Planning Center vs. Pushpay

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Planning Center
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Planning Center in Carlsbad offers modular church management applications, providing CRM, tithe management, event registration and attendance, and volunteer resource scheduling.
$14
per month
Pushpay
Score 6.4 out of 10
N/A
Pushpay delivers digital solutions to help churches achieve their missions. Their ChurchStaq, ParishStaq, and Resi Media suites aim to simplify engagement, giving, administration, and video streaming—enabling their 14,500+ customers to increase generosity, drive participation, and build stronger community relationships.N/A
Pricing
Planning CenterPushpay
Editions & Modules
Calendar
14+
per month
Check-ins
14+
per month
Giving
14+
per month
Groups
14+
per month
Registration
14+
per month
Services
14+
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Planning CenterPushpay
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices increase based on the number of members and attendees.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Planning CenterPushpay
Considered Both Products
Planning Center
Chose Planning Center
Planning Center provides more integrated people management than FellowshipOne or CCB at a better monthly price. Planning Center Giving is more competitive than PushPay and also available at a better rate. Planning Center Services is hands-down the standard for worship planning …
Chose Planning Center
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 …
Chose Planning Center
I've used worshipteam.com for worship resources, which has a few advantages. It's much easier to transpose music sheets AND audio recordings with a click making for an easier practice session. Planning Center does not provide an easy-to-use function like that (though they do …
Pushpay
Chose Pushpay
Pushpay's platform seems to have a slight edge on analytics of donors, but those features are not worth the excessively higher costs to us.
Chose Pushpay
We had previously used a program called eGiving to receive online payments and contributions, and we have previously used PowerChurch as our CRM, and Pushpay (including its Church Community Builder program) far excels both of these other programs. Pushpay is more user-friendly, …
Chose Pushpay
  • The giving directly inside of our Church management platform (CCB) was not a great option as the mobile site was not as robust. Due to previous transitions between church management platforms, we did not want to migrate, giving from one software to another, which is both a …
User Ratings
Planning CenterPushpay
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
1.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Planning CenterPushpay
Likelihood to Recommend
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
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As the fees are incredibly high, I would not recommend smaller organizations with lower budgets. If an organization is looking to separate their electronic giving processing outside of their church management software to allow a consistent user experience regardless of a change from one church management platform to another, Pushpay is a great solution.
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Pros
  • Easy to use app
  • Helpfully displays order of services/events
  • Provides instant collaboration among several users
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  • Receive payments for church events
  • Receive donations and contributions to the church
  • Help manage our CRM (church community database)
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Cons
  • Groups' Communication Tool
  • Giving app scaled access for volunteers
  • Church-wide communication tool
  • Song-reporting integration with CCLI
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  • Cannot give to more than one fund in a single transaction.
  • Cannot pull data from the church management software. Therefore, if donors give electronically and via cash or check (which is processed directly in Church management software), the donor cannot run one giving statement through Pushpay, which includes all of their gifts. Pushpay does allow check and cash scanning through their platform which can resolve the statement issue, however, they do not have image scanning software, therefore, a visual copy of checks or cash envelopes cannot be exported or retrieved.
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Support Rating
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.
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The access to support is excellent; however, the turnover with assigned account managers has been high over the years, which makes it challenging to build a lasting rapport. There have been some technical and functionality issues communicated over the years which have been received by the account manager. At the time, with responses such as "yes, we know it's an issue, and we're working on that, but we don't have a timeframe." These problems are never resolved, nor are progress reports or follow up ever addressed, then the account manager changes and the cycle starts again.
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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We had previously used a program called eGiving to receive online payments and contributions, and we have previously used PowerChurch as our CRM, and Pushpay (including its Church Community Builder program) far excels both of these other programs. Pushpay is more user-friendly, and its financial program and its CRM program work much more effectively with one another.
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Return on Investment
  • Reliable and consistent scheduling options for volunteers. Keeps them happy and us staffed.
  • Better communication makes for a better planned and executed service.
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  • Pushpay served as a fine giving platform and allowed for our church to move digitally well.
  • However, the inordinate fees and costs of their platform ate away at much too large of our donations. With the other platforms out there, it doesn't make sense for us to lock into contracts with excessively high fees.
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