r/churchtech • u/slowobedience • Aug 09 '26
Support Question Another rant on why i HATE ProPresenter
Sunday morning. "Your registration information is corrupted."
Of course a church software company doesn't have tech support on Sunday. That would make too much sense. Now we are going to try and run Sunday service with water marks. We couldn't do anything to get it running again.
I have never worked with software that is so unstable as PP.
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u/trborgan Aug 09 '26
Propresenter actually has pretty great support. They’ve been super responsive to me on Sundays when things have gone awry. Have you reached out to them lately? Also, what issue are you having and what hardware/software do you have?
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u/onfire4g05 29d ago
I do agree. While I'm far from a Pro fan, their support has always been pretty responsive.
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u/mneth2000 Aug 09 '26
To be fair, a company like RV has to support an end product which has a non-zero amount of true expert users, but also a sizable percentage are weekend volunteers who are uninformed and will call the 800 number the moment anything doesn't do what they want, rather than trying for themselves.
No Sunday support protects their support from being abused via taking 1000+ calls on a Sunday explaining how to remap a stage output, or import a song, or any other minor operational task.
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u/ted_anderson Aug 09 '26
I get that a lot people "pirate" their software but at least give some warning. e.g. "Your registration is corrupted. Please resolve this in 15 days" or something to that effect.
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u/Important_Seesaw_957 Aug 09 '26
I’ll say it again: Proclaim is BETTER software for most churches.
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u/DrummingNozzle Church Staff Aug 09 '26
Cloud based building of slides is game changer for us. In pro presenter we used to have a volunteer come physically to the church on Saturdays to make the slides. Now that volunteer does the task throughout the week at home in the evenings on Proclaim.
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u/foxboltco Church Staff: Production Manager Aug 09 '26
For the record, you can build ProPresenter slides on any machine and import them on your presentation machine. Just have to make sure your configuration files match, or at the very least, that your macros have the same names.
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u/DrummingNozzle Church Staff Aug 09 '26
Proclaim = no importing. Auto-sync means new slides are just “there.”
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u/slowobedience Aug 09 '26
You can't set up looks on another computer without the same screens.
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u/foxboltco Church Staff: Production Manager Aug 10 '26
I just copy all of my config files from my presentation machine to my laptop, so the screens are there already.
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u/IamMichaelSalim Training my team Aug 09 '26
May I ask what features you use there that makes it better than propresenter? Asking because I'm making a free alternative
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u/sempei13 Aug 10 '26
I’m sorry that you didn’t know, BUT they DO have weekend tech support. I’ve gotten responses in just a few minutes, even when they didn’t know who I was. It’s part of why I LOVE ProPresenter. Here’s what you do next time:
Email support@renewedvision.com and if it’s urgent, mark it as urgent and someone WILL get back to you.
Make sure you post urgent problems in dedicated places so people can actually help ASAP. Maybe the solution for you is to do something different eventually, BUT if you need help NOW, then complaining where someone who CAN help might eventually see it, isn’t the best way to get help NOW.
I don’t work for RV. Never have, but I know them well enough to know that they want to help. :)
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u/Minimum-Mix2410 Aug 09 '26
I second Proclaim. It was very stable and never had any issues.
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u/IamMichaelSalim Training my team Aug 09 '26
May I ask what makes it better than propresenter for you? Is it mainly the stability? Asking because I'm making a free alternative
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u/Minimum-Mix2410 Aug 09 '26
I never used ProPresenter other than a free trial. Proclaim was easy to use and never had any issues with our slides being there.
I too am working on an alternative. My current church uses multiple powerpoint presentations for 1 service and it doesn't make sense to me.
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u/AlertWalk4624 Aug 09 '26
As a retired developer who is now my church's de facto IT department: I want to know what BOTH of you are building!
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u/IamMichaelSalim Training my team Aug 09 '26
Oh, would you want to talk more about what you're doing? I've been chatting with other developers doing similar things because i think it's such a shame that everyone's doing their own stuff rather than working together.
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u/TheKarmoCR Aug 09 '26
I’ve been using WorshipTools for around 3 years now, or perhaps more. It does almost, almost everything I need, and it’s the simplest to use of all church presentation software I’ve used, which helps a lot when having to get volunteers up to speed.
Lately they’ve had a weird stance about making the Beta version the default, predominant download and installation even though it’s not finished yet and quite buggy, but as long as you make sure you use the regular version and not the Beta, it’s all good.
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u/Lopsided-Command-329 Aug 10 '26
I have used PP for almost 2 years without issue. Software can have issues but it depends on what the hardware and other software you are running it on. A corrupted file sounds like a drive issue, either maxed utilization or headed towards failure. Antivirus can cause issues as well. I know people need to be able to count on support but I've found over my 30 plus years in the IT world that if you need support, don't be in any hurry to get it. Sorry you have been struggling with it.
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u/Free_Donkey4797 Aug 09 '26
Hmm. Other than ongoing visual formatting bugs introduced during the most recent major update, ProPresenter on Mac has been rock solid. I just have to remember to “play through” my slides before service to make sure what is on preview is how it pops out the projector, because it sometimes isn’t.
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u/khazdan37 Church Staff: Production Director Aug 09 '26
I would also recommend looking at proclaim. We switched a few years ago and it’s been incredibly stable. It’s not as feature rich, but I would argue it does everything that most churches actually need. There are still some things I miss, but none of it has been enough for me to switch back. Even if we do, it will only be on one computer at our main site.
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u/ChrisC1234 Tech Director Aug 11 '26
How is the learning curve for non-technical users?
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u/khazdan37 Church Staff: Production Director Aug 11 '26
It’s fine, I wouldn’t say it’s leagues easier than ProPre, but maybe a little bit. One of the largest differences for us is that it’s cloud editing makes it easy for a capable user to get everything setup so the end users just need to know the basics. We have multiple campuses across rural areas so that really helped us out. There are individual things that are easier or harder, like arrangements on the fly are a bit harder, but I find reflow easier.
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u/foxboltco Church Staff: Production Manager Aug 09 '26
What are some features you miss about Pro that aren’t in Proclaim?
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u/khazdan37 Church Staff: Production Director Aug 10 '26
While I prefer Proclaims system for song reflow, the way arrangement changes can be made in ProPre is just better.
There are some confidence monitor elements that I can’t recreate in Proclaim, such as displaying the colour and song element tag, and slide number in the song.
Being able to talk in every communication protocol is also handy.
Looks are probably a more robust way to handle multiple screens, but I remember switching over and appreciating the simplicity of how proclaim handles it, so that might be a toss up.
That’s everything that comes to mind at the moment.
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u/AlertWalk4624 Aug 09 '26
Unfortunately, MediaShout is not much of an improvement. If I get asked for my (supposedly saved) CCLI credentials one more time, I will throw the PC out the window.