Churchteams: Bare Bones but Affordable

Churchteams' customer service was fantastic. It was also the most affordable option for us at the time. However, a poor (bare-bones) design made it "seem" less professional. Perception is often reality, unfortunately.

Pros

Customer service was great with ChurchTeams. Their team went above and beyond with all of our requests, even praying with our office managers on the phone and asking about their lives. Of course, that has little to do with the actual software, but it is and added bonus. Churchteams is a bare-bones option for small and medium-sized churches looking to establish a database. Because of limited interface design, it's fairly easy to navigate.

Cons

Presentation was not at all impressive. The usability was limited because of this, in my opinion. To some, being pleasing to the eye isn't important, but we found it to be a drawback. Bad design makes people not want to use it as much as good design does. It's a fine line, but an important one.

Pastor Assistant - main user of Churchteams

So the most incredible experience I had with tech support was a time that I totally messed up our online giving - in fact, I single handedly cancelled all ability of any transactions going through. This was something that was ENTIRELY my fault and could have cost our church thousands of dollars in offerings. I realized that this was a major problem on a Saturday afternoon. I put in an emergency call, and believe it or not, the owner of the company called me back and interrupted his dinner at a restaurant to make phone calls and pull in favors so that our online giving was up and running by Sunday morning. Loving my Churchteams!

Pros

I am the pastoral assistant for a church with weekly attendance of about 800, and a database of 6063. We have been using Churchteams for more than five years. When I came on staff, Churchteams was set up, but there was no one to train me. I learned the program by watching the tutorials, and having tech support on speed dial. The program itself is very intuitive if you have minimal database skills. The most amazing part of Churchteams is their amazing tech support. They were always cheerful and very helpful with even the most basic questions that I had as a new user. When I left phone messages, they were always (yes, always) returned the same day or the next.
It meets all the needs of a church of our size. We use it for general database uses and mailings, scheduling volunteers with reminder texts, all of our giving including text-to-give, check in for kids and teens, keeping track of membership and our membership classes, and small groups.

Cons

Our website guy would like it if the links could be totally customized so it doesn't look like people are leaving our website when doing online giving or small group sign-ups.

Couldn't be happier, does everything we need and it's super easy to use!

I oversee most of the ministries in our church and churchteams has made managing all of those groups a breeze. Can't imagine going back to a life without this management software!

Pros

Churchteams is very user friendly and intuitive. Great for every aspect of managing groups including sign-ups, attendance, reports, follow-up, scheduling volunteers w/built in reminders and so much more! Very helpful in tracking an individual's involvement and spiritual growth indicators. As an added bonus, we recently began using their online giving feature which is less expensive than our previous provider. It has streamlined our book keeping process and made registering and paying for church events an easy one stop process. All that being said, the Churchteams feature I most appreciate is their support team. Very friendly, knowledgeable people who are super responsive - always get an email or call back within 24 hrs. and usually much sooner.

Cons

Technology and I don't normally get along very well and there have been some instances where I had some difficulty running a report I needed. The nice thing about churchteams, however, is that in the few instances where I've run into that issue, I just contacted support and they ran the report I needed for me and then took the time to explain how I could do it myself the next time. Probably will not be an issue at all for someone who knows their way around a computer.

Churchteams has brought us all together!

I am the secretary here at theway church. Before Churchteams, communication was handled via Gmail, which is fine, but after several emails to large numbers of people Gmail shut down. Through Church teams, I can email or text as often as I need to. Now, I am not the only one sending out emails and texts. The Pastor, Associate Pastor, and the Team Leaders can send out their own communications. With the scheduling feature, the communications are sent out automatically! That has saved alot of time as well as helped with Volunteers showing up when needed. The online directory has helped our members and regular attenders stay in touch with one another too. We utilize the groups to set up teams for different jobs throughout the church. For instance, our Sign team is scheduled on a rotating basis to change the church sign weekly. Notifications are sent out automatically. Nursery Volunteers are handled the same way and we know who accepted or declined their assignment. Since setting up various groups, we have more involvement from members and regular attenders than before. Everyone is excited about doing what they are assigned to do! We use the check-in software for Nursery and Children's Church for Volunteers and the children. This also gives us attendance totals. We use the Contribution aspect of Churchteams too. It is so simple and helps keep track of everyone and their giving. We will soon be adding our online giving to this program as well. We are excited about that! We love the fact that we can access ChurchTeams from any device too! I use my phone to communicate with everyone when I am away from the office all the time. Prayer Requests...No problem. I can send it right out. We are a church that is 5 years old. We are new to keeping track of everything. But Churchteams has made it easy. The reporting allows us to pull up any information we need whether it be birthdays and anniversaries for the month or Baptisms for the year, etc. We love how Churchteams has brought us all together as the body of Christ to do what He has called us to do. We would recommend it to other churches.

Pros

User friendly, great support!

A Good Fit for Our Ministry

We chose ChurchTeams after a long search and evaluation of multiple Church Management Systems. We wanted a system that was not overly complicated, and that could be used by our leadership team. Church Teams has been a great fit and we are happy with our choice. Here are a few things that we like - Small Group Management is the leading feature for Church Teams. It does a great job integrating into our website, allowing people to search and signup for groups. It also helps us track participation in groups. Group leaders receive an email after their meeting, where they can track attendance, share updates, and list prayer requests. This keeps the group members and church leaders connected. - Children's Check-In has also worked well for us. It's fast and quickly allows us to track attendance for our children's ministry - Event signup and registration is another feature that we like and use frequently. - Finally, we really like the ability to have a password protected online church directory. Compared to other Church Management Systems, Church Team functions a little differently. Everything is setup as a group. Your ministry teams, your events, your assimilation pathway, and your classes are all setup as groups. Communication and tracking is done through adding and moving people between groups. Custom properties can also be added and tracked. Overall, Church Teams has worked well for us, and the cost is cheaper than many competing products. We don't use the financial tracking features built into the software, since we do that through another system, but we use most of the other features. The interface is not as clean and easy to use as some of the other products on the market, but it's a good fit. It also doesn't take a huge amount of time to customize and setup. You can start using it quickly, and once you understand how it works, you can use it for more powerful functions. It's not the right fit for everyone, but for us, we have been pleased.

Great Product for the Cost

We have been using ChurchTeams for a few years now and have seen it continually grow and evolve into a capable solution for full Church Management. When we first started they were lacking a few features that we wanted, but they were what fit into our budget. Since then they have kept the same pricing and released quite a few of the features we have requested. They have also been very responsive when something was not working correctly or we needed a minor tweak to accomplish something. The Small Groups reporting feature is phenomenal. It's mobile responsive which makes it work great on any device! They just added individual password management logins, which was the most glaring shortfall. However, now that we have that feature, I feel it is much more secure. They also recently added email templates and scheduling, which was greatly needed. The only shortfall with this feature is you cannot access scheduled emails to edit. However, again support is great, as we needed to change one of our scheduled emails and they did it through the back-end for us. We also utilize their online giving solution, which creates a great scenario as all of our giving records are kept within CT, and we can send out giving statements via email at the end of the year. It also works well for registrations for events and such. The processing fees are very competitive. I wish they had 3rd Party Integration with services such as Planning Center and Mailchimp like I've seen with other products, but we are able to make it work. Overall, for the price...they can't be beat! And their customer support is top notch, including having the founder email you during the year to offer to pray for your church.

Pros

Price, group reporting, customer support, mobile responsive, online giving and registration, adaptable.

Cons

No 3rd party integrations, some tasks require a little work to complete.

Churchteams is Well Worth Your Consideration

We have been using Churchteams for several years now. I have had experience with Fellowship One, Planning Center, Church Community Builder, and Churchteams. Out of all of those Churchteams has been by far the easiest to work with. Their customer support is outstanding and they try very hard to understand your issue. A lot of other systems seem to ignore you if you use it the exact way that they build it to be. Churchteams is very customizable and flexible compared to the other systems. Our group & team leaders love using Churchteams and we very rarely have issues with our leaders filling out reports because Churchteams makes it very simple for them and sends them an email. I'm a big analytics guy so I also really enjoy how Churchteams gives you access to all of your data. You can download all of the data that is in the system and create your own reports, but if you're not like me dont worry, they have a ton of great reports that you can generate and it's not complex to run them like some other systems. No report numbers to memorize. Churchteams might not be as flashy as some other systems but where they lack in flash they make up in being consistent. Churchteams is extremely reliable compared to other systems I've used. You can tell they are former ministry people because they seem to know the real needs of people who work in a Church. I highly recommend Churchteams to any church but I would specifically recommend it to churches are less than 1,000 and/or have a small groups ministry. Churchteams started as a ChMS for small groups and grew into other areas. Churchteams is the king of the hill when it comes to Small Group Management. Everyone else in the ChMS industry tries to replicate what Churchteams does with groups but no one comes close to doing it as well as Chuchteams.

Pros

Nearly everything is customizable.
Fantastic group/team management.
Easy to use reports.
Leaders enjoy using it.
Outstanding customer service.

Cons

Functionality is great but design could be improved.

Best Church Software Out There

I have been in full-time church ministry since 2005 and have gone through 4 different church management systems, trying to find one that's easy to use, cost-effective and still gives me everything I need to track people, their giving, their involvement and engagement. Church Teams has gone above and beyond to understand church ministry like no other product I have worked with. We don't spend hours trying to click the right button to get the report we need anymore, and if I get stuck, I just call or email their customer support and have an answer almost right away. They have also established an online user community where I have learned tips and tricks from other users, and been able to help them out sometimes myself. This isn't just a software product they created - they have created a community. As an administrator, it's been valuable to find a community of people to work with.

Pros

This product is easy to use, and VERY tailored to work in church ministry. The process of moving from another data management company was easy, and we had the opportunity to customize it to suit our personal needs. Our Staff quickly learned how to navigate within the product, especially getting the information they need from the reports. But, hands-down, the best thing about this company is their customer support. They are quick to respond to any question that you have, even the "dumb" ones. They also listen to what you're trying to do and have created systems and processes based on user feedback. I love this product and the company!

Cons

Even the best can get better. I would like to see a "dashboard" created, so that when I log in, any tasks that have been assigned to me are easy to locate and process.

Best Church Software I've Ever Used

When I first started using ChurchTeams, I was a small group pastor with no assistant or administrative help. When we launched 103 groups that was a lot of data to potential have to input. Considering I wore several hats in our church, it would have been impossible. By sending our group leaders a link to ChurchTeams database, they set up their own groups, populated their rosters, then completely weekly reports online about their group members. It was a life saver. In Group Connection environments where groups leaders meet prospective group members, the mapping feature has been extremely helpful for prospective group members to see which groups are near them. I could go on and on. I have nothing bad to say about this product.

Pros

ChurchTeams has an intuitive interface. It is mobile friendly. The fact that volunteers can access their groups from anywhere is a huge plus. Removes the centralized administrative tasks that most church databases require. It provides both high security and usability. I have used this product since 2004 when it started as a small groups database. Now, ChurchTeams can do everything. The staff is polite and very responsive. You can pick up the phone and call the President of the company if you need to! They are always learning and improving. Always open to suggestions. I highly recommend ChurchTeams. It's affordable, efficient, and safe. As we say in the South: "Dumb if you don't!"

Good strong company

This is our 7th year with Churchteams & we could not be more satisfied. From the very beginning with set up, it has been remarkably easy to use. All of our group leaders use it, our staff, and our weeklly money counters. There was an immediate night & day difference from the company we used previously to Churchteams. We like the customer support, the fair price, ease in using it for everyone, safe & confidentially sound, and easy to use reporting system. Early this year we started using the online giving and text-to-give features and we are so grateful we did! We also recently started using the registration feature, which is easy to use and makes the admin portion of the events a breeze. Combine that with the text-to-give and it totally rocks. :) Something else we appreciated from the beginning is that we have never felt pushed into doing any of the extra features, such as the online giving, etc. One other cool thing is that every once in a while I get a message from one of the founders saying they were praying for our church & for me! I know God prompted their hearts to pray each of those times, since there was a definite need for it, AND we felt those prayers!

Pros

Churchteams' support is incredible! We've always had superior & prompt answers to questions. The founders of the company have been good at making sure our needs are met & we get the full potential that Churchteams has to offer...whether it's hearing directly from them, or the helpful webinars & training videos.

Cons

I honestly cannot come up with one! They have exceeded all of our expectations.