LGPC-John wrote:We are evaluating whether to use desktop (Plus) or the web (Online) version. We are a single location church with 1-2 Accounting users (including payroll), 2 Church Management users and possible use of Check-In functionality. We have stable and (relatively) fast internet service from Comcast in the Pittsburgh PA area.
What is the "best" (functionality, maintenance, ease of use) option between Plus (desktop) and Online (web access)?
Depends. PCPlus Online users do not need to worry about doing updates, and will always have the latest version. That said, you have to do your own backups, and download them to a local drive. While Powerchurch does do a full server backup in case of failure, they do not have the capability to restore an individual database if someone deletes something that needs to be recovered. The other issue is that you're accessing the 'cloud' servers using a connection program.
PCPlus standard requires that the user perform the updates, however, the system does let you know when they are available. Again, you have to do your own backups of the data, but you can set that up to be done automatically on the 'server' computer (the one where the program and the data reside) using the standard Windows Task Scheduler.
Powerchurch Check-In will work with either, however, the connection is different depending if you're using PCPlus standard, or Online.
What is the approximate percentage of PC-Plus installations versus the percentage of Online installations?
I would say, about 70-30 to 75-25 right now. I'm basing that on the numbers of questions I answer here about PCPlus Online. I could be off a bit. Again, they don't release exact numbers.
Cost is close enough between the two that cost is not a major factor. What other factors should we consider?
How many concurrent users will you have? PCPlus standard is a site license, you can install it on as many computers as you have on the network, and they all can access the system at the same time. Online you can only have two concurrent users, which means if you would want to have additional users on the system, they would have to wait until someone else was offline, or you'd have to add on an additional user package.
For Online, who will do your backups? As I mentioned, you have to manually perform the backup of your database, and download it to a local drive (or USB drive) so you have it if needed to restore. There is no way to automate that currently.