Pushpay for Rock RMS
Pushpay for Rock RMS
Who is this page for?
Church Leadership
- that run RockRMS as their church database
- who have been called by Pushpay 45 times
- who want to gather more information
Advantages
- Large company, hundreds of employees
- Offers a mobile app and other software products/services/development related to church giving
- Has a rollout campaign to get church members doing online giving
Disadvantages
- RockRMS Integration
- Pushpay does not power Rock event registrations
- Pushpay does not power Rock giving forms
- Pushpay does not sync fee data on transactions into Rock
- "Giving" not "Paying"
Do Christians have a paying relationship with God? With their local church? What is being "paid" when your church members use Pushpay?
Pushpay Owns the Experience
- Giving happens on www.pushpay.com
- Donation receipts come from support@pushpay.com, not your church
- Donors login to Pushpay.com to manage giving
Contrast that with donors giving on yourchurch.org, getting donation receipts from yourchurch.org with your logo, your email template, your messaging.
Migrating Saved Cards and ACH to New Processor
Simple Donation will migrate your data from us to your next provider (in a PCI-compliant manner).
Will Pushpay? Their Terms say that they own the data. Ask in writing advance of signing a contact, "Will you migrate payment data (card/ach) to our next processor?"
Without migrating this data your recurring givers will have to re-key and re-setup their recurring donations. This could make it hard to switch away from Pushpay and you could feel stuck.
Pushpay spends MEGABUCKS on sales and marketing
Pushpay spent $28 million in sales and marketing in their last fiscal year and they acquired 373 churches in that same fiscal year.
That's $77,000 per church. How do they recoup that money?
Pushpay is a Publicly Traded Corporation
Pushpay is a publicly traded company and has a tension of serving their customers (churches) and shareholders. That tension can put Pushpay at odds with the church. If they are wildly successful, could they return excess profits to churches by lowering prices? They are duty-bound to do what is in the best interest of Pushpay, not necessarily the Church.
Corporations must earn a return for shareholders. Your ideal donation processor gives you better service every year while lowering prices -- that's hard to justify to investors. Even just making the same profit you did last year is hard to justify. Public companies are under constant pressure to increase revenue and lower expenses every quarter.
Taken from Pushpay's 2019 Annual Report:
"Pushpay expects continued strong revenue growth, as we continue to execute on our strategy to gain further market share in the medium-term and believes this is the best way to maximise shareholder value.
From a strong financial position, we will continue to balance expanding operating margin with opportunities to increase revenue growth. We are particularly focused on ensuring efficiency remains high, while maintaining cost discipline throughout the business.
In the long term, Pushpay is targeting over 50% of the medium and large church segments, an opportunity representing over US$1 billion in annual revenue."
Pushpay Raises Prices
From their Terms:
You agree that Pushpay can and will automatically increase its service fees by up to 10% every year when your contract renews
5% Growth "Guarantee"
Pushpay offers a guarantee your church giving will increase 5% in the first year. There's a few reasons to question the value of this guarantee:
- They are not offering to contribute the money that gets your giving increase up to 5% (just refunds or invoice credits)
- The refundable fees are just the software fees of the first year, not processing fees
- They decide if you get account credits or a cash refund. You don't get to choose and will likely get account creditshttp://archive.is/vcCgz#selection-569.705-569.79 against future Pushpay invoices
- Guarantee is null if:
- you change senior pastors
- there's a recession
- even just a micro economic change
- the church moves
- attendance goes down
- attendance doesn't go up at the rate it has been
- church marketing budget goes down
- church marketing budget doesn't go up at the rate it has been
If you go Pushpay, and see no increase in giving, does this "guarantee" have any value? After having spent all that extra money on Pushpay, you are probably going to switch to another vendor. And Pushpay reserves the decision as to whether you get a refund or invoice credits. If they choose invoice credits, they may not be worth anything to you.
Other Thoughts
What are Pushpay's next moves as a company?
They already serve over half of the top 100 churches. How will they grow profit when there's no more market to sell donation processing to? Raise prices? Cut staff and support? Get into related services like church management software? Buy competitors?
Good Questions to Ask Pushpay Before You Buy
- How often do you raise prices? Is it normal for Pushpay to raise prices when a contract renews?
- How often do you raise processing rates?
- If we decide Pushpay is not for us and decide not to renew our contract, will Pushpay export our giver's payment data to a new processor? (this can be done in a totally secure and PCI compliant manner)
Conclusion
You might be feeling some pressure on the Pushpay end... maybe you should take a 2 week break from talking to Pushpay and ask leadership at churches that are long-time Pushpay customers if they have a had good experience.
You can find those churches by reaching out in RockRMS Community Chat or searching on Google.
Pushpay spends $28 million dollars per year on sales and marketing, 45% of their budget selling and marketing to you.
You should keep researching. We'd love tell you why other churches have passed on Pushpay or left it to use Simple Donation with RockRMS.