The main difference between Planning Center and Tithe.ly ChMS is that the cost for Planning Center quickly grows as your church scales up. With Tithe.ly, the price stays fixed and won't increase over time as your church grows. Tithe.ly Church Management is an all-in-one, cost-effective, and easy to use alternative to Planning Center. Get a detailed comparison to Planning Center below.
Although there is bias in this article because we believe Tithe.ly Church Management is a great fit for most churches and church organizations, we hope to give you a better understanding of the differences between Tithe.ly Church Management and Planning Center. At the end of the day, our heart is that you find the right product for your church and if we can help you make that decision, then we are happy.
What is Planning Center?
Planning Center is a set of software tools to help your church staff and church connect online. It essentially acts as both a church community builder and basic church management software.
Planning Center services churches ranging in size and varying in denomination. The typical church will use Planning Center for managing and receiving donations, scheduling and service planning, managing volunteers, and storing member contact information.
Planning Center Overview
Planning Center's key features include:
- A giving platform
- Tools for event management, such as a check-in tool for children's check-in and volunteer check-in at church services, and a tool for event registration for current and upcoming events
- A communication tool for communicating with team leaders, faith teams, and Planning Center Groups
- A publishing platform, including a website builder
- A tool to track attendance
- A tool for worship planning
Planning Center's alternative products include a tool for building a church app. Potential users will want to note that Planning Center does not offer an accounting platform to help with accounting tasks and accounting services.
How Planning Center Works
Planning Center can be used by a church leader or admin to lead a team of people, run a service, and manage general church affairs. As a church software, it offers a number of features that church admin, pastors, volunteers, and worship teams will find extremely helpful (such as attendance tracking and donation management).
Like most software tools designed for churches, Planning Center charges a monthly subscription fee. The fee increases as your church size increases.
Why Do You Need to Look for a Planning Center Alternative?
When used for a very, very small church, Planning Center has only a minimal cost. But as your church scales up, the costs for Planning Center scale up quickly. Using each of its tools in an unlimited capacity will cost your church over $1k a month!
To find an affordable alternative to Planning Center that offers the same all-in-one church management software without the extra cost, look for a tool that offers similar capabilities at one flat fee. That way, your church won't be "punished" for growing–and you can make a strong push for increased attendance and growth without worrying about increasing budget for church software.
The Best Planning Center Alternative
Alternatives to Planning Center abound. It's not challenging to find affordable church management software–Breeze Church Management, for example comes at a low price (There are also options that are equally expensive, such as Church Office Online).
However, the best Planning Center alternative is an affordable church software that offers a selection of capabilities that go beyond what Planning Center offers.
You'll also want to look for a tool that offers, at minimum, a 14-day trial for free.
Tithe.ly
Tithe.ly is an all-in-one church management solution that offers the advanced capabilities of Planning Center without the price. Tithe.ly provides church admin, pastors, worship leaders, and ministry leaders tools for connecting, engaging, and leading with ease.
How Tithe.ly Works
The biggest difference between Planning Center and Tithe.ly is the pricing structure. While Planning Center scales up in price as your church grows, Tithe.ly charges one flat fee ($99) to use all of its tools. Tithe.ly is a church software that makes it easy and cost-efficient to scale.
For example, as your events grow in size and attendance, there won't be add-on costs for event management and event registration tools. Your attendance records can grow, but your budget doesn't need to increase.
Tithe.ly offers more than just a 14-day trial or 30-day trial. You can get started on Tithe.ly for free, with zero contracts, risk, or cancellation fees.
Why Choose Tithe.ly Over Planning Center?
Tithe.ly Church Management (ChMS) comes at a more affordable price than Planning Center. Tithe.ly ChMS offers a wide range of tools that make managing church affairs simple and efficient, including tools for managing workflows and reporting.
Finally, users of Tithe.ly report that it has an easy-to-understand, intuitive design.
Comparing Planning Center to Tithe.ly
Our goal here is to be as factual as possible. If anything has changed or we've listed something incorrectly, please reach out so we can fix it immediately.
1. Tithe.ly Church Management is an all-in-one, easy to use solution
We aren't into add-ons or charging for additional features or modules. Our heart has always been to give customers everything they need at a single price point. And that's exactly what we do. You get all our existing features and all our future features at no additional cost.
Planning Center has taken the approach to charge for many additional features and modules. What may seem cheap to begin with may actually end up costing a lot more in the end!
2. Tithe.ly Church Management's pricing is simple and cost-effective
Community contacts can be stored in Tithe.ly Church Management free of charge. We also do not charge a setup or termination fees and our plans have no lock-in contracts.
Within your plan, everything is unlimited! This includes unlimited check-ins and event registrants to name just a couple features.
Planning Center has multiple products with additional costs, which quickly adds up to a substantial amount of money. Additional charges include how many check-ins you can perform and how many registrants for events.
3. Tithe.ly Church Management is better integrated
Because Tithe.ly Church Management is an all-in-one solution, the different tools and platforms integrate much better than something that is made up of multiple products. We work very hard to make your experience streamlined. When products are separated and decoupled, it can cause issues around how well they are integrated.
4. Tithe.ly Church Management offers amazing and free customer service and support
Customer service and support is one of the most important aspects of what we offer. If you sign up to a great product, you expect to get great customer service. This is why we have a dedicated Customer Happiness Officer.
At Tithe.ly, we pride ourselves on our ability to provide you with customized service. We offer unlimited support to assistance any person from your church using our church management software (ChMS) whether it be the senior pastor or a volunteer who serves once a month.
You can reach out and talk to us on the phone, live chat and email.
5. Tithe.ly Church Management has better privacy protection
In this day and age, privacy and security of data is so vital, especially when it comes to storing personal data. At Tithe.ly, we have servers based in Australia, Europe, and the United States, which means your data is closer to home depending on your location and offers better data privacy.
6. Tithe.ly has global servers for faster access
As mentioned in the previous point, we have servers strategically located in Australia, Europe, and the United States. This means each click or page load doesn't have data traveling around the world and back to you, saving you seconds per click and hours of productivity each year!
7. We support small, medium and large churches
Our church management software is very scalable and has powerful customization options for all churches, no matter their size. We are constantly making improvements and adding features to help made you do church life better.
Who Should Use Planning Center?
Churches that are very, very small (less than 25 members) and need only a few tools may choose Planning Center. But for churches of 100 people or more, this tool can quickly become expensive.
Who Should Use Tithe.ly?
Churches that want to grow without paying an exorbitant cost for software should use Tithe.ly.
Tithe.ly's stellar customer support, incredible suite of tools, commitment to security, and beautiful UI only sweeten the deal.
Of course, it's a team decision. When your team leaders and admin are all on board, adopting Tithe.ly or replacing your previous church software with Tithe.ly becomes an effortless shift. Tithe.ly also offers a range of training videos and other resources to make the change even easier.
Planning Center & Tithe.ly Price Comparison
As mentioned above, using Planning Center for your church services and management can cost over $1k a month. Tithe.ly's fixed rate for its services is $99 per month.
Church organizations looking for a more affordable option will want to choose Tithe.ly.
What Churches Are Saying About Tithe.ly
Here's what actual customers have to say about using Tithe.ly.
"I like that I can see both a high-level view of the church, with reports and statistics, but at the same time, I can drill down to a very granular view and see how individual people are doing. As a pastor, I need to have both a view for the whole church and the individual person, and this software helps me to do that." – Doug
"I liked having the ability to create a team and schedule the entire team with minimal effort. Rather than scheduling each individual, the software allowed me to group people together and schedule at once. I was also able to remove people from the schedule before a final submit, which was also useful." – Alyson
Final Thought
At the end of the day Planning Center is a great product, but it's not right for every church due to the higher overall cost, especially if you require more than a couple of add-ons. Be sure your church is evaluating all the right options and making the right choice for your congregation.
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