Sanctuary vs Planning Center: an honest comparison

First, the obvious

We build Sanctuary. A comparison written by one of the two products is worth reading only if it is specific about where the other one wins, so this one is. Planning Center is a long-established, well-liked system, and for a lot of churches it is the right answer.

What each one covers

Planning Center is the broader system. Alongside people, service planning, giving and registrations, it also covers children’s check-in, groups, room and facility booking, and a member app with published content. If your church needs those, that breadth is the whole argument and you can stop reading here.

Sanctuary is narrower on purpose. It covers people and families, forms, events and registrations, volunteer scheduling and service planning, communication, and giving, plus Shepherd, an assistant that works across them. Room and equipment booking is basic: it warns you about clashes rather than managing facilities in depth. Children’s check-in is in testing and not generally available. Those are real gaps today.

How the two price

Both keep the people database free without limiting how many people you store. Anyone telling you one of them charges for its directory is selling something. Past that, the two are shaped differently.

Planning Center charges per product, and meters each product by its own usage: team members for service planning, donations per month for giving, and check-ins, group members and rooms for its other products. Sanctuary sells one plan that includes scheduling, giving and the My Church congregation app, sized by campuses, team members and monthly donations.

So the comparison comes down to price at your size. Count your team members and your typical monthly donations, add up the Planning Center products you would actually use, and set that total beside the one Sanctuary plan that fits. One detail on ours: Sanctuary’s team member count includes every login on your account, not only people on a schedule.

We would rather you checked than took our word for it, because both of us can change a price and this page is not their pricing page.

When Planning Center is the better choice

• You run children’s ministry check-in and need labels, security tags and guardian matching on a Sunday morning. Ours is not generally available yet.
• Small groups are a core part of how your church works and you want them managed in the same system.
• You book rooms and facilities, and double-booking the hall is a recurring problem.
• You want a large ecosystem of third-party integrations, or you already have staff trained on it.
• You are multi-site and complex enough that maturity matters more than anything on our list.

When Sanctuary is the better fit

• Your bottleneck is the weekly scheduling chase, and you want each decline to arrive with a suggested replacement and open positions to stand out before the weekend.
• You want an assistant that can answer questions across people, serving and giving, and prepare a schedule you approve.
• You want fewer moving parts: people, serving and giving in a few connected products rather than a larger suite to configure.
• You are a small or mid-sized church where the difference between tiers is real money.

How to decide

Do not decide on feature grids, including this one. Take the checklist from our guide to choosing church management software, open a free account on both (each has one) and run your own next Sunday through them end to end, with ten of your own people.

Whichever one gets you to a confirmed schedule and a correct giving record with less typing is your answer, and it will not necessarily be ours.