Church software programs: what to look for and how to choose the right one

Church software usually goes wrong one purchase at a time. Online giving gets added during a building campaign, a check-in system shows up before VBS, and eventually the same family sits in several databases that don’t agree with each other. The fix is a system where giving, people, and communication share one record, so the guest who gives, joins a group, and signs up to serve is one person in your data instead of three.

Price is the other half of the decision, and it’s harder to compare than it should be. As of October 14, 2026, published plans run from $0 for Planning Center’s free tiers to $119 a month for Tithely All Access or ChurchTrac’s unlimited plan, before processing fees. Pushpay® and Subsplash price their full platforms by quote. The pricing comparison below puts six platforms side by side, including Pushpay’s all-in-one ChurchStaq®.

One system instead of a pile of spreadsheets

Every worship service, event, and outreach effort runs on records: who gave, who came, who’s scheduled, who needs a call. Church software keeps those records in one place so your staff isn’t rebuilding them from spreadsheets each week.

The integration is the point. When giving, communication, and member records live in separate tools, someone has to move data between them, and the copies drift apart. In one system, a family’s new address updates everywhere at once.

ChurchStaq works that way. It keeps one profile per person from their first gift or first visit, across giving, church management, and the church app, for churches from a single site to multiple campuses.

Features worth paying for

A feature list tells you what a system can do. Whether your staff and volunteers will use it on an ordinary Tuesday tells you more. These are the areas that carry the most weight.

Church giving and financial management

Giving funds everything else, so start here. Members should be able to give online, in an app, or by text, and set up a recurring gift once instead of remembering every Sunday. Recurring gifts are what carry a budget through the summer slump and the weeks after Easter.

Reporting matters as much as the donation form. Your finance team needs giving by fund, trends over time, and year-end contribution statements without a spreadsheet in between.

Pushpay’s church giving platform records online, app, text, cash, and check gifts in one place. Its Everygift® features recover failed recurring payments, and when a donor’s card expires, the system handles the update automatically.

Church management system (ChMS) for member engagement

A church management system (ChMS) is where you see who’s connected and who’s drifting. One member database tracks attendance, small groups, and serving, so a pastor can see when a family stops checking in their kids before anyone mentions it.

Follow-up workflows can do the remembering. A first-time guest gets a welcome note, a new volunteer gets routed to a background check, and a prayer request reaches the right pastor, each triggered by the record instead of someone’s memory.

Volunteers need the same structure. A ChMS with volunteer scheduling lets team leaders assign positions, see who’s available, and send reminders without a group text chain. A shared calendar keeps church events from landing on the same night in the same room.

Pushpay’s ChMS connects each member profile to giving and serving history, with follow-up processes, kids check-in, and volunteer scheduling in the same system.

Mobile accessibility and church apps

Email open rates and social media algorithms decide much of what your people see from you. A branded church app gives them one place to watch sermons, register for events, and give, and push notifications go straight to their phones.

That covers the urgent stuff too: a volunteer shift reminder, a retreat registration deadline, a weather change to Sunday’s schedule.

Pushpay’s church app comes as the standard MyChurch app or a fully custom app branded to your church, depending on the plan.

Insights and analytics

Good ministry decisions come from data you trust. Giving trends, attendance patterns, and serving levels show where staff time should go: whether new visitors come back, which ministries are growing, and when giving dips.

The value is in acting on it. If volunteer sign-ups fall, look at recruitment before the gaps show up on a Sunday. If a communication channel isn’t reaching people, move the message somewhere it will.

Pushpay Insights puts giving, attendance, and serving on one dashboard and flags at-risk attenders, donors, and volunteers so your team can follow up early.

How to evaluate church software programs

Every vendor promises to simplify ministry. The way to test that promise is to run your church’s real work through the system before you sign.

Start with your church’s needs

Before comparing vendors, write down the two or three problems that cost your team the most time. A single-campus church and a multi-site church need different things, and so does a church whose biggest headache is giving versus one whose biggest headache is volunteers. Prioritize the software that solves your top problems, and treat everything else as a bonus. If you’re not sure where your gaps are, Pushpay’s Church Tech Check is a good place to start.

Room to grow

Ministry doesn’t stand still. A system that works for 200 people should handle 2,000 without a migration, and adding a campus should mean changing a plan rather than changing vendors. Ask each vendor what changes, and what it costs, at the next size up.

Ease of use

Pastors, administrators, volunteers, and members all touch the system, so a clean interface matters more than a long feature list. Software that’s hard to learn gets abandoned. (And abandoned software keeps billing.)

Integration with existing tools

Your church already runs on other platforms for accounting, payroll, and livestreaming. A new system that doesn’t connect to them means duplicate entry and manual exports. Ask for the integration list and confirm every tool you already pay for is on it.

Pushpay doesn’t charge extra for its integrations and lists 80+ of them, including Gusto for payroll and Resi for streaming (those subscriptions are billed separately). If your books live in QuickBooks Online, here’s how church giving platforms connect to it.

Customer support and training

Even good software has a learning curve. Look for live support, onboarding help, and training your team can come back to, and check the support hours against the hours your team works, weekends included.

Pushpay’s support runs Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific, with weekend and holiday coverage for urgent issues. Every plan includes an implementation coach and a customer success manager, and Pushpay University offers courses, certifications, and live training.

Church software pricing compared

Prices last checked October 14, 2026, on each vendor’s public pricing page; Pushpay’s processing rates are from Pushpay. Vendors change pricing without notice, so confirm current rates before you buy. Processing fees are U.S. rates.

Church software costs anywhere from $0 to a few hundred dollars a month before processing fees, and the pricing model matters as much as the sticker. Planning Center charges per product based on usage. Tithely and ChurchTrac charge a flat monthly rate. Pushpay and Subsplash price their full platforms by quote. Rock RMS charges no license fee at all and asks for a donation instead.

Staff seats rarely drive the bill. Pushpay states there’s no limit on users or administrators, Tithely includes unlimited admin users, and Planning Center’s People database is free for unlimited users. The exception is Planning Center Services, which is priced by how many team members access it.

Mid-size churches (200 to 1,000 people)

For a church of 200 to 1,000 people, the realistic shortlist is Planning Center, Tithely, ChurchTrac, and Pushpay. Which one is the best value depends on two things more than the subscription line: how much of your giving arrives by card, and whether you’d rather buy products one at a time or sign one contract.

Start with processing, because it scales with every gift and the subscription doesn’t. At published U.S. rates, the fee on a $100 gift works out like this:

Platform	$100 card gift	$100 bank transfer (ACH)
Planning Center	$2.45	$0.30
Pushpay	$2.30 to $3.20, by giving volume	$0.70 to $1.30, by giving volume
Subsplash	$2.60 to $3.29	$1.00
Tithely	$3.20	$1.30

Each tenth of a point on the card rate is $1,000 a year for every $1 million your church receives by card. What your processing fee funds breaks down what sits behind that percentage.

Text giving is its own line item on some plans. It’s included with Pushpay Giving and Subsplash Giving, costs $5 a month for a Planning Center toll-free number, and costs $19 a month on Tithely’s free Giving plan (it’s included in All Access). The best text-to-give platforms for churches compares them in more detail.

Then the subscription:

• Tithely: Church Management is $72 a month at any size, and All Access (adding the app, website, and worship planning) is $119. Annual billing takes about 25% off Church Management.
• ChurchTrac: $79 a month for 500 names, $99 for 1,000, and $119 for unlimited, with 10% off for paying yearly. Count every child and guest you track, because each one is a name.
• Planning Center: People is free. Giving, Services, Check-Ins, and Groups each climb the same ladder ($15, $32, $69, $115, $179, and $239 a month), keyed to their own count. Planning Center estimates monthly donations at weekly attendance × 0.17 × 4.3, so a church averaging 500 on the weekend lands near 366 donations a month and the $69 Giving tier.
• Pushpay: the subscription comes by quote, and the processing rate depends on your total giving volume. The published terms are no setup fees, no user limits, no extra charge for integrations, check scanning from $0.29 per check, and a 1-, 2-, or 3-year contract. Pushpay reports that churches of about 1,000 people grow and secure $37,000 a year with its Everygift features.

Ask Pushpay for your processing rate in writing alongside the subscription quote. Then compare total cost (subscription plus fees on your actual mix of card and bank gifts) across every vendor on your list.

Buying your first ChMS? Every vendor here lets you test with your own data before paying: Planning Center has free tiers on every product, Tithely and ChurchTrac offer 30-day trials, and Pushpay offers a self-guided product tour and a demo. Smaller churches can go deeper with how to choose church management software for small churches.

Running more than one campus

For a multi-campus church, the best value is the tier that keeps each campus’s money, people data, and branding separate without a second system. None of the vendors below publishes a limit on how many campuses you can run.

Platform	Campus giving and deposits	Campus app and branding	Campus access for staff	Where it sits
Pushpay	Per-campus giving designations and a separate bank account per campus	Per-campus branding, media, and push notification categories; a per-campus app is available	Multi-site admin, plus multi-site ChMS with metric dashboards	Complete tier, by quote
Planning Center	Campus labels on funds, with giving reported church-wide or by campus through one giving portal	One Church Center app, with a landing page per campus	Permissions are set person by person; there are no campus-based permissions	Standard per-product pricing; no per-campus fee listed
Tithely	One account tracks giving across campuses, with a separate text-to-give number for each	Not stated on the pricing page	Not stated on the pricing page	Standard flat plans
Subsplash	Not stated on the pricing page	Multi-campus app on the Enterprise package	Not stated on the pricing page	Enterprise, by quote

Total cost for a multi-site church is the subscription, plus processing on every campus’s giving, plus onboarding. Pushpay, Planning Center, and Tithely all state no setup fees, though Pushpay offers paid coaching on top.

The tradeoff with Pushpay is that the per-campus features live on the Complete tier, so a two-campus church pays top-tier pricing to get them. What that buys is separate deposits and branding per campus inside one giving and ChMS contract. On Planning Center, the question to ask is access: if campus staff shouldn’t see another campus’s records, you’ll manage that person by person.

Rock RMS says it runs 10 of the 12 largest churches in the U.S. It charges no license fee at any campus count, though you’ll still pay a hosting partner or host it yourself. For a fuller checklist, see the multi-campus ChMS buying guide and the roundup of church apps for multi-campus churches.

Free and low-cost options for startup churches

The cheapest way to start is Planning Center’s free tiers or Tithely’s free giving, and each runs out at a predictable point. The table shows where every free or entry plan stops.

Option	Free version	Where it stops	First paid step	Giving fee, card / ACH
Planning Center	Free tier on every product; the People database is free and unlimited	Giving at 10 donations a month, Services at 5 team members, Check-Ins at 10 a day, Groups at 15 members	$15 a month per product	2.15% + $0.30 / $0.30
Tithely Giving	Free online, mobile, and text giving with unlimited donations	No member database, groups, check-in, or volunteer scheduling; text giving adds $19 a month	Church Management at $72 a month	2.9% + $0.30 / 1% + $0.30
Breeze (now Tithely Church Management)	No free plan; 30-day trial	Flat price with unlimited contacts	$72 a month; worship tools add $29 a month; texts past 250 a month cost $10 per 500	Tithely Giving rates
ChurchTrac	No free plan; 30-day trial	Plan size is set by names tracked	$29 a month for 75 names	Stripe nonprofit rate, not published on the pricing page
Subsplash Giving	$0 a month giving	Giving only	Subsplash One, by quote	2.3% to 2.99% + $0.30 / 1%
Rock RMS	No license fee	Hosting is separate, through a cloud partner or your own server	Suggested donation of $4.45 per weekend attendee per year; grants available	Not published by Rock

Free is a fine place to start and an awkward place to leave, because giving is the hardest thing to move. Planning Center notes that recurring donations can’t be transferred into its Giving product directly, so donors set them up again. Pushpay says it has migration tools that move recurring givers over. Ask every vendor on your list how recurring gifts move in and out before your first donor sets one up. What you get (and give up) with free church management software covers the rest of the tradeoff.

What should a church plant pick?

If your plant is 6 to 18 months from public launch and affiliated with a recognized planting network, Pushpay’s church plant grant covers the full platform free for 12 months: Giving with Everygift, ChMS with kids check-in, and a mobile app. It’s the same platform established multi-site churches run, so there’s no migration later. Standard processing rates still apply.

Already launched, or planting outside a network? Planning Center is free for all church plants for one year. Tithely gives qualifying plants All Access free for the first year (it values that at $1,500), then $119 a month. ChurchTrac builds custom quotes for plants, and Pushpay prices independent plants case by case.

Whichever you shortlist, run it through these before you sign:

• Setup speed: Can you take a gift before launch Sunday? Tithely says its giving setup takes 5 to 10 minutes, and Pushpay onboards grant churches during pre-launch. Ask each vendor for a go-live date.
• Year-two cost: Price the month the free year ends at the attendance you’re planning for. Tithely’s is $119 a month, Planning Center’s depends on which products you’re using by then, and Pushpay’s is a quote.
• Contract: Planning Center and Tithely run month to month. Pushpay’s standard plans run 1, 2, or 3 years.
• Integrations: List the tools you already pay for and confirm each one connects. Tithely connects to QuickBooks Online, Planning Center runs background checks through Checkr, and Pushpay lists 80+ integrations, including Gusto for payroll.
• Growth: Ask what changes when you add a second service or a second campus, and which tier that puts you on.

For more on the giving side, see the best giving software for church plants and 5 things every church planter should know about tech.

Planning and leadership tools

Church planning software covers two jobs that vendors price differently: service planning (the order of service and who’s on each team) and leadership follow-through (follow-up processes, dashboards, and pastoral notes).

Automated volunteer scheduling

For automated volunteer scheduling you can price without a sales call, start with Planning Center Services. It fills open positions based on blockout dates, preferences, and when each person last served, and it’s free up to 5 team members.

Ease of use doesn’t show up on a pricing page. Use the trial: build next month’s schedule for one real team, send it, and watch how the tool handles the people who decline.

And no scheduler fixes a thin bench. Automation fills positions from the volunteers you already have. Recruiting the next ones is still on you, and the recruiting section of the guide to managing church volunteers covers it.

Common mistakes to avoid when choosing church software

The expensive mistakes rarely show up in a demo. They show up a year in.

Choosing software that doesn’t integrate

Separate tools for giving, people, and communication mean duplicate entry, more errors, and no single view of what’s happening in your church. Pick a platform where those share one record, or confirm the integrations exist before you buy.

Overlooking mobile accessibility

Members expect to give, register, and watch from their phones. Staff and volunteers need mobile access too, for schedules, attendance, and check-in. A platform that’s awkward on a phone limits both groups.

Focusing only on price instead of long-term value

The cheapest plan in year one can cost more by year three if you outgrow it, because moving recurring gifts between giving platforms can mean asking donors to set them up again. Price the plan you’ll need at your expected size, add processing fees on your real mix of card and bank gifts, and compare that total. What free church management software costs you walks through the hidden side of starting free.

Ignoring user adoption and training

Powerful software doesn’t help if staff and volunteers won’t use it. Choose a platform your least technical volunteer can learn, and a vendor with live support and a training library your team will go back to.

Skipping over insights and reporting

Without data on giving, attendance, and serving, you’re guessing about what’s working. Make sure the reports you’ll need come standard, so you aren’t paying for custom builds or exporting to spreadsheets to answer basic questions.

Steps to successfully implement software

A good system rolled out badly still fails. Planning, training, and a phased rollout are what get software adopted.

Get leadership and staff buy-in

Before a technology change, pastors, administrators, and ministry leads need to know why it’s happening and what it changes for them. Answer the practical questions early. Will this save the admin team time? Will members find it easier to give? Who owns cleaning up the data before the move? Aligned leadership makes the rest of the rollout easier.

Demo and test options

Reading about features is different from using them. Use demos, free trials, or a pilot, and test with tasks you do every week: send a church-wide email, track a Sunday’s attendance, process a donation.

Train staff and volunteers

Break training into short, role-specific sessions instead of one full-system walkthrough. Finance learns gift entry and statements, pastors learn follow-up, and volunteer leaders learn scheduling. Vendors with training videos, live support, and a knowledge base make this easier because people can go back to them later.

Gradual rollout strategy

Switching everything overnight invites confusion. Some churches start with online giving and add member management later; others pilot with one ministry or one campus first. Either way, you get time to fix problems and collect feedback before the whole church is on the new system.

Monitor and adjust

Implementation doesn’t end at launch. Review giving reports, engagement data, and user feedback in the first few months. If a feature isn’t getting used, people usually need more training or a clearer reason to use it.

Where Pushpay fits

Pushpay is built for churches that want giving, church management, and a church app under one contract. ChurchStaq brings the three together:

• Giving: online, app, and text giving with recurring gifts and Everygift payment recovery
• Church management: attendance, groups, follow-up processes, kids check-in, and volunteer scheduling
• Church app: sermons, events, groups, and giving in one place, with push notifications
• Insights: giving, attendance, and serving trends, with at-risk people flagged for follow-up

It fits mid-size, large, and multi-site churches best, where the Complete tier adds per-campus giving, branding, and bank accounts. Pushpay serves more than 14,000 ministries, and 7 of the 10 largest U.S. churches run on it.

Churches using Pushpay to strengthen engagement and giving

The clearest number is what happens after a switch. Pushpay reports that churches moving to its platform grow their recurring donors by 24% on average, which matters because recurring gifts are the ones that keep coming in the weeks attendance dips.

Next steps: see Pushpay in action

A demo is the fastest way to check fit. Bring the two or three problems you wrote down at the start, plus your current giving numbers, and ask the team to show you:

• Admin time: how gift entry, statements, and follow-up run from one record
• Engagement: how the app and communication tools reach people during the week
• Giving: what your processing rate and recurring giving setup would look like
• Growth: what changes when you add a service or a campus

Conclusion

If you’re planning a switch, plan around January. Your old system sends last year’s contribution statements, and the new one starts the year with clean giving history. Working back from that, October and November are when the decision and the data cleanup need to happen.

Get a demo to see ChurchStaq with your own numbers. Not ready for a demo? The State of Church Technology 2026 is based on responses from 1,300+ church leaders and shows how other churches are using their tech.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about church software programs

1. What is church management software, and why do churches need it?

Church management software (ChMS) is a shared database and set of tools for tracking people, giving, and volunteers. Churches use it so staff can follow up with people and run day-to-day operations from one record instead of scattered spreadsheets.

2. What are the key features to look for in the best church management software?

Look for these five:

• Giving and accounting: online, app, and text giving with fund-level reporting and contribution statements
• Volunteer coordination: scheduling, reminders, and availability in one place
• Ease of use: an interface staff and volunteers will adopt without weeks of training
• Mobile app: giving, events, and groups on members’ phones
• Communication tools: email, text, and push notifications sent from member lists

3. How can church software improve financial management?

It records every gift, online and offline, against a donor’s profile, so giving reports and year-end statements come from one place. Pushpay adds automatic recovery for failed recurring gifts through its Everygift features.

4. What is the best church management software for small churches?

It depends on budget and what you need first. As of October 14, 2026, the lowest published entry points are Planning Center’s free tiers and Tithely Church Management at $72 a month. ChurchTrac starts at $29 a month for 75 people tracked.

5. Can church management software assist in volunteer management?

Yes. Most systems include scheduling, position assignments, and reminders. Some automate the schedule itself: Planning Center Services fills positions from blockout dates and preferences, and Pushpay’s ChMS adds a family serving calendar and flags unfilled serving roles in Insights.

6. How do large churches benefit from church management systems?

They get multi-campus management, reporting across every ministry, and automated follow-up at a volume no staff could handle by hand. Look for per-campus giving and reporting, campus-level access controls, and dashboards leaders can read without an analyst.

7. What role does church software play in worship planning?

Most church platforms include service planning: building the order of service, scheduling worship teams, and sharing songs and notes. Pushpay’s service plans hold people, songs, Bible verses, and notes, starting on the ChMS Advanced tier.

8. How can a church ensure a smooth transition to new software?

Plan it in phases:

1. Assess your church’s needs and choose the right ChMS platform.
2. Get leadership and church staff buy-in.
3. Train administrative teams and volunteers by role.
4. Roll out the software gradually.
5. Monitor usage and adjust based on feedback.

9. Where can I find more information or a demo of Pushpay’s church management software?

Take the self-guided product tour or request a demo. The demo includes a free giving analysis with no obligation.

10. How much does church management software cost?

Anywhere from $0 to a few hundred dollars a month, plus processing fees on online gifts. As of October 14, 2026, Planning Center’s People database is free and its other products run $15 to $239 a month each, Tithely Church Management is $72 a month, and ChurchTrac runs $29 to $119 a month by the number of people tracked. Pushpay and Subsplash One price by quote.

11. Which church software is best for a multi-campus church?

The one that separates campus giving, deposits, and branding on a tier you can afford. Pushpay’s Complete tier includes per-campus giving designations, a bank account per campus, and per-campus branding. Planning Center tracks giving by campus in one account but sets permissions person by person rather than by campus.

12. Is there free church management software?

Yes, with limits. Planning Center People is free with an unlimited database, Tithely Giving is free apart from processing fees, and Rock RMS charges no license fee. Planning Center’s free tiers stop at 10 donations a month in Giving and 5 team members in Services.

13. What’s the best all-in-one software for a church plant?

For a plant 6 to 18 months from launch and part of a recognized planting network, Pushpay’s church plant grant includes Giving, ChMS, and a mobile app free for 12 months. Planning Center and Tithely also give plants a free first year.

DISCLAIMER: this content has been generated, at least in part, by artificial intelligence.

See also:

• Mobile giving app vs. text to give for churches
• Best church management software for 2026
• Why I believe in AI for the Church, and where I draw the line