Does your church have a church mobile app? Within the last ten years, this has become a popular feature for churches to take advantage of. Church leaders need to communicate with their congregation to let them know about upcoming events. Not only that, but custom church apps are a place to find past sermons as well as a place for online giving. Connect the app with your social media accounts to fully incorporate easy and fast communication!
Check out our list and breakdown of different church app providers to determine which one works best with your church’s needs and price plans.
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Table of contents
Why Have a Church App?
There are endless benefits to having a church app. Mainly, so that communication is always accessible. It’s a simple fact that most people spend a lot of time on their phones, mindlessly scrolling. Why not offer an alternative to that mindless phone time? With an app, you have the ability to customize everything! Link past sermons with notes, a worship playlist of the week, and so much more. A mobile app is a great way to keep your congregation informed about everything happening in the day to day life of the church.
App Benefits:
- Push notifications
- Online giving
- Bible & reading plans
- Media player
- Group messaging
- Volunteer management
- Event calendars & registration
- Live streaming
Top 5 Things to Include in Your Church App
- Online Giving
- Sermons – sermon notes
- Events Calendar
- Prayer Requests
- Push Notifications
Best Church App Providers
1. Subsplash
Subsplash is a great choice and easy-to-use church management platform that offers a wide range of communication features to help churches manage their online presence and engage well with their congregation.
They provide a wide range of features that can help churches improve their communication with their members. The platform’s mobile apps allow people to stay connected with their community through in-app messaging groups, access sermon videos, and receive push notifications for upcoming events and other important announcements. Subsplash also provides tools for building and managing a church website, including customizable templates, event calendars, and announcement banners.
This app also offers a variety of email and SMS capabilities for easy church communication. The platform lets users create and send emails and text messages to specific groups of people within their church, such as volunteers, small group members, or even new visitors. You can also create automated email campaigns, such as welcome series for first-time visitors or event reminders.
2. Ministry One
Ministry One’s goal is to come alongside your church’s mission and provide a solution that integrates with the internal tools you are already using. MinistryOne is an app designed to easily connect your ministry with your community. It is one of the most affordable church apps out there because they offer their fully integrated app free when you are using a service that connects with them.
By itself, MinistryOne costs roughly $468 for the first year ($39/month). However, if you use Church Office Online, ELEXIO Community, Fellowship One Go, ParishSOFT, Shelby Next Membership, or SimpleChurch CRM the MinistryOne app is free.
The Ministry One app service is an add-on to their other services they offer. That means it will help churches interact with members with attendance, keep track of contact information, handle giving and sign up for events, and even pay for the event, plus support the church with their offerings and tithes.
3. Go Church App
Go Church App is overall easy to use and provides a great user experience. However, some users report that certain features–like Events Registration–can be tricky. The Go Church App includes features such as push notifications, a giving tool, custom forms, and embedded video content.
Go Church App allows churches to build an app customized to their specific needs. The fully customizable Go Church App is $57 per month, with a one-time full setup fee of $997. Go Church App is fully customizable. Putting design in the hands of customers, however, doesn’t always produce a great result.
4. Aware3
Aware3 is a mobile app company that focuses on three areas of interaction, which they call connection, communication, and generosity. This company offers ways to connect with the members and the church, two-way communication between people and their staff, and in-app donations. New users can schedule a demonstration where a member of the Aware3 staff will walk the user through the setup process and show them how the backend works. This backend lets users control their app and add or subtract various features.
The app features:
- Chat
- Push Notifications
- Sermon Notes
- App, Text, and Web Giving
- Live Polls
- People Profiles
5. Pushpay
Pushpay’s church app is easy to use and simple to navigate. The My Church App integrates with Pushpay’s church management system, offering features like check-in, group messaging, volunteer scheduling, and more. This app also includes updates about upcoming events, a media player, and church member profiles.
My Church App provides an easy experience for both church members and staff to connect, communicate, and engage with the church community. Pricing: Pushpay’s full package costs $199 per month.
6. Tithe.ly
Tithe.ly’s custom church app is another great option to use for churches. It’s just one part of a whole suite of features including a church management system, CRM, website builder, and more. That makes it simple to integrate Tithe.ly’s app with your church’s existing media and content.
The Tithe.ly app is one of the more comprehensive church apps available. It offers in-app mobile giving, a prayer wall, a media player, interactive sermon notes, an interactive newsfeed, a group chat feature, push notifications, and more. A Tithe.ly app has everything your church members need to plug into prayer, the Word, and community on the go. Using Tithe.ly also means minimal upfront costs and labor for running and managing the app.
You can use the Tithe.ly church app as a standalone feature for $89 per month, or you can sign up for the entire suite of Tithe.ly tools for just $30 more per month.
7. Church Center App (Planning Center)
Church Center is a mobile app and web app from the company Planning Center that gives you simple, convenient access to everything happening at your church. Using Church Center, you can see
updates and contact info for small groups, register for events, manage giving, and ensure your
contact information is current. The app requires you to log in to view your account information or for your groups to ensure your personal data is protected! If your church already uses Planning Center then this is a great addition.
8. SecureGive
As part of SecureGive’s 7-in-1 multi-giving system, Mobile App Giving offers a fully in-app giving experience complete with Apple Pay. Your church members can give their tithes and offerings, make a purchase, and manage on the go, right from their phone. The SecureGive Mobile App makes it easy for donors to manage their own accounts from any device.
The in-app donor dashboard makes it easy for your church members to see recent transactions, year to date giving, last year’s giving, and all-time giving at a glance. Mobile App Giving from SecureGive allows your donors to repeat any transaction with the tap of a button. Users simply launch the app, tap the “Repeat Donation” button, and confirm the details. This makes it easy for your congregation to give regularly and quickly.
9. Apollos App
Apollo Mobile Apps offer a simple, yet intuitive user experience for church members and staff. Apollo Mobile Apps has features for viewing content, posting messages (and prayers), and integrations with the Apollo church management system. More advanced features include an app media player.
This mobile solution can help potential users connect with the community, request prayers, and learn critical information about the church such as important dates. Apollo Mobile Apps cost $90 per month for the premium version. The minimum cost is $60 per month. The Apollo Mobile App may be integrated with additional parts of the Apollo church technology suite, making it easy to set up an app that’s synced with all aspects of your church’s technology.
10. Appy Pie
Appy Pie is a no-code app builder, which means that users can develop their own app without coding experience. Users of Appy Pie report that its most basic version is simple enough, but it can be difficult to add more advanced “beta” features.
You could build a whole range of features that integrate with your church’s website, community prayer list, weekly bulletin, contact info, and giving platform. However, that depends on how much time and energy you want to invest in Appy Pie. Appy Pie can give churches the ability to build and publish an app all on their own. Appy Pie’s most basic self-service package costs $16 per month, or you can pay up to $60 per month for advanced packages to run and manage your app.
11. The Church App
As part of the Subsplash family, The Church App has features for giving, website building, messaging, media, and live streaming that integrate with the rest of Subsplash’s tech suite. The Church App is one of the more comprehensive church app platforms. It provides tech-savvy churches the tools they need to engage their church members.
Pricing for the Church App isn’t exactly clear. While it costs nothing per month to use the giving feature, their website doesn’t display information about the remainder of the features. The Church App can integrate with your church’s admin tools and engagement tools.
12. ShareFaith
ShareFaith offers a full suite of church-focused services. They offer a great collection of church video loops, background graphics, theme graphics, and videos for worship services and church marketing material. They have added a bunch of other services including websites, giving services, Sunday School, VBS lessons, worship presentation software, and now church apps.
To subscribe to the ShareFaith Church App, you’ll need a ShareFaith Complete Yearly Membership, which costs $72/month billed annually or $80/month billed monthly. The full services include all the items listed above including the online or app giving service. They also do not charge for startup, which can be a big saving compared to the other services.
The app service includes some great features like:
- Streaming video and audio of sermons and sermon notes
- AirPlay or Google Play for streaming sermons from the app to a TV
- Online and app giving
- Calendar and event planning
- Bulletins and newsletter publishing
- Blogs
- Promos of upcoming events
- Push notifications
13. Elexio
Elexio is a fantastic church management software for keeping your congregation organized. It has a group management feature for managing, scheduling, and communicating with small group members. Elexio has a custom church app you can get on Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store for communicating with members anywhere. This church communication tool has a live streaming feature for airing worship services or online sermons on your church website, social media page, or church smartphone app.
Elexio is a great communication app with a task management feature to promote accountability. This church communication tool automatically notifies church staff or volunteers when a task gets assigned, even if they are not signed in to the system. Church staff and volunteers can reply to the email notification upon task completion to automatically update the system.
14. Breeze
Breeze is another church management software with a member management feature for creating, storing, and organizing member information. It has an event management feature for planning and holding events. This event management feature also lets you take attendance during events and print name tags to help members get to know each other. Breeze has a custom church app available in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store to manage your church on the go.
You can use Breeze’s email and text messaging feature to remind members about their pledges or invite them to join fundraising activities. You can use Breeze to generate financial reports and share information about the church’s financial health with stakeholders. Breeze also lets you print or email year-end giving statements to show donors your appreciation for their generosity.
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