5 Best Church Website Builders in 2023

Dec 6, 2022 by

Brandon Duncan

The easiest way to ensure your church is ready to spread the Good News online is with the right website builder. 

Today, so many options are available to help you build a beautiful church website, but finding the best one to serve your needs can take time and testing. 

Any church leader seeking to increase their reach online will need the right tools to effectively serve and communicate with their members.

Here are five church website builders that we think will continue to make waves in the faith community in the years ahead.

1

GabrielSoft

Since 2005, we’ve created digital tools to serve the church's mission and help faith communities thrive online. 

Our easy-to-use church website builder can help you design your website within minutes using our drag-and-drop functionality and built-in content modules. These modules allow you to add relevant content to your website, such as blog posts, calendar events, social media news feeds, Sunday live streams, and much more!

GabrielSoft provides many different options for your style preferences, including beautiful free themes with custom color schemes and fonts for added flexibility to your design. 

We also offer seamless online giving and payment solutions for churches to inspire cheerful givers to donate more frequently and capture any possible payments for fundraisers, ticket sales, and even school tuition.

Our affordable church website builder subscription packages – starting at only $25/month – include ongoing updates and industry-leading security.

All GabrielSoft websites are designed to look beautiful on any device, whether on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer, allowing you to reach more people. This will also enable visitors to quickly locate service times and learn more about your vibrant faith community.

And, of course, GabrielSoft provides unlimited, award-winning customer support! As a GabrielSoft customer, you'll enjoy free one-on-one support and training via email or phone.

We'd love for you to try GabrielSoft by signing up for a free 30-day trial. Click here to get started or learn how our platform can work wonders for your church, school, or ministry by scheduling a free demo. We look forward to serving you!

GabrielSoft Features Summary

Cost: $25 to $55/month (paid annually)
Full features included: Yes, on every plan
Built for churches: Yes
Hosting included: Yes
Online Giving: Available as an add-on service and only a 3.1% processing fee 
Customer support: Yes, available Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST by email or phone.

And if you think GabrielSoft isn't the right fit, here are a few other options we think might work for you:

2

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms online, currently powering over forty percent of all websites on the internet! Its user-friendly dashboard, extensive theme options, and a steady supply of third-party plugins for adding greater functionality make it easy to build a website that suits your needs.

While WordPress does not include drag-and-drop functionality, it can be added by purchasing third-party plugins such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, or Visual Composer. Each might take a little time to learn, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be designing in no time.

If you’re not tech-savvy, WordPress can be more hands-on than you may like, as you'll need to set up your own web hosting plan, connect your domain, and manage software & security updates. Being the most popular platform also makes it an easy target for cyber attacks, so having a reliable security monitoring plugin like Wordfence ($99-$950/year) is a must! 

Sadly, the biggest downside to WordPress is there’s no customer support. Having an experienced web developer within reach might be a good idea for your first attempt.

Despite some of its pitfalls, WordPress is still the platform of choice for many. It has tons of flexibility to push the limits of what it can do, especially with the help of a skilled coder. If this is your first website or if you need a more hands-off church website builder, WordPress may not be the best choice for a novice looking to get their feet wet.

Wordpress Features Summary

Cost: Free to $1,000+ annually
Full features included: Yes
Built for churches: No
Hosting included: No
Online Giving: No, but it can be integrated with just about any payment solution (i.e., PayPal, Venmo, WooCommerce, etc.).
Customer support: None. However, there are support forums and online WordPress communities with tons of helpful information and resources (if you have the time to sift through them all).

3

Squarespace

Squarespace can be a good platform for launching a new church website if you're just getting started. With attractive templates and intuitive design tools, including their drag-and-drop functionality, Squarespace can help you create a website that'll keep your church members connected. However, Squarespace is a general website builder that caters to all industries, which means church-specific functionality is lacking.

Squarespace also offers a library of add-ons to extend your website's capabilities, which, unfortunately, cater mainly to the needs of bloggers and e-commerce sites. Since add-ons are managed by third-party developers, you'll not only pay a separate licensing fee or monthly subscription but any technical issues are not covered by Squarespace's customer support. 

Squarespace offers affordable website plans starting at $16 per month, which is pretty reasonable for any website builder. However, you will need to upgrade to their Business Plan for $23/month ($276 paid annually) to access more advanced features, including online giving. 

Squarespace Features Summary

Cost: $16 to $49/month (paid annually)
Full features included: No, depends on plan level.
Built for churches: No
Hosting included: Yes
Online Giving: Available only with their Business, Basic and Advanced plans.
Customer support: Yes, help is available 24/7 by email only.

4

Wix

Wix is an all-in-one website builder made explicitly for businesses but offers a variety of professional website templates for churches, each with its unique design, color scheme, and layout. Their drag-and-drop builder makes it simple to add text, images, buttons, or videos anywhere on your page without any coding knowledge. 

Wix hosts all customer websites, so you don't have to worry about managing or updating your website, as everything is taken care of for you. 

Suppose you're looking to add additional functionality to your website, like online giving. In that case, Wix offers its own payments solution but requires you to upgrade to one of its Business Plans, starting at $27/month plus processing fees.

Wix Features Summary

Cost: $16 to $45/month (paid annually)
Full features included: No, depends on plan level.
Built for churches: No
Hosting included: Yes
Online Giving: Yes, but requires an upgrade to their Basic Business, Unlimited, or VIP plans, which would increase your overall cost to $27 to $59/month (paid annually) plus processing fees of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Customer support: Yes, non-priority support available 24/7. Priority support only on more expensive plans.

5

ShareFaith

ShareFaith's user-friendly tools and features make it simple for churches of all sizes to create attractive websites and connect easily with their congregation. For those who like the functionality of WordPress but don't want to deal with upgrades, maintenance, or security, ShareFaith is essentially a managed WordPress platform built specifically for churches. 

Along with your ShareFaith subscription ($50/month), you'll gain access to their stock media library to keep your website looking fresh and engaging throughout the year.

Online giving can also be added to your website but would increase your subscription to $84/month, which could be a deal-breaker for some smaller church communities. 

Overall, ShareFaith is a strong option, but the additional costs for advanced features and services could make it the least budget-friendly.

ShareFaith Features Summary

Cost: $50/month (paid annually)
Full features included: No, depends on plan level.
Built for churches: Yes
Hosting included: Yes
Online Giving: Yes, but it will require you to upgrade your subscription to $84/month (or $1,008 per year).
Customer support: Yes, it is available Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST by email or phone.

No matter what church website builder you choose, you’ll want to make sure it has the functionality you need, the flexibility to grow with you over time, and the support to back you up. 

As website technology continually evolves, you can count on GabrielSoft to be on the leading edge and to serve as your online mission partner every step of the way! Be sure to click the banner below to get started on your free 30-day trial – no obligation, no credit card required.