The design of a church website is the best way to spread the words of God into a broader spectrum of audiences.
A church website is also the top-notch platform for the people, who want to stay connected with the representatives of the church, join the congregation, or want to be well informed about all the special programs, events, and meetings in the church community.
Apart from the current members, almost 80% of the new visitors check out the website of a church before stepping into the building.
Hosted Website Builders are the best solution for creating a church website.
No messing with the Developers, No messing with hosting, only results. Thats the promise of website builders.
But there are innumerable numbers of free as well as paid website builders in the digital market. Then how can you choose the ideal one for your church website design?
Well, this article will separate the best website builder from the lot.
What to look for in a Website Builder?
Any website created in a builder will display the basic information like contact number, map, and location of the church. Integration of social media accounts, adding videos, images, content, and pages are also fundamental elements of the website builders. There will be no problem at all in downloading the resources for online visitors to the website. But before making any purchasing decision, let us take a sneak peek into the checklists of the best website builder for the churches.
- Easy to Use: This is the most vital aspect to look out for if you are not an expert coder. If you are an amateur and do not have any knowledge about backend coding, UX, and hosting, then you should select an intuitive website builder. Simple drag and drop, click through segments and well-organized sections will help you to create a church website without any headache.
- SSL: SSL or Secured Socket Layer protects the website visitors from any kind of hacking or malware. It helps to encrypt the personal information of the visitor keeping it safe and secure. This is another significant aspect of this online confessional world.
- Online Store: Sometimes churches sell souvenirs online on their website. So there should be an option to set up an online store for the devotees to purchase something directly from the website.
- Donations: We all know that on some occasions, you might need to pitch into the people visiting your website requesting donations. Thus a secure and safe payment gateway should also be incorporated into the website builder that you will be going to use for the design purpose.
- Setting up of the events: Churches often arrange for events. A website will let all the members of the church take a glance at the calendar. An RSVP can also be created to get an estimate of how many people will be attending the event.
- Area for the Members only : The website builder should also include certain pages that will be locked for general visitors. Only Father, Volunteers, or administration of the church will have access to them.
- Integration of a newsletter : Many website builders come with their own newsletter service. Other includes forms for newsletter registration by letting you add some codes in the template.
- Sermons: Nowadays churches record the sermons and upload those into the page of the same name in the MP3 format. These sermons will be available to the devotees so that they can download or listen to them anytime and anywhere. Make sure the website builder you will be going to choose to have this format of uploading the sermons.
5 Best Website Builder for Churches
Now without further much ado let us have a quick look into the curated list of the top 5 website builders for the church theme.
- Wix – Best OverAll
- Weebly – Good Editor
- Squarespace – Decent Templates
- ShareFaith
- Nucleus
# 1. Wix (Recommended)
Wix is an immensely popular website builder which is used by millions of users worldwide. It has a powerful visual editor which lets you have precise control over your website layout.
Powerful Church Specific Features
- Wix boasts of powerful church specific features.
- The church templates in the Wix are mainly found in the non-profit and religion section of the library segment.
- There are a total of 18 templates for the church in Wix, so there is more than one option to meet all the needs of the designer.
- All the designs of the templates are mobile-friendly too. It is one of the most versatile website builders for creating a fully functional and great looking website for the church. Customization is straightforward and maintenance is minimal in Wix.
What Makes Wix a Great Choice for the Church Websites?
1. Great collection of Church specific Templates :
The church templates in the Wix are mainly found in the non-profit and religion section of the library segment.
There are a total of 18 templates for the church in Wix, so there is more than one option to meet all the needs of the designer. What’s more, Wix is constantly releasing more and more templates. So one thing is for sure, you will never run out of design options for your website.
2. Donation Feature:
The payment gateway integration makes it straightforward to collect donations directly on your website.
3. Event Management Module
Makes it easier for the members to remember the upcoming events of the church. You can sell the tickets, track the RSVP, and send our reminders to the members before the event through the website designed in Wix builder.
4. Mobile Responsive Templates
A large portion on non tech savvy users use mobile are their primary device. So it is important that your website caters to mobile users. Wix has you covered here. The church templates (and all others) are mobile responsive by default.
5. Google Maps Integration
Every church website must have a google map integration. This will ensure that mobile visitors will be able to get driving directions with a single tap. This becomes particularly important for festivals.
6. Deep Social Media Integration
Wix boasts of deep social media integration. It means that media related to Church Events can be easily pushed to social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
7. Affordable
Wix is an affordable website builder. You can make a full-featured website for a few 100 USD per year. What’s more, it even has a free plan which lets you test drive the feature without making any upfront payment.
Conclusion
Wix is best choice for creating a church website. It is feature rich, easy to use and affordable.
2. Weebly
Weebly is one of the easiest website builders to implement for the novice. The essentials in Weebly can be tweaked but it will not mess up the basic structure of the website. Team management, separate membership area, and event and calendar adding features are present in all the responsive templates of Weebly. The slick editor of this website builder offers drag and drop blocks for the content for better control and design flexibility. You can also add third-party applications like an HD video player and a bold donation button. There is also an option to offer ebooks and audiobooks from Scribd to the church members.
What Makes Weebly Perfect for Church Websites?
The features that make Weebly perfect website builder for the church websites are:
- In-Built Live Chat facility allows the members to interact with each other. Prayer requests can also be sent through the chat feature of Weebly
- Personalized surveys, polls, and forums help to generate forms to collect RSVPs for the church events, opinions about a subject or discussion about the sermons
- Website Booster enhances the brand visibility in the search engines that will help the passer-by parishioners to stop by your website for prayer
3. Squarespace
Are you seeking a minimalist, clean, and modern website builder for the church? Then Squarespace is the one for you. The great features of Squarespace allow regular updates from the church on the website. The online store for selling the souvenir is simple to add, set up, and manage. Sourcing of the images for the website is also legal through the integration of apps like Getty and Unsplash. We would recommend the templates from the Community and Non-profit section of the website builder for church designs. Mission, donation, appointment bookings for the confession, integration of social media accounts, and volunteers are some of the features that can be added in the template.
What Makes Squarespace Ideal for Church Websites?
The notable features of Squarespace that make it an ideal website builder for the churches are as below.
- SEO aspects in the templates allow customizing the descriptions and titles of the pages for those who are looking for a church to worship locally. There is also a checklist of the SEO to identify the related keywords of the pages and optimize the content of the website.
- Management of the mailing list helps you to invite members for church events, regular parish newsletters, and special announcements.
- Recurring payments and Donations can be set up in a separate page so that the members can make pledges whenever it is convenient for them
4. ShareFaith
ShareFaith is one of the oldest website builders for building websites for the church. More than 8000 church websites have been created with ShareFaith. The extensive template library contains unlimited themes for the churches. It comes with a drag and drops editor that makes designing a piece of cake. The Worship Leader Magazine has presented ShareFait for the Best of the Best awards for nine years. All the previous clients of ShareFaith adore the adaptability to create a church website.
What Makes ShareFaith a good partner for the Church Websites?
Let us take a look at some of the features of ShareFaith that makes it a good partner for the church websites.
- Preloaded pages like about us, contact us, and the calendar is already there after downloading the template. The pages also contain some content which can be swapped with a text or image of your own.
- Live streaming of sermons and the ability to download them is another added feature of this website builder
- Other features like lessons for Sunday school, software for worship, and vacation bible school can also be incorporated in ShareFaith’s church website.
- Media Integration like podcasting, online sharing, and tithing can also be done
5. Nucleus
The nucleus is the all in one hub for the website builder for the church website. The drag and drop and integration of application features make website design uncomplicated. Robust manager of forms, clean segments for blogs, contact us, donations, and calendar are some of the features that make Nucleus a popular one among the list. A sermon and a prayer request page can also be added to download the latest recordings from the church.
What Makes Nucleus Wonderful for Church Websites?
Below are the reasons that make Nucleus a wonderful partner for designing the church websites.
- Easy to use interface makes it one of the top all in one hub for the creation of church websites. All the information is gathered in one place making things easy for the congregation.
- Any type of forms can be added to increase the engagement of the visitors
Conclusion
Thanks for reading this article with so much patience. With the above 5 website builders for the creation of the church site, we have tried to enlist everything for everyone regardless of any technical abilities, requirements, and budget. Whichever platform you finally decided to go with, we would recommend designing a demo first and then going with the final edit. Amen!