Texting in Planning Center
Texting is a great way to send information to congregants from various Planning Center products. You can use texts to communicate last-minute changes, urgent announcements, donation opportunities, and notify congregants who don't use Church Center.
The table below provides an overview of texting capabilities in each product. Scroll down to find specific details and links about texting for each product.
Product | Can send texts | Can receive replies | No mobile carrier restrictions | Free to use | Opt-in/out options |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Check-Ins | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Giving | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Services | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Services Mobile | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Tip
As an alternative to texting, you can use Church Center for announcements, group messages, push notifications, and donations.
Check-Ins
If you're in the US or Canada and need to contact an adult about their child, you can send a pre-written text message from a manned or roster station. Recipients cannot reply to these messages.
To learn more, here's how to send a text to parents or trusted adults.
Giving
Text2give allows donors in the United States to make donations via text message.
To get started, follow along with this text2give article to learn how to set up a toll-free number and teach your donors to use text2give.
People
If you need to send quick information to people, send them a text message! All texts are sent from lists and stored on the Message History page. You can also see them on the Communication tab of any profile. Replies are not received.
To get started, set up text messaging with Planning Center's texting partner Twilio so that you can send texts to lists.
Or if you'd like to text with Clearstream or Text in Church, an organization administrator can enable those third-party integrations in Account settings.
Services
You can choose to get text notifications whenever you receive scheduling requests, reminders, or general emails in Services. These texts are sent through a free email-to-text service called SMS gateway, which is only available through certain mobile carriers. If your mobile carrier is supported, you can respond to scheduling request notifications using a short link in the text notification.
To learn more, here's how to set up and respond to text notifications.
Services Mobile
If you need to touch base with your team members about an upcoming change, you can email or text them right from their scheduled plan. Tell them where the change was made in the order or notify them of a time change, and they'll receive the message and link to the plan in their inbox. Replies will go to the sender of the message.
To learn more, here's how to email or text teams using the Services mobile app.