Creating a website for your Church to spread ‘word of wisdom’ does not have to be overwhelming- and it surely does not need a lot of time and will certainly not cost you a fortune. Instead, you just need to choose one among the list of these best church website builders, and you are good to go. You can compare them, and see which one fits your absolute requirements.
Without any doubt, by choosing the best website builder for your church, you can create an online space for your church, engage more people, and spread God’s words to a wider audience.
In today’s time, no matter what we do or what information we need, it starts with an online search. Therefore, having a website is important, and the same goes for a Church. Not only will it help people find you, but it also makes it easier to spread information, teaching and thoughts through a website for a church.
In this post, I will discuss in detail some of the most sophisticated, straightforward, and advanced website builders in 2021. And if you are creating a church website, then you surely consider these options. No matter which website builder you choose, you can complete a website without having to code or prior technical knowledge. Long story short, you do not have to be a developer or a professional to build a creative, optimized and mobile-ready website for your church with these site builders.
If you came here, you are getting only the most sophisticated, simple-to-use and advanced site editors available today. No need to look elsewhere if you are after making a church website. You can now do it in a breeze, without any technical or design background. So, without any further adieu let’s get started with the comprehensive discussion.
What is a Church Website Builder?
As a matter of fact, a church website builder is a Content Management System that helps you build a website from A-Z. A CMS is a platform that powers your website- and allows you to create web pages of the website, and play around with it to bring a great experience for the users. Therefore creating a website for your church allows you to improve the reach, knowledge and history of the church, timings of sermons, location types of services and related information, all on your site.
Besides, they also allow you to integrate additional features, add memberships, notifications and alerts, newsletters, accept donations, possibly everything you need in a website for a church. However, choosing the best church website builder is the key to creating a website that creates a good impression and attracts the audience to your church website.
Not to mention when it comes to websites, ‘the first impression is important. And creating a good impression is all about how you reflect on others’ minds. Again, research shows that a persons ‘first impression’ of the website primarily depends on how visually appealing it looks. So, having a website that loads quickly and looks stunning.
Talking about websites for your church, well it has a huge role to play – whether it is creating, growing, or spreading the word. The best church website builders must be chosen with long term vision in mind, and not merely because it is free. Are you wondering which one? Well, let us discuss this in detail here.
List of Best Church Website Builders
- TemplateToaster
- Weebly
- Wix
- Constant Contact website builder
- Site123
- Nucleus
- Ministry Design
1. TemplateToaster – Best Church Website Builder
TemplateToaster is a popular offline website builder, so you can download the software on your computer and use it to create a website for your church. Therefore, you do not need to know about coding or programming, to use the platform for website building. The desktop-based software is a perfect solution if you want to build a website for your church, as it is beginner-friendly and allows you to design a theme or template, just the way you like.
You can easily generate templates for major CMS platforms like WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Prestashop, Drupal, and more. And the best part of you does not have to learn to program or even need an active internet connection.
Also, it depends upon you whether you want to use pre-made responsive church templates or customize them according to your choice or even design your church theme from scratch. And one of the best things about this software is that it offers responsive layouts along with a robust visual editor. Thereof you can build a beautiful and creative website for your church and improve its reach.
Features:
- Easily import and export content
- SEO management
- Pre-built templates
- Powerful CMS theme builder
- Responsive web designs
- Browser compatibility
- Custom widget area/module positions/regions
- Drag and drop website builder
- In-built stock image library
- Create custom videos
Pricing:
TemplateToaster offers pretty decent value for money plans. It includes a free trial, for which you can unlimitedly use and experiment with the software. But it won’t let you create a website for upload during the free trial. Nevertheless, it has two plans to choose from, so you can select based on your needs and budget.
- The Standard edition:$27.45
- The Professional edition:$68.66
Pros:
- Easy to use – drag and drop user interface
- Unlimited free trial
- Templates and themes specifically designed for church
- Can access even without internet connection
- Beginner-friendly software
- Wide selection of editing tools
- Compatible with major CMS platform and web hosting platforms
Cons:
- Only available for Windows (No Mac version)
- Download and installation may take time
- Once you upload the templates they cannot be edited
2. Weebly
Weebly is again one of the best website builders for small business, portfolios and churches. It is an extremely easy to use platform, integrated with several apps, and features that can drastically help your website grow. Although the platform is not exactly designed or a mainstream platform for churches only, it has many features that can prove to be quite beneficial for church websites. As mentioned earlier, the platform is super easy to use, and in most of the parts, you can easily build a website quickly using the proprietary tools.
However, if you want to integrate with third-party church management systems then there are no options available. This is an important point to note as it can be a deadlock for most churches.
On the positive side, the slick drag and drop editor offers quite flexibility and control when it comes to designing for the church website. Besides, Weebly also offers a wide selection of third-party apps through which you can include a clickable button for donations and a high-definition video player. Additionally, you can also offer church members remotely-hosted audiobooks and ebooks from Scribd.
Features:
- Powerful SEO tools
- Customizable polls, forms, and surveys
- In-built live chat
- Site booster
- Drag and drop editor
- Responsive templates
- Easy publishing
- Free subdomain
- Domain registration
- Full-width page editor
Pricing:
Weebly is a free website builder and the very basic plan is available for free. However, you can also choose from the three premium plans mentioned below.
- Connect a domain: $5 /mon
- Pro: $12 /mon
- Business: $25 /mon
- Business Plus: $38 /mon
Pros:
- Easy to set up and customize
- Mobile-ready designs
- In-built eCommerce support that you can use for donations
- App centre allows you to add extra features
- 24/7 customer support
- Pro plan and higher premium plans allow you to create a membership area for your site
- Beginner-friendly site builder
Cons:
- Limited SEO capabilities
- No custom theme editing’
- No support for AI creation
3. Wix
Wix is again not a website builder that is specifically designed for the church, but it surely won’t let you down. Particularly, the platform caters to small business and owners who want to create a website, which perfectly fits into the idea of the best church website builders.
Wiz is a powerful website builder that comes with a pay-per features pricing model. So, the more you pay every month, the more features you can unlock. However, this can be a major shortcoming also of the platform.
Also, you get to create a website with Wix based upon two options. First of all, you can use Wix ADI to build a website using the Artificial Intelligence designs, which generates a church website for you based upon the series of questions based upon your church. However, the second option allows you to choose a template or theme for your church and customize it accordingly using the drag and drop editor. You can find pre-made templates that come with in-built features like event calendar, donation page, church membership, social media links and others.
To make your Church website even more functional you can also integrate apps from the Wix app market, like holiday pages, social media streams, customized welcome messages and more.
Features:
- Template specially designed for church websites
- Upload and embed audio and video content
- Member area dedicated for prayers, sermon request through forums
- Manage events and make registrations easier
- Supports options for donations
- Great backup option for the site recovery
- Wide-selection of applications from the Wix app market
Pricing:
Wix offers some of the most amazing features, and top-level hosting absolutely for free. However, you can upgrade to any of the 4 plans and unlock more features and functions for your website.
- Connect a domain: $1.10
- Combo: $1.72
- Unlimited: $2.55
- VIP: $4.47
Pros:
- Easiest to use
- 500+ templates
- Quality features for church website like contact form, newsletters, sermons, accept donations, calendar to set reminders
- Intuitive drag and drop editor
- Extend the features of your site with the Wix app market
- Great site speed
- Excellent customer support
Cons:
- Templates are not replaceable
- The free plan focuses on Wix advertising
- Tracking and analytics only available in premium plans
- The site cannot be transferred
- Premium plans are single site only
4. Nucleus – Best Church Website Builders
The next one on our list for best church website builders is Nucleus. It is a website builder that is specifically designed to meet up all of the requirements a church website needs. And has all of the necessary pro church tools to help your church website grow and create an online presence.
Notably, Nucleus has a powerful set of features that you need to build a great website for a church. From robust management features blog posts section contact details, event calendars, and donations sections, it has got all. Moreover, you can even add a sermon page or a prayer request page and people can easily listen to the audio.
In short, Nucleus has all of the features that you need in a website builder that is specifically built for the church. It has been precisely tailored, to be an all-in-one platform with an easy to use interface for your church website.
Features:
- Easy to use more like beginner-friendly
- Specific features like sermon manager, form builder, online giving, that are built for church websites only
- Mobile-friendly web designs
- Helps with search engine ranking
- Great customer support
Pricing:
You get a free trial for up to 30 days and you can use everything absolutely for free. Later you can upgrade to any of the three plans based upon your needs.
- Web: $99 /mon
- Giving: $79 /mon
- Media: $39 /mon
Pros:
- 30 days free trial
- Offers ‘scholarships’ for smaller churches and startups
- Designed as a central hub for your church website
- Join the Facebook group to know more about church website building
- Great library of video, footage clips
- Pre-built social media posts to use on different social media platforms
Cons:
- The support team is only available from 9 am to 5 pm EST
- If you want to take donations from your church website then you need to pay a flat fee
- Cannot have multiple users for your website
5. Ministry Designs
Ministry Designs is again one of the best church website builders on the list that is specifically designed to help your church website reach, teach and grow the audience. The platform understands the specific requirements of a website builder for a church and offers two options – a prepackaged solution and something that is highly customizable.
The prepackaged solution comes with 20 templates to select from. You can choose designs that look great for your website along with high definition clear pictures. Also, there is a free library of more than a thousand photos and media to select for specific events, occasions and holidays.
On the other hand, if you want more control and customization over the designs then Ministry Designs offer a product named ‘Omega’.It is a dedicated website builder for churches on the platform. It comes with a drag and drop editor, that you can use to create a website using the predefined modules.
Both options are great and you can choose to depend upon your church website requirements.
Features:
- Pre-designed themes
- Top-notch SEO capabilities
- Wide-selection of 1200 free social graphics
- Drag and drop UI
- Domain emails
- Fully responsive designs
- Easily manage and track monthly offerings
- Create unlimited web pages
- Excellent customer support
Pricing:
Ministry designs cost $1000 straight away for software and support. Next, you will have to pay $20 /month for ongoing hosting.
Pros:
- Attractive and responsive templates built for church designs
- Unlimited training through dedicated ‘Ministry Success Representative’
- Excellent customer support (24/7 email support, 24/7 chat support, phone support, and Ministry Success Representative)
- Specific features design for church websites like upload sermons, create calendars, manage email list and more
- Create multiple users account where 3 users are free
Cons:
- Very expensive
- Templates are not that great, you can find similar templates with website builders like TemplateToaster, Wix at a much affordable price
Bonus: Church Website Builders
6. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is again a great platform to build church websites, as they offer several features that are highly beneficial for such kinds of websites. Although popularly known as a platform for email marketing services, Constant Contact has over the years grabbed its hold in the world of website building. And, one of the best features about them is that they provide web hosting so you do not have to purchase it from any other platform.
Just as many other website builders in the market Constant Contact uses Artificial Intelligence to automatically generate a church website which you can later customize as well. It is a great solution if you own a church and want to make a presence online with limited time and budget. Powerful marketing tools like Logomaker, Google advertising, social media and email marketing, domain names, eCommerce tools are simply icing on the cake for a website builder.
Pricing:
Constant Contact offers a free plan but if you want to get rid of the ads and need a custom domain you need to upgrade to the premium plans.
- Starter plan: $10 /mon
- Business plan: $20 /mon
Pros:
- You can start up with Constant Contact absolutely for free, which is a great option for small churches with a limited budget
- It is very easy to build a website for your church
- Easily customize template designs
- 24/7 customer support
- All plans come with a free SSL certificate
- Powerful email marketing tools
Cons:
- Cannot create multiple users for your site even if you purchase premium plans
- You need to upgrade to a premium plan to use a custom domain name
- Constant Contact takes a 3% commission on sales (valid for free and start the plan).
7. Site123
Lastly, we haveSite123on our list of best church website builders. So, if you are looking for an easy and quick way to build a website for your church then Site123 is a good option. Especially if you do not have much technical knowledge and coding skills, Site123 is a perfect website builder to start with.
Although there are no church-based templates, you can easily customize any of the templates and design your church website as you like. Moreover, features like clickable maps, music player and worship team bios are very useful for a church website. Also, you can add a call to action and social media platform buttons to make it easier for visitors to reach out to you.
Pricing:
Site123 offers a 14 days money-back guarantee with the premium plan. Besides, you also get a free plan with subdomain and 250 MB storage and 250 MB bandwidth.
- Premium plan: $5.80 /mon
Pros:
- Easily integrate donation forms
- Ready-made content pages
- Show faith community through historical timelines
- Build single-multiple page sites
- Responsive web designs
Cons:
- No access to the source code
- Visible ads on the free plan
- No user access area
What to Look for in the Best Church Website Builders?
Well, if you are new to website building, too much information can get quite overwhelming and make it even more difficult to pick the best website building platform for your church. So, while choosing that one platform from the aforementioned list here are few things that you need to consider:
- Accepting donations: A church website may need people to pitch in through your website. So you need to check if you can accept donations while using the website builder.
- Create a calendar: You will have to list your church services, events and activities, on the website.
- Upload sermons services: If you want to add sermon recordings on your website, then you need to have these features.
- Registrations and log in: You may need to have content or even timings only for the registered users.
- Multiple user accounts and permission: Allow certain church members to update website information without requiring access.
- Design and templates: Lastly, you must choose a website builder that has a wide selection of templates and designs for the church website. Also, you need to look for a builder that has easy to edit and use customizers.
Wrapping Up… The Best Church Website Builders
As you may know from this article, finding the best church website builder can be quite intimidating because you have a lot of things to look for. However, balancing the current needs and future aspects of your website that matches with the features, costs and add-ons is something you need to be keen on.
All of the church website builders that I have mentioned in the list are good at doing their job. And it all comes down to your needs and budget, without compromising on the growth of your website’s online presence.
Which among the website builders did you choose to create your church website? Do you have more suggestions or questions? Do let me know in the comment section, I would love to engage. Also, for more information and updates subscribe to our blogs.