Planning Center Groups
Church management software
Church software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
Take the quiz to check if Planning Center Groups and its alternatives fit your requirements.
$15 per month
Free TrialFree version
Small
Medium
Large
- Public sector and nonprofit organizations
- Education and training
- Arts, entertainment, and recreation
What is Planning Center Groups
Planning Center Groups is a church group management module within the Planning Center platform that helps churches organize small groups, classes, and teams. It supports group listings, signups, member communication, attendance tracking, and leader workflows. The product is typically used by church administrators and group leaders to manage group lifecycle activities and coordinate participation. It is designed to integrate with other Planning Center products for shared people data and church-wide workflows.
Purpose-built group management
The product focuses on core group operations such as creating groups, managing rosters, tracking attendance, and handling signups. It supports leader roles and workflows that fit common church small-group structures. This specialization can reduce the need to adapt generic membership tools for group ministry processes.
Integrated Planning Center ecosystem
Planning Center Groups connects with the broader Planning Center platform, enabling shared people records and consistent permissions across modules. Churches using multiple Planning Center products can reduce duplicate data entry and keep group participation aligned with other church activities. This integration is a practical advantage when standardizing on a single vendor suite.
Self-service discovery and signup
Groups can be published for congregants to browse and request to join, supporting common “find a group” use cases. Signup and request workflows help administrators and leaders manage capacity and follow-up. This can streamline onboarding compared with manual email-based coordination.
Not a full ChMS alone
Groups addresses group ministry management but does not replace broader church management needs by itself (e.g., giving, accounting, or end-to-end member management depending on a church’s requirements). Organizations often need additional modules or separate systems for a complete church operations stack. This can increase overall subscription complexity for churches seeking an all-in-one product.
Suite dependency for best value
Many benefits depend on using other Planning Center products for shared data and workflows. Churches that only need group management may find the platform approach less compelling than a single-purpose tool. Migrating away later can require rethinking processes that rely on cross-module integration.
Limited fit for non-church orgs
The product’s terminology and workflows are oriented toward church ministry contexts such as small groups and leader structures. Non-church membership organizations may find the feature set and configuration options less aligned with their governance and reporting needs. This can reduce applicability outside the church software category.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Group members | Free | Full feature access; unlimited groups & group events; counts up to 15 active group members; visitors are not counted. |
| 75 Group members | $15/mo. | Full feature access; unlimited groups & events; priced by number of active group members per month. |
| 200 Group members | $32/mo. | Full feature access; unlimited groups & events; priced by number of active group members per month. |
| 500 Group members | $69/mo. | Full feature access; unlimited groups & events; priced by number of active group members per month. |
| 1,000 Group members | $115/mo. | Full feature access; unlimited groups & events; priced by number of active group members per month. |
| 1,500 Group members | $179/mo. | Full feature access; unlimited groups & events; priced by number of active group members per month. |
| Unlimited Group members | $239/mo. | Full feature access; unlimited groups & events; priced by number of active group members per month. |
Seller details
Planning Center
Carlsbad, CA, USA
2006
Private
https://www.planningcenter.com/
https://x.com/planningcenter
https://www.linkedin.com/company/planning-center/
