A church management system is a tool to help you manage the day to day administration of your church.

In the case of ChurchBuilder it is a secure online tool, meaning that it can be accessed by your staff, and also, if you wish, by your church family.

It starts with a people database where you can store all the contact information of not only church members and new enquirers, but other necessary contacts such as local schools or councils, site maintenance workers etc.

Your people data can then be helpfully sorted into groups and there are handy features such as group emails and reports you can run on that data.

Beyond this central hub there are other areas of church administration you may like help with – calendars, rotas, service planning, resource booking, event planning etc.

ChurchBuilder offers 3 different products tailored to meet the needs of different sized churches, we call them Essential, Engage and Extend. You can read more about them further down on this page.

Our Features page gives you more detail about all of ChurchBuilder's features.

Our Roles page tells you how ChurchBuilder can help you in your role at church.

Our Pricing page shows you which features are offered by Essential, Engage and Extend.

ChurchBuilder Essential gives you an online people database, with a church directory both online and in printable format. In addition it enables you to store not only an unlimited number of church contact details, but any number of other useful contacts such as local schools, your council, new enquirers etc.

This centralised, online people database is a helpful tool, but without groups it lacks an ability to make sense of all that data. We have added in Group Manager to our Essential package so that you can sort your data helpfully into whatever groups you need, send group emails and run simple group reports.

Group numbers and members are unlimited and could include:-

• congregational groups
• small groups
• children and youth groups
• administrative groups - staff, local service providers etc
• membership and affiliation groups.

Essential provides you with pre-set permissions enabling you to give the right access to information to those who need it for their roles.

Essential is quick and simple to set up and requires you to have no training. Your site will be populated with help videos and there is further help on the ChurchBuilder support site should you need it.

For a full list of Essential features visit our Pricing page.

ChurchBuilder Engage has been designed for churches who want to be able to organise more of their church life using a management system but don't need the extensive features offered by ChurchBuilder Extend.

It offers you:-

• a people database, church directory and reports
• groups and attendance tracking
• calendars
• rotas
• activities
• media library.

Engage provides you with pre-set permissions enabling you to give the right access to information to those who need it for their roles.

It is quick and simple to set up and requires you to have no training. Your site will be populated with help videos and there is further help on the ChurchBuilder support site should you need it.

For a full list of Engage features visit our Pricing page.

ChurchBuilder Extend is our original ChurchBuilder product. It has extensive features and bespoke permission settings which have been requested by our customers and are loved particularly by larger churches and groups of churches.

In addition to the core elements offered by Engage, Extend offers you:-

• service planning
• resource calendars
• event planning and booking
• extensive report manager
• music manager for upload of song words and sheet music
• export to song projection packages or VP slides
• automatic service sheet generation
• prayer diary
• meeting planning
• bespoke permission settings (tailoring who has access to what information).

With this extensive set of features and the ability to tailor the permissions on your site, comes an added level of complexity. We have carefully designed Extend to be easy to use for your church staff and members, but to achieve this end, you will need a small team from your church to be trained by us to set up your site. 

We call this small team your "webmasters" and we highly recommend "webmaster training" for those churches using Extend. To set up your site without training is often a false economy of your time and effort. It leaves you without the basic principles of how to set the site up and the ability to tailor it specifically to your needs.

If you feel your church needs Extend and you are struggling with the training costs, please speak with us.

ChurchBuilder can include a website or it can stand alone and attach to your current site.

We have designed it this way based on the differing needs of churches. Some are keen to keep their existing website and just need a church management system.

Others are looking for both a new website and a management system and appreciate being able to combine them in one.

Costs

• Our recommended templates cost a one-off fee of around £50-£100

• We charge no set up fee for creating your site using these recommended templates