I have used Elvanto for many years now and find it by far the easiest, feature rich ChMS around. Whilst functionality and UI are important, solid backup and support is critical. The Elvanto team are always on hand to answer questions quickly and the support team know their product (sounds obvious but not always the case!). There is a cost to using the software, but for those trying to weigh up the difference between a manual system vs Elvanto, it's a no-brainer. I wouldn't run my business off excel so why run a church using excel? Everybody I have ever recommended Elvanto has started using it, and within 6 months they say why wasn't I using this before? Is everything great? There are some areas that have been a frustration. The Check-In system has pro's and con's. Pro is it's web based and works from an iPad. The downside is the printing software is frustrating and doesn't always do what it's told. If you are a portable church this can be an impediment as you must have internet, and the print server can be a little hit and miss. Whilst it may seem retro-grade, I would like to see a rock solid, offline enabled application for child-check in, it's one of those areas that if it fails, goes sideways quickly. Would this prevent me from using the check-in system? Categorically NO. Unlike some ChMS systems the printers are cheap DYMO's so the overheads and supply options are cheap and easy. Elvanto have a strong record with feature updates that are well thought out and 'released when market ready'. Product development has been strong and the team are always willing to listen to new ideas or feature requests. Not everything get's implemented, but they do listen and good ideas (or necessities) get implemented quickly. Elvanto is agile. It's not a perfect system (none are), but compared to most other ChMS systems around Elvanto is one that must be in the top 1-2 on your evaluation list.

Ease of use. Feature Rich. Fantastic Support. Competitively Priced. Integrates with many 3rd party applications. Simply makes church management easier.

Check-In printing can be hit and miss (your average volunteer struggles if things go sideways). No "Offline" check-in mode, so mobile churches need to consider internet services (and speeds). BI is a little behind and could be improved. There are reports, but true "BI" and dashboards are missing.

Overall organizational unity and efficiency. Streamlined, standardized and unified volunteer coordination. Centralized mass communication, and a highly user-friendly worship service planning platform and the ability to store the church worship song inventory online for all to utilize as needed.

I like how intuitive it is and how easy it is to figure out. I can teach functions to even the most tech-challenged people in our church and they are able to know what they need to do with ease. I also like the umbrella of functions it has under the one program for the price point offered. When you go from 100 to 200 active users the price doubling is a bit steep (this is why I gave value 4 stars), but it is comparable to similar programs, but easier to work with. Lastly, the customer service as well has been fantastic from day one and that was a major reason I chose Elvanto over other programs. Their speed of response is typically within 1 day, despite being in Australia, while I'm in the US.

More than anything it is their phone app, which is fairly useless at this time compared to just logging into the website on your phone (this is where 4 stars on Features comes in). The phone app has yet to be integrated with the majority of functions offered and the development has been too slow to get it going. Elvanto has a community Post board, which we love as a church, but to not have that on the phone app that can give you notifications of a new post seems like a huge oversight. The normal software I really have no issues with at all, if there is something hard to understand or more complicated, there is help available in the forms of tutorials or customer service is an email or chat away. The phone app, however, needs to be pushed through development and in big ways and then Elvanto will be a force to be reckoned with, and our church would have greater integration as people who don't get in front of a computer on a daily basis (i.e. young moms, blue-collar workers, etc.) would have it in their phones too.

I like Elvanto and have become accustomed to it's size and quirks.

Elvanto is a product that is great at a lot of things, but really isn't the master of anything. It's a massive suite that does a whole lot and it works for the most part, but it has some quirks. The potential is there to being amazing.

It seems as though, since being purchased by Tithe.ly that the suite is being put on the back burner in terms of development.

I have been a loyal customer with Elvanto since 2014. Before Elvanto I had tried a bunch of other softwares out there but they fell short of what we were trying to accomplish. Some of the more decent ones that we demo-ed like fellowship one and Church Community Builder had tiered pricing that were pretty expensive. When we looked into Elvanto the major things that attracted us were; 1. User friendly interface 2. Robust platform 3. Ridiculously low price The last ChMS we used was so inadequate that we add to subscribe to other services like Planning Center Online, MailChimp, Eventbrite, Trumpia (who by the way are crooks that were billing us without service and have refused to refund our money for two years now) etc, just to accomplish our goal. Since we signed on with Elvanto we no longer need all those other providers. Elvanto is not perfect yet like every other ChMS is not but they work tirelessly to keep bringing out new features. I even asked for a particular feature we wanted to allow members have access to the groups they belong and be able to interact with others within their group through their group page and Elvanto made it happen in a matter of weeks. I have been recommending them to churches in our network and they are loving it. Kudos to all the guys and girls at Elvanto. You keep doing what you are doing and I keep sticking with you guys. God bless you.

1. User friendly interface 2. Robust platform 3. Ridiculously low price 4. Great customer service

Member page still need more work but they have assured meet they are getting to that after rolling out their wonderful event registration feature they have been working on.

There are positives and negatives to any system. The same is true for Elvanto. I researched a huge number of Church Management Systems, but didn't find anything that fit exactly what we needed. However, I stumbled upon Elvanto. The design & pricing is what originally captured my interest. They have a nice, clean design that is easy to customize to fit your church's color scheme & logo. The pricing is also very competitive, nearly half of what many other systems cost. I signed up for their free trial (which was also paramount). Many ChMS's simply don't offer an easy way to find out how well it will work in your organization. You have to schedule a demo and use demo data in a test instance that doesn't reflect actual data from your organization. This wasn't true for Elvanto, which was refreshing. You get to start with an actual instance and import your real data. Then I had to contact support with a couple questions. I got a detailed reply within a few hours of asking. This is something that I had only gotten prior from Planning Center. Needless to say, I was impressed. That top notch support can make up for a myriad of faults. There are some areas that they still need to work on. They are actively developing a proper event management area with ticketing, etc... and they are constantly trying to improve on their mobile app and many other areas. In the end we decided to go with Elvanto. It works well for most everything that we need, and the things that we need additional help with, they've always been very quick to try and accommodate what we need.

Service Planning, People Management, Customizable Reports, Group Management, Check-in System, Top-notch Support, Responsive Design for easy access across all devices

Form Builder can be limiting on available actions after a user submits a form, Reports are super customizable but many built-in reports cannot be saved in an easy to view location, Mobile app is a work in progress

We signed up for Elvanto early on in terms of their development. They weren't quite as good as CCB as a database, or PCO as a planning tool, but the fact it could do both in the same system made it worthwhile. Since making the decision to switch, we haven't looked back! Elvanto is user friendly, highly adaptable, looks good and is still continually improving. The mobile app still has a way to go to be fully functioning, and event payment still hasn't arrived yet, but I have no doubt that they will be worth the wait. While we as a church still aren't using it to its full capabilities, we are definitely doing things now, that are leading to growth, that wouldn't be possible without Elvanto.

The fact that it is able to do everything in one program. Rostering, service planning, attendance tracking, people flows, etc. That it's intuitive and looks good (with great a great ability to personalise) and that updates and improvements are coming thick and fast!

The service planning still lacks a little adaptability in terms of look and feel (compared to PCO) and images still can't be added to nametags. Can also seem like too many configuration options are possible when starting out (people categories, demographics, locations, groups, services) which can make starting a little confusing.

We have been using Elvanto at Gateway Church Geelong now for well over 2 years. Our initial interaction with using Elvanto was during the trial period. The team were highly helpful in helping us transfer over from another PC based program that was locked to one machine. They were able to help with tweaking elements that would have hindered our transition within minutes of making them aware of our challenges. This made it an easy decision to go through the challenge of changing our processes and taking our database online. The final result is this. Elvanto has changed the way that the people in our church interact culturally, personally and as a community. Our teams, groups, database, rostering, has become part of our 'Community Hub'. It's the place where key correspondence is posted, either in blog format on the members home page or via pages that only certain groups, teams or leaders can see in the member area. Being able to filter categories and people groups has changed the way we communicate in a functional way. I could go on forever... the short of it is this. If you are using excel or a primitive software that is locked to one persons computer... just start the trial and email lots in trial period to see the benefits. Your people will end up being better contributors because they are in the loop and included as community.

Its flexibility and the way it supports local church function at any size.

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We were looking for a church membership database software that was cloud based and mobile friendly so that all our pastoral staff could access it anytime, on the go, from anywhere, on any device, without installing any software. We also needed it to support Chinese characters, and Elvanto was one of the few that worked for us. After signing up for a trial, we found the system super easy to use and very intuitive. The price was very reasonable so we were very comfortable to give it a go and signed on. They are more than just a membership database and over the years we have have steadily used more and more of their features to manage many aspects of our church activities like scheduling volunteers, and planning services. We even managed to use their event management system to handle room and resource bookings. We successfully got our small group leaders to submit reports after every meeting thanks to the very handy email reminders. It is very helpful for our pastoral care staff to assign tasks to follow up. It is very easy to customize to our needs and they keep improving it on a regular basis. Their customer support is very friendly, helpful, and responsive to customer requests and suggestions.

so easy to use that even our most tech averse pastoral staff are able to use it

Difficult to track extended relationships (aunts / uncles / cousins / etc.) beyond the standard family unit

I really enjoy this App. It is web based so able to be accessed anywhere by anyone you chose. Pricing is reasonable and there are so many functions that it s a challenge to use them all efficiently! There is a bit of time involved in the initial set up but well worth it. It is also very user friendly and intuitive. The support guys are constantly improving and updating features and open to suggestions. It combines software like Pastoral Care, Planning Center and Pulse into one integrated platform. ie your database, songs, planning roster and pastoral care with notes and reminders all in one place. Your volunteers can have their own login, volunteer for rosters and communicate directly with their department heads within the app. The security level options allow various levels of access from volunteer to Senior Administrator. You can keep track of groups, training and services and customize for you own specific needs. You can send out emails and link to Mail Chimp and also send out SMS's linked to a provider of your choice from within the app. I love the new feature of being able to add and track Contacts, (as opposed to members), without including them in your payment subscription based on member entries. Contacts are people that you connect with through things like events and youth, that are not usual church goers, but you want to keep them informed of special occasions. It also has financial tracking functions which I think would be handy for very a small church or one in the USA and places where donations are tax deductible. You can also enter pledges and track them. I highly recommend this application and commend Ben and his team for the wonderful work that they are doing.

The various functionality options and that it is web based so your people can access it from any computer anywhere and reasonably priced.

Nothing

Customer service was always quick and helpful.

The software underwent a recent upgrade, which seemed to bring a less eye-catching interface. Also, church staff had a difficult time learning the software and after about a year and a half, we gave up and moved on.

Elvanto is really worth while! Our church has moved away from an operation based on numerous Excel sheets and document versions, and has been using Elvanto for the last two years. Just to know that you are looking at the correct version - be it contact information, group schedules or the detailed plan for the next service - has really helped us a lot! We use Elvanto for - LIFE group organization and management - Planning services and large events - Church member and attendees information and management - Managing workflows for New Contacts follow-up - Managing e-mail lists used with MailChimp - Planning and sending out SMS messages - Checking in children to Sunday school ...among other things. Elvanto has a nice REST based API (altough a bit limited) which lets you integrate with other applications and systems. It would seem like Elvanto has not managed to grow their development capability during the last two years. This, unfortunately, results in a reduced ability to develop new features in the pace that customers of online systems demands today. On the other hand, their customer support is fast and accurate. Elvanto responds to their customers and manages to solve reported bugs within hours!

All basic functionality for church and group management is there. The ability to lock down and manage who sees what of information. Integration with Google calendars.

The software has world-wide customers and some of the functionality does not make sense everywhere. I had hoped that Elvanto put more effort in making functionality that is flexible and an fully featured API. In this way every church has the ability to ajust the system to their needs.

We love the ability to customize user log-in. We can add different users with different amount of accessibility into areas of the software. Also we focus a lot on being able to pastor people. We can add categorizes of notes. This helps us track and note where people are at. We can also add custom fields to in their profile to track spiritual growth. We switched to this program and have been thoroughly satisfied. This was also a great price software for church databases.

It is a little difficult with customer service cause they are an Australian company so at times the time difference for us in the US is hard to maneuver. The only other con we have found is the graphic appeal of customizing forms and mass email. This is something they are aware of. They have already made improvements since we have used their service.

I reviewed quite a number of church management tools, and Elvanto was by and far the best tool that we came across. Since we've implemented Elvanto, rostering our volunteers, managing our events and services has been so much easier! Our church volunteers love using Elvanto too. Now they can't imagine doing ministry without it!

Extremely flexible and very well thought out. From small groups, to rostering, even integration with CCLI. Elvanto covers all areas within a church.

Not many cons, but if I need to add something here then in the reporting section, we require the information in some specific ways. We weren't able to get it to produce the reports that we would like, so we've had to use some work arounds.

Elvanto has been a good tool for our church and our ministries. We do find many items, Elvanto is a few steps behind in implementation. Our first hand examples, are 1. use of forms and linking children, youth parents in demographic settings and groups. 2. Check-in printing of labels parents v children, 3. payment for events and registration through either events in the calendar and forms. 4. pulling reports All of our topics we have submitted to customer support and we do get responses quickly. Not all topics are fixable immediately and we are often told the team is working on it.

It has practical usage for tracking attendees and volunteers as well as service planning.

Other functionality needs work. AS stated in my previous comments on the first page.

The relational aspect of Elvanto has been extremely helpful. I'm a pastor that uses this software with the church and keeping up with people is the most important thing for our team. We want to keep track of people, but we also want to know what's going on in their lives. Elvanto gives our team the opportunity to share with each other notes about people we've connected with during the week. This is extremely helpful for us to keep each other up to date with what's going on in people's lives in our community.

This software doesnt have many downsides, but an issue would be the service programming. It just takes a few extra steps to do certain things like add notes for a specific department within that service. Sometimes just the organization of creating a service with different elements seems like it could be simpler.

Elvanto has solved a ton of IT problems we had within our organization. It has centralized many areas that needed to be centralized. We still have many opportunities to maximize the resources and features Elvanto offers. It's grown with us from being a small church plant to now a medium sized church. It's awesome to know that it is ahead of us from an innovation perspective rather than behind us.

Ease of use and ability to scale.

The time it took to have a solid mobile platform.

After trying other softwares like Fellowship One and others that were super complicated we tried Elvanto and we are amazed at the way Elvanto has helped us manage our church. This software is super complete and easy, the best of it is that is very customizable.

Elvanto is one of the best Church Software there is. Our whole team love what Elvanto does and how we can keep track of our members growth and progress on our church process and vision.

I wish their app interface was more complete and had more functionalities,

When we first started using Elvanto, we were generously given 1year to test the software as a new church. This helped us to evaluate our options and harness the opportunity Elvanto provided. Since we started using Elvanto we have not considered a different product given that the platform meets our needs. Nevertheless it would more valuable to see a few more features included as part of the package, like SMS inclusion, chat/Call app integration, project management app integration and a fully functional mobile interface. With such inclusions Elvanto is sure to set a standard other similar software look up to. Besides, I believe Elvanto is a brilliant software and the team are doing an amazing job.

Designed with the church at heart

No sms inclusions, cost is less competitive

Great software that really enhances our ministry with church membership, service preparation and church communication. Behind the software is a great team who respond very timely to questions, and suggestions. I've used one of the other big church management systems and much prefer Elvanto! Thanks Elvanto.

Fairly easy to understand and use. The Customer service and tech support is excellent. Very quick to respond to enquiries. Has always been helpful with technical difficulties and been supportive in all queries.

Customisability

apps is still to improve.

Love elvanto. Very powerful. Fantastic support. Plus they're improving features/interface regularly.

Power of searching/reporting.

Minor: Interface/workflows could be a bit more intuitve

So easy to use and doesn't take long hours of training. Check it out... I've used 3+ different ones and would always push to have Elvanto!

Ease of use.

Not robust enough for some places.

As the title says we loved the mobile app functionality and it was priced really well for what we wanted and the fact there is no charges for add ons. This definitely made it into our top five when we looked at a lot of software.

The service programming can be a little haphazard and the mobile app while it is cool we are looking forward to some improvements there. We will be able to pastor our people better by knowing who they are

After months of extensive research on ChMS solutions, I frankly couldn't find any one that I could wholeheartedly adopt and endorse. The current options were one or more of the following: 1) not easy to learn and use; 2) have an outdated and/or klunky interface; 3) more social network than ChMS; 4) are easy to learn but lack key features/functions; 5) are feature-rich but are too expensive. However, a few weeks ago, I read about Elvanto for the first time, and I started a free trial. Elvanto was the solution that I was imagining, except better! This is the only software I know that combines 1) a super-intuitive interface, 2) all essential features and many advanced features, and 3) affordability. I especially love what they've done with groups. As someone who previous managed 45 community groups, 100+ leaders, and 700+ members, Elvanto would have been a godsend as a single tool that allows me to set up group rosters, contact entire groups, have leaders report attendance and comments.