What platform should our church build our website on?

The response to this question is closely connected to question #3 concerning the cost of building a website. When you buy a car you don’t just look at the cost, you also look at key features. Ultimately the cost and features will add up to the right car for you. The same is true of website platforms. Just like I did in question #3, I’m going to break down platform options into categories. There will be some overlap, but here I’ll be focusing on features instead of cost.

OPTION 1: TEMPLATED CHURCH PLATFORM

Platforms that come with a selection of templates, many built-in church features, and a monthly subscription fee.

Pros: These platforms are built for churches. They come with sermon/media, donation, small group, and event applications. Some even have their own built-in Church Management System. These platforms are great for churches looking for an easy DIY option with designs that are generally pleasing for churches

Cons: First, the costs of maintaining and continuing to develop a website platform is huge and most of these church website platforms are too small to support such an important platform. As a result you get more down time and glitches.

Second, many of the built in features are things your church management system already does and probably does better.

Last, these platforms typically lock you into a certain design without many customization options. If you want to keep your site simple then you’ll be okay, but if you want to do anything custom (which pastors often do) then you may hit a wall.

Favorites: If you decide to go down this road the two platforms I would look at are Clover Sites, and The Church Co. Clover Sites has been around forever and creates a pretty good looking template for a reasonable price. I’ve built a couple websites on their platform and while the lack of customization keeps me away, it may be okay for you. The Church Co* is a little newer to the scene but I've been very impressed with their platform, price points, and above all their integrations. They have figured out how to integrate your Planning Center or CCB applications directly into your pages, which is a game changer. This integration feature is available even if you don't use their website platform.

* The Church Co is an affiliate of ours because we recommend their integration only subscription for Planning Center Users. While we do make money on people subscribing through our link, we would recommend this platform regardless.

OPTION 2: TEMPLATED GENERIC PLATFORM

Platform that comes with a selection of generic templates, built with businesses in mind, for monthly subscription fee.

Pros: The big “pros” for this type of platform are the price points, quality development, and customization options. The first two “pros" come as a result of them being bigger companies with more resources. Because they’ve figured out the website biz, they’re able to keep their subscription costs lower than church website platforms and they have the team to keep it running smoothly, fix problems quickly, and keep developing it as technology evolves.

The third “pro” is probably the most important to me because at Clearpath, we build 95% of our websites on one of these platforms called Squarespace. I’m not going to get into it right now but I have many reasons why I prefer to build websites on Squarespace (click for blog article dedicated to this question) and one of them is the balance between a VERY well developed CMS (content management system) with the option to code in your own designs with css (cascading style sheets). This means you can easily break out of their system design settings if they don’t suit your needs. This is very hard to do with church website platforms.

Cons: These platforms are not built for churches. This means you’re getting features you don’t need and you’re not getting church specific applications you may want. The latter reason is enough for many DIYers to avoid this option completely. 14

Favorite: There is only one platform I recommend that’s Squarespace*. We’ve built website on others, but have learned the hard way that Squarespace is by far the superior platform and has everything we need to build a church a quality custom website. Then when we hand the site over after launch, the church has all the tools they need to manage the website instead of having to hire a developer whenever something breaks or needs changing.

* Squarespace is an affiliate of ours. While we do make money on people subscribing through our link, we would recommend this platform regardless.

OPTION 3: SUBSCRIPTION-BASED AGENCY

Wordpress is an open source platform that allows you to use purchased templates and customize them to your liking using visual editor and/or custom code. Wordpress is a platform worth singling out as it’s very popular among churches and businesses and because it does have significant pros and cons.

Pros: The thing churches love about Wordpress is that it is fully customizable. You can take about any template and with enough coding knowledge you can make it do pretty much anything. Also in the “pro “category, Wordpress can be very cheap. It’s cheap when you use a template and you don’t do any customization (or you know how to code and can do it yourself).

Cons: While Wordpress can be cheap, it can also get very expensive pretty quickly. You see when you add third party plugins or builders, which you almost certainly will, you have to pay for these plugins and/or work hard to make them work for you. There’s also usually a fair amount of coding that needs to 15 get done and so you’ll need to pay a developer. Developers are (typically) not designers, so you need to tell them what you want or have a developer + designer team.

Bottom line, Wordpress can be very useful and powerful, but the extreme flexibility the platform gives you also makes it more complicated, frustrating, and potentially more expensive.

If you would like to speak to me about Clearpath designing your website I’d love to have that conversation. Even if you don't go with Clearpath as your design agency, I'd love to chat and help guide you in the right direction.