Planning Center was created to address the pain points of people serving in ministry. Everything we build is designed to help churches help people. And that will never change.
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Many years ago...
As the Director of Graphics & Web and Director of Music, they wrestled with spreadsheets, juggled countless details, and felt the weight of a complicated and stressful process. 
So they decided to build a better way—a tool now called Services, designed to make organizing Sundays much easier.
To help us scale and manage our growing day-to-day operations, Jeff Spillman was added to the team (yes, another Jeff) and has been a cornerstone of our culture and leadership ever since.
We quickly noticed even more needs churches had in their daily work, so we introduced a few more tools. But we only wanted to build the essentials. As Jeff, our CEO, once said: “We will never be a church management system.”
Never say never, right?
Since then, we’ve doubled down on our commitment to building tools that support churches’ day-to-day ministry work. 🫶
We’re committed to making sure this never changes, so in 2024 we cemented our future as an independent company by forming the Ministry Centered Foundation and making Planning Center—officially—not for sale.
Today, we have a growing team and a complete system comprised of 11 products that all work together to help churches help people.
What we’re about now
We love our churches. We love our team. We love our products. These three loves drive every decision we make, such as…
Planning Center is founder-owned and totally bootstrapped. We don’t have any investors, we’ve never taken any funding, and we’re 100% debt-free. Learn more!
What we charge for our products is readily available on our website. There are no hidden fees or contracts, and you don’t have to talk to anyone in sales. We don’t even have a sales team.
Getting help is quick, easy, and free for everyone—whether you’re a customer or not. Our team will respond within one business hour (Monday – Friday), and we have a weekend crew for any emergencies.
With 65% of our team working in Product and Engineering, creating new features and updating older ones is part of our everyday work. See what’s new!
Planning Center People, our central tool for people management, is completely free. Because keeping up with the people in your church should come at no extra cost.
With our open-source API, churches can build their own specialized integrations and other companies can create interconnected add-ons with us.
BY THE NUMBERS
support response time
active churches
average employee tenure
active users
employees
processed donations
per day
our mascot
Have you met PiCO? Our friendly mascot was created in 2011 and has since appeared on t-shirts, stickers, plushies, arcade games, and more.
Have more questions? We’re here to help. Contact Support.
Over 90,000 churches trust Planning Center. Of those churches, 4 million staff and volunteers use our products every week to help them in their ministry work.
We’re a user-friendly product for any church of any size—whether you’re a small neighborhood church or have multiple campuses. We scale with your growth because we’re in it for the long haul. That said, we know we might not be the right fit for everyone. So feel free to start a free 30-day trial of our products, see how we compare to other church management systems, and reach out to our support team with any questions!
Yes! Our team is growing and we’re regularly updating our site with new roles. Check out our open positions!
The Planning Center office is based in Carlsbad, CA; however, 82% of our employees work remotely and are spread out all over the United States. We get together three times a year to cultivate relationships and collaborate on work.
Planning Center is owned by Jeff Berg, our CEO. We’re privately held, and thanks to the Ministry Centered Foundation, we’ve ensured we’re never sold.
