Before the pandemic, churches count on events to boost engagement among members, like holding church socials, Bible studies, and family days. Although most of these events were discontinued at the height of the pandemic, many churches are starting to attract members to in-person events again. Churches are now adopting a hybrid model that combines online and in-person events in serving their congregation. Church members seem to agree because 35% of all churchgoers liked both online and in-person services, according to a Barna study.
Managing church events, an already challenging task, is now even more difficult these days, but some tools can make holding events easier. This article will tell you about some of the best church event management software you can use to make holding events stress-free and more productive for your members.
Church Event Management Tools List
Here’s the list of the best church event management apps I’ll cover in this article.
- Subsplash
- FellowshipOne
- Realm
- Smart Church Solutions
- Rsvpify
- Swift Events
- Hopin
- EventPro
- PowerChurch Plus
- Arlo
Comparison Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best church event management solution? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
1. User Interface (UI): Aside from church leaders and employees, church members also use church event management software, so I look for software with a clean user interface to provide church members with a positive user experience.
2. Usability: Users need to be able to use church event management software immediately, so I look for user-friendly and easy to master software.
3. Integrations: Aside from church event management software, churches use other software, so I look for a church event management software that works great with other church management tools that your church uses, like CRM and ChMS software.
4. Value for $: Churches are non-profit organizations, so I look for software with many fantastic features with affordable monthly rates.
5. Versatility: Churches hold in-person, online, and hybrid events so I look for software I can use to manage different types of events.
Church Event Management Platform: Key Features
- Event calendar: Allows event creators, team members, and church members to view upcoming events to block off their schedules and avoid conflicts.
- Event registration: Allows attendees to register for an event and has an event check-in feature to know the exact number of attendees.
- Resource management: Lets church leaders manage resources critical to a successful event like rooms, audio-visual equipment, chairs, printed materials, etc.
- Payment collection: Allows users to accept payments or donations to paid events.
- Marketing: Allows users to promote upcoming events to increase attendance.
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Overviews Of The 10 Best Church Event Management Software Solution
Here’s a brief description of each church event management system to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
1. Subsplash – Best for paid, ticketed events
Subsplash Events enables your church to create, publish, manage, and promote your events from one central dashboard. You can easily announce events on your website and mobile app, both of which can be created through the all-in-one Subsplash One church management platform.
With Subsplash Events, you can customize your church events with custom ticket types and prices, custom form questions, attendee limits, and more. All events will automatically sync with your church app and website and notify your admin team when a new person registers. When someone registers for an event, their contact and personal details will be added to their member profile so you can access or export the data later.
Is your church hosting an upcoming paid event like Vacation Bible School or a church conference? The Subsplash Platform makes it easy to collect and process payments—allowing your ministry to keep your financial data all in one central place.
Subsplash One offers pricing upon request.
2. FellowshipOne – Best church events calendar
FellowshipOne is a church management software with a wide variety of capabilities for managing your church and taking care of your flock. It has payroll and accounting software to help you manage your church’s finances. You can also use FellowshipOne to manage and schedule church facilities to ensure that small church groups have access to facilities for their group activities.
Informing members of upcoming events is one of the best ways to encourage attendance, and FellowshipOne can help you because it automatically updates your church calendar when you create an event. With this feature, members can take note of the events they are interested in to sync them with their personal or business calendar to avoid conflict. Organizers and volunteers can access your church calendar and view details of the event, giving them an awareness of their roles in making the event successful.
FellowshipOne pricing is available upon request, and they offer a 30-day free trial.
3. Realm – Best for church event volunteer management
Realm is a church management system with event management capabilities to provide members with more opportunities to get together and engage with other members. You can use Real to accept payments for paid events like summer camps, retreats, or kids’ programs. Realm also allows you to create recurring events for activities such as Sunday schools, volunteer meetings, or weekly socials, so there’s no need to create an event weekly.
Knowing how many church members you will attend your event can help you prepare better, and Realm has an event registration feature you might find useful. Realm lets you inform church members about upcoming events so they can pre-register using the Realm mobile app. What’s great about this feature is you have a better idea of the number of attendees to expect, so you know how many volunteers you need, how many chairs you should prepare, or if you have enough printed materials to make your event successful.
Realm provides pricing details and a free demo upon request.
4. Smart Church Solutions – Best church facility management for event planning
Smart Church Solutions is software for all the facilities requirements of your church. You can use it to design facilities that can serve the needs of your congregation. It is a system that church leaders can use to maintain facilities and ensure proper working order. Smart Church Solutions’ event scheduler allows users to design and create custom forms for events like registration forms or consent forms.
Smart Church Solutions is a church facilities management software to ensure proper utilization of church facilities during events. It allows users to reserve rooms, venues, sound systems, multimedia devices, and others critical to the success of any event. Smart Church Solutions is a useful software because it can help prevent conflicts and double booking, resulting in the disruption of events and discord among church members.
Smart Church Solutions pricing starts at $50/location/month, and they provide a free demo upon request.
5. RSVPify – Best for church fundraising events
RSVPify is an events management software for churches, businesses, and non-profit organizations that need software to efficiently plan and execute events. You can use it for event planning and tracking invitees giving you an idea of how many attendees to expect during the actual event. RSVPify also allows you to create customized event registration and online reservation forms to collect attendees’ contact information and get to know your audience before an event.
Generating funds is critical for your church because it can help you provide services to your congregation and initiate outreach programs for your community. Rsvpify can help you sell tickets for events to generate funds. You can use RSVPify to sell ticket variations like VIP tickets so you can maximize the potential of fundraising activities. RSVPify also gives you the option of collecting online donations for specific events, giving church members the freedom to choose the amount they want to give.
RSVPify integrates with other event planning and communication tools, including Facebook, Slack, Salesforce, and Gmail.
RSVPify pricing starts at $39/account/month and they offer a free trial upon customer request.
6. Swift Events – Best for online church events
Swift Events is a virtual events platform you can use to widen the reach of church events and services using the internet. You can use the platform to conduct live polls, SMS polling, quizzes, and gamification to make your event more interactive. It also allows you to conduct pre-and post-event surveys to help you determine areas you can improve to make future events more successful.
Online events are getting more popular among churches, and if you want to start hosting online events, then Swift Events is the best church event management software for you. Swift Events allows you to customize your online event using your font, color, and layout style to make your event stand out while promoting your church. You can use Swift Events to Livestream in-person events on your church website, or social media account so you can reach members who cannot attend in-person anywhere they are in the globe.
Swift Events integrates with other communication and video conferencing tools like Webex, Zoom, and GoToMeeting.
Swift Events has a free version for up to 150 participants, while the pricing for the paid plans starts at $5/month/up to 300 participants.
7. Hopin – Best for event marketing
Hopin is a management software for handling not just in-person events but online events and hybrid events too. You can use it as a planning center to manage your event in its entirety, from planning to post-event evaluation. It has an analytics feature to help you analyze critical data like attendee statistics, chat transcripts, and event recordings so you can use event data to plan future events.
No matter how amazing your event is, it can turn into a disaster if you cannot market it properly, which is why Hopin’s event marketing feature is a vital feature. You can use Hopin to create an amazing landing page that can help promote your event and drive attendance or launch an email marketing campaign. It also has an attendee management feature for resending tickets, creating promo codes, issuing refunds, and others that can help increase attendance at your events.
Hopin integrates with other amazing event management tools like Twitter, Mailchimp, GoFundMe, Figma, and Slack.
Hopin is free church event management software, but they offer paid plans starting at $99/month/account.
8. EventPro – Best for managing equipment & service rentals
EventPro is an event management software for churches of all sizes, businesses, and nonprofits to help them plan and execute events. It has different modules to help you manage your events, including attendance tracking, email marketing, child check-in, etc. You can also use EventPro to create custom event webpages to market your event and act as an online registration form.
Mounting an event means utilizing resources, and EventPro is the best event management software for you if you want one that allows you to manage the resources you need during the event. You can use EventPro to allocate resources like tables and chairs, audio-visual equipment, tents, and others to ensure the comfort of attendees and avoid double-booking equipment. If you have to source equipment, you can use EventPro to maintain a record of hired equipment and their costs for accounting purposes.
EventPro provides customized pricing and a free demo upon request.
9. PowerChurch Plus – Best church event management software for task tracking
PowerChurch Plus is a church management software solution with different modules to help you manage your church and its activities. It has a membership management feature for maintaining a record of your members, their contact details, and other critical information. PowerChurch Plus’ donation management feature can help you manage member contributions whether from checking accounts, credit card, text giving, or online giving. This donor management feature also allows you to keep donors' financial information secure while ensuring that records of donations are available for fund accounting.
Small churches and large churches rely on the generosity of volunteers when it comes to manning events, and PowerChurch Plus is the best church management software for you if you want to ensure that volunteers know what to do during events. PowerChurch Plus has a volunteer management feature to assign tasks to people giving you a better idea of who is responsible for a task and which tasks need more resources. You can use the software to automate the sending of notifications whenever a new task gets assigned to help you save time from sending a text message to each volunteer.
PowerChurch Plus has a one-time license fee starting at $395. They offer free demos that customers can download using the PowerChurch Plus website.
10. Arlo – Best for educational events
Arlo is a training management software with an event management feature to help you conduct recurring events successfully. It allows you to create customized registration forms ensuring you capture all the details of participants for easier group management during the actual event. Arlo can help you create tasks and assign them to volunteers or church employees. Arlo also helps streamline task management by automatically sending a task checklist whenever you assign a task.
Part of ministering to a flock is helping them improve themselves by gaining new skills or maximizing the ones they possess and Arlo is the best event management software for you if you hold recurring events or educational ones. With Arlo, you can easily plan and execute educational events like a series of seminars about how to minister to the community or how to manage Sunday schools effectively. You can use Arlo to create multi-session courses that allow participants to choose the sessions they want to take. Arlo lets you automate workflows to help you save time, like sending feedback surveys to help you gauge the success of your events.
Arlo pricing starts at $89/license/month, and they offer a 14-day free trial.
What do you think about this list?
Events are crucial to churches of all sizes because they offer excellent opportunities for church members to mingle and for the church leadership to raise funds for outreach programs and other church activities. If you want to mount successful events every time, your church needs excellent church event management software.
This type of software can help you create and manage events, market events, and collect payment for ticketed events. With the help of excellent church event management software, you can hold amazing church events all the time to improve engagement and help church members hone their skills.
Aside from church event management software, there are other fantastic software your church can benefit from, and you can read all about them when you subscribe to The Lead Pastor.
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