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When choosing a project management system for your church, there are several factors to consider. Finding the “perfect” solution for your church means finding the right balance between budget, desired capabilities, and the platform’s usability.
Because every church is unique, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to solve all of your organizational needs. It’s vital to explore the options and find the best solution that meets your team’s unique needs and uses.
To help you identify the best project management solution, here’s a quick rundown of five popular systems, a few pros and cons, and their price points.
Planning Center
Planning Center describes itself as “a set of software tools to help you organize information, coordinate events, communicate with your team, and connect with your congregation.” It’s less of a full-scale project management system and more of a database; however, churches of all sizes use this popular platform, and with its workflows and suite of features, you may be able to tailor the system to work for you.
👍 Pros: Because Planning Center is for churches, it has many ministry-focused features to help you manage volunteers, gather event sign-ups, track giving, and more services you won’t find in different software.
👎 Cons: Planning Center is not a project management system in the traditional sense, so you may have to work creatively to manage projects that aren’t related to Planning Center’s core products.
💸 Price: Planning Center utilizes a product-tiered monthly subscription system, so the price ranges vastly depending on your usage—however, the core “People” product is always free. Try out the entire suite of products with your first 30 days free.
Asana
Asana says its software is “the easiest way to manage team projects and tasks”—and they may be right. Their project management system includes workflow builders, timelines, Kanban-style boards for project management, calendar views, and even allows you to view your team’s workload. Asana is the project management system utilized by ReFrame Ministries, the parent ministry of Church Juice.
👍 Pros: Asana is intuitive, user-friendly, and truly built for end-to-end project management. Asana offers many helpful integrations, like Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. We like that you can separate core projects into boards and add only relevant users to each project.
👎 Cons: Asana’s reporting functionalities are relatively basic compared to other systems, and it’s an entirely task-based (or to-do list) approach to project management. You also can’t assign one task to multiple users without duplication.
💸 Price: Asana’s basic plan includes many core features and is free for teams with less than 15 users. Their premium ($10.99) and business ($24.99) plans bill monthly per user and allow even more advanced access.
Monday.com
Like Asana, Monday.com allows you to manage projects using boards, views, and dashboards. They also offer many integrations like Slack, Dropbox, and Adobe Creative Cloud. Monday.com offers different features and functionalities based on your desired use, from creative and design to marketing or project management.
👍 Pros: Monday.com allows you to send and receive emails within their platform and offers collaborative document editing.
👎 Cons: Their free plan only allows for up to two users.
💸 Price: Monday.com’s free individual plan includes up to two seats and limited feature access. Their other plans are billed monthly per user (or seat): Basic ($8 seat/month), Standard ($10 seat/month), and Pro ($16 seat/month), with added features and capabilities at each level.
Trello
Trello is highly user-friendly and has all the basic capabilities you need for easy project management: boards, lists, and visual cards. Trello also allows you to use pre-made templates for task and project management, making getting started with their tool quick and easy. Trello boasts that it “integrates seamlessly” with popular apps like Slack, Dropbox, Outlook, etc.
👍 Pros: The visual aspect of Trello and its use of task “cards” makes it somewhat unique. Their free plan is generous and allows for unlimited users.
👎 Cons: Trello is less robust for more complicated and customized projects.
💸 Price: Trello’s free plan is free for “your whole team” and includes unlimited cards, but only up to ten boards per workspace. Their standard plan ($5 seat/month) includes unlimited boards and their premium plan ($10 seat/month) offers multiple advanced views.
Notion
Notion is unique from the other project management systems discussed because of its minimalist design and document-focused capabilities. However, it may be ideal for more writing-focused collaborative or marketing projects like a content calendar. Though a bit more set-up is required to get started in Notion, it is almost entirely customizable for your unique needs and preferences.
👍 Pros: Notion’s minimalist design makes it less overwhelming than other project management platforms. They offer tons of free templates you can customize for several different use cases. Notion also offers document creation and collaboration within their platform (think Google Docs).
👎 Cons: While Notion does have capabilities to create different projects, boards, and views, you mostly have to set them up yourself or customize a pre-existing template for your needs.
💸 Price: Because Notion isn’t a traditional project management system, their free- and paid-tier subscriptions are only for individual users. However, Notion does offer team subscriptions for $8 per seat/month.
Of course, this list is not comprehensive—there are several other project management systems you may want to explore, like ClickUp or Basecamp. It’s important to remember, though: No matter which platform or provider you choose, the best systems are the ones you actually use!
Once you’ve decided which project management tool is the best service for your church, you’ll need to develop a plan to gather buy-in and implement your solution across the staff team.
