5 Best Church Website Builders in 2024
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January 5, 2024
Jan 5, 2023 (updated Feb 6, 2024) byThe 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.
Below are five church website builders that will continue to make waves in the faith community in the years ahead.
Criteria for selecting the best church website builder
Before delving into the top five picks, let's explore the essential factors that churches should take into account when choosing a website builder.
Churches need a website platform that prioritizes flexibility, user-friendliness, and robust functionality. Furthermore, it's crucial to consider features such as seamless online donation capability, integration with social media, and the ability to share church events and news. Easy access to customer support should not be overlooked. Affordability is important, particularly for smaller to mid-sized congregations. Churches should also seek a website builder with the capability to customize visual elements, including colors, design, and overall aesthetics, to align with their unique branding.
Popular website builders for churches were assessed by this criteria and ranked below. Overall, GabrielSoft is the best church website builder and will work well for a wide range of congregation sizes and church needs.
Top 5 Church Website Builders
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GabrielSoft
The best church website builder in 2024 is GabrielSoft.
Since 2005, GabrielSoft has created digital tools to serve the church's mission and help faith communities thrive online.
With GabrielSoft’s easy-to-use church website builder, you can create and launch a beautifully designed website in minutes. Our drag-and-drop functionality and built-in content modules make it simple to add blog posts, event calendars, social media feeds, embed your live streams, and much more—all in just a few clicks.
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.
GabrielSoft’s all-in-one Engage Packages cover everything you need to inspire connection, generosity, and engagement. Some plans also include:
Group messaging for reaching your members on the go;
Live streaming for broadcasting Sunday worship and special events;
Secure online giving and payment tools to help your community give joyfully and seamlessly manage payments for ticketed events and fundraisers.
With industry-leading security, automatic updates, and a design that looks stunning on any device, GabrielSoft makes it easy for visitors to find worship times, explore events, and learn about your community wherever they are.
Plus, every GabrielSoft Engage plan includes our unlimited, award-winning customer support. Your team is ready to provide free one-on-one support and training via email or phone, Monday through Friday, whenever you need it.
If you're ready for a fully integrated platform that simplifies church engagement, GabrielSoft is here to help! Contact our team today to learn how GabrielSoft can help your church, school, or ministry thrive online.GabrielSoft Features Summary
Cost: Varies by plan–contact us for details or learn more here.
Full features included: Yes, on every plan
Built for churches: Yes
Hosting included: Yes
Online Giving: Included in all Engage plans, with no setup, monthly, or annual fees
Group Messaging: Yes, comes integrated with Engage Grow & Max plans
Live Streaming: Yes, comes with Engage Max plan
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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 third-party payment solutions (e.g., PayPal, Venmo, WooCommerce, etc.).
Group Messaging: No, requires third-party service integrations
Live Streaming: No, requires third-party service integrations
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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.
Group Messaging: No, requires third-party service integrations
Live Streaming: No, requires third-party service integrations
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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.
Group Messaging: No, requires third-party service integrations
Live Streaming: No, requires third-party service integrations
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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).
Group Messaging: Yes (as an add-on?)
Live Streaming: Yes (as an add-on?)
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 reach out to us with any questions or feel free to schedule a call with our GabrielSoft team for a look under the hood!