Church Community Builder Software

Church Directory, Follow up Workflow, and more

Church Community Builder was heavily used at my last church and it served three primary purposes for us and it did those things well. 1. Family Directory - Immediate and detailed information on families within the church as well as a confidential notes box to keep updates on contacts and outreaches and involvement within the church to promote spiritual health and church involvement. Mobile access to this directory also made on-the-go contacts nice and easy. 2. Follow-up Workflow Organizer - As a team, we came up with a follow-up system. For example: Week 1 - Phone Call, Week 2 - Postcard, Week 3 - Visit, Week 4 - Enroll in all newsletters applicable. One administrator was then put in charge of building this workflow, who is assigned to each section, and what they've got to do. Once the workflow was made active, as new families are added into the system, they immediately get dropped into the follow-up queue for week 1, the leader in charge of phone calls gets their info as an alert, and is able to mark "COMPLETE" after the phone call is made and info is updated. The workflow continues its cycle through each assigned party until the new family has gone through the full follow-up spectrum. 3. Event Coordination - When an event is decided upon, all details can be built into the CCB Calendar. The administrator​ can title the event, mark its date, time, space requirements, necessary supplies, workers needed, and more. Leaders then took care of their sections and that's it.

Pros

The ability to build a follow-up​ workflow to go to specific people in the process has been monumental for helping us stay in touch with new visitors.
Fully customizable reports and attendance sheets
Confidential notes and information on families for admin eyes only
Notifications and alerts queue for each member in a specific workflow to contact and report on
Ability to create services, programs, special events, and more as well as break down all needs from material to personnel and have lists sent to coordinators, volunteers, or the entire church for the purposes of donation (expanded on below)
Administrators are not the only ones with full access to directory. Any family can access, but won't necessarily have the permissions of an admin

Cons

Not the best option for small churches
Can be a learning curve with it, but plenty of resources available to get the most out of it
A lot of maintenance necessary to keep all information up to date and accurate

Comprehensive and Contemporary

Very good experience. We have been blessed by their software. It helps us in guest follow up. We have benefited from the forms and website integration as well as the LEAD app. Customer service has always been good at follow up. The technical training videos and help sheets on their help site have been very helpful.

Pros

Here is a list of the pros:
1. The software is robust. It is comprehensive in its data search and storage capabilities.
2. The software is evolving. CCB is constantly updating and improving upon the software and app.
3. There is an app that allows us to search our congregant information and follow up on processes.
4. The software was transformational to our assimilation guest ministry process. Not only did they send me a +1 gift for checking out the software, but that book, Fusion by Nelson Searcy changed our church's guest ministry process. It fits perfectly with what CCB offers in terms of process queues and data functionality.
5. We can do forms right in the software that we can upload to our website. This allows guests, members, regular attenders to complete signups, ministry applications, and registrations without ever having to write on a piece of paper. Follow up is very simple.
6. Customer service is excellent. There are a number of technical sheets and training videos on their help site. Very good.

Cons

Here are some of the cons:
1. The software is so robust you almost need a dedicated position to create calendars, forms, searches, processes, keep the database clean (people who leave, etc...), and train people on how to use it.
2. The software does not do schedules like Planning Center does (not as user friendly and it doesn't connect with Songselect). Honestly, it seems like Planning Center and CCB are competing. While Planning Center does schedules better, CCB does everything else better (my opinion). Our church uses both. We would switch from Planning Center if CCB did schedules better.
3. The checkin portion of CCB, while easy to use, especially with the app, is not as easy to setup. For example, we use both ipads and Citizen Bluetooth printers as well as PCs and Zebra USB printers. They each have different challenges and can be technical to set up.
4. I wish there was a way to integrate our church app with CCB. We would like to do geofence checkin and mobile bar code checkin.

CCB is an excellent software for any church!

My overall experience is excellent. I really do love CCB.

Pros

I really like Church Community Builder because it makes it easy to manage everything in one place. CCB has tons of features, so whatever you are looking for, there is a great chance it does what you are needing. In addition, anytime you need help figuring ANYTHING out, they have AMAZING customer support. I have never, ever felt frustrated when reaching out for help. Any time I ask for help, I get a prompt response from a live person living in Colorado Springs who fully understands the product and is excited to help me understand the product too. Further, if there is something more that you wish CCB did, or if there happens to be an area you see could be improved, they are always open to feedback and new "feature requests" because they want CCB to work for the customer and serve our needs. Just when you think CCB can't get better....it always does! I love CCB.

Cons

The thing I like the least is that sometimes because CCB does do so much, there can be a long learning curve in understanding HOW to do everything. There are some areas of the software I still have never used because I've never taken the time to learn how to use them. However, anytime that I wish to learn, they make it easy by offering video tutorials, or you can submit a support ticket with questions, or they even offer live video training videos you take as a group or at times you can schedule live 1-on-1 video chats where they will walk you through the software. I have taken advantage of all of these services numerous times and have never felt let down.

Overall, we have had a great experience with CCB. We continue to expand how we use it in ministry.

This software is geared toward church or ministry use. It has been great for searching our database to find individuals who are serving or not, who are connected in a community group or not, or who have not attended recently for follow-up, etc. You can customize many fields to help the software suit your specific reporting needs. Individuals can log in and update their profile, find a group, find a place to serve, give a contribution or register for an upcoming event.

Pros

CCB is web-based therefore it is easily accessed from office, home or anywhere.
There is a small group app that is great for group leaders to make contacts, take attendance, etc.
You can schedule weekly or monthly reports that are sent to your or someone else's email.
The Metrics tool is fantastic.
Default privacy settings can be set pretty tight, but individuals can chose what they want others to see or not see on their profiles.
Sending mail merges or messages is very easy to do.
If someone is logged in, their contact information will auto-fill on forms they are filling out.
There are great help videos & articles by subject that explain how to use the system.
The software has improved over the last 4 years and continues to improve with releases of periodic updates, enhancements and fixes.

Cons

CCB is very complex and can overwhelm some people, especially when setting up queries to find the right people for a saved search.
Forms have to match to records (understandable) but it can take a lot of time for something like VBS which may have hundreds of forms to match to records.
Addresses do not CASS certify so there can be misspellings or incomplete addresses in your data.
It can be hard to get your church on board to use the system, even leadership. Change can always be difficult.
You can't sign up an entire family on a single form. Forms need to be filled out for each individual so it matches to their personal record.

The Industry Standard for Web Based Church Administration

Church Community Builder allows me to keep track of everything that I need to keep track of in one place. It allows the church to empower each ministry to easily do the administration that's required.

Pros

Church Community Builder is the leader and industry standard for web-based church administration. The software is intuitive and easy to use. I have implemented the software at two churches in which I have worked and helped others get the most out of their subscription.

What I like most about the software is that it is comprehensive. I've seen too many churches build separate and unconnected systems for children's check-in, group sign ups, payments for events and donor records. When these systems don't "speak" to one another, it creates more confusion and work for the church staff.

The goal of church administration is to remove the burden of administration away from the ministry team. They typically excel at being with people and doing the work of the ministry. However, many struggle with administration basics such as keeping track of groups, communication, attendance data, etc. Church community builder allows our staff to be "efficient with things, so we can be effective with people".

Everyone benefits from a centralized system - whether you log in daily or rarely. We always know where we can find the information we need. Saving time makes the churches dollars go farther.

Cons

The mobile computing revolution took place since CCB launches their 2.0 platform. Getting the software to work and interact well with mobile devices has been a slow process, but I'm happy to see the progress that's been made with the Lead App.

Overall, CCB is a wonderful program! Great for small & big churches!

Easily being connected to other leaders, especially for a church run on volunteers. We are in the church at different parts during the week and don't have the benefit of having our offices filled all week with each other! So it helps with easy communication and connection. Also, for our volunteer church members & their calendars for serving! Having a place for all their information, birthday's, anniversaries, etc is so helpful!

Pros

I love how everything is connected, and once you get knowledgeable about it, it is easy to use! I love how the calendar is connected to our website, how you can have groups of different ministries and send emails to them or texts and it's professional and not from a personal phone. I love overall how there isn't so much for church members to learn how to use it, so it has basic communication and information where they can go on and be connected and informed! Also, their customer service is beyond amazing! They have helped in any and every way, from email responses (even if I'm not understanding something simple) to calling on the phone to walk me through something... They truly have beyond a five star staff!!

Cons

I think there are some things for them to work on, but it's all natural and a part of them moving forward. I, as a user, can detect some things when I try to do something I can't, but being a developer I understand they can't have it all perfect for us! Nothing too big of a con, for someone not to get CCB, but what is great about them is that you can email them ideas or situations you are running into and they will add it to their list of ideas and the team goes over them! I think that's really awesome! A few ideas we've had as a team, mostly for convenience sake, to move forward that could be helpful is:

-When it comes to "Room Requests" having an area for a clean up list, or that if a ministry or person uses a room or resource the steps needed to put things back to the way they should be.

-Another thing being when someone wants to sign up for CCB that there can be a button on the email that you could click "directly add into CCB" or "deny" type thing, so you don't have to re-type/copy everything. OR Maybe if you are an admin, have a notification that someone has signed up, so when you are logged in, you could click "approve" or "deny" just like you do when people want to put something on the calendar, or use a resource, etc.

-Scheduling, that there could be an option to keep re-peat the schedules, because some ministries use the same people! And you could even remove people from it, and replace them, but leave the rest the same.

A great overall product that is absolutely necessary for our church.

In my opinion, Church Community Builder is the best church management software out there. It allows you to be able to track all of data points you need, has a great event management system, a great volunteer scheduling system, a build in business intelligence system (called Metrics), and a unique system for managing manual processes. It does everything that you'd expect and more.

Pros

Church Community Builder has a bunch of great features that I could list out 1 by 1, but if I had to pick what I like most about the software, it's their commitment to updates. The release a new update every 8 weeks. Sometimes the updates are bug fixes, which you expect a software company to release, but often they are new features. It's this persistence in bettering their product, that has given me the most confidence in the company. I know they are working on the features that their customers want.

Cons

The things that I like least about the software is the lack of support for custom branding and reporting.

Our church has worked hard on branding and Church Community Builder (CCB) doesn't support it much. The CCB portal is plain grey in color. You can choose custom color themes, but they are preset color themes, not user-defined. Also, they have a feature that allows you to send mass emails out and at the bottom of the email there is the CCB name and logo. It can be confusing to people that don't know what CCB is. They see an email, then see it's coming from CCB.

As far as the reporting goes, it's pretty much been the same for several years. You can create custom reports that allow you to search on very specific criteria, which is great. The downside is, you can't always display the results of that criteria in the viewable report. You'll be able to see which people met the criteria, but not be able to see the actual data point. Most of their reports allow you do see the criteria, but a few important ones you can't (most notably the process queues and individual notes). CCB does have some built-in system reports that allow you to view some of the data you can't view in the custom reports, but you can't edit those reports to allow you to add other data points.

Fantastic church management software, especially for a multisite context

Better management of our church database and processes, with a constantly developing partnership where this company responds to the real needs of its customers.

Pros

Where to begin - user interface is so intuitive, seemingly endless ability to customize features, and - more than anything - amazing responsiveness of both customer support and product development to concerns and feature requests. I have truly been amazed by how often CCB churns out new features. It seems within a month or two of us thinking (and occasionally, but not always, mentioning to them), "Gee, I wish I could do THIS in CCB", they will release an update that adds the exact feature we had hoped for. It's very obvious that they are eager to receive feedback from customers, appreciative of the feedback, and then they get to work making their software even more robust to serve the needs of churches of all sizes and structures. We used another big-name church database software before, and CCB has been vastly superior - especially in managing the unique needs of a multisite church. Also, the mobile app that they recently launched is so user-friendly, and they are constantly adding new features and functionality. Kudos to CCB! They truly feel like they are ministering to the church so we can minister better to our congregations and communities, not just trying to make money off churches.

Cons

There was a bit of a learning curve when on initial setup. It felt a little too wide open to me, until we figured out how best to set things up for our church and got our feet wet a bit. Once I learned more about the way CCB *thinks*, it became very intuitive to expand my use and skills in the program.

Great Cloud Based Database (plus more!) software for Churches

Pros

We like the groups feature and how easy it is to message group members, keep their information up to date, the opportunity for group members to connect with each other, love the forms and automation that are available in the software. We love the giving feature and ease of use for our church to set up automatic giving and pledges. The software is great for ministry leaders whether volunteer or paid. Fast customer service when needed. We love the support of launching our church into using it. We paid for the coaching which we would recommend to EVERYONE in order to utilize it successfully. our coach, rocked.The process queue feature is so helpful in keeping track of where people are in a certain process or system of events. Great use for all of it. Loving the app that is being created and constantly updated. There were two other "software companies" we were looking into... but they were either not cost effective for what they offered or their features were hard to understand and operate. We even talked with many other churches using these companies and heard of struggles. Glad we chose CCB.

Cons

The development of the mobile app is recent over the last 12 to 18 months. We wished it would have been sooner, but they are really doing a good job on improving that and adding features to it constantly. The scheduling feature, which would be the most used, but is the later part of mobil development. CCB is releasing and has realeased it with improvements already. Overall though, CCB is a company for churches and listen to their customers in what they need.

It has been an excellent experience moving our church management system to CCB.

Pros

I will start with the people. We have had a great experience with the CCB team - our coach who helped us with our rollout over many months, the database team who helped with the migration of data, and the customer support team have all been fantastic.

The software itself is very robust with all the features we expected and needed. Our transition to CCB went very smoothly because of the easy-to-use functionality, excellent help videos and documentation, and a great team to help us when we get stuck. I also appreciate that new features are rolled out regularly - this is not a stagnant set of features. They seek feedback from churches to make the software more useful, give us beta releases to test and provide feedback, and then we see the features released in the baseline quickly afterwards. They invest in the future and we are seeing a new look/feel and mobile-friendly approach rolling out.

As an example of ease-of use, our children/youth check-in was running well with another application but we wanted our full attendance in CCB. This could have been a difficult sell to our NextGen team, but the features and ease-of-use made it a very straightforward transition.

As a point of reference, we are a church of approximately 4,000 attendance each weekend.

Cons

A few things that are already on their list to improve:
- full mobile features - already rolling these out
- Improved/Full giving capabilities (app, text-to-give, web, kiosk) so that we don't need a separate vendor/app for this.
- Improved reporting - CCB offers lots of canned reports and the ability to build very good custom report but the custom reports are mostly focused around people interactions.

Church Community Builder Review

With Church Community Builder, we are able to record any information we need for our church members, for our groups, for our events, and more. I love how you can look on someone's profile in CCB and see when they started coming, what groups/classes they are involved in, if they are volunteering anywhere, you can also see if they have been baptized and more! This tool is a great way to help people take their next steps in faith. I also love how you can automate process queues so that you can easily have a process set up for something (let's say volunteering) and you can see them through the entire process from initial interesting volunteering, all the way to helping them get connected with a team. This program allows us to not let people slip through the cracks. I could go on and on about specific elements that I like, but really the program is just a great way to organize and help people stay connected. Highly recommend!

Pros

As a communications specialist for my church of 2,000 people, Church Community Builder is a huge asset to have! This software allows you to track, record, and organize any and all of your church information in one place. From creating individual profiles of those who come to our church, to creating groups, calendars, forms, and more, this database seems limitless in terms to what you can use it for. Without this software, I don't know where we would be.

Cons

This program is so detailed, there are layers and layers of options on how to organize information, so sometimes it can get a little glitchy and can be overwhelming at some points. However, this program is something we use daily, and we know now how to navigate it to get the best results.

We have used CCB for almost 10 years and have been very happy with our experience.

Pros

We appreciate how responsive the team has been to our feedback. We get excellent response time on all tickets submitted, friendly, competent service and have also felt heard anytime we have asked for other features. One of their reps actually proactively reached out to us recently to meet with us and understand our needs better, which they were doing with a number of their customers.

This is, of course, in addition to the reliable functionality of the features we use daily in our organization. We use many of the modules and continue to develop more usage within our staff and congregation as I am able to help more of our users become more comfortable with the features. We rely on this tool daily and it allows us to connect to more people in our congregation and community than any other tool we have used or reviewed.

Cons

There are at times things we wish were more intuitive, such as the user interface for adding events with rooms and resources. We understand the challenge with providing so much complexity and functionality so we are not unhappy with the product. It just means we let only our power users use those areas and do our best to keep them well-trained. We love that we have a voice in shaping the future of the interface and feel CCB is always interested in staying relevant in the market for these types of tools.

Our eyes are opened possibilities we never knew existed!

Pros

We replaced an aging church database, hosted on an internal server, with Church Community Builder. Having our data in the cloud has brought so much more reliability! In addition, what had been a simple tool for staff now became a multi-dimensional interactive platform not only for us as staff to keep track of vital information, but for our attenders to interact with us, with their groups, and to be able to manage their own information, print their own giving records, etc. Church Community Builder was a quantum leap up from what we had, and we are still discovering ways to streamline and use it more effectively and fully. The support is VERY good. If you go with Church Community Builder YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. Also, BUY THE COACHING for implementation. If you don't, you will be missing out on so much in the software. If you're like us, you will go at the project with the mindset of the software you had before, and you may miss out on a whole different way to think about things that will revolutionize your experience.

Cons

The hardest thing about the software is not the software itself, but our own people. Getting our staff and others to fully utilize the software and break their old habits/inefficient ways of doing things manually has been the biggest challenge.

No need to look elsewhere for church management software

The exceptional experience I've had with the software has only been matched by the top-notch customer support experience that encompasses friendly and knowledgeable customer service personnel, substantive email updates, and webinars that cover both current functionality and future plans. Their level of integrity in sharing forthrightly where the product is and where it is going exceeds the experiences I've had with other businesses.

Pros

Three years ago after extensive analysis of the top church management software on the market, I recommended and then implemented Church Community Builder at my church. I've never looked back. In those three years, the company not only significantly expanded its features and functionality, but also its ease of use. Administration and finance areas now run so much more effectively through the use of the software, and our mission critical youth ministry relies on it for all their local out-reach and international events. I continue to enthusiastically both use and support the software.

Cons

In the last year, Church Community Builder has caught up and is beginning to surpass the user interface experience that much smaller companies with limited software functionality were rolling out. I look forward to the continued rollouts that are planned for making the mobile experience surpass those smaller companies, many which have gone out of business.

CCB is easy to use, less expensive, and very intuitive!

I give 2 thumbs up for CCB overall. The cost is significantly less than many of the other ChMS's out there, and I feel our church gets more "bang for the buck" by using it! We regularly get comments from our attenders that show us how effective CCB is ("Wow! How did you know this was my 2nd visit?" "Thanks for the note that you were praying for me." "Really? I've been attending since 2006, but haven't attended membership, yet? How do I sign up?") I haven't mentioned one of the best features: the ability for members of groups to communicate to each other (without either having the other's email address)! Our group members feel a sense of belonging, right from the start!

Pros

I'm assuming 5 stars is best in your survey. The customer support rates many more stars than I'm able to give. The team at CCB was so supportive and helpful during the transition from our "old" ChMS. CCB's Process Queues make tracking attenders so easy: we can "watch" them as they move from first-time visitors to members. The Queues also make it easy to see which volunteers have been processed (background checks, coaching/training, etc have been done or NEED to be done). Fewer people slip through the cracks now! CCB has been taking notes when we mention some of the capabilities we had in our "old" ChMS, but don't have in CCB (for example, the ability to track attendance, based on giving). They listen to our concerns/issues, then help us find a workable solution...all the while, they're talking to programmers to make programming changes that will impact CCB's growth.

Cons

We have found some issues when trying to email "Parents Of", and are aware that changes to improve this feature are expected any day (first-quarter 2011). We are a large church (5,500-plus in an average weekend), and initially found CCB to be more geared toward smaller churches. In the 5 months we've been with them, we've seen them changing to be more accommodating to the large churches...but there's still room for growth in this area. Implementation packages are available, but if not used, the church may feel like a fish out of water. I highly recommend implementation be used for all churches that want to use as many CCB features as possible.

CCB is great for churches of any size

CCB works constantly to improve their products and provides a lot of free training. I have been impressed with the way customer service sends a video to show you how to walk through any steps needed to correct an issue I am having. There is a lot of components involved and they work hard to make it work well together.

Pros

Customer service is quick to respond and follows up to make sure your issue has been resolved. They also take note of improvements suggested and act on them.

The metrics to track attendance and giving are very easy to adapt to each church's needs. Giving statements are easy to run. The ability to use mail merge and link files is very helpful.

Groups are easy to design and allow people to interact easily.

New schedules are a huge improvement.

Cons

The team has worked very hard over the last couple of years to improve the software. Most issues I have had in the past have been resolved.

The only issue we have now is that in order to use the serving portion of the software, individuals have to do a lot of date input to get it started. Because we didn't make it a focus of our original log ins, we don't have the date needed to get this portion working well. Wish we could find a work around to get this portion working well for us.

Good Program for Churches

We get to keep 99% of our information in one central location. It helps us keep track of people and events. We use it constantly, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Pros

There's a lot to do with CCB. Our primary use is for room reservation and volunteer tracking. Reserving rooms and resources is easy, and takes very few steps. It takes a lot to keep track of all the volunteers our church has, and CCB puts them all in one location. We can send out emails to groups, respond to forms instantaneously, and schedule volunteers for duties. Like I said, there is a lot to do on CCB.

Cons

With there being lots to do, there's a lot to learn. Adequate training is difficult to come by in my organization, most of mine has been playing around with CCB to figure things out. At times it can be slow, and we've found that some of our administrators have lost information over time.

Switching to CCB was the best decision!

I have been very impressed with CCB's commitment to their church partners. They continually strive to listen to our needs and help us keep the business side of things easier and less time consuming, so we can focus on ministry.

Pros

It's a very powerful tool that has everything in one secure place. It is very easy to use, and when you have questions you can get help from their extensive library of videos and articles, their online user community groups, and by submitting a support ticket for individualized help. I am most impressed that many on their staff use CCB in their home churches and they can relate to what we are experiencing and what we need. They are continually building/modifying the software to better serve their church partners needs. There are many places that we can customize what we use and what we see at any time. Reporting is clear and easy to use and the metrics are fantastic for a quick glance into involvement and church health. Our old database software was very difficult to use and we ended up mostly using it as a directory. With CCB, we are able to connect with our church family more easily and track vital church health information much more efficiently.

Cons

It would be helpful if the software included an accounting general ledger that would be integrated with the rest of the system.

Would Recommend to Churches Looking for Engagement

Our church has been a user for about 3 years now, and we like this product for the most part. We find that it works well with most of the systems that we had set up long before purchasing, and we would definitely choose CCB again if given the option. I wouldn't recommend this to churches just looking to save contact information, but I would highly recommend it to churches looking to further engage the members of their churches through the various tools that it offers. One nice feature of CCB is all of the preferred partners with whom they work. They allow users to use other programs and tools for the church that integrate with CCB. We have partnered with several of them (like Aware3 and Protectmyministry) in order to increase our administrative efficiency for things like background checks and apps.

Pros

integrations with other online tools, customer service has been extremely helpful, updates seem to address areas of need, number of tools available

Cons

cost is high compared to some offerings, but value is high as well. Oftentimes we have to change our internal systems because of the limitations of the tools available (I would imagine this is common for every system that isn't custom though).

Very satisfied with Church Community Builder

It helps us manage our large church organization with 3 campuses and several thousand records quite easily. People profiles, groups, giving, serving, sign up forms, communication, etc. It is web-based so we can log in remotely.

Pros

CCB has just recently updated people profiles and is now getting ready to launch their new Schedules module, which I have seen in training and it is fantastic. They are working through updating all of the areas of the software. For administrative users, the software is very functional. It's easy to create groups, enter information, see a person's involvement on one screen, and communicate through group messages and mail merges and group promotion. There is a lot to this software. Their customer service is quick to respond and their user's groups are great for ideas and help as well. There is a lot of training available through articles, videos and webinars.

Cons

There are some limits to reports or how to set up metrics, limits to some mass changes, not being able to match a form to more than one person, so parents fill out a form for each child when signing up for something like VBS., not being able to schedule an email message or mail merge.