Fellowship One Software

My church used this software to manage members, events and groups. As a group leader I was tasked with using it to track group attendance and report issues to church leadership. I personally didn't like it even in my limited use because the interface was not clear and it was tough to use. Adding members to the group was very confusing, the software just isn't designed very well in that regard. One constant I heard from pastors and staff at the church was how much they disliked this software. We recently just switched off to a new software that is much easier to use. Personally I am glad as I was not a fan of this platform.

Pros

- Tracks group attendance really well.
- Once you got into the place you needed to be getting data entered into the system was fairly easy.
- Allowed leaders to make edits to meeting attendance fairly easily.

Cons

- User interface is not friendly, the system was honestly difficult to find your way around.
- Even church staff could not fix simple issues like user information being in the system incorrectly; there was only one staff member that really knew how to fix a mix up where our account had incorrect information in it. The system would not let us correct the error ourselves as it was limited to an admin.
- Did not take imports from other systems well so data had to constantly be manually entered by staff which created loads of extra work for them.
- Adding members to your group was a pain as they had to be added to Fellowship One, sent a request and then you could add them. If I had a guy just visiting the group there was no way for me to put his attendance in without having to officially add him to the group which was not great for tracking purposes as a leader.

Pros

I like that I don't have to write out a check to give tithes and that there is an app/website to do it. I like having church directory in one spot in case I needed to get in touch with someone. If you have simple needs for the software, this is a great tool.

Cons

No matter how many times I save the category of giving for my tithes on the app, it will not save it! So frustrating. I'm not sure what other church softwares are capable of, but this one does not do much.

We don’t even know where to start to describe our massive disappointment with this product. From poor customer service, useless training, horrific report system, sales person persuaded to upgrade to iOS hardware, when their app is still being developed.... there’s not one Sunday that our check in line works smoothly. Their solution? No solution.
We regret we did not read these comments before signing that agreement. We are writing in here in hopes to prevent some one else make the same mistake.

Cons

- Reports: unfriendly, useless fields
- Service: no follow up, there’s never a solution, just apologizes....
- check in app: forced to use Bluetooth, still on testing mode... we have 10 devices we invested that simply do not work.
- database: unfriendly to use
- forms: very basic, unfriendly to use
- Add On: literally most that you get included into any other software, in FO it’s an add on, which they only tell you afterwards.... Had to pay for ONE user to train on how to enhance reporting options.
- Giving Platform: unfriendly, no comment line

We've moved away from F1 to Rock, and we couldn't be happier.

Pros

Excellent people-management system: the perfect church rolodex. Tracks finances well, handles basic check-in features, handles simple email communication, and has a very extensible reporting system.

Cons

Other than looking up people's contact info, it's not great at anything. You'll end up using third-party volunteer tracking (PCO integration would be a snap, but they won't do it), third-party finance partners (because their payment gateway is poor), third-party email clients (because their email system is poor), third party registration systems (because inFellowship is a nightmare from which you can never awake), and third-party groups sign-ups (ditto). This wouldn't be such a problem if the Fellowship One design team didn't refuse, as a matter of principle, to cleanly integrate with anyone who provides a competing product. Since almost any electronic service for churches is a competing product, that means F1 doesn't really integrate well with anyone.

Pros

Easy to set up new members, add them to groups and classes. Plenty of space for comments and the ability to transfer a volunteer from one group to the next.

Cons

I seem to be kicked out of the program quite a bit along with the program being very slow at times (Monday mornings especially).

This company started out great and has gone downhill. In the past year, we spent months trying to get a response from the billing department on an issue. The woman who was assigned to our company did not respond in a timely manner and, when she did respond, gave us wrong information or did not answer the initial question. We even purchased wrong equipment because we were misinformed about what we needed. We also spent time leaving messages for our account rep, only to find out 3 weeks later that he no longer worked there and we had a new rep. We were not informed and our old rep's voicemail was still active. Our experience with F1 was very disappointing and we decided to leave. In order to cancel, you must give 60 days notice & pay 30% of each month left in your year, according to the contract. And, no matter when you turn in your cancellation paperwork, they don't run the cancellation until the end of the month. So, if your contract month begins on the 14th, you still have to pay because F1 runs the cancellation on the 31st, even if you turned it in at the beginning of the month. The only positive thing I can say is that F1 did let us out of our contract one month early, so we had a 30 day cancellation notice instead of 60. But, that was a small thing after so many months of problems.

Pros

The software is helpful and you can run reports from your database for many different needs. Check-in works well.

Cons

Customer support and especially the billing department caused us many problems. The software is expensive and the contract will nickel & dime you if you try to leave early. The software is expansive and a lot of setup & upkeep has to be done manually.

Fellowship One is cumbersome, not intuitive and too glitchy. Do not use it, ever.

Pros

Nothing.

Cons

Fellowship One is cumbersome, not intuitive and too glitchy.

Advice to Others

Do not use it, ever.

This has been such an awful experience. Just today, indicative of the process since F1 took over Connection Power, nearly 3 hours today trying to get to someone and all you can do is leave a message only to find out that you have to call back and leave a message for someone else. Highly recommend NOT Fellowship one

Advice to Others

Go somewhere else

Likes Best

Fellowship One is powerful. It is the best way to manage the complexity of a growing church, community and world.

Likes Least

Large, powerful and at times a little slow in responding to unique needs but it's worth it.

Recommendations

Of course you need to look at what you need. The larger the church or more complexity you have the more power the software you need.

Likes Best

Fellowship One is a tremendously powerful tool that meets most of the needs we have for our church database. We are able to track an infinite number of details related to each person in the database. Recently, we began using F1 to allow our church members to search and find a small group, then sign up - all online. I am still learning all the ways we can use F1.

Likes Least

The most frustrating aspects of F1 are: 1) It doesn't have a mobile interface for online registrations - and online registration is a huge part of how we use F1. We have begun using a third party app that integrates with F1 so that our online registration process is mobile friendly. 2) F1 is not very user-friendly and they don't offer easy-to-find support. This is the most difficult aspect of the product.

Recommendations

Fellowship One, even with it's difficulties, is a valuable tool. My recommendation is to have several people who are very tech savvy that can learn F1, become masters at using F1 and who can teach others the basics.

Likes Best

Fellowship Tech support is very knowledgeable and very responsive. The report writing team is outstanding in building capable and flexible reports.

Likes Least

The email system is too simplistic, particularly in handling unsubscribes. There is no capability to be connected to one ministry and not another without manipulating attributes.

Recommendations

Understand that Fellowship One is a comprehensive system. It requires the user to be engaged in knowing what they are doing and what it means for future needs.

Likes Best

I like the options and the cross-platform integration.

Likes Least

I don't like their support or how difficult it is to mine the information from the system. It is far from user friendly in a church volunteer department. Even after I had someone get certified on the product, it's still cumbersome to use.

Recommendations

Take your time and see what else is out there. We are fully vested with F1, so transition would be highly difficult. So explore. My thoughts are, what good is it to have features, if you can't use the features? Especially reports! We have someone that has a degree on staff in database management. Without that person, we would have changed systems.

Likes Best

It's a complete church management software system that has grown with us over the years. As we grew, Fellowship One was able to handle our growth.

Likes Least

Their report writer is really lacking for our needs. There has even been times where two different Fellowship One reports were to have the same results, but the two reports gave me different results. That was very troubling. Also, recently their response time to support tickets has been very slow.

Recommendations

Look at all options before committing to any one provider.

Likes Best

I can get reports that give me what I need to know and can manipulate those for just the information I need. I also really like the giving module - with the batch scanner - really fast, intuitive, and easy to administer. We aren't there yet, but when we are it will be easy to segregate check scanning from posting. I can also say that each time they make upgrades to the program, I am impressed with the improvements. It seems like F1 "gets it".

Likes Least

It is difficult to figure out how to enter a ticket to receive support. I wish they would streamline this process.

Recommendations

F1 has a very robust offering. I have just talked about what I see from a finance manager point of view, but we are really happy with what they have done with groups, and their communication platform is good too. It is a big program, with lots of capabilities - it's very robust.

Likes Best

I like how powerful the database is and how much you can do with it.

Likes Least

With so many reporting options, it gets confusing sometimes just getting a simple report done.

Recommendations

Look at all the options, and if you're cool with using them and want a powerful database, F1 is the best one out there.