Realm

Pros: Realm has allowed our parish to get into the 21st century of church management! It is so nice having everything in one place and having the ability to provide access to our parishioners so they can see their giving in real time. Realm is opening so many doors for us and we are so happy to be on this path.

Cons: It was difficult to know exactly what to do when I was handed 'the keys'. I took over a lot of the finance responsibilities as well as administrative tasks and I struggled to know where to start.

Pros: The Realm system is user friendly Great Support

Cons: The directory was a little tricky to print, but we received help.

Pros: How great the customer service was and how easy it was to set up.

Cons: There wasn’t anything I didn’t like or had problems with.

Pros: It handles nearly everything. We use it for accounts payable and receivable. I can print checks straight from the accounting software and log it into the register. We keep up with our bank account and bank credit cards this way. Profile Accounts can be customized to fit your needs and reports can run off the information collected. It makes finding information for our Annual Church Charge Conference reports quick and easy. I can also use reports to sort out particular types of members, members by age, and so on and I can create labels from the report inside of Realm itself. We can create News Posts that allow comments and/or email notifications and send them to all members or separate groups. It makes communication a breeze. We are able to create events and allow members to sign up and let us know how many people they are bringing. I have heard that ACS is also working to make a scheduler/calendar that will work with Realm. Right now we use ACS Facility Scheduler and it is a great tool.

Cons: The only thing I would like to see is a facility scheduler/Calendar that we could use inside of Realm itself.

Pros: I like the reporting and event section and its not hard to understand

Cons: the check system, because Realm has not created the capability to connect of their check-in system to wireless printers like Planning Center. We use to have Servant Keeper with the pc ...so we updated to make a more streamline look for check without all the cords and pc's. So I have to use 2 databases Planning Center for Check In and Realm for everything else. We had been told before we transfered to Realm that it was in the works to get wireless printers for check in..that was many years ago 7 or 8.

Pros: Realm Connect has been a tremendous way for our congregation and staff to communicate and keep abreast of news and events. Our people love the fact that they can not only see their own profiles, but also the online directory of members.

Cons: I have not found anything that I do not like about Realm.

Pros: The Realm support team are tremendously helpful, patient when we have questions or need instruction, thoughtful when crafting solutions, professional and polite. All our interactions with the Realm team have been very positive, and it is a relief to hear the voice of folks like [sensitive content hidden] on the other end of our calls with we need assistance!

Cons: It sometimes difficult to make corrections or back out entries/actions when simple mistakes are made.

Pros: The simplicity of Realm is what I like the most. We do not have to invest a huge amount of time getting staff to understand the modules. The system is intuitive and able to handle complex workflows.

Cons: We do have some functionality that hasn’t been deployed. I wish there was an easy way to take a look at the functionality prior to a decision to implement.

Pros: We appreciate the clean look of Realm and the ever expanding functionality around volunteer management.

Cons: There are a few functions I wish worked differently. All can be worked around and submitted for enhancements.

Pros: The online database and connectivity with congregants who will use the app.

Cons: Congregants who refuse to use the app. Struggle learning the system from admin side - congregants complain not user friendly. People still having glitches with sign in so they have abandoned using it. To meaning settings required to opt in to notifications.

Pros: Realm is a very well constructed CRM system for churches, not surprising consindering how long ACST (maker of Realm) has been in business. It has an integrated donations system. You can buy (which we did) the integrated accounting module, thus eliminating the need to double post donation summary information. Customer support is excellent. Customers get to suggest and vote on enhancements.

Cons: Conversion to Realm should have been easier. I'd like to be able to construct queries like in any database system using parentheses to bracket query logic. It is overkill for many small (under 100 Average Sunday Attendance) churches in my opinion.

Pros: We haven't encountered any glitches in Realm. It works as it is supposed to. Once you get used to how things work in Realm, it's easy to use.

Cons: There are features I requested be added to Realm. These requests have not been acted upon.

Pros: Realm is user friendly and if there is something that I can't figure out, the customer support is amazing!

Cons: Integration with ACS would be helpful. I haven't used the Accounting feature however, I was told that everything would go to Accounting and ACS would phase out. I haven't heard good things about the Accounting option and the fact that ACS hasn't been phased out, makes me leery of that option.

Pros: The best qualities of Realm allow us to easily track donor gifts and create registration events to which congregation members can RSVP and pay.

Cons: There are occasionally things that are not intuitive and require a call into Realm/ACS for help. The help line does almost always get us a quick answer and help us with our concerns.

Pros: WE LOVE THAT ONLINE DONATIONS POST DIRECTLY TO CONTRIBUTOR'S ACCOUNTS

Cons: TAKES ME A WHILE TO FIGURE OUT SOME REPORTING FEATURES. ALSO CANNOT HAVE MORE THAN ONE GIVING DATABASE

Pros: Ease of use. I can add, edit, unactivate, or even delete profiles in seconds. Online giving is the best! Having used other providers, the ability to create separate giving page links, funds, text giving is far superior to any other product I have tried. Plus, it all pulls over into reports got me to look at YTD data in a moment.

Cons: Integration of Pathways. We still struggle with utilizing this tool as it seems cumbersome. And when an event is created in a group, it can't be shared outside that group. I would love group events to show up in "Registrations" with a way to hide repeating events or have repeating events show up as just 1 event with the next one shown. I also would appreciate the ability to delete profiles that gave 7+ years ago. We have no need to keep them. Wish there was a service planning option so we didn't need to use Planning Center anymore!

Pros: Sending messages quick, keeping reach of giving for management stand point and being able to have one location for everything you need.

Cons: Initially setting this up was a little of a hassle from when we migrated. But the customer support was super amazing and helped so much!

Pros: First, it was a really switchover from their previous software. Second, it was amazing for us when COVID hit.

Cons: There were limited role management options when it came to giving permissions to Church attenders. I do think it worked good otherwise.

Pros: aun no puedo calificar recién estoy usándolo

Cons: aun no lo uso y no puedo dar una opinión de evaluación

Pros: Our reasons for using Realm out weigh the reasons not to use Realm. It is a robust system that offers your organization a lot of features, maybe more than you will use. It is simple to use and the features available allow you to implement as you need.

Cons: Some of the products in Realm are not needed but cannot be a la carte. The system can be expensive but they work with smaller organizations to accommodate this.

Pros: Nothing -This has been the most frustrating (and expensive) software that anyone could purchase

Cons: Every area has issues. Maybe the pay online works ok.

Pros: Realm does almost anything you would need a church management software suite to do, and does it well: tracking attendance, giving, financial transactions; keeping family and sacramental records; providing good communications and volunteer coordination features. It even integrates with ConstantContact and the web interface is intuitive and keeps improving.

Cons: Realm does so much so well--but it isn't good at anything out of the box. For instance, each household in Realm must have a "head of household" --an antiquated notion of family dynamics that isn't necessary. The structure of reports--and what reports are available by default--are limited and can be frustratingly to customize on the fly.