13 Best Website Builders for Churches That Are Affordable and Easy to Use
Creating an online presence for your church is the best way to connect with your community, no matter where they are in the world.
With your website, you can share downloadable resources, upload sermons and blog posts, accept donations, and even manage events.
There’s an endless list of things to do when running a church, but luckily, building a website doesn’t have to take much time.
In this article, I’ll share my insights on 13 of the most affordable and easy-to-use website builders, so you can start ministering to more people through your site in no time.
After reviewing these church website builders, I’ll guide you, step-by-step, on how to build your church website.
Let’s get to it.
1. Church Template by Webnode
Webnode is a website builder that aims to simplify the website creation process so that anyone can design and publish their own site.
It does this through its easy drag and drop editing features, as well as great technical support when needed. They’ve got over 200 website templates you can choose from and customize the way you like.
The platform is best known for its multiple language support, so you can really present your church to a global audience. Its multilingual feature lets you create a version of your website in over 20 languages.
You can also add other features including a blog, online store, video background, and animations to make your website more dynamic and modern. Build forms and accept online payments easily with their built-in eShop options.
Plans that accept online payments or donations at Webnode start off at $11.95 to $19.95 per month. These plans include a custom domain, secure hosting, and web analytics. The main difference between the plans includes the amount of storage, bandwidth, and website backups.
Webnode would be suitable for churches with a predominantly multilingual congregation, or those who want a simple and affordable website platform.
2. Ministry Designs
MinistryDesign’s goal is to partner with your church to provide an engaging online church experience for your ministry.
The platform is easy-to-use and includes a comprehensive Content Management System (CMS) to help you manage your online sermons, blog posts, and any other content you might be posting.
You can also accept donations, integrate live streaming on your site to reach a broader audience, and keep your members updated with your own custom email address.
MinistryDesign’s team provides a one-on-one training session to help you onboard and set up your site. You’ll also get unlimited training once you start your plan.
However, MinistryDesign does not come cheap.
To get started on their platform, you’d have to pay a $1,000 one-off fee and pay $30 monthly thereafter for web hosting and your SSL certification. Unfortunately, MinistryDesigns does not have a free plan or a free trial option.
Though the features they offer are comprehensive and unlimited, MinistryDesigns may be better suited to more established churches due to the high costs associated with it.
3. Nucleus Church
Nucleus is a powerful platform to host your website that focuses on getting your church and your members to the next step in faith, through technology.
The power lies in its unlimited storage and bandwidth capabilities to support hours of your video sermons, podcasts, and other media files. It’s really simple to create playlists for your content too, so visitors can find just what they need.
It also helps you with your overall social media plan, by providing daily social media posts that you can share with your congregation. You can also access over 20,000 video clips to add flair to your church content.
Apart from media-related features, you can accept and keep 100% of the online donations with no processing fees — that’s great.
Nucleus only has one plan to gain full access to its platform. It costs $99 per month (billed annually) and comes with a 30-day trial (no credit card details needed), so you can test drive it.
For smaller churches who may need financial support, scholarships are available.
The only downfall is that you can’t really see the website templates they have on offer unless you sign up for the free trial.
4. FinalWeb Church Websites
FinalWeb is a church-specific website builder that offers the features you need to minister to your congregation, at a more affordable price.
It has a strong media focus, allowing you to host hours of video and audio sermons, which you can then curate into a library for your members. You can gain access to professional stock images to give your posts a credibility boost.
What’s impressive about this platform is its church management features. FinalWeb allows you to have subsites to cater to the different ministries you might have.
So the kid, teen, and adult ministries can all access tailored content. You can even host live streams and event countdown timers.
As robust as the platform is, FinalWeb prides itself on its easy to use interface and that you can create your website in just 5 minutes. Their website templates are also quite modern looking.
Website plans come at a single price of $29 per month (billed annually). However, if you want to add live streaming to your plan, that can cost $32 per month on top of your website plan, depending on your expected viewer count.
All FinalWeb plans come with 50 email addresses to help you administer your church.
5. ShareFaith
ShareFaith has various software products that work together to create a seamless online experience for your church.
Its main product is its easy, drag and drop website builder that’s packed with great templates and helpful features to run your church. Not only does it accept tithing and online donations, but site visitors can submit their online prayer requests too.
If you purchase their complete membership, you can turn your website into a mobile app easily with ShareFaith’s beginner-friendly app builder.
You can also access live streaming capabilities and ShareFaith’s own presentation plugin to help create inspiring slides for worship.
ShareFaith has a strong focus on kids and families, so they’ve got plenty of lessons and resources for Sunday School, Bible School, and Devotionals for the whole family.
To reap the benefits of all these great tools and features, you’ll need to pay for the ShareFaith Suite membership which is $79/month, billed annually. However, if you’re only looking for the website and media platform, then it’ll set you back $45/month, billed annually.
You can try this platform for free, but only for seven days.
6. Faithlife Sites
Just like ShareFaith, Faithlife Sites has a variety of helpful church-specific tech products to help you serve your communities. The difference is — Faithlife does so at a more affordable price.
Similar to other website platforms, you can easily create your own website without touching a single line of code — simply use the drag and drop editor. Once your site is customized the way you like it, you can explore other useful features, like Faithlife’s media library to elevate the visual content of your next service.
Faithlife’s websites are based on a “do it once” concept. That is, updates made on your website will automatically sync with your other Faithlife products like the app and the Digital Bulletin.
So, the next time you have an announcement, just update your website and your members will get the notification through Digital Bulletins.
Other products and features on Faithlife that complement your site include membership sites, unlimited pages, and extensive video hosting for sermons.
You can use Faithlife Sites with their free plan or, to unlock more features and access more storage, you can upgrade to the Premium plan for just $19.99/month.
Something to note, though, is that to get more storage for your website, you’ll have to pay for each product or feature individually. For example, the Premium plan is capped at 50GB of storage which may not be enough to host all of your media.
7. Webflow Church & Religion Website Template
What’s different about Webflow is that it’s a website builder with a built-in and robust CMS — great for content-heavy sites like church websites.
Although Webflow is not a church-specific website platform, it has great church templates and features that the modern church might need. These templates typically cost $49 upfront.
Highlights include animations and interactions to make your site look even more professional. Webflow’s ‘what you see is what you get’ editor makes it easy for you to make changes to your site in real-time. And the best part is that you won’t have to touch a line of code.
If you’ve never worked with Adobe Creative Cloud, you may find Webflow’s interface a bit intimidating. Yet, they’ve got lots of tutorials to take you through the software, so you can start creating responsive websites.
The CMS and hosting service is quite impressive too. You can manage all of your media files and rest easy, knowing that Webflow is hosted on the Amazon Web Services network. This ensures fast loading and unlimited bandwidth, no matter where your audience is.
Webflow has different plans to suit the needs of any church. The most common plan to opt for would be the CMS plan for $16 billed annually.
With this plan, you get the benefits of Webflow’s robust CMS. However, you only have an allowance for 1,000 form submissions a month, which may be a limited number for a growing church.
8. Ekklesia360
The goal at Ekklesia 360 is to create websites that encourage action from your visitors. That’s why they focus on website design, making sure church members can find what they’re looking for right away.
Through Ekklesia 360’s user-friendly drag and drop editor, anyone can create a professional website.
Posting and managing media content is also simple with the easy to use CMS. Notable features include its customizable dashboard, web-based control panel (so anyone can update the site no matter where they are), and social media synchronization for optimum marketing.
However, Ekklesia 360 comes with a high price tag. Plans range from $65 to $185, depending on the storage, bandwidth, and media features you need (e.g. live streaming). You can also get a custom quote if you want to get unlimited features.
On top of this price, you’ll also have to pay to use their themes and layouts. This can cost from $300 to $500 for the theme alone.
The good news is, if you are still interested in trying this platform out, you can do so with their free live demo. However, I would only suggest Ekklesia 360 for churches that are already of considerable size or rapidly growing.
9. Churchikon
Churchikon is one of the simplest platforms to build your church website with.
Simply choose a template, edit text and photo elements with their drag and drop tool, and you’re done — it’s that easy.
Add an image gallery to your site to showcase the outreach your members are doing around the community. Share your new posts on social media with social media integrations, and keep your members up to date with the events and happenings at your church.
For more advanced functionality, you can add an online store with multiple payment options, a prayer request form, and stream videos and podcasts.
Churchikon plans are very affordable, ranging from the basic plan at $4.90 per month to the premium plan at $7.42 a month.
The main difference is that the premium plan includes all of the advanced features. This platform would be great for smaller and more locally-focused churches.
10. Mission — Church Website Builder
Similar to Nucleus, Mission focuses on helping churches get to the next level in faith. It just does so in a more affordable way.
Some of the main draws, apart from its easy drag and drop website editor, are the built-in SEO features and unlimited blogging.
What’s unique about Mission church, though, is its sermon builder. Freely upload your sermon videos and podcasts to your site, and make it better by accompanying them with downloadable resources for your audience.
Social media integrations are available to easily spread the word and, for extra help, Mission has free online training videos and community pages to support you along the way.
Mission comes at only one price plan of $47 a month. This price is inclusive of a custom domain, web hosting, and ample storage and bandwidth. Further, 10% of the fees go towards helping other churches grow.
I’d recommend Mission if you’d like the power of Nucleus, but at a more affordable price.
11. Online Church by Wix
Wix may not be a church-specific website builder, but it packs a powerful punch when it comes to what it can offer to the modern-day church.
Wix’s church templates, like the one above, let your community easily find what they are looking for. If there are things you want to change about the template, you can do so easily with Wix’s well-known drag and drop builder.
Unlike other site builders, Wix allows for more creative freedom when it comes to customization, as it has tools that let you completely change the intricate elements of the site.
Wix’s built-in features such as Wix Video is great for uploading sermon videos, Events are good to keep your members up-to-date, and Blog will let you build on sermon topics or give your community updates.
You can also accept online payments by way of donations or by setting up your own online store through Wix’s business accounts.
Plans range from $17 a month for a Basic account to $35 a month for their VIP account. The main difference between plans is storage size. For instance, with the Business Basic account, you get 5 hours of video content, whereas, with Business VIP, you get unlimited video hours.
Wix is great for those churches that value creative freedom when it comes to designing their website.
12. Church123 Church Website Builder
As the name suggests, Church123 makes it really easy to create a website in three simple steps.
First, pick a template that suits your church. Second, edit the template as you wish. Third, add content to your site and that’s it — ou’re ready to publish and share your site with your community.
Church123 has all the features you need to run a successful church website, namely, great media management to make it easy for you to showcase all the great things your church is doing.
The platform does this through generous storage to host your podcast sermons, video embedments, and photo galleries.
You can also add as many third-party integrations as you want. Some integrations that may be helpful for your site include an online event calendar, surveys, daily Bible verses powered by Bible Gateway, blogging functionality, and online donation buttons.
Church123 also has an advice and support center if you need help with anything.
Plans are billed quarterly or annually. If you take the annual package, it can cost $370 per year or $30.83 a month, plus $22.50 a year for your custom domain name. All plans include business email, unlimited pages, storage, and fast web hosting.
I’d recommend Church123 for those who value simplicity above all else. Plus, you can try out their platform for 30 days free of charge.
13. Zyro Website Builder
Zyro is a fast loading and user-friendly website builder. It has many stunning, professionally-designed website templates that you can choose from and customize to suit your church. The templates are also responsive so people can visit your site from any device.
Its drag and drop editor, as well as the handy grid layout, makes it super easy to snap text, images, and videos right into place. And the great thing is — you don’t need any design or coding knowledge to get started.
You also won’t need prior marketing knowledge. That’s because Zyro’s impressive AI-powered marketing tools, such as the content and slogan generator, can help you write clever copy, while it’s free logo maker can help elevate the overall look of your church website.
To keep your community updated, you can also add a page to post your latest blog articles or daily devotionals. Simply add a new page, customize it, and start writing.
If you’re looking to share downloadable resources, and sell digital or tangible items, you can do so with Zyro’s eCommerce platform. Some noteworthy features include its gift voucher options and advanced analytics to help you understand your congregation better.
If you’re not looking to sell items online or accept donations, the Unleashed plan at $2.99/month is perfect for you. However, to get the most value from Zyro, I recommend going for the eCommerce plan which costs $8.99/month.
Zyro’s paid plans come with free web hosting, blogging tools, and an SSL certificate to ensure top security.
How to Use These Church Website Builders to Get Your Site Up and Running
There are so many options out there when it comes to the best church website builders. The great thing is they all have one thing in common: beginner-friendly set-up.
In this section, I’ll show you how to get started with your church website. I’m going to use Zyro as an example because it’s my top pick for being easy to use and offering great value for your money.
1. Choose a template
Zyro’s got many beautiful designer templates to choose from. Here, I’m going with Kenzie, because I want the photo to be impactful when visitors visit my website. I clicked the Change Background button to start off my customization.
2. Customize it
Zyro is automatically linked to Unsplash. So even if you don’t have any of your own professional church photos taken yet, you can still publish a beautiful site. You’ll have access to over one million free stock images.
I decided to go for a lively worship image to show what my example ‘church’ is about. I easily changed the Title and Headings by double-clicking on the text, and it came up with the text editor.
You can use their handy AI writer tool on the sidebar to help you write catchy content. All you need to do is click on the AI button, choose the category you want to write about, and it’ll come up with engaging content that you can copy, edit, and paste onto your website.
3. Ready to publish
Here I am, just one click away from publishing my own church website. As you can see, it really is as easy as 1, 2, 3 with Zyro.
Choose The Best Church Website Builder
It’s important to have all the features that are necessary for creating a true community online at your disposal. Furthermore, you’ll need to aim for the right balance between modern user experience and traditional church values.
These features include a rich media experience, a place to engage members, and a strong call to action.
In this article, I’ve shared 13 of the best website building platforms for churches in 2020.
And of all the platforms on this list, my top pick is Zyro. It’s simple and easy to use, without losing any functionality in the process. It also offers great value for money and a 30-day money-back guarantee if you decide you don’t like it after all.
I hope this article has helped you in making a decision.
All the best!
