Breeze vs Planning Center: Which Is Right for Your Church? (2025)

This is the comparison we get asked about most often. Breeze and Planning Center are the two dominant church management platforms for congregations under 1,000 members — but they have very different design philosophies, pricing structures, and ideal use cases. We've tested both extensively and here's our honest take.

The One-Sentence Summary

Breeze is a flat-fee, beautifully simple ChMS built for churches that want everything working on day one without a learning curve. Planning Center is a powerful, modular system built for churches that are willing to invest setup time in exchange for much deeper capabilities.

Testing Methodology

We set up both platforms with identical data: 250 member profiles, 3 weekly services, 45 recurring volunteers across 8 positions, and $15,000/month in giving to track. We measured setup time, training time, weekly admin time, and tested specific workflows that church admin staff care about.

Setup and Onboarding

Breeze: Up in Hours

Breeze's onboarding experience is genuinely impressive. We imported 250 member profiles from a CSV in about 20 minutes, configured our giving funds in another 15, and had a functional system within the first afternoon. The UI is clean and obvious — a church administrator with no prior software training could be productive within 2 hours.

Planning Center: Up in Days

Planning Center has a more complex onboarding experience. Setting up People took about 2 hours. Configuring Services (volunteer scheduling) for our 3 services with 8 positions and 45 volunteers took a full day. The first Sunday using it, we encountered some scheduling notification issues we needed to troubleshoot with support docs. By week 3, everything was running smoothly — but the ramp-up is real.

Member Management

Breeze: Clean and Accessible

Breeze's member directory is beautifully simple. Custom fields are easy to add, household management makes sense, and the search and filtering (using tags) is fast and intuitive. Staff who aren't particularly tech-savvy adopted it immediately without training.

Planning Center: Deeper but More Complex

Planning Center People is significantly more powerful — custom forms, automated workflows, detailed engagement tracking, and list automation go well beyond Breeze. But that power comes with complexity. Not every staff member will leverage these features, and the extra capability often goes unused in smaller churches.

Verdict: Tie — Breeze wins on simplicity; Planning Center wins on depth. Choose based on whether you need the depth.

Volunteer Scheduling

This is where the comparison isn't close.

Breeze: Basic volunteer scheduling with email reminders. Adequate for simple needs.

Planning Center Services: The gold standard. Build service templates with positions (worship leader, sound tech, children's lead), assign volunteers, send automated schedule requests with accept/decline buttons, track blackout dates, share chord charts and lyrics, create order-of-service runsheets. Volunteers can manage their schedule from a mobile app.

Verdict: Planning Center wins decisively. If volunteer scheduling is a top pain point, this alone justifies Planning Center.

Online Giving

Both platforms handle giving solidly. Breeze gives (2.9% + $0.30 card) is built-in and works without any extra setup. Planning Center Giving has a slightly lower card rate (2.3% + $0.30) and the unlimited free tier makes it attractive.

Neither matches Tithe.ly for mobile giving experience — if giving growth is your priority, you might consider using Tithe.ly for giving alongside either Breeze or Planning Center for ChMS.

Verdict: Slight edge to Planning Center (lower card rate, free tier).

Pricing Reality Check

Both platforms advertise attractive price points, but the total cost picture is nuanced:

Key insight: Breeze's flat pricing is a genuine differentiator for larger small churches. A 500-member church pays the same $72/month as a 100-member church. Planning Center's modular pricing scales up quickly if you use multiple apps.

The Decision Framework

Choose Breeze if:

• Your church has under 500 members
• You want to be live within days, not weeks
• Your admin team isn't especially tech-savvy
• Predictable flat pricing is important to your budget process
• Volunteer scheduling is not a major pain point

Choose Planning Center if:

• You have an active volunteer program with complex scheduling needs
• You want to start free and grow into paid tiers
• Your team includes a tech-savvy person who will own the system configuration
• You expect to grow beyond 500 members and want a platform that scales
• Worship team coordination and service planning is a weekly challenge

Our Verdict

Both platforms are excellent — this isn't a case of one being objectively superior. The right choice is determined entirely by your church's specific priorities.

For the majority of churches under 500 members reading this, Breeze will serve you excellently with minimal friction. For churches where volunteer coordination is a significant operational challenge, Planning Center's Services module is worth the learning curve.

Our recommendation: Start with the free trials. Breeze gives you 30 days with full features (no card required). Planning Center has a permanent free tier. Try both with your real data before deciding.

Frequently Asked Questions