Planning Center is the US market leader — but it's modular, priced per product, has no built-in chat, and wasn't designed for UK churches. Here's how Aurnet compares.
Planning Center prices each product separately — People, Services, Giving, Check-ins, Registrations and Groups — and each has a free tier, so a small church can genuinely run on it for nothing. The cost arrives as the church grows and the products stack up, in dollars, and even then there is no Gift Aid, no member-to-member chat and no training module.
Aurnet is a single subscription in pounds that covers all of it: mobile apps, chat, events, rotas, giving with Gift Aid declared as people give and ready to claim, sermons, training, pastoral care and the admin dashboard. If Planning Center's free tiers cover what your church needs, take them — they are a strong product and hard to beat at nothing.
| Feature | Aurnet | Planning Center |
|---|---|---|
| Native iOS & Android app | ||
| Web admin dashboard | ||
| Member-to-member chat | ||
| Gift Aid (HMRC compliant) | ||
| UK GDPR compliance | Partial | |
| Stripe giving (0% App Store fee) | ||
| Event registration forms | ||
| Volunteer & rota management | ||
| Children’s check-in | Separate product | |
| Check-in priced by Sunday volume | ||
| Livestream plays in the app | ||
| Training & discipleship programs | ||
| Accountability partners | ||
| Pastoral care tracking | ||
| Bulk SMS | Add-on | |
| Push notifications | ||
| Household management | ||
| Custom email sender name | ||
| Flat monthly pricing | ||
| Free plan available |
Gift Aid alone is worth thousands of pounds per year to most UK churches. Planning Center has no mechanism to collect, store, or export Gift Aid declarations. You'd need a separate system — more admin, more cost, more risk of HMRC non-compliance.
Aurnet collects Gift Aid declarations at the point of giving, stores declarations against each member record, and exports a clean report for HMRC submission. No separate tool. No paper forms. No gaps.
Start free — no credit card required. Or compare all competitors side by side.