or set up kiosks where people identify themselves with a plastic card, phone number, or photo. Attendance is recorded automatically. The system prints customizable name tags and optional parent pickup tags on supported Dymo and Brother printers, and produces reports for organizations, groups, services, events, or classifications. It provides a web interface for desktop, laptop, or tablet and apps for iOS and Android. Connections to Mailchimp support contact exports, while Slack can receive crew notifications and channel updates. The maker describes SSL encryption for data transfers, PCI DSS guideline compliance, backups across multiple secure data centers, and configurable roles covering more than 30 permission types. The free Ministry Lite plan is free and includes 250 contacts, three admin users, and 1 GB storage. Paid plans start at $29 a month; any plan can be tried free for 30 days without a credit card.

Excellerate is church management software for organizing member and family records, attendance, giving, groups and visitor follow-up. Profiles can include customizable information alongside visits, meetings and small-group involvement. Visitor tools assign follow-up, capture results and feedback, and report on retention and assimilation. For groups and classes, the software supports attendance, online leader reporting and growth analysis. Contribution tools cover tithes and pledges, check scanning, imports from online giving services, statements and reports. Check-in can use barcodes, touchscreens or attendants for child pickup, events, youth and volunteers. ServePoint adds volunteer scheduling, reminders, conflict notifications and resource sharing. Users can adjust fields, tabs, picklists, views and reports; the support team also offers report creation. Excellerate has desktop products and Atom cloud access, which supports simultaneous users on computers, tablets and phones with automatic backups. The desktop church-management and check-in products are Windows-only and do not require internet access. Check-in can also work offline and at remote locations without a network. A 100-member desktop plan is listed at $145 once; cloud pricing is also listed.