ProPresenter

ProPresenter is so customizable from the standpoint of the administrator (setting up lyrics, backgrounds, videos, etc.), yet it is really simple and easy to use for those running it on a Sunday morning.

ProPresenter has a feature (that I love) where it will sync with my order of service from Planning Center. However, unless a song has been imported straight from CCLI Song Select, it will not automatically import the song into the playlist, even if they are named exactly the same as what is listed in the setlist.

ProPresenter 7 enables our relatively small church to present professional looking graphics to our online and in house worshipers. Even though the initial learning curve is relatively steep, there are plenty of tutorials and videos available to make the learning detailed and easy. Once I learned the basics, I was astounded at the simplicity and complexity of the program. You can do basic presentation with ease and quickly master more complicated ways of utilizing the capabilities of ProPresenter more fully. One of the best and most helpful features is the ability to create different themes that can be applied to text. This saves you so much time. Separating media, slides, announcements, video input etc. into different layers that can be selected or cleared gives you many different options and features in using the product. Being able to send the same text to a display in house on a full screen and at the same time as a lower third on a live stream is a very useful feature. Another great feature is that your work is immediately saved as you work on a presentation. No need to worry that you will lose your work if you forget to save. This is also not a stagnant one time buy, but a product which evolves and improves all the time with new features and the latest ideas for application.

For whatever reason the program takes a while to load on a computer. More so than most other software programs. Even though there is an app available that can serve as a remote to control the program from a phone or tablet, as apposed to a computer, the design is poor and the functionality is limited. Propresenter recently released a plug in for stream deck, which is also available as an app, which will probably make up for the lack of a good remote. As far as I am aware of, there is no physical remote that will work well with ProPresenter.

ProPresenter 6 is good at sequencing images, allowing videos to be used as backgrounds, and the database of user created material works well. The weekly task of creating the worship flow for our services is easy and works relatively well. I like that you can click on graphics and text images to make visuals on the fly. We have used ProPresenter with PowerPoint, Keynote and Proclaim software concurrently and switch between them with almost no difficulties.

In our particular setup - iMac with a Kramer VGA video splitter, in 4:3 - 1024x768 res. - ProPresenter 6 does not correctly initialize the screen buffers causing us to quit and restart the program almost every time we use it. We don't have this problem with PowerPoint, Keynote or Proclaim. Also, for the price, the image (slide) editing functions are clunky - usable, but not good. Apple's Keynote software (free with every Mac) is a great model for easily creating high quality visuals.

It's intuitive. Easy to use. Easy to navigate. Customizable. Very clean and clear. if you have the time to dig into it, you are able to make really incredible presentations without having to buy other programs. It is well made!

the features are too much for some smaller organizations. Maybe create an option for fewer features for those that don't need​ all the bells and whistles.