Faithlife Proclaim

Proclaim worship presentation software is an excellent solution for any size Church!

Comments: Overall, I'm quite impressed with Proclaim. It has changed our worship service by Leaps and Bounds, and made me more efficient getting my work done during the week. There are so many features yet that we have not even begin to scratch the surface on, but I'm excited for the future in hopes that we will dig deeper and begin to use them.

Pros:

What I love most about Proclaim is that it is so intuitive with the layout and how things are put together. It doesn't take a computer genius to be able to lay out a presentation. Also, the person left to run the presentation during the service needs to know nothing more than how to Progressive slide forward or backward. It's really that simple! Proclaim is even made it super simple by integrating our work subscriptions, Bible versions in scripture, along with song lyrics within the software. It is literally a one-stop-shop. What used to take me over 2 hours to do in illustrator, Photoshop, and PowerPoint, I can now get done in about 30 minutes and Proclaim. The customer service is also outstanding! Each time that I have emailed them, I've gotten a reply back usually the same day with a personalized email addressing my specific question. No Scripts or faceless reply to

Cons:

One of the things I like least about this software is the dependability of the sinking upload feature. I can work on a presentation at home, and press the sync feature leave my laptop open for a couple hours, and it still won't show up on the church computer several days later. We end up having to share the actual presentation file through Google Drive in order to make sure that everyone has access to the file that they need. I wish that there was a way that I could actually see the progress of a file being synced and know what it is 100% uploaded and ready to collaborate with. The other thing that I don't like about the software is that all the art, song lyrics, and in-depth Bible study stuff are all extra subscription cost. Period. In addition to the money that is spent each month on Proclaim itself. For a small church, this can be quite an expense and not everyone is able to pay it. The church that I attend is about 30 to 40 people on a good Sunday, and they do pay for the Proclaim software, but I end up having to pay for all the artwork subscriptions myself just so that I don't pull my hair out trying to put presentations together. The basic artwork included with Proclaim is lackluster at best.

Excellent choice for church presentation software

Comments: Proclaim is a great package and highly recommended. It's getting better over time and works well for our church.

Pros:

Proclaim is multi-platform and has a cloud-based component, such that it's easy to create service presentations at home and then use them at church. All that's required is that the Proclaim software is installed both places and logged into the same group. Overall, it's pretty easy to use and many things are obvious to find and use. It has enough customizability that it should be usable by both small and large churches alike. Service content is editable in a freeform editor, with changes instantly previewed on slides to the right. It's super easy to see how changes affect what will be displayed to the audience.

Cons:

The biggest drawback is the song database and organization. You can't organize songs into different collections, nor can you see all of the songs in your database in one place in order to do organization, cleanup, etc. When you pull in a song to your service order, you are editing that song everywhere it might be used, so you have to be careful about changing verse orders, words, attribution, etc. Additionally, song titles must be globally unique within the church group. In other words, you can't have two songs named identically where one is a congregational version and the other is a choral version. You have to differentiate somehow via the name. Faithlife has indicated they are working on a major upgrade to the song organization features, so I am hoping that this gets much better in the near future. Editing backgrounds, adding images, and editing smartmedia is a little confusing at first, so it really takes some getting used to. This aspect of the product could be made better.

Not too happy at the moment.

Pros:

When the program was running with ease. Although I have been working with this program for 2 year, although I still didn't know all of the ropes to it, I am able to quickly find information on my own in order to implement new jobs that are requested of me.

Cons:

About a month ago, I have communicated with a CS regarding my inability to get any posts to actually load and post to my personal page as well as our Church page- I am a moderator and have access to do so. CS was able to assist me with the complications the first time finding that my account had been flagged as potential spam; I haven't done anything different recently; never encountered an issue in the past. a CSR was able to troubleshoot the issue and I was granted access only to find that I was once again unable to post anything the following day. I reached out to a CSR once again and repeatedly through e-mails and only received a reply that they had received the second e-mail with the issue but never received assistance or a resolution. I also asked for some suggestions as to what I may have accidentally done wrong so that I might can fix it to no avail. It has been 21 days so far. (I am able to access and use all other features; the only issues are with the sharing of our information, daily verses, daily devotionals, links and church service reminder posts) My pastor has full access to our main account as well as his account and IS able to post with no issues. I have created another account and awaiting for my pastor to grant me permissions to our main account. I don't feel like repeatedly creating multiple accounts in order to use the site is something I should do.

Great Product... easy to use

Comments: We have used some other products in the past and Faithlife seems to be the most stable of all that we have used. We've never had any issues using it at all. It is fairly easy to use and get set up as well.

Pros:

We love the ease of use. I can edit and update presentation slide from number of locations and then sync them in the cloud. Additionally, the presentation slides can tie in to an electronic bulletin on a member's phone.

Cons:

They update the software fairly often - that's a GOOD thing. But, the program loads up first and THEN tells you it needs updated instead of just updating it when you open it. Seems fairly benign but it loads slow on initial opening so that takes some extra time. Just minor inconvenience though.

Proclaim Native-Cloud Ease

Comments: I used Proclaim for several years but switched to another product during the COVID pandemic due to the other product's ability to stream a service easily. I came back to Proclaim for performance reasons, and I had to do some interesting things with OBS to create a stream that included live video and slide data from Proclaim. Since Faithlife has finally created an alternate slide screen where I can modify the slide data with live video in the background, I absolutely love Proclaim.

Pros:

I love the fact that Proclaim is natively cloud-based and any edits I make to a service presentation are instantly replicated to any other device with Proclaim on it. I also love the responsiveness of the slides to slide changes. It doesn't matter if the background is an image or 50mb video loop, the slides change is instant. I have used other product that have a .5 sec - 2 sec delay and you wouldn't think that makes a difference but in song lyric changes or during a pastor's sermon it's an eternity.

Cons:

The feature to stream directly to a RTMP feed from a Mac. This has been available on the Windows platform for a while, and I have been patiently waiting for this for several months now.