Planning Center vs PowerChurch Check In

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.

PowerChurch Check In is an add-on for PowerChurch Plus and PowerChurch Online that manages check-in and checkout for child security and event attendance. It automatically records attendance and works with PowerChurch Membership, Activities & Skills, and Events Calendar. For each event, a parent label can include an automatically generated security code; the system tracks who dropped off and picked up a child. Kiosks can be staffed or self-serve, and express checkout can use barcode scanning. Labels can include name badges, bag tags, parent labels, and teacher notes. Supported equipment includes label printers, barcode scanners, webcams, and electronic pagers. Teachers or nursery workers can add incident notes with a time and location for parents to see during checkout. The installed kiosk application runs on Windows and macOS. PowerChurch Online users can also use a browser kiosk, but that option is not available for PowerChurch Plus. Online Check In costs $18 a month or $198 a year. PowerChurch Plus options include one-time upgrades and new-user purchases; a new-user standard download costs $189, paid once, and requires PowerChurch Plus.