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If you’re a church leader, you might be familiar with the classic, hair-pulling madness of trying to get a well functioning website working for your church.
There are so many factors to consider! How is it going to look? How will it be laid out?
What information should you even put up there once you have a site? Upcoming events? Audio of your sermons? Videos of your sermons? A live stream of your Sunday service? The possibilities are endless …but so is that headache, right?
If you feel like you just need a hand getting everything done so you can get back to your sermon prep, you’re not alone. There are literally thousands of pastors and church leaders out there looking for a quick and easy way to streamline the online part of their church …while still keeping it relevant.
After all, we practically live online these days, don’t we? After all you probably hopped onto Google and typed in a few search terms to find this post in the first place, right?
And if any potential future congregants are ever going to find your church, chances are higher than ever that they’re going to do so in a very similar way.
Fortunately, there are quite a few church website builders out there that are specifically devoted to supporting church websites with their specific needs.
<h3>Finding a good church website builder</h3>
When searching for a Faith-based CMS provider (that’s basically the shorthand for a website builder) for your church, you’re going to want to look for more than just the tools they offer.
For example, you’re also going to want a provider that can cater to the specific needs of your church with of course the most important need being easily-available support for non technical users.
With that in mind, we’ve gone ahead and organized a list of our top CMS providers that have met three criteria:
<ol>
<li>They’re popular <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/">church website builders</a></li>
<li>They provide good service</li>
<li>They’ve demonstrated an understanding of the needs of the church</li>
</ol>
Here is the list, ranked in order of companies considered to provide the best <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/">church websites</a>.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There’s one more bit of additional information that we want to include that can be helpful in the decision-making process. Currently, in the church technology space, the market of individual, stand-alone companies are being rapidly consolidated by a “big fish,” so to speak. We’ve gone ahead and included a handful of the companies that have been purchased by this larger “big fish” company in the list after the two independent ones at the top because some of these subsidiary companies still provide their own, unique website builders. However, be aware that often quick acquisitions and employee consolidation of companies with decent products can lead to a lack of technical support, (which is one of our three major criteria!).
Alright, on to the website builders!
<a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/" target="_blank">Ministry Designs</a>:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-1_iipqzm.png" alt="Ministry Designs " />
The number one solution, head and shoulders above the rest, is Ministry Designs. Ministry Designs not only has the most intuitive and comprehensive <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/" target="_blank">church website builder</a> (CMS) but they also have all of the features you need to make sure that your website stays up to date. One of the amazing things that they do, that is really outside of the norm for this industry, is roll out monthly updates. They do this to ensure that you’ll never have to buy another website. Additionally, when working with the folks at Ministry Designs, they assign you a customer success representative who will share their screen with you and teach you how to use their tools. When shopping for your new website for your church, you would be making a mistake not considering Ministry Designs first.
FaithConnector:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-2_tshm3u.png" alt="Faith Connector" />
Our second choice is FaithConnector. Along with Ministry Designs, this is one of the few remaining website builders that is still standing on its own, and for that, we give them both a round of applause.
FaithConnector is another solid company with excellent support and another slew of features that usually means they can get you the site that you’re looking for. Their website builder is good, though their editor is a bit out of date, which is why they land second on our list.
With good support, a solid product, and a host of features, FaithConnector remains one of the few viable options if you’re looking for an independent company that provides good, focused support.
Nucleus:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-3_nchkjn.png" alt="Nucleus" />
Nucleus is a relative newcomer to the conversation but has gained some popularity, in large part to some excellent marketing. After reviewing the website editor, I’ve found it bit limited next someone of the other companies on the list. Nucleus has positioned and priced itself as a church “hub,” but the facts are after reviewing it, it's missing some critical flexibility and options that the featured companies on this list offer. Plus, at $99 a month it’s pretty expensive.
Note: The remainder of the list is made up of companies that have been bought out in recent years. While they are now subsidiaries of a larger organization, these candidates have managed to retain at least a portion of their website building capabilities, though long-term technical support has become a concern.
Sharefaith:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-4_e99uhx.png" alt="Sharefaith" />
toward helping churches build their websites. But — and this is a big but — they’ve built their tools to be an overlay of WordPress. 
While this might not be an issue for a tech-savvy website builder, if you’re from a church that lacks those “technical gurus,” this can present a whole bunch of problems. A system built on top of another system is always a bit nerve-racking, and with the potential to lose good customer support in the future, the ShareFaith website builder has become a bit suspect at this point.
Clover Site: 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-5_rnhe09.png" alt="Clover Site" />
You’ve got to give credit where credit is due, and in this case, it’s honoring an industry pioneer.
Clover was at one point was the leader in the church-specific CMS industry.
Unfortunately, though, that day of prominence has come and gone. At this point, Clover lacks the flexibility needed to really personalize and customize your website. That, in addition to the whole selling out to a larger company bit, has landed them further down the list.
Ekklesia360: 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-6_oyj7bk.png" alt="Ekklesia360" />
company’s willingness to make changes to their CMS, literally customizing the features they offered on a case by case basis for their customers.
This might sound good on the surface, but before you start jumping for joy, the problem in connection to this adaptability that we found quickly presents itself is affordability. Changes on the kind of scale we’re talking about aren’t minor, and that extra cost puts them out of reach for most church’s budgets.
In addition, we found that their website editor is sadly out of date, a bit clunky, and difficult to work with.
Thrive CMS:
If you're wondering what Thrive CMS is, you're not alone.
Thrive is the website editor solution that the a larger consolidation company created as their own website builder. It has been pushing most of its brands to use this new CMS, and Bridge Element, Site Organic, and Ezekiel are now all selling the Thrive CMS solution.
One question that we couldn’t manage to answer was why it was priced differently across those brands.
Pricing aside, from what we could tell, the solution is limited and a bit hard to work with; however, it does seem to be a bit better than what these established brands had before.
A final note:
Although this list of the best church website companies isn’t comprehensive, we felt like the options listed above were the best in the market that target churches.
While <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/">Ministry Designs</a> clearly topped the list with their high-end website builder, impressive features, and excellent customer service, the truth is there really are still quite a few choices out there, so take your time and look into each option to find the one that works best for you.
Whatever you do end up choosing to go with, we always recommend not just researching, but actually demoing any of these CMS solutions before signing up in order to see which one meets the specific needs of your church the best.

The Best Church Website Builders

mike-johnston

As religious organisations and churches have grown and evolved, the processes involved in running them have become even more complex. Managing a church now requires a much more comprehensive approach than simply relying upon a church leader to run everything. And this is where <a target="_blank" href="https://sites.faithlife.com/?utm_source=superbwebsitebuilders&amp;utm_medium=partner&amp;utm_content=partner&amp;utm_campaign=sitesreviews">Faithlife Sites</a> comes in. Faithlife Sites wants to take all of the work involved in running a church and make it easier. Let's see how they do it with a Faithlife Sites Review.Using a church CMS, users can create and customize their church websites using a variety of automated tools designed to take the background work out of running a church so that ministers can focus on their community priorities.Let’s look at how and if Faithlife Sites CMS has accomplished this goal.<h2>Getting Started</h2>Many website builders and content management systems make the initial integration part of their service quite difficult to get on board with, but with Faithlife Sites the initial pathway is pretty straightforward. Upon signing up (for free) you’re asked for the usual basic details of name, email and phone number before continuing on to the main dashboard.  <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screenshot-2019-05-09-at-15.png" />It’s from the dashboard that the real power of Faithlife Sites as a hub for any and all church needs is revealed. It’s seriously impressive. After you claim your church group, you’re taken to My Faithlife, which is where you can manage all aspects of a church community in one place. The transition from signup to dashboard, to actually getting started with the site design, is intuitive and well laid out.<h2>Design</h2>The website design is clean and easy to navigate. Nothing important is hidden away and there is a clear demarcation between My Faithlife, which is more of an end user part of the site, and the website/community manager sections.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screenshot-2019-05-09-at-15-1691093724549.png" />The themes available for the site CMS are limited and there are only six in total, but they are perfectly suited for the needs of this target audience. There is also a selection of stock images that are free to use in the website builder itself.<h2>Usability and Support</h2>The support on Faithlife Sites is outstanding. They have an extensive help section which covers almost every part of the site and they are contactable via phone, email, and web chat via their help portal. There are also dozens of informative videos to talk through almost any query you could have.The usability of the site is a key part of the appeal of this CMS and you can tell that they’ve invested a lot of time researching their target demographic. Nothing in the site – from the initial sign-up and community management section, to the website builder – seems out of reach to even the most technophobic end user. The design of the site helps enormously, as it is clean, well-labelled and intuitive to the point of basic. This is a good thing, though, and I found myself getting up to speed with their system very quickly.<h2>Key Features</h2>The excellent website builder is the key selling point here. Some content management systems make website building and structuring seem like a labyrinthian process, but Faithlife Sites makes it incredibly easy. All of the pages are laid out on the side of the window in simple layers. Want to edit the home page? Just click on the home tab. Want to edit sermons or your about page? Just click on that page and then click on the piece you want to edit.The process of building a site using this CMS is incredibly simple and could be quickly picked up by almost anyone, in my opinion. The design aspects of the pages are limited but easily customisable in an intuitive way. You can also view your prospective site as it appears on a desktop screen, mobile, and pad. This is a small thing but it adds a lot of value.The community management software in Faithlife Sites is also incredibly powerful. With a minimal amount of work, you can start building an online church community that has a forum, combined calendar, group chat, and bulletin boards in easy reach that are easily controlled by a team of admins.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bulletins_gofy9g.png" />There is also an excellent structure in place for taking and processing online donations that will be extremely useful to any church group. This is easily navigated and seems reliable.<h2>Pricing</h2>Faithlife Sites pricing is scaled depending on the size of your congregation. You can set up a basic site free of charge and premium packages start from $16.67 a month (when paid annually).All packages allow users to collaborate online with unlimited team accounts, run different presentations in multiple rooms concurrently, build presentations from any computer, anywhere, get over 5,000 free church graphics, and interact with the congregation by sending alerts directly to their phones, among other features.Higher value packages include free stock imagery, pro Media library, over 16,000 motions, stills, and mini-movies from Graceway, Church Motion Graphics, Dan Stevers, FreeBridge, Igniter, and Playback.This is a competitive pricing structure that incentivizes users to get a custom domain for their church rather than sticking with the basic free package that uses a subdomain structure.<h2>Pros</h2><ul><li>Incredibly easy to use</li><li>Vast support system to help almost anyone to complete their website</li><li>Free multimedia for a professional look</li><li>Competitively priced</li><li>Powerful community management dashboard that’s easy to navigate</li></ul><h2>Cons</h2><ul><li>Getting access to the initial page can be a little confusing as you have to find your church group on a map or via search.</li></ul><h2>Final Verdict 4/5</h2>Faithlife Sites is an excellent CMS that is incredibly easy to use and I highly recommend it for any church group that wants to go online. It’s such a powerful and simple CMS that there may even be a market for it outside of the church sphere, if they ever choose to go in that direction.

Faithlife Sites Review

grainne-logue

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The Best Church Website Builders

Faithlife Sites Review