The two that seem to compete the most against F1 are Church Community Builder and ACS. My church uses ACS but CCB looks pretty good these days.

Thanks Matt! I had a conference call with a pastor a church in Charlotte, NC today. They dropped F1 for CCB recently. It looks very impressive. The nice thing about ACS is that you can run it without an Internet connection.

Hey Shrop,
We are in the process of deploying ACS for Child Chek-in. We looked at a number of systems and visited a few churches to talk to them about their systems. Several of the churches were using ACS and F1, but the deciding factor for us was the fact that ACS can be run off-line. We are located just outside the city limits and our Internet is through a commercial long range wireless. Our biggest hurdle was making sure the system would be functional even when the Internet was down (happens more then I would like). And the second was I need all the bandwidth I can get for our live stream, so sharing that with the children's ministry was a no go. Another big point for us was wanting to setup the stations as self-serve, which ACS does nicely. A few "older PCs, some new touch screen monitors, bar-code reader and label printer, and you got your self a self-serve kiosk for about 1000$USD plus a church copy of ACS.
Don't rush into this project without doing due diligence. Remember why you're deploying it in the first place (safety of the kids) and never let the budget keep you from doing it right. The kids are too important for a half hearted attempt.

Good points. We may also have issues with Internet connectivity - ex: none without a cellular card of some sort.

We will look at ACS too. Seems ACS, CCB and F1 are the tops in this area. Homegrown is too much to tackle and doesn't make sense.

I agree about doing this right. We have folks pushing to get it out and done and I have already pushed back asking let's plan this and really investigate. No worries there.

Thanks!
Shrop

Definitely plan it out. we procrastinated it for various issues including money, until one Sunday when we had an issue. Nothing to serious, but serious enough that the family left the church.
We all agreed that the issue could have been prevented if we had the appropriate system in place. And suddenly money was not an issue. But we still took the time to plan it out and do our home work.

Best of luck to you.