TL;DR: Breeze is the easiest church management software to use in 2026. If your church needs a simple, affordable tool for member management, giving, and basic communication, Breeze delivers without the complexity of Planning Center or the cost of Pushpay. But “simple” has tradeoffs: no worship planning, limited automation, basic reporting, and zero support for churches outside the US. Here’s our full review.
What Is Breeze?
Breeze is a church management platform built in Los Angeles, launched in 2013. Its pitch is simple: church management software that doesn’t require a tech degree to use.
While Planning Center gives you eight separate apps to configure, Breeze puts everything in one place. Member database, giving, events, check-ins, groups, communication, and follow-up all live under one roof with one login and one monthly price.
Pricing: $82/month flat fee. Unlimited members. Unlimited users. No per-person pricing. No add-on charges.
That’s it. One price, everything included. For churches tired of calculating per-member costs or deciding which modules to add, Breeze’s pricing is refreshingly straightforward.
What Breeze Gets Right
1. It’s Genuinely Easy to Use
This is Breeze’s defining feature, and they earn it.
Most church management software requires training sessions, video tutorials, and weeks of setup before your team feels comfortable. Breeze can be set up in an afternoon.
The interface is clean and intuitive. Navigation is simple: People, Giving, Events, Tags, Communication. No nested menus, no hidden settings buried three clicks deep. A church admin who’s never used management software before can figure out Breeze without reading a manual.
This matters more than most software reviews acknowledge. The best feature in the world is useless if your church secretary can’t find it. Breeze wins on discoverability. Everything is where you’d expect it to be.
2. The Pricing Is Honest
$82/month. Unlimited everything. No surprises.
Compare that to Planning Center, where a 500-member church using most apps pays $148+/month. Or Tithe.ly, where pricing tiers vary by feature set. Or Pushpay, where contracts start at $200+/month.
Breeze also includes a free 14-day trial with no credit card required. You can import your data, test every feature, and decide before you pay anything.
For small-to-medium churches watching their budget, this predictability is valuable. You know exactly what you’ll pay this month and next year. No scaling penalties for growing your congregation.
3. Member Management Is Solid
Breeze’s people database covers the essentials well:
- Profiles with contact info, family connections, custom fields, and notes
- Tags for flexible categorization (visitor, new member, worship team, men’s group, etc.)
- Household grouping with family relationships
- Activity timeline showing giving, attendance, communication, and notes per person
- Advanced search with filter combinations (find all members tagged “volunteer” who joined in the last 6 months)
- CSV import/export for data migration
Tags are Breeze’s secret weapon. Instead of rigid categories, you can tag people with anything: ministry involvement, spiritual gifts, life stage, interests, connection status. Then filter and search by any combination of tags. It’s flexible without being complicated.
4. Giving Is Well-Integrated
Breeze includes online giving through their partnership with payment processors:
- Credit/debit cards and ACH bank transfers
- Recurring giving setup for members
- Fund management (tithes, offerings, building fund, missions, etc.)
- Giving statements generated automatically for tax season
- Text-to-give option
- Giving kiosk mode for in-lobby terminals
- Pledge tracking for capital campaigns
The giving reports are clear and useful: giving by fund, by member, by date range, year-over-year comparisons. Your finance team can generate end-of-year statements in minutes instead of days.
Transaction fees are standard: 2.9% + $0.30 for credit cards, 1% + $0.30 for ACH (capped at $5). These are in line with industry norms and slightly better than some competitors.
5. Follow-Up Tools Work Well
Breeze has a built-in follow-up system that many competitors lack:
- Create follow-up tasks for specific people (“Call John about joining a small group”)
- Assign tasks to staff or volunteers
- Set due dates and get reminders
- Track completion status
- View all open follow-ups in one dashboard
For churches that struggle with letting new visitors fall through the cracks, this feature alone can transform retention. When someone visits your church and fills out a connection card, you can create a follow-up workflow that ensures someone actually contacts them within 48 hours.
6. Check-Ins Are Included
Unlike some competitors that charge extra for check-in features, Breeze includes them in the base price:
- Children’s check-in with name tags
- Security code matching (parent pickup verification)
- Allergy and medical alerts on printed labels
- Self-service kiosk mode
- Headcount tracking
It’s not as feature-rich as Planning Center’s Check-Ins (which offers more label customization and advanced room management), but for most churches, Breeze’s check-in system covers what you need.
Where Breeze Falls Short
1. No Worship Planning
This is the biggest feature gap compared to Planning Center. Breeze has no worship planning tools at all. No service builder, no song database, no team scheduling for worship teams, no chord chart management, no ProPresenter integration.
If your church has a worship team that needs to coordinate songs, musicians, and media across multiple services, you’ll need a separate tool (Planning Center Services, or a standalone app like SongSelect/OnSong) alongside Breeze.
For churches with simple services (a few songs, a sermon, announcements), this isn’t a problem. For churches with complex production workflows, it’s a dealbreaker.
2. Reporting Is Basic
Breeze provides the essential reports: giving summaries, attendance trends, membership growth, and tag-based filtering. But the reporting engine is surface-level compared to more mature platforms.
What’s missing:
- Custom report builder (you can’t create your own report templates)
- Engagement scoring (no automated tracking of member activity across touchpoints)
- Giving trend analysis (basic year-over-year, but no predictive analytics or retention indicators)
- Dashboard customization (you get one default dashboard, you can’t build your own)
For most small churches, the built-in reports are sufficient. For churches that want data-driven decision making or detailed board reports, Breeze may leave you wanting more.
3. Automation Is Limited
Breeze has follow-up tasks and some basic workflow features, but it’s not an automation platform. You can’t build complex multi-step automations like:
- “When a visitor fills out a connection card, wait 2 days, send a welcome email, wait 5 days, create a follow-up task for the hospitality team, wait 14 days, send an invitation to a newcomers class”
Planning Center’s Workflows feature handles this. Breeze requires manual intervention at each step. For small churches, this is fine. For growing churches with hundreds of visitors per month, manual follow-up doesn’t scale.
4. Communication Tools Are Basic
Breeze lets you send emails to individuals or groups (filtered by tags). That’s about it.
What’s missing:
- SMS/text messaging (no built-in texting, though they offer a third-party integration)
- WhatsApp (not supported)
- Email templates (limited template functionality)
- Email scheduling (send now or save as draft, no future scheduling)
- Email analytics (no open rates, click rates, or engagement tracking)
For churches that rely heavily on email communication, the lack of scheduling and analytics is frustrating. For churches that need SMS or WhatsApp, Breeze simply doesn’t offer it natively.
5. No International Payment Support
Like Planning Center, Breeze’s giving feature only supports US payment methods:
- Credit/debit cards (US)
- ACH bank transfers (US bank accounts)
No M-Pesa. No Paystack. No Flutterwave. No international bank transfers. No mobile money of any kind.
For churches in Africa, Latin America, or Asia, the giving feature doesn’t work. And since giving is one of Breeze’s core selling points, losing it means you’re paying $82/month for a platform that’s missing a major piece.
6. The Mobile App Is Limited
Breeze has a mobile app for members (Breeze Church App), but the admin experience on mobile is limited. Most administrative tasks still require a desktop browser.
For church admins who do a lot of work from their phones (common in African and Latin American churches where phones are the primary device), this is a meaningful limitation.
7. No Multi-Language Support
The Breeze interface is English-only. For multilingual congregations, or churches in non-English-speaking countries, there’s no localization option.
Breeze vs. Planning Center: The Honest Comparison
This is the comparison most church admins are making, so let’s lay it out clearly.
| Category | Breeze | Planning Center |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | Easier (one app, simple UI) | More complex (8 apps to configure) |
| Pricing (200 members) | $82/month flat | $50-150/month depending on apps |
| Pricing (500 members) | $82/month flat | $100-200+/month |
| Member database | Good | Excellent |
| Worship planning | None | Best in class |
| Giving | Good (US only) | Good (US only) |
| Check-ins | Good | Best in class |
| Groups | Good | Good |
| Automation/workflows | Basic follow-ups | Advanced workflows |
| Reporting | Basic | Moderate |
| Communication | Email only | Email + limited SMS |
| Integrations | Limited (Zapier, Mailchimp) | Extensive (ProPresenter, CCLI, 30+ tools) |
| Setup time | 1-2 hours | 1-2 weeks |
| No | No | |
| Mobile money | No | No |
| Global payment support | No | No |
The short version:
- Choose Breeze if you want simplicity above all else, don’t need worship planning, and want predictable pricing.
- Choose Planning Center if you have a worship/production team, need advanced workflows, or want deeper integrations.
- Choose neither if you’re outside North America and need WhatsApp, mobile money, or regional payment support.
Who Should Use Breeze
Breeze is ideal for:
- Small-to-medium US churches (50-500 members) that want simplicity
- Church plants that need to get organized quickly without a steep learning curve
- Churches without dedicated tech staff (volunteers can learn Breeze in an afternoon)
- Churches that don’t need worship planning tools
- Budget-conscious churches that want predictable, flat-rate pricing
- Churches migrating from spreadsheets or paper records for the first time
Breeze is not ideal for:
- Churches with complex worship production workflows (no service planning)
- Large churches (1,000+) that need advanced automation and reporting
- Churches outside North America (no international giving or communication tools)
- Churches that need WhatsApp as a communication channel
- Churches whose members use mobile money for giving
- Data-driven church leadership teams that need custom reporting
- Multilingual congregations needing a localized interface
Setup and Onboarding
Getting started with Breeze is fast. This is one of its strongest selling points.
Day 1:
- Sign up for a free 14-day trial at breezechms.com
- Import your member data via CSV (Breeze provides a template)
- Set up your giving funds (tithes, offerings, building fund, etc.)
- Configure tags for your church’s categories
Day 2-3: 5. Invite your team members with appropriate permissions 6. Set up check-in locations and label printers (if using check-ins) 7. Create your first follow-up workflows for visitor follow-up 8. Test online giving with a small transaction
Day 4-7: 9. Train your staff and key volunteers (1-hour session is usually enough) 10. Begin entering attendance records and notes 11. Go live with your congregation
Breeze also offers:
- Free data migration assistance (they’ll help import your data from another platform)
- Live chat and email support
- A knowledge base with video tutorials
- Webinars for new users
The total onboarding time for most churches is under a week. Compare that to Planning Center (2-4 weeks) or Church Community Builder (4-6 weeks), and Breeze’s simplicity advantage is clear.
What Real Users Say
From reviews across Capterra, G2, and church tech communities:
What they love:
- “We switched from spreadsheets to Breeze and it changed everything. Setup took two hours.”
- “The flat pricing is a breath of fresh air. No surprises.”
- “Our 75-year-old church secretary learned it in a day. That tells you everything.”
- “Tags are incredibly flexible. We can track anything without complex custom fields.”
- “The follow-up feature alone was worth switching for. No more visitors falling through the cracks.”
What they wish was better:
- “We outgrew the reporting pretty quickly. Wish we could build custom reports.”
- “No worship planning means we still use Planning Center Services alongside Breeze.”
- “The email tools are bare bones. We ended up using Mailchimp separately.”
- “No texting built in was a surprise. We expected it at that price point.”
- “Would love better mobile admin capabilities.”
The theme is consistent: churches love Breeze for its simplicity and pricing, but growing churches eventually hit the ceiling on reporting, automation, and communication features.
The Verdict
Breeze is the best “first church management software” on the market. If your church is currently using spreadsheets, paper records, or nothing at all, Breeze is the easiest path to getting organized. The learning curve is minimal, the pricing is transparent, and the core features (people, giving, follow-ups, check-ins) work well.
The question is whether you’ll outgrow it. Churches that need worship planning, advanced automation, detailed reporting, or international support will eventually need something more. And migrating away from a platform you’ve built your data in is never painless.
Our recommendation:
- If you’re a small US church (under 300 members) that wants to get organized without complexity, Breeze is an excellent choice. You’ll be up and running in days, not weeks.
- If you’re a growing US church that needs worship planning or advanced workflows, start with Planning Center. You’ll avoid migrating later.
- If you’re a church outside North America, Breeze’s US-only giving and communication tools mean you’re paying for features you can’t use. Look at platforms built for the global church, like Gathrik, that support WhatsApp, mobile money, and regional pricing from day one.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Breeze cost?
$82/month, flat rate. Unlimited members, unlimited admin users, all features included. No contracts, cancel anytime. They also offer a free 14-day trial with no credit card required.
Is Breeze good for small churches?
Yes, this is Breeze’s sweet spot. Churches of 50-300 members get the most value. The simplicity and flat pricing are perfect for smaller congregations that don’t need enterprise features.
Can I use Breeze and Planning Center together?
Some churches do. They use Breeze for member management and giving, and Planning Center Services for worship planning. It works, but you’re managing two platforms and paying for both. There’s no native integration between them.
Does Breeze have a mobile app?
Yes. The Breeze Church App lets members view the directory, give online, check in children, and view events. The admin experience is primarily web-based, though basic admin tasks can be done on mobile.
How does Breeze handle data migration?
Breeze offers free migration assistance. You can export your data from most platforms as CSV, and Breeze’s team will help you map and import it. They also support direct migration from several competitors.
Can Breeze handle multiple campuses?
Breeze has basic multi-campus support, but it’s not as robust as Planning Center’s. If multi-campus management is a core need, Planning Center or Church Community Builder might be better fits.
Does Breeze integrate with Mailchimp?
Yes. Breeze integrates with Mailchimp for email marketing, which helps compensate for its limited built-in email tools. Tags in Breeze can sync with Mailchimp audiences for targeted email campaigns.
Need church management software that works beyond North America? Gathrik is built for churches worldwide, with WhatsApp messaging, M-Pesa and mobile money giving, and pricing that reflects your local economy.