Question

Photo of Tessa Schoumaker

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Compare to PCO?

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We are looking into a new church management platform. How does Rock RMS compare to Planning Center Online?

  • Nick Airdo

    Nick Airdo

    Tessa, are either of these answers below reasonable to you? (They both sound good to me.) If so would you kindly accept one so one of these two fine community members gets the credit for the answer? Thanks!

    • Photo of Jim Michael

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      I'll give you my .02... Aside from various features and capabilities, the biggest difference between Rock and PCO (or any other cloud provider of a ChMS) is that PCO is a pretty much turnkey solution... It's already hosted and "ready to go" with you plugging in your data and configuring it (within the bounds of what they allow, which will be far less that Rocks customization capabilities) to your needs once you start paying for it.. It's sort of like Gmail for email... It's already there and you just start using it. By contrast, to use Rock you need your own Windows server, whether it be local on your network or hosted at a cloud provider. This typically demands some IT know-how to get things up and running. There are some providers on this Rock web site that provide Rock hosting and do most of the heavy lifting for you, but it's still more hands on than you might be wanting to get into.

      From what I'm reading in your reply it sounds like you are wanting/needing 100% turnkey solution and I'm wondering if Rock is more than you're willing to take on at the moment. Don't get me wrong... Rock is an incredible product and that's why WE'RE moving to it, but I'm just being realistic and doing a successful Rock implementation takes a LOT of "ownership" from someone (or more likely someONES) in your organization to get it hosted and configured properly. You just don't fire it up and start pointing and clicking and everything is pre-done for you... A lot IS, but probably not enough for your current situation, if I'm reading you correctly

      I would take a look at the Planning for Rock guide here if you haven't already done so. It will likely give you more insight into what you're in for if you choose to go with Rock http://www.rockrms.com/Rock/Book/2/57

    • Photo of Jeremy Hoff

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      Hi Tessa,

      Great question!  
      It's a little hard to be brief when comparing the two without knowing some details about your organization and your specific needs.  But.. here goes. :-)

      PCO was born as a way to plan worship services, and has since added church management features to handle resources and facilities, children's checkin, groups, giving, and other cool stuff churches need.  It excels at the planning details regarding worship services and getting people scheduled for their roles. It also does charting and has a library of workship songs to help worship leaders keep their weekly efforts as minimal as possible. 

      RockRMS was born as a Church Management platform that excels at the boilerplate church management stuff (roledex info, baptism dates, familes, check in, attendance, giving) and offers a great CMS (content management system) to power your website, workflows to keep information between your congregation and staff and leadership flowing, self-service options to permit the users to have information specific to them presented when logged in, and a robust system for reports.  While RockRMS does volunteer scheduling, like PCO, it's not setup to handle all the minute-by-minute details needed to schedule worship service.  Possible to bring to RockRMS?  Sure... custom code could make that happen, but that's not a trivial ask.

      The two systems differ in a couple key ways: First, RockRMS is open source, free, and extendible with custom modules that can live side-by-side with core code.  This means you get a fantastic ChMS system that is customizable and very low cost.  

      Another key difference is the community around RockRMS.  That custom code you and other churches can build can be shared.  For a church like mine (Shepherd) this brings huge power to the big-C Church.  You see, our current ChMS permits code sharing, which is really cool, but the audience of other churches is limited to maybe a couple hundred.  With RockRMS, the financial barrier is so low that custom applications we build can be shared with far more churches.  This type of ecosystem is unusual in the church software world, and helps us all make the most of our ministry resources.

      Now, this is pretty high-level and you may have a laundry-list of questions.  I encourage you to post those question since your minsitry has specific needs, wants, and desires in software. With those, we can help with those specifics and help determine whether RockRMS is (or isn't) a good fit for your church.

      I hope that helps!

    • Photo of Tessa Schoumaker

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      Thanks so much! This helps. To give a bit more details about what we are wanting, we are a relation-focused, growing church of about 400 members with vision to be 2,000 in the next few years. Our biggest wants are something that can help us stay relational with our members and is simple. The biggest factors we are taking into consideratoin are:

      Internet - Are there options for check-in if our wifi dropped (tends to happen often)?

      Check-In Stations - How easy is it to convert our current check-in stations (small pc with touch screen kiosk) to our new system?

      Attendance - Can we track individual attendance and get alerts when it is lacking? (Also, can we delete extra/mess up people we put in?)

      Reports - How easy is it to run a report?

      1st Time Visitors - How well does it handle 1st timers and alerting us with them and their info?

      Member's Volunteer Interest - Can members tell us what they are interested in volunteering in?

      History of Contact - Is there a way to keep a history our our contact with our members? Example, when and why we talked to them on a phone, met with them, etc.

      Windows/Mac - Is it usuable on both platforms? I know RMS has an iPad app, does that mean mobile has to go through their website?

      Website Friendly - How easy is it to embed an event registration form to our website?

      Server - I don't fully understand the server side of it, but what are the options/costs of this as a rough, simplified explanation? 

      This is the big one

      Ease of Use - How simple is it? How easy are these things to actually do? Do we need to have an IT team just to use it? Can we teach our non-techie volunteer leaders to run this? I know there are a LOT of capabilites, but I want to make sure they are actually doable. My main concern with RMS over PCO is the ease of use. It seems to be a lot of customizing and tech-related knowledge that is required, where PCO seems to run like an app that does a lot of that for you. But if RMS is worth learning, we definitely would put that time into it. 

      I mainly just want to know how these factors compare between RMS and PCO. I did quite a bit of extensive research on PCO before discovering RMS, so I know a lot about PCO, but it seems to be a bit more difficult finding what I need to with RMS to compare the two. So thank you so much for helping me do so!

       

    • Photo of Jeremy Hoff

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      OK!

      My responses inline [[ in brackets ]]

      Thanks so much! This helps. To give a bit more details about what we are wanting, we are a relation-focused, growing church of about 400 members with vision to be 2,000 in the next few years. Our biggest wants are something that can help us stay relational with our members and is simple.
      [[ Great start.  That you are growing by so much suggests a church with big vision.  This is a nod to Rock.  ]]

       

      The biggest factors we are taking into consideratoin are:

      Internet - Are there options for check-in if our wifi dropped (tends to happen often)?  
      [[ I don't think Checkin works offline right now.  Someone else will have to confirm this, and whether there are plans to accomodate. ]]

       

      Check-In Stations - How easy is it to convert our current check-in stations (small pc with touch screen kiosk) to our new system?  
      [[ depending on the hardware you have, maybe very easy.  the key is usaully the checkin printers - RockRMS requires Zebra printers at the moment.  ]]

       

      Attendance - Can we track individual attendance and get alerts when it is lacking? (Also, can we delete extra/mess up people we put in?)
      [[ Track attendance: yes.  Alerts?  There are a couple built-in (such as the home page showing a 'badge' with recent attendance).  Deleting attendance is possible too. ]]

      Reports - How easy is it to run a report?
      [[ I'd check out the videos on RockRMS.com, but from all the ChMS systems out there, Rock's is among the friendliest.  As you add fields to record data, those are automatigically reportable.  It doesn't get a lot simpler, but if you think of a way, mention it! :-) ]]

       

      1st Time Visitors - How well does it handle 1st timers and alerting us with them and their info?  
      [[  If you need a report that you review on a dailly/weekly/etc. basis, Rock can do that.  If the "alert" you are after is an email, this is something Workflows can help with.  Workflows are pretty awesome! ]]

       

      Member's Volunteer Interest - Can members tell us what they are interested in volunteering in?  
      [[ Yes.  Check out the Contact Us for on the demo site (http://rock.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/ContactUs) and note that this is among the simplest of forms - you can add fields such as dropdowns for people to pick a specific interest. ]]

       

      History of Contact - Is there a way to keep a history our our contact with our members? Example, when and why we talked to them on a phone, met with them, etc.
      [[ Yep! ]]

       

      Windows/Mac - Is it usuable on both platforms? I know RMS has an iPad app, does that mean mobile has to go through their website?
      [[ Rock aims to be higly cross-platform.  It does not require an iPad app to work.  Try http://rock.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/ on your mobile phone - looks pretty good, right? :-)  And it can be tailored to match your 'brand'. ]]

       

      Website Friendly - How easy is it to embed an event registration form to our website?  
      [[ I'm not 100% certain what you are asking.  If the form is from another site, pretty easy to embed if their website supports embeds (most do).  If you are aiming to have event registrations powered by RockRMS, then it's fairly easy as well.  Check out the Events documentation here: https://www.rockrms.com/Rock/Book/29/70 ]]

       

      Server - I don't fully understand the server side of it, but what are the options/costs of this as a rough, simplified explanation? 

      This is the big one
      [[ This is key. You can host it yourself, or have it hosted by someone else.  Hosting fees range widely, but it would be difficult to recomment any hosting less than $50/mo and expect you to have an excellent experience year-round.  As the church grows, hosting needs will also grow.  Remember, most of the time your website will be "idle" meaning not a lot of usage.  But you want the host to be ready for you when you need it - - such as on weekends when Children's Check-In is happening, and your pastor just made a suggestion to register for an event or start giving online.  Now, if you have someone technical who's familiar with web things, getting up and running w/ RockRMS will be easy.  There are people who can be hired to help, too! ]]

       

      Ease of Use - How simple is it? How easy are these things to actually do? Do we need to have an IT team just to use it? Can we teach our non-techie volunteer leaders to run this? I know there are a LOT of capabilites, but I want to make sure they are actually doable. My main concern with RMS over PCO is the ease of use. It seems to be a lot of customizing and tech-related knowledge that is required, where PCO seems to run like an app that does a lot of that for you. But if RMS is worth learning, we definitely would put that time into it.  
      [[ As Michael suggests, PCO is more turnkey.  That's not to say you won't get a great experience w/ RockRMS -- it aims to be simple too.  By "use it" I'm presuming you are referring to day-to-day tasks that help your congregation.  You do not need an IT team just to use it.  Out of the box, RockRMS offers a great platform for the boilerplate stuff.  
      Where RockRMS Becomes especially awesome is when you need to customize it - many customizations are free and easy, some more doable via help from the Rock Comunity and Ecosystem, and still more with hired help. ]]

       

      I mainly just want to know how these factors compare between RMS and PCO. I did quite a bit of extensive research on PCO before discovering RMS, so I know a lot about PCO, but it seems to be a bit more difficult finding what I need to with RMS to compare the two. So thank you so much for helping me do so!
      [[ I hope these help.  Happy to delve deeper as you ask questions - it's an important choice.  PCO is easy, but you play in the sandbox they have built.  It's a fine sandbox.. don't get me wrong.. but they're not setup for wide ranges of customizations.
      If the IT help is what you are missing, check out the support page here: https://www.rockrms.com/CommunityPartners  or reach out to me.  I hope this helps! ]]

    • Photo of Tessa Schoumaker

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      Thank you everyone! I apologize for the late response. These answers were very helpful. After much consideration and research, we decided to go with PCO for now. Main reason—we don't have a tech team right now and need a ready-to-go "turnkey" solution. While Rock RMS is a GREAT software, we just don't have the people it requires to work right now. Thank you again!