Apps Run the church
Run the church
Church management systems
A church management system holds the membership roll, household relationships, attendance, giving records, and serving schedules. The right one is the one your elders and office staff open every week without calling for help. Weigh data export as heavily as any feature, because churches change systems and the records belong to the church.
Before you buy
Demand this in writing
Ask for every line below before a card goes on file. A vendor who will not put an answer in an email has answered.
- Household and membership records an elder can read without training
- Attendance and participation records kept as records, with no points, streaks, or badges
- Permission roles that match real church offices: pastor, elder, deacon, volunteer
- Full export of your data in open formats, CSV at minimum, run once before you sign
- A price you can state in dollars per year at your current roll size
- Multi-campus features priced separately, so a single-site church is not paying for them
- A support channel where a person answers a question about church work
The tools
Named options
Rows are not ranked. They run from the tool most churches meet first to the narrower options, and anything of ours goes last. Where a price was verified, the row carries the date it was read and a link to the page it came from.
Planning Center
Right for
Churches that want people, services, giving, and check-in from one vendor
The system most volunteers have already used somewhere else, which shortens training to almost nothing. Every product has a free tier with a hard cap, and the caps are low enough that a growing church crosses them one at a time. That is the honest shape of the bill: it starts near zero and climbs by module.
Who should skip it
Skip it if you need one number on one invoice. Six products is six line items, and the total moves whenever a ministry grows.
Price
A free tier on every product with a cap on each: 5 team members in Services, 10 monthly donations in Giving, 10 daily check-ins, 15 group members. Paid tiers run per product. Card giving is processed at 2.15% + $0.30. Texting is $5 a month for a toll-free number plus $0.02 a message. Music Stand is $5 a month. No contract and no setup fee.
Breeze ChMS
Right for
A small office with no IT staff that wants one flat bill
One price, unlimited admin users, and a volunteer can learn the whole thing in a week. Giving is included at no monthly charge. The flat rate is the feature: the treasurer can put a single figure in next year budget and be right.
Who should skip it
Skip it if you run multiple campuses, need layered permissions, or want to build custom workflows on top of your records.
Price
$72 a month, flat. Unlimited admin users, people, giving, groups, events, and email. Texting includes 250 messages a month, then $10 per 500. No setup fee, no contract, 30 day trial.
ChurchTrac
Right for
Churches under a few hundred members that want accounting in the same system
Priced by how many people are in your database, which means a church of 90 pays like a church of 90. Accounting and messaging are add-ons rather than assumptions, so a church that keeps its books elsewhere is not paying for a ledger it will never open.
Who should skip it
Skip it if your roll is large or growing fast, because the tiers are what you are buying and each step up is a new decision.
Price
Tiered by the size of your database, from 75 names to unlimited. Accounting adds $15 a month and messaging adds $7 a month. Paying yearly takes 10% off. There is a 30 day trial and no free plan.
Rock RMS
Right for
Churches with a developer on staff or a budget for one
Open source, so the software itself is not the cost. The cost is a server, a person who maintains it, and the hours it takes to configure. Churches that can staff it get a system they own outright and can extend without asking permission.
Who should skip it
Skip it if nobody on staff can name the last time they applied a security patch. An unmaintained church database is worse than a spreadsheet.
Price
Open source. Self-host it or buy hosting from the project. No dollar figures are published on the site, so get the hosting quote in writing.
Covenant OS
By Church PostingRight for
Churches that want members, giving, service planning, and communications in one system
Our church management system. In development and not available to buy. It is in this list because a reader deserves to know we build one while we review the others, not because you can use it.
Who should skip it
Everyone, today. Nobody can run a church on software that has not shipped. Breeze fits a small office now, Planning Center fits a church that needs the depth.
Price
Not available. Pricing publishes when the product does.
Buy the system your elders will open. A cheap tool used every week beats an expensive suite the staff avoid. Run a full export of your data before you renew, and open the file.
Have a bill that says otherwise?
Invoices from pastors and treasurers correct these pages faster than anything else does. Send one, or read how we review.