eCatholic Review: Website, Donations and Live Streaming Solutions

eCatholic Pricing & Cost

eCatholic's web hosting packages start at a price of $20/month. The cost increases based upon the number of pages and storage space your website requires.

eCatholic also offers live streaming packages starting at $79/month. The cost increases based on your number of viewers, storage space, and video quality.

Cancellation: You can cancel at any time directly through the online subscription section.

To get a free 30 day trial of either eCatholic product, visit them here.

Table of Contents

• Full Review
• eCatholic Pricing & Cost
• Key Products
  • Websites
    • Website Editing
    • Website Content
    • Online Payments & Giving
    • Website Security
    • eCatholic Website Examples
  • Live Streaming
  • Services
• Is eCatholic right for you?

Full Review: eCatholic

eCatholic is the largest provider of Catholic websites in the United States. The company was founded by Josh Simmons in 2005 to help parishes create dynamic, beautiful websites without having to develop software themselves. The company is based in College Station, Texas and has 20 employees.

Today, eCatholic offers an extremely user-friendly website builder created specifically for Catholic organizations, as well as a platform that allows you to live stream any of your events over several very popular media platforms. Finally, it also offers website design and branding services as an additional layer of support for organizations that are interested. In testing, we found eCatholic's tools to be intuitive, easy-to-use and effective. 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.

Key Products

Below, we'll discuss the key products offered by eCatholic, and how each would benefit your church. We'll also share some photos of the actual products to give you a sense for look and feel.

Websites

All of eCatholic's websites come with the complete suite of features, modules and themes. Online donations, live streaming and custom design services cost extra, which we'll cover below.

Website Editing

Editing eCatholic websites requires no coding. The system makes it easy to structure your site map, create new forms, drag & drop those forms on your pages, and make smaller inline edits.

Here is a view of the sitemap editor in eCatholic. This tool makes it easy to create a new page, and add it to the appropriate menu. You can also delete pages using this tool.

You create forms using eCatholic's online forms tool. On any page, you simply click +Add Content to access 11 form types. Click on your desired form type and drag it to the page to begin editing your form. eCatholic makes it very simple to drag new fields into the form, name them, and arrange them. Here's what it looks like to create a Contact Us form in eCatholic:

Once your site is structured and you have the right forms on the right pages, it is easy to organize the forms and make any final minor edits to your website copy or design. Moving forms on pages is as easy as clicking and dragging the form to its new location. The rest of the forms will automatically relocate to their appropriate position on the page. eCatholic allows you to edit copy and make minor changes to your pages with a simple point and click. Below is an image of inline editor that you can use to edit text, add links, add images, and more:

Website Content

eCatholic has many types of content that you can add to your website. The core modules that it offers include:

In addition, eCatholic makes it easy to add Catholic content, social media content, video and Catholic news directly to your website without writing a line of code. Examples of Catholic content include Word On Fire, Today's Readings, ChurchPOP blog, and Grotto.

Online Payments & Giving

eCatholic has simplified and automated the tithing process to make it easier for your members to give more. Their eCatholic Payments tool allows you to create mobile-friendly forms that can process debit & credit cards as well as e-checks. It also supports recurring donations. With the same tool, you can accept payments for events, tuition, and anything else you would like. The price for eCatholic Payments is $20/month.

The payments dashboard is integrated directly into your website. In the dashboard, you can see transactions with associated dates, donors, amounts, and accounts. You can also view each account and subaccount to view its balance and print financial statements. Payment processing costs 3.1% + 20 cents per transaction for credit cards, 1.7% + 30 cents for debit cards and 1% + 35 cents for ACH.

eCatholic proudly donates 10% of its ePayments revenue to seminaries and retired priests.

Website Security

All of eCatholic's websites come with an HTTPS certificate, which provides secure data encryption and better search rankings. Your data is stored in secure, scalable data centers. Finally, eCatholic automates the backup of your websites, which protects your data in the case of an emergency.

eCatholic Website Examples

Here are some examples of impressive websites built on the eCatholic platform.

Tulane Catholic

Archdiocese of New York

Diocese of Providence

Live Streaming

eCatholic Live Streaming allows you to schedule and stream your live events over several popular media platforms. All Live Streaming plans include a Roku channel, AppleTV integration, Vimeo syndication, archiving, and real-time analytics. Automated archiving is a valuable feature that saves your videos when they are done, and allows them to be viewed by your audience on-demand. The packages start at $79/month and increase in price based upon your number of viewers and file storage.

With Live Streaming, you can stream to:

Services

If you don't have the time or expertise to build the website you desire, eCatholic provides several services.

Is eCatholic right for you?

eCatholic is the largest provider of Catholic websites in the United States. Today, eCatholic offers an extremely user-friendly website builder created specifically for Catholic organizations, as well as a platform that allows you to live stream any of your events over several very popular media platforms. Finally, it also offers website design and branding services as an additional layer of support for organizations that are interested. In testing, we found eCatholic's tools to be intuitive, easy-to-use and effective. 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.

Visit eCatholic to sign up for a free 30 day trial today.