FQ Worship vs Planning Center

As a worship leader, scheduling people to play should never be a source of stress or headache. It shouldn’t be a complete hassle, nightmare and what’s keeping you up at night. Unfortunately, it has been for me most of the two years I’ve been leading worship at CCk. A little over a year ago, I started seriously looking for an online… worship… planning… system… online… thing. I had no idea what was out there or what I was looking for at the time. When I started leading worship at CCk, the worship leader before me (who now pastors a thriving church up in Canada, word up Pat!?) used a combination of iCal and iDisk. I continued with the iDisk approach (to use as an online archive of mp3’s) but started searching for something to schedule people with. I started hitting up the big guys, like WorshipPlanning.com, LifeWay worship, Planning Center, etc. Now, before I continue, I’ve been leading worship since I was fifteen, but I’ve only been the worship leader of a church for about 2 years. I am not, by all means, the worship planning software guru. These are simply my own experiences and opinions. Let us continue…

I immediately didn’t like worshipplanning.com. It was confusing, had too many features and just plain looked bad on the inside (I’m a graphic designer, I notice aesthetics). LifeWay was just getting going, didn’t have many features and lacked customer service. I then tried using Planning Center for about a month. I watched the vidoes, uploaded songs, added my team and tried diving into it. But, at the time, for some reason, I didn’t like it. It was confusing to me. I found it very tedious to create services (which also included copying them from week to week) and scheduling people. But everyone raved about Planning Center and couldn’t believe I didn’t like it. I seriously felt like an internet dummy. I’ve always felt pretty confident with technology and stuff, but Planning Center had me doubting for sure.

I then came across FQWorship.com. When I read “Created by Chris Tomlin and a team of worship leaders,” I got the same feeling I got when I saw the DisneyWorld sign for the first time. It was like, finally, this has to be it. I signed up immediately and dove in. My band caught on fairly quickly, as did I. I was impressed with their customer service and their willingness to listen to the user’s voice. Their site was pretty cool and all flashed up. It had its glitches, but hey, Chris was on top of it, right?

I continued with FQ for a good year or so. Along the way, I started noticing things I wish FQ had. Things like an online archive of all the songs we play. Sure, they had a pop-up mp3 player, but band members could only play songs that were attached to a particular service. They also didn’t have multiple permission levels for users, which meant my head vocalist had to login with my username and password to schedule other vocalists, bummer. And yes, you could schedule people to services, but how do they know they’re scheduled? They just recently added an email function to send a message to those playing at a specific service, but it’s a very new feature and is still lacking in my opinion.

They do have cool resources like an extensive video library with gear overviews and how-to’s. There’s articles by big worship leaders. Their prices are nothing to laugh at either. Their most elite membership is only $19.95. That’s seriously legit. But at the end of the day, I was still pulling my hair out from scheduling drama hitting me week in and week out. I’m paying for online worship planning, and yet I’m still stressed out about planning worship, there’s something wrong there. Also, I was still having to use services like MailChimp and iDisk, along with FQ to get the job done. Don’t get me wrong, iDisk is great and MailChimp is seriously amazing, but c’mon, three online services to accomplish one thing? There’s gotta be something better. Enters Planning Center Online.

I decided to give Planning Center another go. I was really going to try it this time, no holds barred (what does that even mean?). After dealing with FQ for so long, I immediately started appreciating Planning Center. I started noticing so many features it had that I always wish FQ had. The biggest being the scheduling system. To be able to schedule people to a particular service, send them an email asking them to confirm or deny, and knowing for sure if they’re playing or not is priceless. And yes, Planning Center’s pricing is a bit steeper, but I can say by experience, my complete lack of stress is worth every penny. Here’s a quick comparison list of features I noticed when making the switch over to Planning Center:

FQ WORSHIP	PLANNING CENTER ONLINE
Prices: $15.95 and $19.95	Prices: $14, $29, $49, $99
You can schedule people to multiple services	You can schedule people to multiple services, campuses, service times and rehearsals from multiple ministries
Only one permission level for users	Six different permission levels for users
Light email support	Extensive email system. Email and/or text entire team, asking to confirm or deny availability. Members can email or text back their replies
No mp3 archive	Full access to entire song database, chord charts and mp3’s
Multiple calender views (filter by group)	Multiple calendar views (filter by services, birthdays, black out dates, anniversaries), list view, “My Schedule” view, matrix view
No blackout dates option	Members can post blackout dates
No iPhone app, no mobile view for website	iPhone app available, with scheduling, chord chart, and mp3 support. Mobile view for website
No live mode	Track how your service is progressing in real time
No logo option; website is a bit dark, wording and navigation a bit confusing	Upload your own logo; site is bright and easy to navigate

 

Remember, the above comparisons are things I personally noticed. Above are the “features I wish FQ had” that I keep mentioning. There are still several features on FQ I didn’t mention and tons of features on PCO I didn’t mention. But, the bottom line is, I’m extremely happy with Planning Center. My band is too, they love it. Also, I don’t have to share an account with my head vocalist anymore, big plus!

Hopefully this will help some struggling worship leader out there looking for a way to stop the nightmare that scheduling can be. Oh, and can I also mention one more thing? Delegation! Find someone to delegate scheduling to! If you’re a worship leader, you need to be writing songs, planning services and being creative! But I digress, that’s for a later post…