Realm Reviews

I like that Realm connects me to other church members, especially when we cannot be physically near each other during the pandemic.

The technology is sometimes difficult for older, less technology savvy, individuals at my church to use so it is harder to reach them.

The website makes it easy to give a digital donation to the church while I am away or don't have cash or check. A huge benefit of realm is that I can access church members' contact information to use when I need it most and that it is always accessible by internet. The announcement feature allows for mass info sharing to keep members informed and engaged. Realm keeps all info private to the church and its members so no others outside the church can access private information such as contact info.

The interface is very easy to use. Custom reports are easy to create. Pricing is appropriate for what you get

Not as flexible for multi-site location that are all small congregations -- the multisite license is way to expensive.

Give it a try you find it helpful for large and small congregations. The access from any computer is wonderful.

Online way to maintain and access membership information for staff that do not work in a single office.

Realm is intuitive and easy to use. Our staff love the ability to access Realm from anywhere and on any device. The types of things needed as a church staff member are there, with other functionality being released regularly. The support is top-notch and works through any issue I have with positively and with a wealth of knowledge.

There are still some areas that are not as built-out as I would like them to be. For example, there is a space to save files or links within a group. This is really helpful for leadership teams to save meeting minutes or volunteer groups to save training information. However, there is not an ability to organize the files into folders or to sort the files alphabetically. They simply are in a big list, sorted by the date uploaded. While this and other more advanced functionality are not there, ACS is continually seeking feedback on what to change and make better. They have an enhancement request portal where ideas like this can be shared and individuals can vote on what they want to see happen next. This portal allows ACS to see what changes we need, while also allowing the churches to weigh in on what is more important and what is a nice feature to have but that they can wait a bit for.

Talk to an implementation specialist or a sales rep to let them know what you are currently doing with the system you have. There are some things that are coming soon that it may behoove you to wait for a few months before changing, to decrease stress on your staff with learning a new system. Or there may be no issues and you can move right away. The support staff is there to help as well, so empower your staff to call them for help - and then monitor the client portal to see what people called about. it is a great feature that allows you to monitor what's going on so you can see what retraining might be needed, without having to be so hands on. If you are the person in charge of the database, use the change as an opportunity to retrain the staff on database best practices, of which ACS can help with, as well as a chance to help your staff help themselves.

Tracking giving is easy in Realm for staff and for the congregation. With the Realm Connect level, the congregation can create their own accounts, see their giving history, and get giving statements. We now are able to send quarterly giving statements within 3 minutes, with little to no cost! And with the integration of online giving, our donations have increased without increasing any staff time in processing giving through an outside vendor. We also were looking for ways to communicate with the congregation better. The Realm Connect level also has an app so that the congregation can see their info via the app, as well as register for events, look up people at the church, and keep in touch with their groups. Realm has a church-wide group with everyone in the database in it. We use the church-wide group to send out all-church events and info. From there, people opt into other smaller groups like our men's group or our soup kitchen volunteer group. They get all the info they need, tailored to their interests. Realm has helped our communication be more targeted and less cluttered, increasing the engagement level of the congregation.

As a church member, I like being able to control and update my own settings and information. I also find the simplicity of Realm to be very refreshing. Posting to groups, messaging fellow church members--or all the members of my small group, checking out the latest church news and events, or giving my tithes and offerings are logical and super simple--and, with RealmConnect, available wherever I may be!

As a Realm administrator, I also love the user-friendly aspects of the RealmConnect app. In addition, I know there a few things that are easier to do or only available on our Realm website and not yet available on the app. I am looking forward to more things being able to be accomplished via the app--for both my role as user as well as administrator.

Discipleship (helping people build relationships) and assimilation (helping people connect) are important parts of belonging to and growing in a church family. Realm pathways, groups, posting and messaging are tools that have helped "give life" to these concepts at our church. I have noticed that as members use Realm, other members are encouraged to participate--and the church family connections continue to grow and flourish.

Love that this program is easy to use and understand. It helps me get information better organizes and keeps it updated. I love too use this program and helps keep me updated in the new things that will be coming to help me get sales.

I love everything about this program I don't have any complaints or concern.

I Recommend trying it out as a trial evaluation to see if it works to help keep your work in order and see if it offers all the updates that you need to keep information in order and keep things going quicker and easier.

Realm provides technology and a program that can help get sales and information up to date all in one program. It helps me stay organized according to the information that is needed. I am able to get work get done faster and easier.

Integrates basic record keeping, simplifies how staff manages information, tracks member involvement, reviews giving trends, enters contribution records, and more

While it is a great program at times it is not user friendly. It can get too complicated with certain record keeping if you are not use to using programs similar to this. Certain functions can give you the run around, sometimes when doing simple tasks (i.e. attendance) you have to go through various tabs to get back to the initial page.

You have to be good at working with new software. Since it is not always user friendly patience is key. Luckily their customer support line is amazing as well as they have a free trial so you can try it out before having to purchase.

Mainly attendance, updating member profiles and membership management.

I like that I can do most of my work in this particular program instead of having to do multiple programs for simple solutions

It is helpful and the best thing about REALM is we can know the ongoing things in church just by looking at the mobile screen!

It is a real help to connect to our friends and the community around which we didn't know all these years but because of realm we started knowing them.

There is absolutely nothing to dislike about it.It is very helpful.

Go with it!Connect to the church and attend prayer even if you are late or held in traffic!

When I was at office and needed attend prayer but couldn't I just open realm and see and hear the live prayer going on!

Problems can be many but not attending the church is not a problem anymore.

I used to work as a TA for the Sunday School classes at a church a while back they had us help out with the tech side of things once in a while as some of the people just didnt really know much about computers and such and this is one of the programs they used. Once I got used to using some of the features it was really nice to work with. Everything is right there and the organization of staff and activities was easy to learn. Honestly I liked being able to use it on my cell phone. Ease of access is great.

sometimes when using it , i had issues signing in. I think that was more of a permissions issue though, i dont think it was reflective against the app itself. So I would personally say that I didnt really find anything wrong with it. Now that said, I also didnt have any complaints from other users.

This program is very easy to use and I would recommend it to anyone looking to keep their congregation and church employees in great communication with each other.

We were able to keep staffing and finances both in order by using the app. I did like that the parishioners could use the app as well. I feel like it really brought the congregation together. Everyone I worked with and that I talked to from the people that attended the church said they liked that we could easily keep communication open this way for everyone.

I like how Realm added some great features for ministry. They have pathways that let you walk people through discipleship and assimilation stuff. So, it doesn't just let you do the regular church admin stuff, it's got tools for communication, discipleship, and all the finances in one place, which reduces how many solutions our church needs to use.

The sidebar navigation takes some getting used to.

Take a tour and talk with a customer rep. It will help you discover all it can do, which might not be immediately evident on your own exploration.

I like how our giving and accounting are all in one. That's a rare feature for a ChMS. It helps us manage all our finances without handling data across multiple platforms.

User friendly, cleanliness of design, intuitive. We moved from The City to Realm and are very happy with our choice. "Customized" is the name of the game with Realm; to permissions, titles, groups, queries... everything can be customized to suit our organization and we're very excited.

I dislike the inability access all of the admin features in the app.

Make sure you get a really clear timeline from the transition team on what to expect with the data transition, down to exactly how the switch will happen, etc. We had a few hiccups when transitioning from The City, like some deleted groups that still showed up, but everything was a very quick fix. The staff is super helpful, and I recommend taking advantage of all the Training materials they offer. They're beginning something called "Realm U", a more digital classroom style training system to help people learn Realm and train others on their team. It's great so far!

Accounting! The ability to merge all expenses, budgeting, income, etc into ONE system is huge for us! We're able to have volunteers have different permissions to access what they need in the accounting area, as well as have overseer capability to just keep things in checks and balances. Along with all of the other pluses of Registration Events, check-in, etc.