European Alternatives to Planning Center
Looking for a European alternative to Planning Center? Planning Center is run by Ministry Centered Technologies, Inc. at 2790 Gateway Road in Carlsbad, California, its terms are governed by California law and disputes go to arbitration in San Diego. It sells separate products for People, Services, Giving and more, with free base plans and processing fees of 2.15% + $0.30 on US card payments.
The European church management tools below are run from Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and several state their hosting location and publish prices in euros, pounds or francs.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA, the UK, Switzerland or Israel, and processes customer data in Europe or Israel. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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3
Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Vendors can pay for more visibility, higher up on the review pages; it never affects which tools are listed. Editorial policy
11 European Alternatives to Planning Center
ChurchTools
Karlsruhe all-in-one church platform with public package prices
ChurchSuite
UK church database with rotas, planning and Gift Aid
Church Admin Plugin
WordPress plugin that keeps church data on your own site
Hubb
Church website, app and admin sold at listed pound prices
ChurchDesk
Berlin platform for calendar, contacts, forms and finance
iKnow Church
English church system with safeguarding and child check-in
Scipio App
Dutch member list and church app from Groningen
Verowa
Swiss parish software for services, rooms and staff
KiKartei
Aargau-hosted parish office software for Swiss congregations
kirchenweb.ch
Swiss church website system with room and course modules
SongBeamer
Bavarian worship projection program for songs and Bible texts
Key takeaways
- Planning Center is sold by Ministry Centered Technologies, Inc. in Carlsbad, California, under California law with binding arbitration in San Diego.
- Planning Center lists its member database and its calendar as always free, so the cost comparison starts from zero.
- ChurchTools in Karlsruhe lists package prices from $39 a month for 100 people and states servers in Germany and Finland.
- ChurchSuite and Hubb both support Gift Aid, a UK tax relief that Planning Center's pages do not mention.
- Three Swiss tools, Verowa, KiKartei and kirchenweb.ch, are written for parish structures and have German-language pages only.
Why people leave Planning Center
Planning Center is a family of church products sold by Ministry Centered Technologies, Inc. from 2790 Gateway Road in Carlsbad, California. People keeps the member database, Groups and Calendar organise the weekly rhythm, Registrations and Check-Ins handle events and attendance, Services schedules teams and plans worship, and Giving takes donations. Church Center turns the lot into one app for the congregation.
Its pricing page leads with free plans, no contracts and cancellation at any time, and it lists the member database and the calendar as always free. That is a hard offer to beat for a small church, and it explains why so many congregations around the world run their rota and their song list on it.
The reasons to look elsewhere are narrower and mostly about where the contract lives. The terms are governed by California law, disputes go to binding arbitration in San Diego, and the pages we read quote the card-processing rate in dollars. A parish in Bavaria, a Kirchgemeinde in Thurgau or a church in Leeds holds the personal data of its members, children and volunteers in that system, and some of them want a supplier closer to home.
- The contract is Californian and disputes go to San Diego The Planning Center terms of service name California law, and they send disputes to binding arbitration under JAMS rules in San Diego. For a church in Europe that means the supplier of its member records sits under a legal system the congregation has never worked in, and a conflict cannot be settled in front of a local court. The ChurchTools, Verowa and Scipio imprints, by contrast, name German, Swiss and Dutch entities.
- Access from Europe is described as your own risk The terms say that anyone who reaches Planning Center from outside the United States does so at their own risk and is responsible for following the laws of their own country. The same document describes Planning Center as a service provider under the California Consumer Privacy Act. A GDPR page is linked from the terms menu, but we did not read it, so this page makes no claim about its content.
- Every product has its own meter The pricing page prices each product on a different yardstick: Services by the number of team members, Check-Ins by the attendees at the largest event, Giving by the number of donations received, and Music Stand as a five dollar monthly add-on. The paid tier amounts were not shown on the page we read. Budgeting for the whole stack therefore means adding several separate bills together.
- The giving fee is quoted for US card payments Planning Center states a processing fee of 2.15% + $0.30 on US card payments. A congregation collecting in euros, francs or pounds will meet other payment routes: ChurchDesk sells a contactless donation terminal, Hubb publishes a per-transaction fee in pence, and Scipio App collects inside its app. The comparison only works once you ask each supplier what a typical Sunday offering costs to process.
What you have to replace, not just match
Planning Center is a stack, so the replacement list starts with an inventory. Write down which of its products your church switched on. A typical set is People for the database, Groups for small groups, Services for the Sunday rota and song order, Check-Ins for the children's ministry, Giving for offerings and Church Center for the app.
No European tool in this category copies the whole stack module for module. ChurchTools and ChurchSuite come closest, with people, groups, events, rotas or check-in in one database. Regional tools such as Verowa, KiKartei and kirchenweb.ch are built for Swiss parish structures and replace the administrative half, not the volunteer-scheduling half.
Two pieces deserve a separate decision. Worship projection and chord charts are a different job from membership, and SongBeamer from Olching covers only that job. Online giving depends on the country: UK churches look at Gift Aid support in ChurchSuite and Hubb, German congregations at ChurchDesk's donation terminal, Dutch ones at the in-app collection in Scipio App.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | ChurchTools | Karlsruhe, Germany | Packages from $39 a month (XS, 100 people) to $249 a month (XL, 2,500 people) plus an XXL package at $399 a month; 30-day free trial; EUR toggle on the pricing page | EU (Germany) |
| #2 | ChurchSuite | not stated on the pages we read, United Kingdom | Plans by number of contacts with monthly and annual views, prices inclusive of VAT where applicable and quoted in GBP, USD, EUR and AUD; amounts not readable on the pages we read; free trial | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #3 | Church Admin Plugin | King's Lynn, United Kingdom | Free version; Small Churches tier $50 a year (up to 50 people); premium EUR 9.99 monthly, EUR 28 quarterly, EUR 99.99 annually (also in USD and GBP) | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #4 | Hubb | not stated on the pages we read, United Kingdom | Website only GBP 19, Website + App GBP 29, Church Management plans GBP 35 / 45 / 65 / 85 a month, all inclusive of VAT; SMS 7p + VAT; donations 2.2% + 20p | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #5 | ChurchDesk | Berlin, Germany | Basic EUR 109, Small EUR 196, Medium EUR 275, Large EUR 437 a month excl. VAT with annual payment; one-off setup and training EUR 960 per congregation | EU (Germany) |
| #6 | iKnow Church | not stated on the pages we read, United Kingdom | Pricing page says prices include VAT and give access to every module; amounts not read; iKnow Chat from GBP 10 a month plus the iKnow Church subscription | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #7 | Scipio App | Groningen, Netherlands | Packages page exists but showed no usable prices on the pages we read | EU (Netherlands) |
| #8 | Verowa | Winterthur, Switzerland | Base licence from CHF 1,500 a year up to 1,500 members, rising to CHF 7,980 for up to 22,000; modules CHF 250 to 950 a year each; excl. VAT | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #9 | KiKartei | Kleindöttingen, Switzerland | No prices on the pages we read; the site only mentions good value for money | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #10 | kirchenweb.ch | Gächlingen, Switzerland | Not stated; free trial and quote request offered | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #11 | SongBeamer | Olching, Germany | Price not shown on the pages we read; site calls the program affordable | EU (Germany) |
How each alternative compares to Planning Center
Best for: German-speaking and international congregations replacing several Planning Center products with one platform
ChurchTools Innovations GmbH in Karlsruhe, registered at Amtsgericht Mannheim as HRB 724299, builds a platform with people, groups, posts, calendars, resources, events, a wiki, check-in, chat and finances. Measured against Planning Center, that is one login in place of People, Groups, Calendar, Registrations and Check-Ins, with a church app on top.
The pricing is the opposite of the product-by-product model: packages by number of people, from $39 a month for 100 people to $249 for 2,500. Servers are in Germany and Finland with Hetzner Online, and the finance module is stated to meet German GoBD rules. There is no permanent free plan, only a 30-day trial and a free first year for church plants.
What ChurchTools does better than Planning Center
- One package price covers the modules, where Planning Center bills each product on its own meter
- Servers in Germany and Finland are named, and the imprint carries a register number
- Finance is built for German bookkeeping rules (GoBD)
- A free first year exists for church plants, a similar offer to Planning Center's
Where ChurchTools is a step down from Planning Center
- No always-free plan, where Planning Center gives away People and Calendar
- The price climbs with every people tier
- English legal pages are translations of the binding German text
Standout against Planning Center. ChurchTools is the only tool here that puts people, groups, calendar, resources, events and check-in into one German-hosted package.
Best for: UK and Irish churches that want rotas, worship planning and Gift Aid together
ChurchSuite Ltd is registered in England and Wales under number 8532235, and its terms follow English law. The tour lists ten modules: Address Book, Attendance, Bookings, Calendar, Children, Giving, Planning, Network, Rotas and Small Groups. Rotas and Planning together are the part that lines up with Planning Center Services.
Giving can claim Gift Aid, take online donations and handle regular giving, a UK tax relief that the Planning Center pages we read do not mention. The amounts did not render on the pricing page we read, and the hosting location and registered address were not found, so a church must ask for both before signing.
What ChurchSuite does better than Planning Center
- Gift Aid claiming sits inside the Giving module
- Ten modules share one database of contacts
- Plans are priced by contacts in four currencies, pounds, dollars, euros and Australian dollars
- English law and a company number replace a San Diego arbitration clause
Where ChurchSuite is a step down from Planning Center
- Price amounts were not readable on the pages we read
- Hosting location is not stated
- The Gift Aid focus helps UK churches and few others
Standout against Planning Center. ChurchSuite pairs Rotas and Planning with Gift Aid giving, which is the combination British churches ask for first.
Best for: Small churches with a WordPress site and a volunteer who can maintain it
Church Admin Plugin is church software that runs inside WordPress. The privacy policy names Andy Moyle of King's Lynn as developer, controller and processor. The free version holds people and family records, a calendar, sermon podcasting and rotas, which is a real subset of People, Calendar and Services.
Premium adds SMS, email and push messages, groups, event ticketing, attendance, multi-site, media and online giving. Prices are €9.99 monthly, €28 quarterly or €99.99 a year, and a Small Churches tier costs $50 a year for up to 50 people. All church data stays on the WordPress site the congregation controls, which also means the congregation chooses the host country.
What Church Admin Plugin does better than Planning Center
- A free version with people, calendar and rotas, and data on your own site
- The host and the country are your choice
- Euro, pound and dollar price lists
- Small Churches tier at $50 a year
Where Church Admin Plugin is a step down from Planning Center
- The church must host, update and secure WordPress itself
- The vendor is one individual, not a registered company
- The privacy policy dates from 2018, and no licence is stated on the pages we read
Standout against Planning Center. Church Admin Plugin is the only option on this page where the church, not a vendor, decides which country stores the member records.
Best for: Small and mid-sized UK churches that want website, app and admin from one supplier
Hubb Digital Ltd, company number 04072126, sells a church website, a church app and church admin tools together. Website only costs £19 a month, Website plus App £29, and the Church Management plans run £35, £45, £65 and £85 a month, from 25 members up to 400 on the largest one. All prices include VAT.
The extras matter: SMS costs 7p plus VAT, a Hubb.Processing account is £3 a month, and online donations and event bookings carry 2.2% + 20p per transaction. Church finance claims Gift Aid on donations. The hosting location and the registered address were not found, and the support site offers a United Kingdom or United States region that we did not trace further.
What Hubb does better than Planning Center
- A full price list in pounds is published on the pricing page
- The church website is part of the same bill, where Planning Center sells Publishing separately
- Gift Aid claims run through Hubb Church Finance
- Some denominations and church groups receive discounted rates
Where Hubb is a step down from Planning Center
- Costs rise with members and contacts
- Transaction fees on donations and bookings
- No hosting location or registered address on the pages we read
Standout against Planning Center. Hubb is the only tool here that sells the church website, the app and the member database as one monthly subscription.
Best for: German parishes and church regions that want a vendor-run platform with set-up included
ChurchDesk GmbH in Berlin runs a platform whose footer states ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification. Every plan includes Calendar, Contacts, Forms, a website designer, Workflows and Finance, with newsletter, duty planning, ticketing, time tracking and donations listed as highlights. The site is offered in German, Danish, English, Norwegian and Dutch.
Plans cost €109 (Basic, 100 contacts and users), €196, €275 and €437 (Large, 5,000) a month excl. VAT on annual payment, plus a one-off €960 per congregation for set-up and training. A contactless donation terminal costs €552 a year, included in Large. The server location is not named on the pages we read.
What ChurchDesk does better than Planning Center
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification is stated in the footer
- Every module is included in each plan, with no separate meter per product
- Set-up and training are part of the offer
- A donation terminal handles contactless gifts at the church door
Where ChurchDesk is a step down from Planning Center
- The monthly price is the highest of the published ones on this page
- A €960 one-off fee applies
- No server location and no named owner on the pages we read
Standout against Planning Center. ChurchDesk is the only tool here with an ISO/IEC 27001:2022 statement and a physical donation terminal.
Best for: Churches in England that need safeguarding and governance records beside people and rotas
iKnow Church groups its features under People, Events, Finance, Rooms, Safeguarding, Statistics, Governance and Life Events, with Teams and Rotas, Child Check-in and Ticketing alongside. The privacy policy carries the iKnow Software Ltd heading, while the site is owned by Edit Websites Ltd, company number 06128243.
The pricing page says every module is included and that prices include VAT, although the amounts did not render. A Church of England partnership page appears in the menu. For people in the EU, the privacy policy names Euverify Ltd in Cork as representative, and the licence terms follow English law.
What iKnow Church does better than Planning Center
- Safeguarding and governance modules are named features
- All modules sit inside one subscription, according to the pricing page
- An EU representative is named for GDPR requests
- A company number is stated
Where iKnow Church is a step down from Planning Center
- Subscription amounts were not readable on the pages we read
- Two company names appear without an explanation
- iKnow Chat is a paid extra from £10 a month
Standout against Planning Center. iKnow Church is the only tool here that lists safeguarding and governance as modules of their own.
Best for: Dutch congregations that want a closed member app with a synced member list
Scipio App is made by Hagru B.V. in Groningen. The Dutch pages describe a safe church app for smartphone, tablet and web with a member list, groups, messages, a digital collection, events, documents, tasks and volunteers. The vendor claims more than 750 churches and over 30 years of experience.
Each member decides which personal details others may see, data is stated to be stored encrypted, and the app locks with a PIN, Face ID or Touch ID. No price was usable on the packages page and the hosting country is not stated. The scope is closer to Church Center plus People than to Services.
What Scipio App does better than Planning Center
- Members control which details are visible to others
- Digital collection runs inside the app
- Dutch company with a street address in Groningen
- Web app plus phone and tablet apps
Where Scipio App is a step down from Planning Center
- Pages are in Dutch only
- No song planning or room booking listed
- No price and no hosting country on the pages we read
Standout against Planning Center. Scipio App gives every member a privacy switch per detail, and the vendor states that data is stored encrypted.
Best for: Swiss Catholic and Reformed parishes and pastoral regions planning staff, services and rooms
Picture-Planet GmbH in Winterthur publishes Verowa. The people module records staff and assigns them to events, worship roles such as readers and altar servers sit under events, and a collection plan is included. Rooms and equipment can be reserved for internal and external use, which Planning Center splits across Calendar and Services.
The pricing is public: a base licence from CHF 1,500 a year for up to 1,500 members, CHF 1,980 up to 3,000, and CHF 7,980 for up to 22,000, plus modules at CHF 250 to 950 each, excl. VAT. Hosting is stated to be at Datenpark in Switzerland with daily backups. The pages are German only.
What Verowa does better than Planning Center
- Swiss hosting and daily backups are stated
- The base licence includes all functions with any number of users and rooms
- Prices by member count are public
- Built around the Pastoralraum structure, which a US product does not model
Where Verowa is a step down from Planning Center
- From CHF 1,500 a year, it costs more at the entry than most monthly plans here
- No volunteer rota is named on the pages we read
- German-language pages only
Standout against Planning Center. Verowa is the only tool here whose published price covers unlimited users and rooms for a whole parish.
Best for: Swiss parish secretariats that keep household records, casual services and statistics
KW-Software AG in Kleindöttingen has offered KiKartei for over 20 years, according to the company, and claims more than 1,000 customers in Switzerland. The base module shows households with all members on one page, records casual services and pastoral data and builds rule-based groups.
It produces mail merges, label printing, Excel exports and an annual statistic, and it imports from resident registers. Data sits in a high-security data centre at Green in canton Aargau, and all mutations are logged. No prices appear on the pages we read, and rosters or worship songs are not named. People, not volunteers, are the subject here.
What KiKartei does better than Planning Center
- Households are the main screen, with every member of a family on one page
- Swiss data centre and a log of all changes
- Import from resident registers and cantonal platforms
- Annual statistics produced for the parish office
Where KiKartei is a step down from Planning Center
- No prices on the pages we read
- No volunteer rota or song planning named
- German-language pages only
Standout against Planning Center. KiKartei is the only tool here that imports directly from resident registers, and that saves retyping when the registers change.
Best for: Swiss Kirchgemeinden that want website publishing and room rental in one system
kirchenweb.ch GmbH in Gächlingen builds each Kirchgemeinde a base system, described as a container, and embeds modules in it. Six administration modules include an event and room hub with an online view for the worship planning team, room rental with invoicing, course organisation, an absence plan and online legal texts.
The member module, Kirchenpersonen, handles households and mixed families but is available only as a basic version. Five system sizes run from Mini to Regional. No amounts or hosting location appear on the pages we read, and the free trial and quote request are the way in.
What kirchenweb.ch does better than Planning Center
- Room rental with invoicing is built in
- Website publishing and administration share one system
- Developed with several regional churches
- A free trial is offered
Where kirchenweb.ch is a step down from Planning Center
- The member module is a basic version
- No prices or hosting location on the pages we read
- Weaker than Planning Center for volunteer rotas
Standout against Planning Center. kirchenweb.ch is the only tool here that lists room rental with invoicing next to a worship planning view.
Best for: Worship teams that need song and Bible projection and keep member data elsewhere
SongBeamer, published by Sebastian Zierer in Olching according to the imprint, projects songs, Bible passages, videos, images and short messages. Multi-monitor operation lets the operator keep working while the congregation sees a full-screen presentation, and full-text search finds songs and Bible texts. Chords can be shown or printed.
Version 6.0 supports optional automatic reporting to CCLI. SongBeamer has no people, group or giving features, so it overlaps only with the song and presentation part of Planning Center Services. The order page returned an error and no price was found, and the operating system is not named on the home page.
What SongBeamer does better than Planning Center
- Songs, Bible texts, video and images run from one program
- Chords on screen or on paper
- CCLI reporting arrives with version 6.0
- It runs on the church's own computer
Where SongBeamer is a step down from Planning Center
- No member database, rota or giving
- No price found on the pages we read
- The vendor is an individual named in the imprint
Standout against Planning Center. SongBeamer is the only tool here that replaces just the projection part of Services and nothing else.
What actually breaks when you switch
The member export comes first. People is the hub that Groups, Services, Check-Ins and Giving all point at, so export it before anything is cancelled and check what the file contains. Group memberships, household links, custom fields and notes do not always arrive as columns, and a new tool's import usually wants its own template.
Rotas are the second break. Volunteers confirm slots in Services, and blockout dates, team positions and song order live in that product. Rebuild teams in the new tool before the old one is switched off, run both for a month, and tell volunteers which app holds the truth. Giving is the third: recurring donors have to re-authorise, so plan a message to them with the first new payment link.
Can I keep the free People database and move only Services?
Yes, because Planning Center sells the products separately, and a church can run People for free while rotas live elsewhere. The catch is the double entry. Every volunteer must exist in both systems, and the link between a person in People and a slot on a rota is the part that breaks when two tools hold the names.
A cleaner split moves the person records together with the rota. ChurchSuite keeps Rotas, Planning and the Address Book in one database, and Church Admin Plugin does the same inside WordPress. If the church wants to keep Planning Center for the database, SongBeamer is the only option on this page that needs no member data at all.
Do I lose the volunteer app when I leave Church Center?
You lose that exact app, and you replace it with the one your new supplier ships. ChurchTools has a church app and check-in, ChurchSuite lists a Network module among its ten, Hubb sells a website with an app at £29 a month, and Scipio App is built around a closed member app for phone, tablet and web.
What disappears is the single front door Church Center gives to music, schedules and giving. Plan a short transition in which volunteers use the old app for rota confirmations until the new one is in their pocket, and tell the congregation which link to open on the first Sunday.
Which one to pick
Pick ChurchTools if the whole stack must move and the church works in German or wants German hosting. Pick ChurchSuite or Hubb in the UK, where Gift Aid matters, with ChurchSuite stronger on rotas and Hubb on a combined website and app. Pick ChurchDesk when a vendor-run platform with set-up and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 outweighs the monthly price.
Choose Verowa, KiKartei or kirchenweb.ch if you are a Swiss parish, and Scipio App if you are Dutch and mainly want a member app. Church Admin Plugin is the free start for a small church with a WordPress volunteer, iKnow Church fits safeguarding-heavy English churches, and SongBeamer replaces only the projection. Stay on Planning Center if free People and Calendar plans are what hold your budget together and US law is acceptable.
Frequently Asked Questions
ChurchTools from Karlsruhe, Germany, covers the widest part of the stack: people, groups, calendars, resources, events, check-in and finance, with servers in Germany and Finland. ChurchSuite from the United Kingdom is the nearest match for Services and Giving, while Verowa suits Swiss parishes. The right pick depends on which Planning Center products your church actually uses.
The pages we read describe Planning Center as a service provider under California privacy law, and its terms are governed by California law. The terms menu links a GDPR page that we did not read, so we cannot say what it promises. If GDPR is a deciding factor, ask Planning Center for its data processing agreement and its hosting location in writing.
Church Admin Plugin has a free version with people records, a calendar and rotas, and it keeps the data on your own WordPress site. The price is the maintenance: your church hosts, updates and secures that site. ChurchTools, ChurchSuite and the Swiss tools offer trials or demos rather than a permanent free plan.
ChurchSuite, through its Rotas and Planning modules, is the closest match for scheduling teams and planning a service. Church Admin Plugin lists rotas in its free version. For the song side, SongBeamer shows lyrics, Bible texts and chords on screen. Verowa plans worship roles such as readers and altar servers for Swiss parishes.
ChurchTools, ChurchDesk, Hubb, Verowa and Church Admin Plugin publish amounts. ChurchDesk starts at €109 a month excl. VAT, Hubb at £35 for church management, Verowa at CHF 1,500 a year and Church Admin Plugin at $50 a year for small churches. KiKartei, kirchenweb.ch, Scipio App and SongBeamer showed no usable price on the pages we read.
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