Planning Center tells you who's there. Holy Insights tells you what it means.
Planning Center is great at scheduling, check-ins, and people management, and its dashboards chart attendance inside each app. What it doesn't do is combine check-ins, giving, groups, and volunteers into ratio KPIs, benchmark them against published research, or write a weekly brief. Holy Insights connects directly to PC and adds that layer on top of the data you're already collecting.
Short answer: keep Planning Center. Holy Insights ($40 to $80/mo) sits on top of it and adds the cross-app ratio KPIs, research benchmarks, and weekly AI brief that Planning Center’s per-app dashboards do not produce. No Planning Center is required, since it also connects to Rock RMS, Breeze, Pushpay ChMS, and QuickBooks, or imports a CSV.
By Braden Murray, founder of Holy Insights · Updated
Competitor details checked against Planning Center pricing, Planning Center dashboards, Planning Center AI on .
What Planning Center Gives You
Planning Center is a genuinely great product, and a lot of what it does it does better than anything else in the church tech space.
- Check-ins and headcounts. PC's check-in system is the standard for church attendance tracking. It handles multi-campus, multi-service, and room-level counts with reliability.
- People profiles and relationships. Household records, contact info, family connections, ministry history. PC's people database is comprehensive and well designed.
- Service scheduling and teams. Volunteer scheduling, song planning, team communication. PC Services is the de facto standard for church production teams.
- Giving via PCO Giving. If you use PCO Giving, you have a complete picture of donations, online giving, and fund allocation within Planning Center.
- Basic headcount reports. PC has built-in attendance reporting for individual events and service types. You can export raw data as CSV when you need it.
- Dashboards you build yourself. PC People dashboards chart attendance over 30 days, 13 weeks, or 12 months, with year-over-year comparison on each widget. A dashboard can be shared with specific people or by permission level, so your leadership team can see it.
Holy Insights works alongside Planning Center. Planning Center is the fastest setup, but no church management system is required: it also connects to Rock RMS, Breeze, Pushpay ChMS, and QuickBooks, or imports a CSV. The rest of this page covers what you can do with your PC data once the apps are combined in one analytics layer.
What PC Can't Show You
Planning Center's dashboards are useful inside each app. The charts are built by hand, one widget at a time, and each one stays within its own app. Here's what falls outside that:
Charts live per app and per widget
PC People dashboards can chart attendance over 30 days, 13 weeks, or 12 months, with year-over-year comparison on each widget. Each chart is a widget you set up yourself inside one app, so there is no single view that puts check-ins, giving, groups, and volunteers side by side.
No built-in volunteer percentage of attendance that we're aware of
PC can tell you how many volunteers served on a Sunday. We're not aware of a built-in KPI that divides that by attendance to give you a ratio, which is the number that tells you if you're healthy or understaffed. Holy Insights calculates it for you.
No built-in NextGen ratio that we're aware of
PC has your kids and youth headcounts. We're not aware of a built-in KPI that shows them as a percentage of total weekend attendance, which is how you know if your NextGen ministry is growing or shrinking relative to the whole church. Holy Insights calculates it for you.
No built-in percentage in small groups that we're aware of
PC Groups tracks who's in a group. We're not aware of a built-in KPI for what percentage of your weekend attendance is connected to a group, which is one of the most useful retention metrics a church has. Holy Insights calculates it for you.
No built-in weekly digest
PC has no built-in weekly digest. You can point an outside AI tool at PC through its MCP connection, but nothing is written for you automatically. Holy Insights writes the weekly summary of what changed, what to watch, and what to bring up in staff meeting.
Dashboards are built by hand, per app, with no benchmarks or AI
PC dashboards can be shared with specific people or by permission level, so your elders or leadership team can see them. Each one is built by hand inside a single app, and none compares your numbers to published research or explains what changed. Holy Insights gives leadership one view that does both.
Feature Comparison
What you get from Planning Center alone, versus what you get when Holy Insights is added on top.
| Feature | Planning Center | Holy Insights (add-on) |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly attendance trend | Dashboard chart over 30 days, 13 weeks, or 12 months | Automatic chart on every metric |
| Year-over-year comparison | Per widget, built by hand | |
| AI weekly digest | No built-in digest (outside AI tools can connect through PC's MCP) | Yes (MAX) |
| NextGen % of attendance | No built-in ratio KPI that we're aware of | |
| Volunteer % of attendance | No built-in ratio KPI that we're aware of | |
| % in small groups | No built-in ratio KPI that we're aware of | |
| Giving per attender | Spans two apps; no built-in ratio that we're aware of | Yes |
| Demographic breakdown | Reporting inside the People app | |
| Leadership team dashboard | Shareable dashboards, built by hand per app | |
| Semester-over-semester comparison | No built-in view that we found | One click |
| Board-ready PDF reports | No built-in board report that we found | Auto-generated |
How They Work Together
Holy Insights connects directly to Planning Center. Your data syncs automatically. You keep using PC for scheduling, check-ins, and people management. Holy Insights reads what PC collects and turns it into dashboards, trend lines, and AI analysis. It never changes your people, giving, or check-in records.
You stay in Planning Center for:
- Sunday check-ins
- People profiles and households
- Service scheduling and volunteer teams
- Group management and signups
- Giving collection (PCO Giving)
Holy Insights adds on top:
- 13-week trend lines on every metric
- Previous-period and 3-year historic comparisons on every KPI
- Ratio KPIs (NextGen %, volunteer %, groups %)
- MAX AI weekly digest and Ask MAX
- Leadership team dashboard
- Board-ready PDF reports
There's no double-entry. Once Planning Center is connected, it syncs daily, and about every 30 minutes on Sunday. Your dashboard stays current without anyone on your team doing anything extra.
When You Might Not Need Holy Insights
Honestly: if you're under 100 weekend attendance, have no staff, and aren't preparing regular reports for a board or elder team, PC's built-in reporting is probably enough for where you are right now. The value of a dedicated analytics layer shows up when someone on your team is regularly asking questions about your data and the answers require more than a single headcount.
If you're at the point where you're manually building charts every month, writing reports from scratch before board meetings, or wondering why a metric changed and having no fast way to find out, that's when Holy Insights pays for itself.
See It With Your Own Data
Book a demo and watch it connect to your Planning Center account.
30 minutes. We'll connect Holy Insights to your PC account live, pull in your real data, and show you the dashboard before you decide anything.
Book a free demoFrequently Asked Questions
Does Holy Insights replace Planning Center?
No. Holy Insights works alongside Planning Center. Planning Center is the fastest setup, but no church management system is required: it also connects to Rock RMS, Breeze, Pushpay ChMS, and QuickBooks, or imports a CSV. You keep using Planning Center for scheduling, check-ins, people management, and giving. Holy Insights reads what PC collects and turns it into dashboards and AI analysis.
How does Holy Insights connect to Planning Center?
Holy Insights connects directly to Planning Center via their API. You authorize the connection during onboarding, and your attendance, giving, and people data syncs automatically. You don't export anything manually.
Does Holy Insights require PCO Giving?
No. Giving data is optional. If you use PCO Giving, Holy Insights can pull that data automatically. If you use a different giving platform, you can import giving data via CSV. And if you don't track giving in Holy Insights at all, the rest of the dashboard works fine without it.
How often does data sync from Planning Center?
Planning Center syncs daily, and about every 30 minutes on Sunday.
Will my Planning Center data be safe?
Yes. Holy Insights reads your Planning Center data and never changes your people, giving, or check-in records. The only thing it creates in Planning Center is its own webhook subscription, so updates arrive automatically. We never store passwords, and the connection uses Planning Center's official OAuth integration.
Doesn't Planning Center already have dashboards and charts?
Yes. Planning Center People dashboards chart attendance over 30 days, 13 weeks, or 12 months, with year-over-year comparison on each widget, and a dashboard can be shared with specific people or by permission level. Those charts live per app and per widget, and you build them by hand. Holy Insights combines check-ins, giving, groups, and volunteers into ratio KPIs such as volunteer percentage of attendance, percentage in groups, NextGen percentage of attendance, and giving per attender, benchmarks them against published research, and writes the weekly brief for you.