Blackbaud Church Management vs. Planning Center

I believe this system was overpriced and under-supported. From experience, it is very clunky and lacking features that churches would find helpful. There are no scenarios for which Blackbaud Church Management is well suited. It is not appropriate for churches. I would avoid it at all costs. They were also not willing to assist in moving to another system.

Incentivized

If you are a music/worship leader in a local church, Planning Center will be your absolute best friend. It changed the way I interact with my team, our songs, and our order of worship each week. If you are involved in a small church with a limited budget or you have very few volunteers, Planning Center may offer more than you need

Incentivized

• Easy to use app
• Helpfully displays order of services/events
• Provides instant collaboration among several users

Incentivized

• Not geared toward churches
• Missing much functionality
• In my opinion, horrible and incompetent support
• No ongoing support for their system

Incentivized

• Groups' Communication Tool
• Giving app scaled access for volunteers
• Church-wide communication tool
• Song-reporting integration with CCLI

Incentivized

I've not needed to use Planning Center support. In the few instances that I would have thought would "require support," tips and notices popped up on screen letting me know what was happening. There are very VERY few issues that I've found with Planning Center. The interface has been intuitive and powerful, so I've not needed to use their support service.

Incentivized

In my opinion, Blackbaud was by far the worst experience we have had with any church management system. We initially moved away from Shelby Systems to FellowshipOne. In an attempt to consolidate church management and accounting into a single system, we moved from FellowshipOne to Blackbaud Church Management to accomplish this. Both FellowshipOne and Shelby wer far superior systems.

Incentivized

At one point, I was presented with both Asana and Trello as helpful tools to facilitate teamwork and collaboration amongst a large group of people. However, when it comes to putting on productions/services/events, Planning Center just seemed to have everything we need. I have never really once given thought to moving on from Planning Center. I'm sure Asana and Trello have much to offer, and I did briefly consider the, but Planning Center (for what we needed) was a grand-slam, home run.

Incentivized

• A negative ROI
• Difficulty in moving data to another system
• Caused a lot of extra work to fix all the errors that came in implementation

Incentivized

• Reliable and consistent scheduling options for volunteers. Keeps them happy and us staffed.
• Better communication makes for a better planned and executed service.

Incentivized