Present is Unison's projection console. The service you planned on Tuesday is the service that runs on Sunday: same songs, same arrangements, same order, no retyping lyrics into a second programme.
From $15 a month per site · a separate subscription alongside your Unison plan · not part of the trial · add or drop it any time
A projection system is not one screen. It's the congregation's, the leader's, the operator's, and the planning everyone did during the week.
The current line, what's coming next in green, the time, and a countdown that turns red the moment you're over. The operator can send a message to the platform — "crèche needs the parents of Noah" — and the congregation structurally cannot see it: that screen has no code for messages at all.
Lyrics are set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a typeface designed for maximum character distinction, because this is read from a piano stool at the far end of the room.
Give each part of the service its planned minutes. The clock shows what was given, what's been used and what's left — green while there's room, red the moment there isn't — and one press moves you to the next part.
Every part is logged. Once a month you can pull a report showing who ran over, when, and by how much. Not to nag anyone — to plan the next service honestly.
"Would the owner of the black Outlander, registration AB12 CDE, please move it." Typed once, with the changing parts in brackets. On a Sunday it's two taps and a registration number — on the big screen, or quietly to the leader's display only.
Drop in video loops, stills and music. Drag one onto a slide and it runs from there until you change it. Start a pre-service countdown on the projector — over your own loop, with your own music under it — and when it reaches zero the screen hands over to your church's logo rather than dropping to black.
Everything is stored on that machine and plays with no internet at all, because church buildings are where wifi goes to die.
Hand the words to the musician and let the operator watch the room. Press Learn, then press the pedal or key you want — next slide, previous, blank the screen, the church logo, send the staged slide, or move on to the next part of the service.
MIDI can only do what the keyboard already does, so a stray note from a keyboard player can never change your service. The bindings live on that machine. Chrome and Edge.
Drop videos, images and audio in, then drag a card onto a slide — or click the card, then click the slide. It runs from there until you change it or take it off.
Filter to just the video or just the stills when the shelf gets long, and silence a loop that arrived with its own soundtrack. Everything is stored on that machine only, which is why it still plays with the broadband down — a second laptop at the back keeps its own copies.
Backgrounds shown are from the free pack at churchmotiongraphics.com.
Not mockups. These are the panels a volunteer opens on a Sunday.
The parts nobody writes on a feature list, and everybody needs at 10:32.
Split a slide by its own words, merge two, edit a line, hide one, paste a repeat. All of it stays on that machine — the church's song and everyone's printed sheet are untouched.
Chorus twice at the top, the bridge doubled, a tag on the end. Drag the sections into the order it's actually sung, repeats and all, without editing the song.
Nine fonts including Lato and Source Sans, sentence case or caps, a backing box for busy video, and a contrast gate that refuses combinations the back row can't read.
Drag the lyric block anywhere on a picture of your screen — useful when the background has a face or a logo in it — with a safe-area guide for badly hung screens.
The visiting speaker's deck and the annual report drop straight into the running order. PDFs become ordinary slides at import, so nothing has to be rendered on a Sunday.
A $25 USB pedal can advance the words, so the musician moves their own lyrics and the operator watches the room. It can only do what the keyboard does — never anything destructive.
Mid-service the leader calls "the one about chains". Press / and type it — Present searches the words of the whole service and takes you there without projecting it.
Credits on the first slide of each song, or every slide, with your church's CCLI number. Every song you project is logged for your records, and downloads as a CSV.
The whole World English Bible is on the laptop — public domain, so there is no licence to accept and nothing to report. Pick book, chapter and verses, break the passage where the sense breaks, and project it. Verse numbers and the reference are on by default.
Scan a code and the phone shows the words on the wall, the words coming next, and Back, Next and Blank. No sign-in, so a volunteer can be working thirty seconds after being handed it. The code expires in a day.
A crèche call or a giving prompt in a band across the screen — top, middle or bottom — without stopping the song. Or take the room over when that is what you meant. Type the car-park sentence once, with the registration in brackets.
Everything runs locally on the machine driving the screen. Fonts, video, songs. If the broadband dies mid-service, nothing on the projector notices.
ProPresenter and EasyWorship are good, well-made programs that have served churches faithfully for years, and plenty of rooms are right to keep using them. Unison starts somewhere different: from the church that already plans its services and its team here, and would rather the screen came from the same place.
| Present | ProPresenter | EasyWorship | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Unison's own projection console — the same app your band already uses, with the screen added | A dedicated production suite, widely used in larger churches | A long-established, approachable presentation package |
| Getting started | Sign in. Nothing to download, on the laptop that is already at the console | Download, install and licence each machine | Download, install and licence |
| Runs on | Chrome or Edge on Mac, Windows or a Chromebook — nothing to install. Firefox and Safari will project too, but they cannot put the output window on the projector for you, and they have no MIDI | Installed app for macOS and Windows | Installed app for Windows and Mac |
| Where the songs live | The library your musicians already read from — one song, one place | Its own song library, maintained inside the app | Its own song library, with a large included database |
| Planning the service | Already there. Open Present and Tuesday’s plan is waiting — the songs, the order and the arrangements, pulled straight from Unison. Nothing to import, nothing to rebuild | Imports a Planning Center plan — if you also pay for Planning Center | Plan wherever you plan, then build the schedule again here |
| Your team as well as your screen | The band is already in it. Every player gets the chart in their own key with the capo worked out, plus the rota, availability and song requests — no second app, no extra bill | Not what it sets out to do | Not what it sets out to do |
| Changes at the console | Splits, repeats and edits stay on that machine — the church’s song is never touched | Edits change the presentation itself | Edits change the schedule or the song |
| When the wifi dies | Keeps running — songs, fonts and video are all on the machine | Keeps running | Keeps running |
| What it costs | From $150 a year per site — with a valid Unison subscription. Licensed by building, not by machine, so every laptop at that site can run it | $289 a year per seat, or $649 a year for a campus licence — the screen only | From $210 a year, rising with your average attendance |
| Cameras and live video | A USB camera or HDMI capture stick, yes — as its own item, or as a background with the words over it, on Present Plus. Picture only: we do not take the sound off a capture device. NDI, no — a web page cannot receive it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise | Yes — capture cards, NDI over the network, alpha-key overlays for broadcast | Yes — camera and capture input |
| Several screens showing different things | Yes — a main screen plus as many congregation screens as the room needs; each can follow the console, show just the background, hold its own picture or standing message, or rest dark. Plus the stage display. On Present Plus | Yes — many outputs, each with its own content | Yes — multiple independent outputs |
| Motion and transitions | Your own video loops and stills run as backgrounds on any plan — but nothing is bundled, you bring them. Between slides: a cut, or one optional fade on the words, off until you turn it on, on Present Plus. No wipes, no dissolves, no effects. That is the whole list | A deep set of transitions, motion backgrounds and effects | Transitions, and motion backgrounds included |
| Bible and media library included | The World English Bible, offline, on every plan. No other translation, and no song or media library — you bring those. Free public-domain photographs are searchable from inside the app | Bible translations available as add-ons | Yes — a large media and Bible library in the box |
Competitor prices are their published house-of-worship rates at the time of writing and are quoted in good faith — please check renewedvision.com and easyworship.com for what they charge today. ProPresenter and EasyWorship are trademarks of their respective owners and are named here only for honest comparison.
The last four rows above are the ones we lose, and we would rather you read them here than find out on a Sunday. We can put a USB camera or an HDMI capture stick on the screen. We cannot do NDI — cameras that arrive over the network — because a web page has no way to receive it — NDI arrives as network traffic no browser can open, in a video format no browser can decode. That is a limit of running in a browser, not a decision we made. If your church sends cameras around the building that way, or runs an SDI feed and a broadcast desk behind it all, ProPresenter does that and we do not. A Plus screen here can hold its own picture or a standing message; if each of your screens needs to run its own songs and slides, that is theirs too. If your services are built around wipes, dissolves and effects between every slide, that is theirs as well — we do one fade, on the words, and we do it deliberately. We include one Bible — the World English Bible, because it is public domain and therefore genuinely ours to give — and if your church reads from the NIV or the ESV on a Sunday, those are licensed translations we do not carry and cannot pretend to. If you would rather a large media and Bible library came bundled with the software than brought with you, EasyWorship has done that well for a very long time.
Present is built for the church that wants words on a screen, driven from the service it already planned here, by whoever is free that morning. If your room needs a production suite, buy a production suite. We would honestly rather you ran the right thing for your room than moved to us and missed something you relied on.
The honest answer starts with what Planning Center does that we do not. Check-ins, giving, groups, registrations, event signups, room booking, a church directory. Unison does none of that and is not going to. If your office runs on Planning Center, keep it — nothing here asks you to move it.
What it does not have is a screen. There is no projection app anywhere in the Planning Center range, so a church that plans there still buys ProPresenter or EasyWorship to put the words up on Sunday. That pairing is what we are really talking about: two subscriptions, two song libraries, and a plan carried out of one and into the other every week.
The arithmetic, from both vendors’ own published prices. Planning Center Services is priced by the number of people who access it — volunteers included — so a thirty-person worship team sits on the $32 a month tier, $384 a year, and one ProPresenter seat is $289 a year. That is $673 for the year. Unison Essentials with Present Essentials is $300, whole team, every machine in the building. Be careful with that comparison at the small end, though: Planning Center is free up to five people, so a tiny team pairing it with one ProPresenter licence pays $289 and beats us by eleven dollars.
If you need the giving and the check-ins, the difference is money well spent and you should spend it. If what you actually needed was the worship-team side and a screen, you are paying for two things to get one. Check today’s numbers at planningcenter.com — Planning Center is a trademark of its owner and is named here only for honest comparison.
Present is worth the same to a church of thirty as to three hundred, so it doesn’t scale with your attendance. It scales with rooms — one licence per building that puts something on a screen. Most churches have one, and never need to think about it again.
Song usage records sit in the cheaper tier deliberately. Keeping your own records should never cost extra.
These are the room-and-rig features. If your Sunday is one screen and a laptop, Essentials is the whole product you need.
Present needs a Unison plan underneath it. It is a separate subscription with its own invoice and its own renewal date, not a line on your existing one — so you can add it or drop it without touching the plan your team runs on. If your Unison subscription ends, Present ends with it.
It isn’t part of the free trial. The trial opens up your Unison plan; Present is bought alongside it, and you can add or remove it yourself at any time.
Projecting song lyrics normally requires a CCLI licence or the copyright holder’s permission. That’s your church’s own licence and your church’s responsibility — Unison only ever shows songs from your own library, and keeps a record of every song you project. That record is your church’s own, to use however its licensing requires.
50% off either tierfor the duration of your subscription
Use the code PRESENT. The first 100 churches to use it, or 31 December 2026 — whichever comes first. It is its own pool, separate from Unison’s founding offer, so having one doesn’t use up the other.
Built for Chrome or Edge on the machine driving the screen. Firefox and Safari will project, but only Chrome and Edge can put the output window on the right screen for you, and MIDI is Chrome and Edge only.