Church Management Software Options

Nich Nicholaou has just posted an article on Church Management Software options that's worth a look if you're in market for a solution.

"I have the privilege each year of publishing an article listing church management software (CMS) providers and what they say their software can do."

Read the entire article here

Comments

[Trevor]

My name is Trevor and I work for Excellerate church management software (www.excellerate.com). I just wanted to vouch that the chart above is really good. It has a very easy to use format so you can see which features are available and decide which matter to you and then start narrowing down.

I also wanted to give a tip for those looking for ChMS, based on my experiences. My tip is that, before you look at software you sit down and describe you perfect software. I've seen a lot of people who called in and were so bombarded by all the options that come with our software that they ended up not getting all the info they wanted and we'd both forget to return to some of the topics that came up. But, I've found that if someone can describe their perfect software before they start looking, then that gives us a list of features we can go through and discuss and the customer ends up much more informed. If you have any questions that you want to ask me, my email is [email protected]

[Jay]

I would add to Trevor comments that the other item churches should decide on is if they want an in house solution, web based solution, or a hybrid solution. While a couple companies offer a solution in 2 or more of these categories this one question would eliminate many of companies that do not fit with the church's view on the software architecture. For example, Icon System Inc has a Network based software called Revelations and also a true web based system called IconCMO. We do not offer a Hybrid system so if the church is looking for one of those we would be eliminated from the list. There are many Pros and Cons to any one of these architectures and it really depends on the individuals church's resource as to which one would work best. An in house option may have more maintenance to do within the church so the church would have to have dedicated people that can administer it on the Servers and PCs. A web-based system would have less server maintenance and in most cases less PC maintenance for upgrading but has a reoccurring charge to use it.