Text In Church Review, Pricing & Features: Church Texting and Email Communication Software

What is Text In Church?

Text In Church is a church communication system that allows you to send emails and text messages to your members, resulting in increased attendance and engagement. Your members are conveniently sent messages directly to their cell phones and email inboxes, and do not need to download any additional application or use a log-in. Text In Church offers advanced features like automated workflows, call forwarding for incoming voice calls, and an integration with Zapier. A particularly nice benefit of Text In Church is that emails sent through the system are completely free. Starting at $37/month, we recommend Text In Church's free trial to any church in the market for church texting software.

Text In Church Pricing & Cost

Text In Church offers three plans that are priced based upon your number of texts per month:

Table of Contents

• Full Review
• Text In Church Cost
• Key Features
  • Getting Started
  • Communication Channels
  • Groups
  • Conversations
  • Advanced Features
  • Analytics
  • Integrations
  • Text In Church vs. PastorsLine
• Is Text In Church right for you?

Full Review: Text In Church

Text In Church was founded by CEO Tyler Smith in 2012. Tyler began building the church communication tools for his older brother’s church. 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. Text In Church is based in Kansas City, Missouri.

Text In Church is a church communication system that allows you to send emails and text messages to your members. Your members are sent messages to their cell phones and email inboxes, and do not need to download any additional application or use a log-in. Some advanced features offered by Text In Church include its automated workflows to send a series of scheduled messages, call forwarding for incoming voice calls, and its integration with Zapier. We did find the analytics package in Text In Church to be less robust, and the system does not offer polling or voice messages.

Overall, Text In Church is a full-featured, well-built tool that we found easy to implement and use. We recommend its free trial to any church in the market for a new communication system. Its integrations with Church Community Builder, and Planning Center are big advantages if your church uses those management systems. The tool's pricing model is better for churches with many members who communicate more through email than text message. If you send a high volume of text messages, you might consider Flocknote, which prices its product on a per member basis.

Key Features

Below, we'll discuss some of the key features of Text In Church, and how they would benefit your church. We have also included images to give you a sense of the look and feel of the software.

Getting Started

Registering with Text In Church is pretty simple and can be completed within 10 minutes. You create your account, select a zip code and associated phone number. The system walks you through uploading your first contact and provides an above average onboarding flow in the product itself. You'll also receive welcome text messages from the CEO and your account manager.

You can add new members into Text In Church one at a time or through an bulk importer tool that allows you to upload a customized CSV file. A nice-to-have feature in Text In Church is their Social Profile Sync tool that automatically pulls in publicly available information about your members found in their Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn accounts. Here's what a profile looks like in Text In Church:

Member profiles in Text In Church also contain the information you capture using a feature called Smart Connect Cards. These are digital forms that allow you to use questions to capture information from your members. For example, you could encourage your members to fill out a Smart Connect Card with their basic contact information when first visiting your church. You can share Smart Connect cards on your website, on a phone or tablet, or in a text message.

Communication channels

Text In Church is built to support email and text communications. There are four steps to sending an email:

The email builder has valuable advanced options. These include the ability to add dynamic copy, links, images, media and other attachments. You are also able to code the email directly in HTML to enable more complicated designs. The system does not auto-save, so be careful not to lose any messages you're working on. Here's a look at the tool's email builder:

Creating and sending text messages is very similar to email. You enter your text into the message, add your recipients and schedule the delivery. The system offers a few advanced features that make texting more robust. Our favorites are the ability to enter dynamic copy (e.g. each individual's first names or address), and the ability to add media. Text messages can also be scheduled to send at a later date. In our testing, text messages scheduled through the system were delivered right away. Here's what the text message builder looks like in Text In Church:

Groups

With Text In Church, you can have an unlimited number of groups. The groups section of the application stores all of your groups. It includes a search bar to make it easier to find the correct group. For each group, you are able to see the members, automated workflows and message history. Groups improve your member experience because they allow you to send messages only to the individuals who will find it valuable. The system does not provide the ability to create sub-groups for more granular communications. Here's a look at the groups interface:

Conversations

Conversations are stored inside of the corresponding group. In each group, there is a log of all the group's conversations that you can search through to find the right conversation. In this view, you are also able to read the latest messages and respond to the thread. Additionally, you can opt-out of future group communications or archive the discussion. Here's a view of a conversation thread inside of Text In Church:

Advanced Features

Automated workflows: In Text In Church, you can create workflows that automate the delivery of emails, texts and reminders to your members in a given series and timeline. Common use cases are event information and reminders, and a welcome series for new members. While valuable, this feature is not very flexible – all messages are triggered when someone joins a group or a certain number of days later.

Call forwarding: You can forward any calls to your Text In Church number to any number you'd like.

Integration with Zapier: A recent integration with Zapier allows you to push your data to over a thousand companies that are integrated with Zapier. Text In Church also built zaps to connect to Trello, Survey Monkey, Constant Contact, Handywrytten, Bonjoro, Google Forms, Evernote, Todoist, Woofoo, with more being added all the time.

Smart Connect Cards: With Text In Church's Smart Connect Cards, you can add interactive and personal connect cards on your church's website. These are great for plan a visit, pre-registration for kids, event registrations, volunteer sign-ups and more. Smart Cards also sync with automated workflows.

Use your local phone number Text In Church allows you to leverage your local phone number and a dedicated short code for the best user experience and highest delivery rates.

Analytics

Text In Church does not offer a distinct analytics portal within its tool. However, it does allow you to see individual message performance. To see how a given message performs, you click the 'check status' link while viewing that message. Here, you will see data on that message's open and click rates.

Integrations

Text In Church has built integrations with a few very useful partners:

In particular, the integrations with two popular church management systems, Planning Center and Church Community Builder, are valuable. With the Planning Center integration, you can pull data, groups and corresponding contact info from Planning Center into Text In Church on a nightly basis. It is a two-way sync, so any member you add in Text In Church will be sent to Planning Center. The integrations with Church Community Builder and Mailchimp are very similar.

Text In Church vs. PastorsLine

Text In Church and PastorsLine are two of the leaders in the church communications space. When comparing Text In Church vs. PastorsLine, there are a few key differences to keep in mind:

Is Text In Church right for you?

Overall, Text In Church is a full-featured, well-built tool that we found easy to implement and use. We recommend its free trial to any church in the market for a new communication system. Its integrations with Church Community Builder, and Planning Center are big advantages if your church uses those management systems. The tool's pricing model is better for churches with many members who communicate more through email than text message. If you send a high volume of text messages, you might consider Flocknote, which charges per member.

If you think Text In Church is right for you, use our referral link to get a free 30 day trial + 500 bonus messages.