Comparing ChMS Platforms: Planning Center, Subsplash, Tithe.ly, Breeze, and CCB

When it comes to church management systems (ChMS), there are several strong contenders out there, each with its own philosophy and strengths. Let’s see how Planning Center, Subsplash, Tithe.ly, Breeze, and Church Community Builder (CCB) stack up against each other.

Planning Center: My Go-To for Internal Ops

In my experience, Planning Center remains a powerhouse, particularly for the detailed, internal operations of running a church. Its modular nature is its defining feature – you subscribe to distinct products like Services, Giving, Check-Ins, Registrations, Groups, and People (the core database). This means you only pay for what you need, which I appreciate.

• Church Management (ChMS): Its strength is undeniable here. The ‘Services’ module is top-notch for complex volunteer scheduling across multiple teams, detailed worship flow planning (including song libraries, media cues), and managing room/resource conflicts. Check-Ins offers secure child check-in with label printing and parent paging. Registrations allows for creating detailed event sign-up forms with custom fields, payment processing, and capacity limits. Groups helps manage small group rosters, communication, and attendance. Giving provides robust donation tracking, online giving forms, batch entry for offline gifts, and detailed fund management and reporting. The ‘People’ database ties it all together, allowing for deep segmentation and targeted communication. If your church needs granular control and robust features for these specific operational areas, Planning Center delivers.
• Website Management: This remains Planning Center’s weaker point in my view. The ‘Publishing’ module exists to create a website and embed calendars or media, but it feels quite limited. Like most integrated builders in these types of platforms, I find it’s primarily template-based. You get ease of integration with other PC modules, but you sacrifice the deep customization, unique design potential, and advanced features (like sophisticated SEO or blogging tools) you’d get with a dedicated platform like WordPress or Squarespace. If your website is a primary communication hub, you might need a separate solution.
• Mobile App: The ‘Services’ mobile app is excellent for staff and volunteers – accessing schedules, plans, and music resources is easy. They also have apps for Check-Ins and other functions. However, these are primarily internal tools, not the single, branded app for overall congregation engagement that some other platforms offer.
• Integrations: Planning Center integrates very well within its own suite of products. It also offers integrations with key third-party services like background check providers and some accounting software (QuickBooks, etc.). However, its focus isn’t necessarily on being a wide-open integration hub for everything.
• Pricing: The modular, pay-per-use pricing is flexible. You can start with just one or two modules affordably. However, as your church grows or needs more modules (Services + Giving + Check-Ins + Groups + Registrations), the total monthly cost can climb significantly, often exceeding the flat rates of competitors. You need to carefully map out your needs and use their pricing calculator.

Subsplash: The Champ for Engagement and Media

Subsplash positions itself firmly as an “Engagement Platform,” built around a central hub (usually a custom-branded mobile app) to connect with your congregation through media, communication, events, and giving. Its components (ChMS, Giving, Live Streaming, App, Website/SnapPages) are designed to work together seamlessly.

• Church Management (ChMS): Subsplash includes ChMS features (people database, groups, communication tools within Subsplash One), but I find its focus is less on deep operational workflows (like complex volunteer scheduling or resource management) compared to Planning Center or CCB. The strength lies in integrating this data directly into the engagement tools – seeing group info in the app, tracking engagement patterns, etc. It’s more about facilitating connection than intricate administration.
• Website Management: Subsplash offers ‘SnapPages’ as its website builder. It provides modern templates and integrates very smoothly with the Subsplash media library, calendar, and giving forms. However, as with Planning Center’s offering, I see it as fundamentally template-driven. You can customize colors, fonts, and layouts to a degree using their block editor, but achieving a truly unique design or implementing highly custom functionality is limited compared to standalone website platforms. Its main advantage is the tight integration with the rest of the Subsplash ecosystem.
• Mobile App: This is Subsplash’s crown jewel in my opinion. They excel at creating polished, feature-rich, custom-branded mobile apps that serve as the primary digital hub for the congregation. Features typically include integrated media Browse (sermons, music, podcasts with categories), live stream viewing, push notifications (which can often be segmented), event calendars with registration links, in-app giving, connection cards/forms, group finders, and embedded Bible reading plans.
• Integrations & Media: Media handling is a core strength. The platform makes uploading, hosting, and streaming sermons and other media across the app and web effortless. Subsplash also handles live streaming well, either natively or by integrating smoothly with third-party RTMP streams, allowing you to use Subsplash features like chat and archiving regardless of your encoding source. This focus on seamless media and external tool integration (especially for streaming) is a key differentiator.
• Pricing: Subsplash typically uses bundled pricing tiers, often based on church size or the package of features selected (e.g., App + Giving + Media vs. adding Live Streaming or ChMS). This can offer simplicity, but requires getting a custom quote. It might be very cost-effective if you need their core suite, but potentially less so if you only need one or two components.

Tithe.ly: The All-in-One Contender

Tithe.ly positions itself as a comprehensive, all-in-one solution aiming to cover most church tech needs under one umbrella, often with a simpler pricing structure than Planning Center’s modular approach.

• Church Management (ChMS): Tithe.ly offers a ChMS that includes member databases, custom fields, group management, attendance tracking, and communication tools (email and text messaging, often through an add-on module). It aims to provide the core functions needed for church administration. While robust, my sense is that it might not offer the same level of granular detail or complexity in specific areas (like volunteer scheduling workflows or resource management) as Planning Center or CCB, but it provides a solid foundation integrated with its other tools.
• Website Management: Tithe.ly Sites is their website builder offering. It provides professionally designed templates specifically for churches. You can add content blocks, sermons, events, and integrate their giving forms. However, echoing the theme, I find it’s still fundamentally a template-based system. Customization options exist within the block editor (styles, layouts, backgrounds), but you’re working within the framework provided, limiting deep design changes or adding complex custom code compared to something like WordPress.
• Mobile App: Tithe.ly also offers custom-branded church apps, competing directly with Subsplash. These apps integrate their ChMS data, events, sermons, push notifications, and, crucially, their giving platform. They aim to provide a central engagement hub for the congregation.
• Giving Platform: Giving is central to Tithe.ly. They offer multiple ways to give (online, text, kiosk, app, recurring) with reporting features. Their platform is well-regarded, though user interface preferences can vary compared to others.
• Integrations: Being an all-in-one platform, its strongest integrations are internal. It connects its ChMS, Giving, App, Website, and Messaging tools together. It also offers some external integrations (like QuickBooks, Mailchimp).
• Pricing: A major selling point for Tithe.ly is often its pricing model. They frequently offer a core ChMS/Giving platform for free or low cost (with transaction fees on giving) and then have add-ons for Apps, Websites, and Messaging, sometimes bundled at competitive flat rates (like $119/month for the full suite was a common offer). This can be very appealing compared to the escalating costs of modular systems or the potentially higher package prices of other engagement platforms.

Breeze ChMS: The Champion of Simplicity (with Caveats)

Breeze ChMS has built its reputation on being incredibly easy to use and affordable, targeting small to mid-sized churches that prioritize simplicity over extensive features.

• Church Management (ChMS): Breeze excels at core ChMS functions: managing people profiles with custom fields and tags, creating smart lists and groups for communication, tracking attendance, managing contributions and generating giving statements, basic event check-in, and volunteer scheduling. Its interface is known for being clean and intuitive, making it easy for staff and volunteers to learn. It includes features like online forms and email/text communication (US only for SMS).
• Limitations – The “Get What You Pay For” Factor: Here’s the crucial trade-off. While Breeze is incredibly affordable (often a single flat rate like $72/month regardless of church size), I’ve found it to be one of the most limited platforms, especially as ministry complexity grows. It lacks the deep workflow automation of CCB, the intricate volunteer/service planning of Planning Center, and doesn’t have native modules for things like advanced resource management or integrated website/app building. You definitely get what you pay for; its strength is its streamlined simplicity, which can also be its biggest limitation if you need more power or breadth.
• Website Management: Breeze does not have its own integrated website builder. Churches using Breeze typically use a separate platform for their website (WordPress, Squarespace, etc.) and may embed Breeze forms or calendars.
• Mobile App: Breeze offers a mobile app that provides access to the directory, check-in features, and basic profile information, keeping its simple, functional focus.
• Integrations: Breeze integrates with popular services like Mailchimp, QuickBooks, and several online giving providers (though it offers its own basic online giving option too). It also has an API for custom integrations.
• Pricing: Its simple, flat-rate monthly pricing is a major draw. There are generally no extra costs for adding more people, users, or using core features, making budgeting very predictable.

Church Community Builder (CCB) / Pushpay ChMS: The Enterprise Powerhouse

Now part of the Pushpay ecosystem, Church Community Builder (CCB) is geared towards mid-to-large churches needing a robust, process-driven ChMS with deep functionality and integration with enterprise-level giving and app solutions.

• Church Management (ChMS): CCB’s strengths lie in its comprehensive feature set and process orientation. It offers detailed membership management, advanced group management (including leadership structures and reporting), volunteer management with scheduling and serving pipelines, robust event management, and powerful financial tracking (pledges, contributions, integrations with church accounting). A key differentiator is its ‘Process Queues’ feature, which allows churches to build automated workflows for assimilation, follow-up, pastoral care, leadership development, and more. Its reporting capabilities are extensive, allowing for deep dives into church health metrics.
• Website Management: CCB itself generally does not include a native website builder. The focus is on providing data and integration points (like group finders, calendars, forms) that can be embedded into a church’s main website, which is typically built on another platform. Pushpay may offer site solutions, but the core CCB strength is the ChMS database and workflows.
• Mobile App: Integration with Pushpay’s custom app platform is a key part of the offering. This allows churches to have a deeply integrated app experience pulling data directly from CCB/Pushpay ChMS for directories, groups, events, and leveraging Pushpay’s advanced giving features within the app.
• Integrations: Tight integration with Pushpay’s giving platform is paramount. It also offers numerous integrations with other church-related tools and has a well-documented API. The focus is on building a cohesive ecosystem, particularly for larger organizations.
• Complexity and Cost: This power comes at a cost. CCB/Pushpay ChMS is generally one of the more expensive options, often requiring custom quotes and contracts typical of enterprise software. Its depth also means a steeper learning curve compared to simpler systems like Breeze. It requires staff capacity to fully leverage its capabilities.

Bonus Section: A Note on Giving – RebelGive

While discussing platforms, it’s worth mentioning a unique player specifically in the giving space: RebelGive. What makes RebelGive stand out in my research is its pricing philosophy. Instead of charging the church a percentage of each donation (like most platforms: typically 1-3% + $0.30 per transaction), RebelGive charges the church a flat monthly fee (e.g., $79-$159/month depending on billing). Then, for each transaction, the donor is given the option to cover the minimal underlying processing cost (usually around 1% for ACH or standard card rates). If the donor chooses to cover it (which RebelGive encourages culturally), the church receives 100% of the intended donation amount for that transaction. This “Give Without Fees™” model can result in significant savings for the church compared to traditional percentage-based fees, especially as giving volume increases. They focus solely on online giving (no text-to-give or kiosk usually), integrating via visually appealing “GivingFlows” embedded on the church website, rather than being a full ChMS or engagement suite. For churches prioritizing maximizing donation amounts and predictable giving platform costs, it’s an interesting model to consider alongside the giving modules of the larger platforms.

Making the Choice: My Updated Perspective

Looking across these platforms reinforces that the “best” choice truly depends on your church’s specific context and priorities:

• I’d lean towards Planning Center if: My priority is deep operational management (especially Services/volunteers), and I value the flexibility to pick and choose modules, accepting the potential for costs to rise with usage and potentially needing a separate website solution.
• I’d lean towards Subsplash if: My main goal is a polished congregation-facing engagement platform with a top-tier custom app, seamless media delivery, and integrated web/giving tools working together smoothly, accepting its ChMS might be less operationally deep and its website less customizable than standalone options.
• I’d lean towards Tithe.ly if: I want an all-in-one platform covering ChMS, giving, web, and app with potentially predictable, often flat-rate pricing for the bundle, understanding it might involve trade-offs in feature depth in specific areas compared to specialized modules and that its website builder is template-based.
• I’d lean towards Breeze ChMS if: My absolute top priority is simplicity, ease of use, and affordability in a core ChMS, especially for a small-to-mid-sized church, fully recognizing that this comes with significant limitations in feature depth and breadth (“you get what you pay for”) and requires separate solutions for web/app needs.
• I’d lean towards CCB/Pushpay ChMS if: I’m at a larger church needing deep, process-driven management, complex workflows, powerful reporting, and tight integration with robust digital giving and app solutions, and have the budget/staff for a more complex, enterprise-level system.

The church tech landscape offers a lot of choices! From my perspective, none of these platforms are universally “best” – it really depends on your church’s size, culture, budget, technical capacity, and, most importantly, your ministry strategy and where you need technology to provide the most leverage. Hopefully, breaking them down this way helps clarify where each one shines and what trade-offs you might encounter.