Planning Center vs ChiesApp: an honest comparison
Planning Center is the most mature church management software around, and it is thoroughly American: English-only, billed in dollars, one product at a time. ChiesApp covers the same ground for a church in Europe: people and families, ministries and rotas, attendance, events, finances. One subscription, priced in euros, built under GDPR. This is the honest version, including the parts where Planning Center is still ahead.
What both of them do
Both are cloud church management software. Both hold your people and families, your ministries and teams, your volunteer scheduling, your attendance, your calendar and your events. If you have ever run a church on four spreadsheets and a WhatsApp group, either one is a step up.
Planning Center started in 2006 in Carlsbad, California, and is used by tens of thousands of churches. ChiesApp started in 2025, built by Gabriele Martucci and Lorenzo Pascalis, two people running churches who needed the tool themselves. One is the incumbent. The other is built for Europe.
Where Planning Center is ahead
We are not going to pretend otherwise. On several fronts Planning Center is the better product, and if these are your priorities you should buy it.
- Worship planning. Services is the best service-planning tool on the market, with song libraries, keys, arrangements and rehearsal files.
- A member-facing app. Church Center is free for members and pulls giving, groups, events and check-in into one place.
- Twenty years of ecosystem: integrations, documentation, a large community and a track record ChiesApp does not have yet.
- Buy only one piece. If all you need is a rota tool, the à la carte model lets you pay for that alone.
- Online giving, where it works: the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Where ChiesApp fits a European church better
- Built in Europe, under European privacy rules. Each church sees only its own data (row-level security (RLS)), and members can be exported or erased on request.
- One subscription instead of five product bills: the plan follows the size of your church, and only two areas — Communication and Resources — need Ministry or above.
- Billed in euros, so there is no dollar exchange sitting on top of every invoice.
- Free up to 30 contacts, no credit card. You can run a small church on it and never pay.
- The interface has an English translation alongside Italian.
- Rotas that build themselves: conflict detection, a draft nobody sees until you publish, then export to PDF and iCal.
- Event registrations with tiers, add-ons and discount codes, a PDF ticket, and check-in with the camera at the door. No fee on the money, because the money never passes through us.
Neither one collects your offerings in Europe
Planning Center Giving does process payments, but only in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For a church in Europe that product cannot be switched on at all. It is not a gap in the feature list, it is a wall.
ChiesApp does not process payments or donations anywhere, and that is a design decision. Finances tracks what came in and went out, and plans what comes next: income and expense bookkeeping with a pivot view, project budgets, recurring costs, assets, and shareable multi-period reports. It is a planning tool, not a till.
The same applies to event fees. The church lists its own methods, bank transfer, PayPal, cash at the door. The person registering says they have paid, a staff member confirms it. Since no money moves through ChiesApp, there is no commission on it, which is the opposite of how most registration tools earn.
What each one costs
Planning Center is à la carte and billed in dollars. People, the database, is free and unlimited. Everything else is a separate product on its own usage metric: Services on the number of scheduled people, Calendar on the number of rooms, Check-Ins on your busiest Sunday. Each line looks cheap on its own. A church that actually needs People plus Services plus Calendar plus Check-Ins plus Groups often ends up past $200 a month, before the dollar exchange and the card conversion fee. Those figures move, so check their own calculator.
ChiesApp is one plan, in euros, sized by how many people you have.
- Free: up to 30 contacts, no credit card. Event registrations come with the Ministry plan.
- Starter: up to 80 members and 5 admins. It lifts the capacity, nothing else.
- Ministry: more capacity, and the two paid areas open here. Communication covers spaces, pages, forms, lists and segments. Resources covers finances, projects, reports and the café.
- Growth up to 300 members, Network up to 800, with more admins and more Space Pass.
- Churches that join now keep their price.
Moving your people across
The people are the part that worries everyone, and they are the easy part. Export your records from Planning Center as CSV, import them into ChiesApp with custom fields, tags and families. From that point the register is live and searchable, and you can export it again whenever you like.
The rest gets rebuilt once, usually in a single guided session of 15 to 30 minutes: recreate the ministries and roles, set up the first rotas, connect the calendar to Google, start marking attendance.
Nothing locks you in. If you leave, you export everything and close the account. No penalty, no ransom on your own data.
Frequently asked questions
Is Planning Center available in any language other than English?
No. The interface, the emails, the documentation, Planning Center University and support are all English-only, and the company has announced no localisation plans. ChiesApp is built in Europe: the interface has an English translation alongside Italian.
Can a European church collect online donations with Planning Center?
No. Planning Center Giving works only in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, so a European church cannot switch it on. ChiesApp does not process donations either, on purpose: Finances tracks and plans church money instead of collecting it.
How does the cost compare?
Planning Center bills per product, in dollars, and each product scales on its own usage metric. A working stack for one church often passes $200 a month, plus dollar exchange and card conversion; check their calculator, since the numbers move. ChiesApp is a single subscription in euros, priced by the size of the church, and free up to 30 contacts with no credit card.
Is ChiesApp really an alternative to Planning Center?
For a European church, yes. It covers people and families, segments, ministries, volunteer rotas, attendance, calendar with two-way Google sync, events, registrations, rooms and finances in one platform, under GDPR, in euros. It is younger and less complete: Planning Center is still better at worship planning and has a mature member app.
Do we pay a fee on event registrations?
No. ChiesApp never handles the money, so there is nothing to take a cut of. The church lists its own payment methods, the attendee declares the payment, a staff member confirms it, and the ticket goes out as a PDF.