MediaShout Reviews

Pros

First and foremost, their customer service / support is the best. Any issue (my own or theirs) I've ever had the MediaShout team has effectively and efficiently solved to my utmost satisfaction. The team is very knowledgeable about their software, know it inside out, and are on top of their game with it. [No non-english speaking people reading from a script with these guys!] They are tirelessly patient and extremely concerned with making sure my experience with MediaShout is the best they can make it. That alone makes the money spent on the software well worth it!

Secondly I love that I can edit the presentation on the fly and live. My Pastor has a tendency to ask for something to be done right BEFORE service starts. Can you show this? Can you add this scripture? You can do all that easily during service with just a few clicks! We couldn't do that before. It's a win/win for us. Pastor's happy and we're happy!

And thirdly, I love that I can now spend more of my time focusing on the pictures / graphics that I want to use instead of spending the majority of my time on formatting and setting up road maps for our worship songs. MediaShout allows you to format the entire cue or script easily! Setting up road maps [that my worship leader changes each time we sing it] is a breeze. Just drag and drop everything in the order you want it and wallah!

And the best part, with the words showing up on the stage with the next line feature, MY team thinks I'm a rockstar!

Cons

I don't like that the main stage and the stage are tied so closely together when creating lyrics. I'm very anal about word placement in regards to the picture / graphic I am using. One slight change on the main effects the words on the stage as well as the next line feature. I know I can use the alignment buttons the software provides, but like I said, I'm anal about word placement. I would also like the ability to change the position of the words that show on the stage without it affecting the words or the next line feature as well.

Although the MediaShout customer service is top notch and the support they offer is the best service around, I do wish their user forum was a bit more active. You can learn a lot about how to use a program more effectively by communicating with other end users. I have yet to find a forum within [or without] MediaShout that actively offers this valuable resource.

Pros

Easy and intuitive once you are up and running. Many times I've been w/o a tech and had to grab a random person from the congregation to advance the screens while I was directing.
Literally tell them "Just hit the space bar ". Have recruited several tech subs that went on to being proficient once they tried it!

Cons

The down time needed to learn each new full version (not the updates).

Alternatives Considered

ProPresenter

Reasons for Choosing MediaShout

Much faster, adding moving backgrounds are a snap

Switched From

Microsoft PowerPoint

Reasons for Switching to MediaShout

I've been to seminars where they pushed PP. Had to keep pointing out MS does the same things, in my opinion easier. Especially if u rely on non-techs to fill in

Pros

So far, I can't really say that there are a lot of pros to this release.

Cons

MediaShout has always had lots of potential, but issues are many. MS7 was rebuilt from the ground up and is marketed as being more stable than other versions. This is simply not true. I upgraded over a month ago and it crashes or locks up weekly. It is also marketed as "powerful presentations made easy." There is nothing easy about this program. It is powerful, if you are willing to go through multiple steps to get your presentations the way you want them. MS7 is missing many of the features that were found in previous releases. In reworking the software, they have made many changes that practical usage very difficult and time consuming.

Pros

I love the user friendly software. It was easy to install and the setup is easy to navigate.

Cons

No cons at this point. We are still getting adjusted to the software. The small issues that we’ve had have been easily taken care of by customer support.

Alternatives Considered

EasyWorship

Reasons for Switching to MediaShout

MediaShout in my opinion offered more features and again user friendly software than the competitor. Also, a friend of mine recommended MediaShout to us. He also uses the software at his church.

Pros

We have been customers for upwards of 10 years.
The program worked with dual monitors.

Cons

We have purchased several upgrades - one because they forced us to. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

A few months ago we showed up for service as usual and our program said we were using a trial version. It started the 30 day countdown.

Eventually we dig out the registration codes for the product we had purchased and it would not accept the code. We tried multiple times but it would never go through.

We contacted tech support and eventually they just told us the company that managed the licenses for them no longer was. We asked what we could do to fix the problem.

The answer? Pay $400 to get a new version. WHAT?!? We purchase a product with the express understanding they are going to deliver on that product.

Instead, because they made an unfortunate decision to do business with the wrong company, it was going to cost US -the customer- $400. No product discount, no alternate license or work around. Just a response that would mean they succeeded at doing this to us TWICE.

I’m not happy nor would I recommend this product. It does the job. There were things we liked and didn’t like but because of the investment we had, we stayed. No longer.

We still haven’t replaced our program. We will be very diligent in reading reviews so we can get a company that is:

1) available with tech support without charging an additional fee and
2) stands behind the service they offer

Pros

Ability to quickly add and edit slides on the fly.
Setup recurring events.
Plan out the service weeks in advance

Cons

Clunky would be the best way to describe it.
Rendering times could be slow especially when changing slides (usually a several second delay).
All videos were stuck on a loop and you have to manually switch to the next one (the auto-advance feature either doesn't work or requires that you manually enter the length of each video).

Pros

It will run slides.

You can import from CCLI

You can add custom backgrounds and create set lists.

Much cheaper than other competitors products (ie. ProPresenter)

Cons

No editing slides on the fly if needed.

Overall platform feels very behind the times and harder to understand than most, updating and continual learning of the program was painful

Mac version seems like an after thought that always is years behind their PC version.

Pros

It's been around long enough that many people may have learned it at some point

Cons

This software got left behind by competitors that overtook it by a huge margin. Don't expect flashy features, ease of use, stability, or recognition by users

Pros

You can do most things under the one computer. No multiple machines or feeds required. This is very useful for a mobile church setup. It also comes with multiple features that you often have to pay extra for with other products such as loads of Bible versions, Songs and Hymnals.

MediaShout also has first grade tech support that quickly respond to issues encountered.

MediaShout has been faithfully serving our church and multiple ministries for over 15 years. Our church was one of the first users of this product in Australia.

Cons

Text editing is probably the weakest point, which we sometimes have to rely on PPT instead for better formatting, but MediaShout is overall a very strong and all rounded product.

Pros

I love that those of us that are tech savvy can dig into the options and have some fun with our creativity, and yet simplify the screen with volunteer mode, so that our week-end volunteers don't feel intimidated........Oh and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that the updates have finally included compatibility with standard remotes.

Cons

The system sometimes freezes during service. My computer is more than capable of handling the software, so I have been trying to isolate why we get occasional glitches. At this point I am blaming it on older video background loops that are not mP4. I don't know why wmv files would cause an issue, but when I don't use them, I don't have issues.

Pros

Built in databases for lyrics and bibles for creation and on-the-fly display. Cue libraries for saving varied versions of lyrics and liturgical (i.e. Advent) texts to pull for future needs.

Cons

Though mentioned the ease of mind in use, there can be some initial difficulties in the beginning of new versions. But we all must get out of comfort zone and learn new things.

Pros

After all of my critical critiques of MS7 early releases I thought I would follow-up with a review of the latest release. I almost had to start from scratch, relearning how to build cues and formatting pages. But, I was able to build this weeks service in MS7 and it ran without any issues/aborts (unexpected shutdowns). I did not use any of my old MS7 scripts but started with a "new" script and built the entire script from scratch. I also imported a MS6 Announcement script into MS7 and did not experience any issues. The "new" MS7 announcement script ran using script control which it imported from the MS6 script.

This release has fixed the unexpected shutdown issue that we were having with the early releases. Another PRO is the support staff at Media Shout. They bend over backwards to help you solve issues or help you learn how to use the product.

Cons

Their early release of the product. There were several features that would give you a comment that this feature would be coming in a future release. With the early releases the software would shutdown in the middle of our church service. To date this version of MS7 seems to be stable.

Pros

I love being able to put video backgrounds behind lyrics on slides. It's a such cool effect. MediaShout is an amazing tool for presentations. I especially appreciate the song & scripture libraries that are independent of any backgrounds.

Cons

I find that MediaShout crashes often. It's more reliable during presentations, but when I'm adjusting the slide order or making other changes, especially with video, it's still buggy.

Alternatives Considered

ProPresenter

Reasons for Choosing MediaShout

I wanted to have a video background persist over multiple slides. You can do that in Keynote (sort of) but it's a pain.

Pros

I love the numerous features and options that help to make for a vibrant worship service. Most of all, I love the wide selection of Bible translations that are available without the need of having to purchase a separate license for each translation. This is really the main reason that we chose MediaShout above the others.

Cons

It can be a bit complicated to operate the software. Stability is a bit of an issue. Even with a powerful machine, it may crash from time to time.
I am not thrilled with the past licensing model that at times necessitated having to potentially purchase a new license if a computer crashed. It would be nice to have an option where licenses could be activated/deactivated via a secure login. However, I think that the new licensing model which makes it more cost effective just to purchase unlimited licenses will remedy this issue.
Finally, upgrade pricing is too high.

Pros

Not much. It was affordable? We had to switch to another program because MediaShout was so unusable.

Cons

MediaShout stops working and crashes multiple times during editing of the slides. Customer service was not good, never answered the phone even during the customer service hours and took a long time to call back. The tutorial videos were not helpful at all. The software does not have a user-friendly interface in general but is especially unusable to people who have no experience with the program. Steep learning curve transitioning from MediaShout 5 to MediaShout 6. No matter how many times we talked to customer service, crashing problems were never resolved. Program was extremely slow. Many other problems but cannot list them all because of Capterra word limit.

Pros

I'm not usually the on-site tech guy for special events, but it happened to be me the other day. Among the inevitable last-minute requests was a count down timer to display on the main screens during intermission so everyone would know when it was time to continue the concert. But, they didn't want a generic video off youtube, they wanted something themed to match the event so it looked intentional. Now, I am not the regular Media Shout guy, in fact I don't think I had ever actually used it for a live event before. This responsibility falls on me so rarely that I usually just go with PowerPoint. I knew MediaShout had better tools for us, but never bothered to learn them, and I was more familiar with PowerPoint. But, a count down timer? I did a quick search on how to create a count down timer in our version of PowerPoint. After skimming a few steps in, I realized this was not the way to go. So, I opened up MediaShout to see what I could figure out. Oh, my, that was too easy. I dropped in a background to match the concert theme and added a count down timer, gave it a nice font and matching color. Ta-da. The event organizers were happy and it worked flawlessly.

Cons

Seems like this thing loads pretty slow. It's running on a good computer, but still seems like it takes forever to open and load up the file.

Pros

rHaving ease of access for Bible translations and hymn/song lyrics has drastically cut down on the time it takes me to do the worship slides each week. I find the Bible tool particularly helpful, no more copying and pasting! After a brief learning curve, MediaShout is easy to use and easy to be picky about.

Cons

I sometimes experience crashing with MediaShout, occasionally at very inopportune times. When I try to do something it just doesn't like, down it goes with little or no warning or explaination.

Pros

Media shout offered functional capabilities for visual presentation in a church environment.

Cons

The ability to really customize and program visual aspects of a church service were limited and/or more difficult than I wanted them to be. Always felt like a bit of a struggle to get the program to do exactly what I envisioned.

Pros

The software is generally reliable with few glitches, especially on newer versions. It can be easily customized. Resource Light compared to some other options.

Cons

There are many better options available, and MediaShout hasn't exactly kept up with competition. Upgraded versions offer little in the way of new features, and the pricing isn't appealing when you compare what you can get for the same or less elsewhere.

Alternatives Considered

EasyWorship and Proclaim by Logos

Reasons for Switching to MediaShout

Ultimately, we chose Proclaim.

Pros

The way I can edit and create slide without disturbing the main view. Also the availability of many Bible versions, enabling us to assist our Pastor in delivering the Message of God to the Church.

Cons

Not having a SCROLLING Announcements Option, is really a negative for us. I still look forward to see one day Scrolling Announcement Feature in future versions.
The other issue is the necessity to reconnect to Internet every Six Weeks, is not helping us in Africa where we do not have internet in our church buildings. Can it be removed, and find another way for verification?

Pros

There are alot of functionality fatures. It gives you the ability to add multple media types as well as create slide designs and trasitions. You can also save detailed templates, this allows you to make dozens of presentaions very fast by simply adjusting the elements.

Cons

The UI is VERY cumbersome. Navigation of the program doesn't have a very shallow learning curve. This can leave a lot of room for mistakes, especially for users with little to no expirence with presentation sofware.

Pros

Every time I have an issue (and there have been plenty, usually operator error), I reach out to MediaShout Support and they get back to me and help me out. They are just awesome.
One of my favorite features in the current version is the ability to have multiple presentations open in separate tabs. No more having a super long presentation for a weekend event that has four events. Just build out the four presentations and the weekend is set.

Cons

If I had to pick something, it would be configuring the Announcement Loop. This one always gets me, it needs its own video.

Pros

It works for what it does, but there are several options needed for customization that are lacking.

Cons

MediaShout seems outdated. It really needs some updates.

Pros

My favorite new feature is the in line editor. It's very convenient to be able to edit slides while still running the program.

Cons

I don't like the way the cursor jumps back to the beginning of the cue when the text wraps to a new slide within the cue.

Pros

MediaShout is far beyond 'just' a projection software for churches. The flexibility and ease of use make it the BEST church service projection software programs out there. We have been using it since version 3 and are now on version 6. They keep listening to consumers and improving it with making spreading the word of God the importance!

Cons

Some of the features are not quite as user friendly as they could be.