Have you ever wondered how to manage or maintain church membership using software? The free download software for church membership is the best software program around. But finding the right one can be challenging. That’s where I come in.
People are quick to dismiss church membership software as either expensive, difficult to use or both. But there are several affordable options. It’s true that some of the best church membership software is paid for, but if you find the right free options you can build your own. If you’re looking for a comprehensive church website software, you should also check out these software.
ACS Technologies (Realm)
Realm puts your most important ministry responsibilities such as administration, accounting, and community tasks all under one roof. It’s one place where everyone can sign in making sure staff can stay informed, connected, and focused on multiplying your ministry. Weather it’s member management, donation/payment processing, event planning or reporting, Realm does it all. Although some features require one-time costs, users save money in the long run by not needing to pay for said features in their monthly bill
- Pricing: There are 3 pricing tiers structured by who is using the software. Starting at $30 for staff only, $46 for all church members, and $209 for multi-site churches. Each tier can also incur one-time costs for extra features if desired.
- Free Trial/Demo: No free trial, but live demos are available.
Wild Apricot
- Price: Free for up to 50 contacts
- Trial: Free 30 day trial (no credit card required)
Wild Apricot is a powerful, easy-to-use, web-based church management system for churches and non-profits to help manage administrative tasks, membership, website, event registration, and other activities.
Wild Apricot is a complete membership management system. Easily manage your contacts, process payments, send out emails, and register event attendees. You can also build a website for your organization using professionally designed and mobile-friendly templates.
Wild Apricot is designed for volunteer-run and small staff organizations with a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge. You will also have access to the user community of peers and experts to get support and share knowledge of best practices.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Competitive pricing
- Highly customizable
Cons
- Limited choice of website templates
Bitrix24 (free)
Bitrix24 is the free online Church management software for unlimited users. The non-profit and faith-based organizations will find this tool apt. This tool can work on mobile iOS, Android phones, and mobile devices and many come with instant messenger. By engaging the congregation, it serves as a social tool. Along with that, it also acts as a business tool like telephony or project management that allows keeping affairs in an organized way.
It includes system of Church structure, church and telephone directory, contact information, and user management process. The Church social network of this app contains a photo gallery, opinion polling, email notifications, and videoconferencing. This wide-ranging tool is ideal to manage Church members.
(Source:Bitrix24)
Specifications:
- Tasks & Documents
- Calendars & Events
- Social tool
- CRM (Customer relationship management) reports
- Church Social network
- Board and People
- Workflow
- Project Groups
Breeze ChMS
For churches looking to automate their tasks alone, Breeze is a fantastic choice. Although they don’t have a website builder, every administrative task can be automated with a ‘breeze’. From donations, to event planning, emailing, and contact management, Breeze can handle it all without extra costs! For small to mid-sized churches, Breeze is a great, simple and inexpensive solution to all administrative needs with minimal setup time.
- Pricing: $50/month flat.
- Free Trial/Demo: No free trial, but instant demos are available.
ChurchCRM (free & open source)
ChurchCRM is a free Church management software that helps to manage the congregation’s information. This open source Church management system is simple, powerful, and comprehensive to use. Being universal, the user can make use of this app from desktop computers to smartphones.
The Church leaders can efficiently handle all the functions and operations by employing this tool. Even the members can effortlessly access information and can efficiently communicate with the management. This fully-featured Church management tool provides interactions, outreach, and follow up facilities. The user can easily search for any member or data with this system.
Elvanto
- Price: $50/month
- Trial: Demo call available
Elvanto is an all-in-one cloud-based solution with many innovative features. Elvanto streamlines pastoral and administrative duties. Plan worship activities, manage finances and engage with church members.
Elvanto has an all-inclusive range of tools with no add-on modules and no extra charges. Some of the main features include access control, customizable forms, custom reports, mobile apps, event management, group management, email and SMS messaging, volunteer scheduling, and attendance tracking.
Elvanto makes the planning of worship services and managing volunteers simple. Create run sheets, schedule your volunteers, access your song database, lyrics, and chords. It has a simple drag and drop interface that makes quickly creating service plans for your team a breeze.
Child check-in, privacy, and safety are some of the key features integrated into Elvanto, vital for children and youth leaders to ensure all in their care are accounted for.
Elvanto also has powerful features for accessing financial data, contribution management, and has the ability to connect with various online giving providers.
Pros
- Great integration with 3rd party financial partners
Cons
- Some features like check-in don’t always work reliably.
ChurchTrac (30days free trial)
If you are looking for affordable Church Software, then ChurchTrac is the apt choice for you. It keeps track of people, small groups, attendance, events, finances, and budgets. The interface and functionalities of this software are intuitive. In various groups like small groups, committees, and classes, the members of the Church are organized, and their attendance along with the communication process is tracked.
This tool helps in organizing Church teams and ministries. It improves communication and believes in promoting spiritual growth. Small to medium-sized churches, congregations, and ministries will find this solution perfect. The users can simplify their ministry activities with the help of this user-friendly system.
(Source: ChurchTrac)
Specifications:
- Membership Management
- Child Check-in & security
- Volunteer and Event Management
- Attendance Reporting and Tracking
- Directories and Reports
- Contributions and giving
- Calendar and Event Management
- Donation and pledge
- Financial Management
- Congregation members profile access
- Free Import and Backups
Breeze
- Price: Starting at $50/month
- Trial: Instant Demo available
Breeze is an easy-to-use web-based church management system designed with small churches to mid-sized churches in mind. With Breeze, you can easily add new data, send mass emails and text messages, track attendance and check-in children securely, and process donations online and by text message. Breeze requires no contract or set up fee and offers a data migration service to get you started quickly.
Breeze makes it easy to manage your church’s database, communicate with your members via email or text message, offer online and text giving, safely check-in children, manage events and volunteers, run reports, and much more!
Pros
- easy data transfer from other systems
- responsive customer support
Cons
- Some features are quite basic
CahabaWorks (free)
CahabaWorks Church Management Software offers professional integrated management of Members, Small Groups, Contributions, Fund Accounting Financials, Payroll, Check-In and Online Giving for the faith-based community.
The Church community can fulfill their unique needs by making use of this free Church membership software. It helps in maintaining membership information and financials. The app provides professional integrated management of members to the Churches.
You can use this integrated and easy-to-use solution for managing the activities of the Church. With this tool, you can minimize the time spent on administrative tasks. This app gives importance to the feedback of the users and believes in continuous improvement.
(Source: CahabaWorks)
Specifications:
- Child Check-in
- Contributions
- Financials
- Groups and Members
- Online giving
- Pledge Management
- Multi-site Management
- Member Directory
- Attendance Tracking
- Built-in accounting
- Member Portal
- Small-Group Management
- Payroll Module
Conclusion:
When it comes to church management software, there are usually two options; buy the software or build your own. As you may know, building a membership software from scratch can be challenging (and expensive). A new approach to building a church membership database is to use an existing open source tool that has been modified for your needs.