Building a church website doesn’t require a lot of time or money. Churches rely on donations, so we understand that there isn’t a huge budget when it comes to building a website. While building a website may not be top of your list, I’m guessing you’ve thought about it which is why you’ve ended up here, and for good reason!
In fact, around 80% of visitors look at a church’s website before considering stepping inside the building. If you don’t have a website, chances are you’re losing out on a huge potential following.
Website builders are a simple and affordable way to get your church website online. You don’t need any tech skills either, which is an added bonus of using a church website builder. If you’re ready to create your church website, let’s take a look at the best platforms to get you online!
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Best 6 Church Website Builders
Our research process is fairly extensive. We plunge hours into signing up to each website builder and testing their features so you can get an honest and accurate account of how they work, and whether they’re any good.
Before making any recommendations, we try and test each website builder and consider:
- Ease of use
- Pricing
- Design and templates
- Features
- Support
The table above shows you an overview of the 6 best church website builders on our panel. The cheapest plan price displayed represents the cheapest price you’ll pay to build a website. This may include promotional pricing and the price may change at renewal.
Note: While the majority of the website builders include a free domain, you don’t have to register a domain with them. If you have already purchased a domain elsewhere before coming across this article, you can still connect your domain name to your website. Similarly, if you already have an SSL certificate, you can apply this to your website with any of the website builders listed in this article.
1. Wix (Best Overall Church Website Builder)
Wix is a top class website builder that allows you to create a website of any kind in a matter of minutes. It’s one of the most user-friendly site builders on the market, offering professional features and stunning templates.
Building a website with Wix is a simple process. You can either pick one of their awesome templates that you can customize further, or you can use their ADI editor. Wix ADI will ask you a few questions then generate a template and website based on your answers. If you want to get your church website online quickly, this is by far the fastest and easiest ways to do it.
Wix’s editor uses drag and drop functionality, so it’s a case of choosing the elements you want on your website, like text boxes, galleries, donation buttons, and dragging them to the chosen area on your site. While Wix isn’t a specialized church website builder, it does offer templates for churches and non-profits. You can easily add a blog, contact forms, event pages, and donation sections, making your church website look professional.
Wix offers a free plan, though the options are fairly limited. Their cheapest paid pricing plan is $14 per month and allows you to connect a domain (or register one for free), and includes a free SSL certificate among plenty of other free features.
Wix Resources
If Wix sounds like the right church website builder for you, then it’s worth taking a look at our other Wix resources to help you start building your website today:
2. Weebly
Weebly is a budget-friendly website builder that offers great features and a wealth of pricing plans. It has a wide range of apps you can choose from to further customize your church website, and like Wix, is incredibly easy to use.
Weebly is a great choice if you’re looking for simple and stylish designs. Their templates are professional, yet not as stunning as Wix or SquareSpace’s. However, if you need some creative guidance and you’re not particularly keen on spending a lot of time on the design, then Weebly will guide you through the process.
This does mean that there’s not much creative freedom. When picking a template, you’ll need to consider what features you want to include, e.g. donations, but you can preview any template before you commit to it. Better still, unlike Wix, you can change your theme at any time, even when your website goes live.
While there aren’t any church-specific templates or a way to search Weebly’s themes, there are enough templates to satisfy most industries. Weebly offers a free plan as well as affordable pricing plans from $6 per month which include a free SSL. There’s no free domain name, but if you upgrade past the basic plan, you’ll get a lot more features and freebies thrown in.
Weebly Resources
As Weebly is one of our highly-recommended website builders for churches and other websites, we’ve tried and tested many of their features and have put together some helpful resources if you decide to build your website with them:
3. SquareSpace
If you’re looking to “wow” your church visitors, SquareSpace offers stunning templates that are guaranteed to make heads turn. While it doesn’t offer a free plan, SquareSpace does provide plenty of features and a wealth of support.
Although SquareSpace isn’t as beginner-friendly as Wix or Weebly, it won’t take too much time to learn, and you won’t need any coding knowledge to build a great website. SquareSpace boasts high-quality features, all of which are built-in to their editor.
There aren’t church-specific templates, but you can browse the Community and Non-Profit area to find the perfect template with built-in features like donation pages, volunteering sections, and more. All of SquareSpace’s templates are mobile-friendly, so if a visitor fancies checking out your church website on their mobile, they’ll be able to see it in all of its glory.
SquareSpace’s prices are admitedly higher than many other website builders. However, you need to factor in that their templates include built-in features, and you won’t need to download extra elements from an app store to customize your website. In order to accept donations on your church site, you’ll need to opt for the Business Plan which is $18 per month.
SquareSpace Resources
We’ve spent a lot of time using SquareSpace. It does require a little more time and effort than Wix, but it’s worth the investment because some of their features are really helpful:
4. iPage
iPage’s website builder may not be the first website builder you think of when considering building your church website. However, it does come with many benefits, like free access when you sign up to iPage’s affordable $1.99 per month web hosting.
If you want to combine your web hosting with an easy to use website builder, iPage is guaranteed to tick the boxes. Their intelligent builder asks a few simple questions, much like Wix ADI, then creates a professional website tailored to your requirements.
iPage’s free Starter website builder allows you to build up to 6 pages, which should be plenty for your church website. There’s a suite of over 550k images, and pre-built sections in their templates to make creating your website a breeze. There are also SEO tools included to help you rank on Google.
iPage’s templates aren’t necessarily anything to shout about like SquareSpace’s are, however, they will offer the features you need to build your church website. You can upgrade your plan at any time too, if you feel you need more features.
5. DreamHost
If you have any experience with WordPress, or have heard of them, you’ll know that WordPress is a fantastic open-source website builder, blogging platform, and much more. DreamHost leverage the power of WordPress, coupled with easy tools and a drag and drop website builder to make building your church website incredibly easy.
In order to use DreamHost’s website builder, you’ll need to sign up to one of their web hosting plans, starting from $2.59 per month. Although this is an affordable choice, you are limited to using WordPress, and for beginners, this may not be the best option.
To get started, you’ll choose your pricing plan, then pick a theme you want to build your website with. Once you’ve customized it, you can then fill in your content and launch your website. WordPress has thousands of free and premium themes and plugins to make your church website incredibly powerful. However, DreamHost’s website builder is more limited as it’s aimed at those that want to combine WordPress with ease of use.
DreamHost don’t offer any church-specific WordPress themes, however, there are enough to choose from that you can customize to make relevant. If you’re willing to put a little more time and effort into building your church website, DreamHost is a good option, but there are easier ones out there.
6. Ministry Designs
Ministry Designs feature a specialist team who all have a background in church ministry. While you may pay a lot more for this service, you should find comfort in the knowledge that you’ll get a tailored approach coupled with experienced and excellent customer support.
The features with Ministry Design are fairly standard. You’ll be able to use their blogging tools, create video backgrounds, and a few more. However, I wouldn’t consider they provide anything outstanding, other than their experienced service team.
Ministry Design’s templates are good and professional, but again, in comparison to SquareSpace, they’re nothing to write home about. The process is incredibly user-friendly, which is great if you’re starting your first church website builder journey. However, it comes at a price.
Ministry Designs charge $20 per month which covers hosting costs, however, the service requires $1000 upfront which may not be readily available. Although you’ll get lifetime access to Ministry Designs and expert support, unless you have the budget to dish out on this expensive service, there are plenty of more affordable options to choose from.
Best Church Website Builders Summarized
At this point, you’ve probably got an idea of which website builder you’ll want to use to build your church website.
We’ve tried and tested each one of the mentioned church website builders and analyzed their features, pricing, templates, and ease of use to give you a solid idea of where to start. However, if you want to take a quick glance at which website builder is best for your requirements, here’s a quick summary:
- Wix – best overall church website builder
- Weebly – best for building your church website on a budget
- SquareSpace – best for stunning templates
- iPage – best for simplicity and ease of use
- DreamHost – best for WordPress websites
- Ministry Designs – best for church-specific experience
Web Hosting Resources
In this article we’ve discussed several website builders that include their own web hosting, as well as some which are web hosts themselves. In case you want some more information about how we find the best web hosts, we’ve pulled together some useful resources for you to explore:
Best Church Website Builders FAQs
While you don’t need to use a website builder for your church website, it’s highly recommended because they are affordable. If you don’t have any coding experience and don’t have the budget to pay $5,000+ for a professional web designer, it’s the easiest and cheapest alternative.
Wix and Weebly are the easiest website builders to use, hands down. They both offer a user-friendly interface and overall experience, coupled with good support resources to get you started. Weebly is more limited in terms of design flexibility, but if you want to get the job done fast, they are both solid options.
There’s no right or wrong answer here, it really depends on your needs. All of the website builders listed in this article are more than capable of offering you a good platform to build a church website with. While Ministry Designs have an expert team behind them, it doesn’t mean the other builders aren’t any good.
Website builders like Wix and Weebly that offer free plans will offer a free subdomain. However, this won’t look professional as you’ll be stuck with a domain like mychurchsite.wixsite.com. You can get affordable domain names from other domain registrars which won’t cost a lot.
No! All of the website builders in this article include free web hosting. If you choose to build your own website from scratch or use WordPress, you’ll need to source your own web hosting from a hosting company.