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  • The 7 Best CMS Systems for Your Church Website

The 7 Best CMS Systems for Your Church Website

Jesse Orndorff —  September 24, 2010 — 37 Comments

As a web designer, developer, or church staff member, you have to update your church website. Usually it is a small change, updating an event, posting a new sermon, or writing a blog post. The best and simplest way to update your site is using a content management system. These systems provide an easy user interface that makes your website easy to update, come with add on components that add in additional functionality, and allow you to easily change website designs. Today I wanted to share the 7 best CMS systems you can use for your church website, enjoy!

LightCMS


This is by far my favorite platform to design and develop for! When designing a church website, I first suggest them to use the Light system. Developed with the church in mind, the system easily allows your staff to update your website, with very little (or no) HTML knowledge. It allows for ANY element to be drag and drop ready, so you can move anything to anywhere on the page. Also, simple donations, email forms, and calendar features are included. The software is hosted, so there is a monthly fee, depending on the amount of pages you have, but a great system!

If your a designer/developer, you will love the way the system works. Design two pages, one home, one interior, code them, drop in LightCMS tags to define what is an edible region and you’re set!

WordPress


If you’re looking for a great content management system, easy to use, and are on a budget, nothing can beat WordPress for your church’s website. I have received such an overwhelming amount of requests for WordPress sites in the last year that I am launching a WordPress focused design company!

WordPress offers a lot in terms of features, with a large community of developers offering free or low cost plugins, a huge template market, and WordPress is free! All you really need is a web host and you can be up and running. For churches on a budget, this is the way to go.

Resources:
Official WordPress Site:
WordPress.org
Paid Themes:
ThemeForest WP Themes
Woo Themes
Free Themes:
Free WordPress Templates

Pagelime


Pagelime is a unique offering, focusing on designers, this simple CMS allows you host your own website, then update it using their hosted CMS. I have used this on a few client sites and I was very impressed. Simply plug-in their code into any area of a site you want to make editable and you’re set. They offer a free account for up-to 3 sites.

Halogy


This one is probably unknown to a lot of users, but I stumbled across this CMS a few months ago and was blown away with how simple this CMS is to use. This is one of the few systems that allows you to buy the source code, host it on your server, and develop on top of it. Created using PHP, this system is extremely fixable.

Features include the ability to add templates, add a shopping cart, and edit content in a simple way! Check them out.

Expression Engine


One of most complete and advanced CMS systems on the market today. Some of the biggest companies run their sites using this system and the features are outstanding! A large development community and support will be able to help you get started.

A few downsides include a larger start-up cost and because the system is complex, the learning curve is steep.

Ekklesia 360


One of the only two CMS on this list that was built specifically for churches. I have not used the system, but I have heard from a few companies that swear by it for church websites. Church specific modules, sermon manager, and member system all make this system very unique.

SquareSpace


SquareSpace has come a long way and is one of the best CMS systems available. For only $12 a month, you will get a hosted website, that you can hand to anyone to update. Easy to update, templates, and blogging are all a few features that this CMS includes.

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Jesse Orndorff

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Jesse Orndorff is a professional website designer from Seattle. Jesse is the founder of Glean, a church website design studio. He is also the owner of Bearded Design, a web development company that provides websites to small businesses. As a youth pastor, Jesse founded Church Website Ideas to help inspire pastors to make their websites more effective in their ministries.

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  • http://www.christianxoopsresources.com Steve K

    Nice round up of some reasonably priced web solutions, Jesse. I conducted a similar round up for open source alternatives, focusing mostly on the resources they offered churches and ministries, but also looking at some of the barriers to entry. Have a look – http://christianxoopsresources.com/modules/article/view.article.php/a33

  • http://www.jesseorndorff.com Jesse Orndorff

    @Steve

    Great list! This is always one of the hardest areas for developing a website. Finding a nice mix between usability, features and cost can be a challenge.

    Cheers!

  • http://www.jesseorndorff.com Jesse Orndorff

    @Steve

    Great list! This is always one of the hardest areas for developing a website. Finding a nice mix between usability, features and cost can be a challenge.

    Cheers!

  • http://www.hkbp.net HKBP

    Waw, great …
    I think this better for our church …

  • http://www.faithengineer.com Mike

    Great list. I’ve used LightCMS and WordPress and they are both awesome solutions.

  • http://www.jesseorndorff.com Jesse Orndorff

    @mike

    Yeah, LightCMS is by far my favorite.

  • http://www.zackesgar.com Zack Esgar

    I personally love Joomla for church set ups because of the amazing components that can be easily integrated into the website with no hassle. I also like Joomla because I can design a site and then leave it to the church staff to easily manage their own content……

  • Raphael

    In my opinion Joomla&Drupal are better than WP….

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  • http://www.iMinistries.org Church CMS

    Thanks for a great list. I use an new up-and-coming Church CMS provider – iMinistries. Their CMS has tons of features, is scalable, has free templates and also nicer looking templates for $75. And if your church or ministry uses them now you can have an iPhone app for $999, too. Hard to beat.

  • Anonymous

    We did our church website using Drupal. Overall a great experience, and you can’t beat free. Good community support, hundreds of useful modules, some nice themes, almost too much capability. If we hadn’t done Drupal, I expect our next choice would have been WordPress, although it seems most WordPress sites end up looking like blogs.

  • Anonymous

    Drupal is a great free choice. My only concern with it is that it tends to be too geek friendly. Meaning, that your standard volunteer or office worker might not understand how it works.

    If you are interested in a new open source CMS, I just came across Halogy (http://www.halogy.com/) which makes the site super easy to edit for anyone.

  • http://webmama.co.uk/ Ecommerce Software

    Wow it is amazing.I think I should try it into my
    Ecommerce Website that it can get a lot of visitors..
    Thanks for this blog.I’ll share it with my facebook friends

  • http://webmama.co.uk/ Ecommerce Software

    Wow it is amazing.I think I should try it into my
    Ecommerce Website that it can get a lot of visitors..
    Thanks for this blog.I’ll share it with my facebook friends

  • Gus

    We are looking to use Light and love it for all the same reasons that you list. One of the area’s that I am a little hesitant in is the sermon management part. How have you handled this with Light?

  • Anonymous

    Gus,

    With Light it is still a little clunky. I find the best way is to still use a third party sermon plugin, like http://www.sermoncast.com/

    I have noticed over the last few months that Light has been focusing more on small businesses, which I hope doesn’t mean they will stop adding ministry features.
    –
    Jesse Orndorff

  • Gus

    Interesting that you point to sermoncast.com when they seem to just be a third part vender of http://sermonstudio.net/pricing.html – looks like they just grabbed this screen shot. You can also find sermonstudio.net labeled as http://sermon.net/ – you can find the same pricing structure on this page: http://site.sermon.net/broadcast/features/

    The problem I have with their service is that I don’t like the look of their player and it does not give a very good video option.

  • guest

    Have tried out all of the above, but the problem is you want it straightforward and easy.
    The average user must be able to update the site quickly, without spending hours trying to learn the system.
    Have finally settled for swiftycms

  • guest

    oops, error for the link,
    here is correcct one
    swiftycms

  • http://twitter.com/livingos Tim Hyde

    Great list. WordPress is pretty much everywhere now. I have been running wordpresschurch.org in various forms since 2004 – we have big showcase of churches using it.

  • http://www.adodis.com/Free-Ecommerce-Software.php Free Ecommerce Software

    It really sounds well, but there are some companies who provide ready made website for a very low cost with all in all features along with hosting and can start business online for just few minutes a head. This really save lot of time and money.

  • http://www.faithconnector.com/church-websites FaithConnector Church Websites

    FaithConnector.com has a great mix of features for churches at a very good price.

  • http://justin.am/ Justin Wise

    Thanks for the Ekklesia360 mention, Jesse. We appreciate it!

  • Anonymous

    Hey Justin,

    No problem! I love what you guys are doing over there.

  • http://www.facebook.com/timcortesi Tim Cortesi

    Jesse - 

    Great list! 
    You might also want to check out SteepleConnect (www.steepleconnect.com), which like Ekklesia 360 is actually designed from the ground up to be specifically targeted towards churches (unlike WordPress, Joomla, LightCMS.. etc).  It’s got some pretty neat social features like a Prayer Wall and Facebook Integration as well.  It also has a totally free pricing tier.  

    (Full disclosure, I am the developer of SteepleConnect so I may be a bit biased!)

    -Tim

  • http://www.theuniuni.com/ cheap bras

    Amazing write-up! This could aid plenty of people find out more about this particular issue. Are you keen to integrate video clips coupled with these? It would absolutely help out. Your conclusion was spot on and thanks to you; I probably won’t have to describe everything to my pals. I can simply direct them here!

  • sally

    i have a question … there is quite a price difference among platforms …  how would you suggest sorting through the prices?  

  • Anonymous

    Hey Sally, 

    It really depends on your budget. If you need something free and are ok paying a small hosting fee, WordPress is great.

    If you are developing out 100% custom website, Expression Engine is fantastic. Expensive, but wonderful.

    I would stay away from Halogy at this point, it is difficult to setup and has been lacking in support lately.

    If you want someone to develop a custom site for you, the team over at Monk Dev and ekklesia360 are wonderful people.

  • Kenny Schuble

    In one of your comments you said LCMS has been doing more business than church, would that still be your choice for a church web site ?

  • Anonymous

    Right now, I think LightCMS is still one of the best CMS for churches. If I had to build a site right now, yes it would be on LightCMS.

  • Kenny Schuble

    Thank You for your reply but, that is with your not ever using Ekklesia 360 correct ?

  • Anonymous

    Hey Kenny,

    I have used Ekklesia 360, just a demo not on a live site. I still prefer LightCMS.

    Both are great platforms. If I was building a large church site, lots of people updating it, and using lots of media I would look more at Ekkesia. For a simple church site, with less tech savvy users updating it, I would go for Light. It all depends on your need.

    Jesse

  • http://www.garden4less.co.uk/weber-barbeque.asp Melissa @ weber bbq uk

    WordPress is a popular CMS among lots of people, even I use wordpress and it is really cost effective.

  • Anonymous

    My church is gonna use Joomla. They tasked me with building it so I turned to a Scout leader who does this stuff and he uses Joomla so that’s what I’m using. I’m also building one for the Troop using it, and the the church and Troop will split hosting costs, but get two different domains.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kirk.strobeck Kirk Strobeck

    You may want to add http://churchdeploy.com to the list, its the engine behind http://atheycreek.com