Best Church Management Software 2021

Discover the best church management software systems on the market. These tools will help streamline your operations, save your team's time, and grow your organization.

Highest Rated Church Management Software

Church management software is built to help improve operational efficiency and streamline a variety of tasks. Features found in church management software include member management, accounting, online giving, and group communication.

Breeze
Rating: 93
Starting Price: $50 per month

Breeze, founded in 2013, is Software Pundit's best overall church management system for small to medium-sized churches. It offers member management, member communication, events & facilities management, giving, forms, and mobile application solutions. Each view within Breeze is clean and makes the most important features available and easy to use. Good examples of this are the tagging feature that is flexible, yet quick for creating as many groups as you'd like. It's flat-rate pricing structure of $50/month for unlimited users and features is refreshingly simple as well.

Pros:
  • Flat price of $50/month for all features is simplest business model we've seen
  • The system's interface is exceptionally easy to use
  • Volunteers can check attendees in on their own smartphones
Cons:
  • Does not offer accounting software or facilities management
  • Lacks more complicated features that large organizations require
  • Mobile applications lag the usablility and feature-richness of the core application
Planning Center
Rating: 88
Starting Price: $199 per month

Planning Center was founded in 2006 and is based in Carlsbad, California. It's flagship product, Planning Center Services is the best point solution in the market for worship planning, and is affordably priced at $0-$199 per month depending on your number of users. We highly recommend this product for any church that wants to improve worship planning. In total, the company offers 8 products that form a comprehensive church management system that is competitive with other ChMS solutions for small to medium-sized churches.

Pros:
  • Services is an outstanding worship planning application
  • Very robust Registrations application for managing complex events
  • You only need to purchase the specific applications you need
  • Mobile application for your congregation comes at no extra cost
Cons:
  • Robust applications like Services and Registration, are complex and take a while to fully master
  • Customer support phone calls require advance scheduling
  • Purchasing only a few of their applications means you'll have to work with multiple vendors to manage your church
  • Giving app does not support pledges or campaigns
PushPay
Rating: 86
Starting Price: $90 per month

Now part of the PushPay brand, Church Community Builder was founded in 1998. It is a great church management system for larger, multi-campus churches. Strengths of the system include its group communication functionality and Processes tool that enables you to create complex communications workflows for individual members. For example, the Processes tool allows your organization to send personalized follow up emails to first time guests, streamline the volunteer application follow-up process, and much more. PushPay serves over 4,000 churches of all sizes and is based in Seattle, Colorado Springs, and Auckland.

Pros:
  • User-friendly group functionality makes it easy to find and communicate with groups
  • Processes feature allows you to create and advance your members through workflows with a series of communications
  • Many major features are now mobile-responsive to create a single experience across devices
Cons:
  • Requires integration with third-party tool to support online giving
  • Does not include website builder
  • Does not replace your accounting & financial software
  • Can’t scan check images without using ProfitStars
Churchtrac
Rating: 85
Starting Price: $5 per month

Byron Tedder, ChurchTrac's founder, began developing the software in 2002 at the request of his pastor. ChurchTrac is a very affordable, effective church management system with its own fund accounting solution. It is ideal for small to medium churches that want a system strong in accounting, and plan to leverage a separate system to maximize member engagement. Today ChurchTrac's web-based church management system is used by over 10,000 churches.

Pros:
  • Enables fund accounting and payroll as a part of proprietary accounting solution
  • Customer support resolves 87% of issues within one hour according to the company
  • Affordably priced compared to alternatives
Cons:
  • Comes with less marketing functionality than other church management systems
  • Emails are sent through a third-party, which requires a separate subscription
  • Doesn't offer immediate telephone support



Best Church Texting Service

Church texting services are used to improve communication and member engagement. These solutions allow church leaders to build marketing campaigns and messages that are delivered through text messages and emails. Some solutions include automated features such as automated responders and integrations with leading church management systems.

Text In Church
Rating: 89
Starting Price: $37 per month

Text In Church was founded by CEO Tyler Smith in 2012. The company's mission is to create simple communication tools connect pastors with people. Today, over 17,000 church leaders use their church communication software to increase attendance, lift check-in rates, and improve engagement. Its integrations with Church Community Builder, and Planning Center are big advantages if your church uses those management systems. We recommend Text In Church's free trial to any church in the market for a new communication system.

Pros:
  • Pricing model includes free unlimited emails
  • Two-way integrations with Church Community Builder and Planning Center to share member lists
  • Automated workflows allow you to set up series of communications for a given group
Cons:
  • Analytics package within Text In Church is weaker, limited mostly to email open and click rates
  • Does not offer live polling or voice messages
  • Your purchased text credits expire each month and cannot be carried over
Flocknote
Rating: 88
Starting Price: $7 per month

Flocknote was founded in 2009 by CEO Matthew Warner to help churches get better at reaching the right people at the right time. The company's solution makes it easy to communicate with individuals and groups through email and text message, and comes with easy-to-use message builders that allow you to design, test, & schedule your communications. We recommend Flocknote to any church that wants a dedicated email and text communication system and sends a high volume of messages. Over 100,000 church leaders use Flocknote to communicate with their members.

Pros:
  • Your members do not have to download anything or log-in, it works seamlessly with their existing email and text systems
  • Well designed layout makes finding and contributing to any group conversation very simple
  • Ability to schedule emails and texts for future delivery for an unlimited number of groups
Cons:
  • Does not integrate with most church management systems
  • More expensive than alternatives for large congregations with flat pricing model
  • Cannot trigger messages based upon data in the system (e.g. for member birthday emails)
PastorsLine
Rating: 80
Starting Price: $8 per month

PastorsLine is built by Fluid Ministry LLC. The product was created by Jason Alexis to help churches communicate effectively with their members and visitors through text, voice, and social media. PastorsLine makes it easy to have text-based conversations with several individuals and groups. The system also allows you to set up more complex, multi-step campaigns that can be used to collect member information or create highly engaging experiences for your congregation. The company has built integrations with many of the most popular church management systems: Breeze, Church Community Builder, Planning Center, and Tithe.ly. PastorsLine currently serves more than 800 active church leaders from churches of all sizes.

Pros:
  • Very affordable pricing, including entry plan at $8 per month
  • Unused message credits roll over each month
  • Integrations with the popular church management systems including Breeze, CCB, PCO, and Tithe.ly
Cons:
  • Parts of the interface are not super intuitive
  • Requires a Mailchimp integration to send emails
  • System allows you to manage group conversations over text message, but not email



Other Top Church Software

There are several church software solutions that specialize in specific products. Below are three popular solutions that are used for church fund accounting, website development, and online giving.

Aplos
Rating: 92
Starting Price: $49 per month

Aplos was founded in 2009 by an executive pastor and a certified public accountant. Aplos' web-based software was built to help nonprofits with fund accounting, tax preparation, and donor management. Aplos is a great solution to help you manage your church's finances and will make it easier to get your financials out on time. We strongly recommend Aplos' accounting package as an alternative to Quickbooks for any small to medium sized church or nonprofit. Outside of this core focus, Aplos has built high-quality solutions for membership management, fundraising, marketing, and event management. Its full suite is a competitive church management system for small to medium sized churches.

Pros:
  • Built specifically for nonprofits to help manage fund accounting
  • Bank integrations make it easy to import transactions
  • End-to-end solutions for donor and event management
Cons:
  • Uses a third-party business named Gusto to manage payroll
  • The main application is not mobile-responsive
  • Does not offer facility management functionality
eCatholic
Rating: 89
Starting Price: $20 per month

eCatholic was founded by Josh Simmons in 2005 to help parishes create dynamic, beautiful websites without having to develop software themselves. Today, eCatholic is the largest provider of Catholic websites in the United States. The company offers an extremely user-friendly website builder created specifically for Catholic organizations, a platform that allows you to live stream any of your events over several very popular media platforms, and additional professional services. While the functionality might not be as robust as high-end offerings in the market, these tools are perfect for small to mid-sized organizations that want a well-built solution that gets the job done for an affordable price.

Pros:
  • Website builder is very user-friendly and requires no coding knowledge
  • Websites can easily add donation module to accept online giving, school tuition, and more
  • Live streaming broadcasts over AppleTV, Roku, YouTube and many other popular media sites
Cons:
  • Not meant as a solution for complex, custom websites
  • Does not integrate with the most common church management systems
  • eCatholic Payments costs an additional $20/month
Tithe.ly
Rating: 89
Starting Price: $19 per month

Tithe.ly was founded in 2013 by Barn and Dean Sweetman, and is based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company's flagship product, Tithe.ly Giving, is built to help churches increase giving and deepen engagement. In 2018, the company acquired Elvanto, a church management system (ChMS), which it now offers as a separate product under its own brand name. Tithe.ly has 11,000 customers in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

Pros:
  • The Giving product has no fees for chargebacks, refunds, PCI security, deposits, or rejections
  • The Events product is easy-to-use, accepts payments, and is highly customizable
  • All four products offer clean, easy-to-use interface for your team to enjoy
Cons:
  • The four products are not fully integrated: ChMS product was built by Elvanto, which Tithe.ly acquired in 2018
  • Members must leave the Giving app to complete their transaction in a separate web portal
  • The Church App only allows you to create 12 groups for customized content and notifications

Church Management FAQs

Church management software helps churches manage a variety of tasks and processes including member management, events & facilities management, online giving, group communication, and accounting. Different church management systems are built for different size churches. In addition, some systems have stronger communication capabilities, while others offer integrated accounting software.

There are several types of church management software. Some solutions are fully-featured and improve a variety of tasks including member management, online giving, and group communication. Other solutions target specific use cases like accounting and worship planning. Here's the most popular types of church management software:

  • Church management software
  • Church communication software
  • Non-profit accounting software
  • Website building and live streaming software

Church management software prices start at about $50 per month for smaller organizations. Most software tools are purchased in an ongoing monthly subscription. Total pricing depends on the size of your church organization. Church texting services start at a price of about $10 per month. Total price depends on your number of members and messaging volume.

The best church management software for you will depend on what features you need. Breeze is an excellent product that was created to simplify the process of church management. This is reflected in everything from its flat-fee pricing structure to its easy-to-use interface. Text In Church and Flocknote are exceptional church texting services. Both make it easy to send high-volume campaigns to members.

Planning Center is the most popular worship planning application with thousands of customers and used in 90 out of the 100 largest churches in the United States. Used by over 20,000 churches, Tithe.ly is the most popular software to grow giving. Flocknote is the most popular church texting service used by thousands of churches.

The most common church management software features are:

  • Member management
  • Member communication
  • Events & facilities management
  • Giving
  • Forms
  • Accounting
  • Mobile application