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What Planning Center app is
If you want the shortest friendly answer, it is this: Planning Center app is the free mobile admin app for churches already using Planning Center, designed to help staff and key volunteers manage work from anywhere.
The most important strategic nuance is that Planning Center is not presenting this as a new standalone church management product. Instead, it is presenting it as a new mobile admin layer over tools churches may already use. That is why the official FAQ emphasizes both that the app is free and that it upgrades the Tasks app into a broader admin experience.
Differences between Church Center app and Planning Center app
The cleanest way to explain this to readers is: Planning Center app helps your team run ministry; Church Center helps your congregation join ministry. That is the single most useful line to keep consistent throughout the post.
| Comparison point | Planning Center app | Church Center app |
| Primary users | Church admins who use multiple products; staff and high-capacity volunteers. | Congregants, families, group members, donors, and volunteers using the public church experience. |
| Primary function | Mobile admin work: notifications, tasks, Home dashboard, and access to products used behind the scenes. | Congregation engagement: giving, events, groups, directory, volunteer schedule, sermons, and family pre-check. |
| Feature focus | Admin notifications, synced actions with desktop, task management, and opening products like People, Giving, Services, Check-Ins, Groups, Publishing, Registrations, and Calendar from one app. | Give and manage donations, join groups, register for events, respond to volunteer schedules, check in children, view the directory, and access livestreams or sermon content. |
| User roles | Internal church team roles. | Public church members and attenders; some group leaders and volunteers also use it from the congregation side. |
| Integrations inside the ecosystem | Acts as a mobile entry point into the broader Planning Center admin ecosystem and syncs notifications between app and desktop. | Powered by Planning Center products and Publishing; the features your church exposes in Church Center depend on what products the church uses and enables. |
| Typical scenarios | A staff member approves a facilities request, checks a workflow, clears tasks, or opens Registrations while walking across campus. | A church member gives, signs up for a retreat, checks a serving schedule, joins a small group chat, or pre-checks children before arrival. |
| Pricing | Free at no added cost. | Free for users; churches manage Church Center essentials inside the free Essential level of Publishing, with paid Publishing upgrades for more customization and media features. |
A helpful editorial takeaway is that these apps are not competitors inside the same platform. They are complementary. Planning Center’s own pages repeatedly describe Church Center as the congregation-facing layer and Planning Center as the staff-facing system.
How much it costs
The first answer readers usually want is the simplest one: the Planning Center app itself is completely free to use. Planning Center says it is “simply a new way to access the tools you already love, at no added cost.”
The second answer is broader: Planning Center pricing is product-based, not sold as one flat public bundle price on the official pricing pages reviewed. The help center says subscriptions are à la carte, and the public pricing flow says you can sign up for the full system or subscribe product by product. Planning Center also says there are no contracts or setup fees, and product pages commonly advertise 30 days free and cancel anytime. The help center further notes that, except for Publishing, subscription levels include full features and support.
Current official pricing snapshot
| Product or layer | Free tier | Paid tiers shown on official pages | Notes |
| Planning Center app | Free | No separate paid app plan specified | Free mobile admin access layer for existing Planning Center accounts. |
| People | Free with unlimited people and access | No paid People tier shown | Officially free for every church. |
| Services | 5 team members, 100 MB storage | 20 members $15/mo; 50 $32/mo; 150 $69/mo; 400 $115/mo; 1000 $179/mo; unlimited $239/mo | Pricing scales by number of people accessing the system and storage. |
| Music Stand | No standalone free tier; requires Services | $5/mo for a 50-team-member parent Services package; $10/mo for a 150-team-member parent package | Add-on to Services; more tiers are not specified in the retrieved page text. |
| Registrations | 5 attendees per event | 20 $15/mo; 50 $32/mo; 150 $69/mo; 400 $115/mo; 1000 $179/mo; 5000 $239/mo | Priced by attendees registered for the biggest event. |
| Giving | 10 donations/month | 75 $15/mo; 200 $32/mo; 500 $69/mo; 1000 $115/mo; 1500 $179/mo; unlimited $239/mo | Subscription pricing is separate from payment processing fees. |
| Check-Ins | 10 daily check-ins | 30 $15/mo; 75 $32/mo; 200 $69/mo; 500 $115/mo; 1000 $179/mo; unlimited $239/mo | Priced by unique check-ins on the busiest day of the week. |
| Groups | 15 group members | 75 $15/mo; 200 $32/mo; 500 $69/mo; 1000 $115/mo; 1500 $179/mo; unlimited $239/mo | Priced by active group participants. |
| Calendar | 1 managed room, unlimited events | 5 rooms $15/mo; 15 $32/mo; 30 $69/mo; 50 $115/mo; 75 $179/mo; top $239/mo tier shown, but the room count is unspecified in the retrieved page text | Calendar is free for unlimited events; pricing applies to managed rooms. |
| Publishing and Church Center customization | Essential free | Plus $15/mo; Premium $32/mo | Church Center essentials are free in Publishing; paid plans add custom pages, themes, sermon notes, and audio/video channels. |
| Church Center | Free to users | No separate standalone public app cost | Managed through Publishing; included with Planning Center accounts. |
| Home | Included free with every subscription | No separate paid Home tier specified | Home is a dashboard and task hub rather than a separately priced product. |
Processing fees and pricing notes
For Giving and Registrations, Planning Center also charges payment processing fees for online transactions. On the public pricing pages, U.S. rates are listed as 2.15% + $0.30 for card transactions and 0% + $0.30 for ACH bank transfers, with country-specific fee schedules also published for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
On discounts and special pricing, I did not find a general public “nonprofit discount” that sits outside standard church pricing on the reviewed official pages. What the official site does specify are two notable offers: church plants can request one year free, and churches under contract with another giving provider can apply to use Giving free for up to 12 months, subject to Planning Center’s review of the current contract.
What Planning Center includes
Planning Center’s official church management page describes eight core products—Calendar, Check-Ins, Giving, Groups, People, Publishing, Registrations, and Services. Around those core products, the ecosystem also includes Church Center as the congregation-facing app and website, Home as the dashboard and task hub, the Planning Center app as the admin mobile app, and Music Stand as a Services add-on for musicians.
| Product or module | What it includes | Common use cases |
|---|---|---|
| People | Free membership database that centralizes member data and ministry activity. | Profiles, lists, follow-up workflows, forms, communication, notes, and background checks. |
| Calendar | Event and facility scheduling from a central church calendar. | Room booking, event planning, event requests, public event sharing, and resource tracking. |
| Check-Ins | Flexible check-in and check-out tools focused on safety and attendance. | Kids ministry check-in, labels, volunteer check-in, classroom rosters, and event attendance. |
| Giving | Donation management and reporting. | Online giving, ACH and card donations, statements, pledge campaigns, and fund reporting. |
| Groups | Group organization, communication, and attendance. | Small groups, recovery groups, leader messaging, event RSVPs, and group engagement reporting. |
| Registrations | Custom signups and event payments. | Camps, VBS, retreats, conferences, household registrations, waitlists, and attendee grouping. |
| Services | Service planning, volunteer scheduling, and rehearsal prep. | Orders of service, songs, plan notes, team scheduling, media library, and rehearsal workflows. |
| Publishing | Church Center content management and customization. | Home page management, custom pages, themes, sermon notes, audio, video, and app analytics. |
| Church Center | Public church app and website powered by Planning Center products. | Giving, group discovery, event signups, volunteer schedules, directory access, sermons, and family pre-check. |
| Home | Dashboard, task, notification, and collaboration hub. | Ministry dashboards, task templates, team follow-up, notifications, and quick links. |
| Planning Center app | Mobile admin front door to the ecosystem. | Opening products, checking notifications, managing tasks, and using Home on the go. |
| Music Stand | Services add-on for musicians. | Annotating sheet music, turning pages with a pedal, rehearsing parts, and syncing charts across devices. |
A simple way to visualize the ecosystem is this: People acts like the central data layer, Publishing manages the Church Center experience, Church Center exposes congregation-facing tools, and the Planning Center app exposes admin-facing mobile access to the same broader system. Music Stand sits on top of Services.
Is it available in iOS and Android
Yes. The Planning Center app is officially available for both iOS and Android. Planning Center’s launch blog links to both stores, the product page shows Apple and Google download badges, the App Store listing names the app “Planning Center,” and Google Play also lists it as “Planning Center.”
Church Center is also available on both platforms. Planning Center’s help center says Church Center is available on the web and as a mobile app, with free downloads for iOS and Android, and the store listings identify it as “Church Center App.”
| App | iOS | Android | Feature parity note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planning Center | App Store listing for Planning Center available. | Google Play listing for Planning Center available. | Official sources say actions sync between web and mobile, notifications sync with desktop, and users can access any product from the app. Planning Center does not publish a product-by-product parity matrix on the reviewed pages, so exact parity by module is unspecified. Dedicated apps like Church Center, Services, and Check-Ins also remain available. |
| Church Center | App Store listing for Church Center App available. | Google Play listing for Church Center App available. | Official help says the Church Center app has the same functionality as the web version, plus the ability to check in people. |
The practical takeaway for readers is friendly and simple: if someone on your staff asks “Which Planning Center app should I install?”, the answer is usually Planning Center for admin work and Church Center App for member-facing participation.
