Your numbers, explained
The three numbers behind your online church
Every service you stream tells you three things that matter: how far it reached, who actually showed up, and how long people can still catch the replay. Here’s what each one means for your ministry — and, because we’d rather be upfront than clever, exactly which one your plan is priced on.
How far your service reached
Your reach- What it is
- The total time your service actually spent on people’s screens this month. If 100 people each watch 30 minutes, that’s 3,000 minutes of your church in front of your people — real reach, not a vanity view count.
- Why it matters to you
- This is the truest picture of your online reach: not how many times a thumbnail was shown, but real minutes your message spent with real people. When this number grows, your service is traveling further into homes each week.
- And how it’s billed
- Being upfront: this is also the one number your plan is sized around — because it’s exactly how our streaming costs work — we’re metered on delivered minutes too, so your plan is sized on the very same meter we are. It’s pooled across your whole church and resets on the 1st; anything past your monthly pool is billed in simple flat blocks. Your tier’s pool and block size are on the plans page.
- One honest note: if someone opens the watch page and steps away with it still playing, that time still counts — the video really did reach their device. In everyday use, reach and watch time are nearly identical.
Who actually showed up
Your online congregation- What it is
- The minutes your people genuinely watched — real attention, measured per person, so you can see who joined you online and how long they stayed.
- Why it matters to you
- This is your online congregation made visible. Who watched, how long, who’s here for the first time, and who’s quietly slipping away — it’s the heart of the weekly Shepherd’s Report and every welcome and check-in that follows. On a free platform this is invisible; with PealCast it’s yours.
- Does it affect your bill?
- This never affects your bill — it’s purely for your ministry. It powers your per-person watch stats, the Shepherd’s Report, and the write-back to Planning Center.
Who can still catch the replay
Your on-demand library- What it is
- How much recording you’re keeping, in minutes — counted just like your viewing minutes. Every service is recorded automatically, and your plan includes an amount of archive each month (2,400 minutes on Small, 4,800 on Medium, 9,600 on Large, 24,000 on Multi-Campus).
- Why it matters to you
- Not everyone can make it Sunday morning. Your archive is how the family that was traveling, the member who was unwell, or the friend someone just invited can still catch the message — every service, ready to replay for as long as you choose to keep it.
- Does it affect your bill?
- Archive inside your plan’s monthly amount is included. Past it, extra archive draws from the same flat block as extra reach — one simple block covers both, so you’re never juggling two meters. One difference worth knowing: viewing minutes are used up and reset on the 1st, but recordings are kept, so whatever you still have counts again the next month.
- We never delete a recording. There’s no expiry date and nothing disappears on a timer — when you want the space back, you remove services yourself, one at a time, from your archive.
How we turn minutes into “watchers”
Raw minutes are hard to picture, so we describe each plan in watchers. Here’s the exact, honest math — no mystery:
1 watcher ≈ an 80-minute average view × 4 services ≈ 320 minutes of reach a month
So a plan’s watcher estimate is just its monthly pool ÷ 320. A 4,000-minute pool works out to about 12 watchers (4,000 ÷ 320), 8,000 to about 25, 40,000 to about 125, and 120,000 to about 375. Those counts assume a service of about 90 minutes; if yours regularly runs much longer, expect proportionally fewer watchers from the same pool. Your archive is counted the same way, in minutes: a roughly one-hour service recorded each week is about 260 minutes a month, so a 2,400-minute archive holds most of a year of Sundays before anything is extra.
- It’s an estimate, not a headcount cap. Your reach is pooled across the whole church, so a packed Easter and a quiet Sunday average out — you’re only ever billed on actual minutes reached, never on how many people are on your list.
- Notifications are always unlimited. You only pay for streaming, never for the people you invite.
- Go over? It’s simple. Extra viewing (or extra archive) is billed in flat blocks that get cheaper per minute the larger your plan — the details are on the pricing page.