Seven template sites for building a church website

March 22, 2010 in for Churches

Most churches want a good website.

However, I’m hearing from lots of churches that they don’t have the skills in-house to build a website.

There’s a growing selection of businesses that offer church websites that are based off a template design. These are often cheaper than building a site from scratch – you just choose a pre-designed template, customise it (e.g. add your own logo and content), and then voila – you’ve got your church a website!

There’s lots of sites that provide templates for church websites for various content management systems (e.g. WordPress, Expression Engine, Drupal, etc) – the difference with the sites in this list is that they include lots of features standard (you don’t need to add the plug-ins yourself), and they look after the hosting for you.

Here’s seven that I’m aware of – let me know if you’ve heard of others:

  1. Clover Sites – one-time fee of US$1,000, monthly fee of $20.
  2. E-zekiel – one-time fee of US$18, with plans at $12, $28 and $64 per month.
  3. Ekklesia 360 – couldn’t find pricing details on their website.
  4. Faith Connector – one-time set-up fee of US$250, with monthly plans of $54 or $79.
  5. Collision Media – one-time set-up fee of US$1199 or $2499, with monthly hosting and support from $29.
  6. Church 123 – $US95 per quarter.
  7. Aquacept – one-time set-up fees starting at US$1800, with monthly plans starting at $49.95.

Update: another site I’ve come across is Church Plant Media.

If you use or have used one of these services, what has your experience been?

If you are one of these providers, we’d love to hear what makes you different and why churches should use you!

  • http://www.aquacept.com Ramah

    There are a lot of things that make Aquacept different from everyone else. Most other design companies have an “Only” mentality. They only recommend services they get commission on, they only use templates, they only use the same layout for their clients but change the colors. They only design your website but arent helpful with any other type of Internet media.
    On the other hand, we do whatever the client needs to help them spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For example, a Church wants us to create software on their website so people can invite their friends to church with a video instead of the standard e-vite. We will create it and add it to the list of services and come up with a name for it later. Maybe video-vite?
    And another main difference is Aquacept focuses on functionality over design. It is more important to us that your website is used to disseminate info and increase ministry as opposed to if it is pretty and has music and flash scrolling across the screen.

  • http://www.lvac.org.au Nate Swift

    Thanks Steve, this is really helpful. I think Ekklesia 360 looks great but maybe just out of reach financially. The minimum up front cost is $2,500 plus monthly fee of about $100.