The Best Church Website Builders
Are you helping out your local church, or are you making your own church’s website intending to promote it, attract more visitors, provide the church members with useful event information, get donations, and post sermons or newsletters?
With a suitable church website builder, you can save a lot of money from hiring a professional website developer. You yet can create a professional-looking website for the church from scratch.
We have selected the top best church website builders for 2023. They are specialized online platforms that allow even non-experienced users to create a website quickly and inexpensively.
Read on to learn more about their features, pros, and cons, which will help you choose the most suitable one for your needs, your tech skills, your budget, and the time you want to spend creating the church website.
Our top 5 picks for the best church website builders for 2023
- Wix – the best overall website builder for churches
- Squarespace – the best designs for church websites
- Weebly – the best budget-friendly church website builder
- Strikingly – the best church website builder for newbies and ease-of-use
- Jimdo – the best builder for creating a simple church website
The features we looked for when choosing the most suitable church website builders
Here are the qualities we looked for when selecting the top church website builders:
- The ease of use
- The design, templates, and customization
- The price and the value of the money asked
- The different available tools and features
- The availability of useful and reliable, and timely customer support and help
- The overall customer satisfaction of other users
1. Wix.com
The best overall website builder for churches
The best overall church website builder of our choice is Wix. It is a leading platform that offers a wide variety of ready-made, professionally designed templates, which are customizable to suit any need.
It is intuitive and easy to use, even if it is the first time you are building a website and is a top pick for church websites and business, personal, and hobby websites.
Pros:
- More than 500 professional-looking templates, including 12 church and religious templates
- The most popular choice for use for church website building
- A helpful and extensive customer support knowledge base
Cons:
- Switching a template once it is live online is complicated
- It offers less storage space than some of the other options
- An expensive Starter plan
Overview of Wix.com
Wix has grown into one of the leading website building platforms preferred by businesses, personal users, and hobbyists, and celebrities.
The website builder relies on an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, which first-time website builders easily understand and use.
The platform comes with more than 500 professional-grade templates for all kinds of businesses, interests, and website types.
Wix has 12 church-specific and other non-profit ready-made templates, which you can choose from to start building a professional-looking website for your church.
The builder offers options for adding event pages, donations, blog posting, and you can even add sermons to the site easily.
Thanks to its ADI (artificial design intelligence) technology, you can set up your website in a matter of minutes and still have it look professional.
Check our full Wix review here.
Wix pricing plans
Wix offers a free plan that will provide you with a subdomain address at Wix.com, 500MB of storage space, a bandwidth of 500MB, and ads displayed on each page.
For your domain name, more storage space, removal of the ads, an SSL certificate, as well as access to more templates and features on Wix, you will need to pay for one of the premium plans.
Wix offers plans for personal use, as well as plans for businesses and online stores, as well as premium enterprise plans.
The prices start from $14 monthly for the Combo plan for personal users. The Unlimited plan is $17 per month and offers 10GB of storage, 1 hour of videos, a visitor analytics app, a site booster app, and $300 worth of ad vouchers. The other website plans suitable for a church website are the Pro plan costing $22 per month, and the VIP plan, which is $39 per month and offers 20GB of storage, 2 video hours, and an added events calendar app, social media, and professional logo apps and more.
All of the plans come with access to 24/7 customer care and live chat customer support, and if you sign up for the VIP plan, you will receive priority customer support.
Interested in Wix? Check our in-depth analysis of its pricing plans.
2. Squarespace
The best designs for church websites
Squarespace is an overall favorite when it comes to the stunning designs of its templates. The website-building platform offers impressive, award-winning templates and designs, many suitable for church and non-profit websites as well.
Pros:
- It offers the greatest-looking template designs among all website builders
- There are excellent event booking tools and features
- It has top-quality features, customization options, and tools
- You can restore deleted posts
Cons:
- Squarespace is not as user-friendly as Wix, which can be a problem for non-tech-savvy users
- There is no free plan
- There are fewer additional apps than those offered by Wix
Overview of Squarespace
With the available sophisticated and gorgeous designs and templates offered by Squarespace, you will be able to create a beautiful and professional-looking website for your church.
Aesthetics are essential if you want to grab the attention of more visitors to your site.
The Squarespace website builder is not quite as intuitive as the Wix platform, so it requires more learning time. Still, you don’t need to have experience with coding or website development to be able to use Squarespace.
Although Squarespace doesn’t yet offer any church-specific templates, you will be able to find many suitable templates for your church’s website in the community and non-profit template section.
The website builder has powerful built-in tools and features in each of the themes, so you will be able to create a donation, a volunteering page, a mission page to your website automatically if you choose a template like the Clarkson template at Squarespace, for example.
But whichever template you choose from Squarespace, you can be sure that your website will look stylish and professionally made.
Related content: Squarespace Review 2023
Squarespace pricing plans
Unfortunately, Squarespace does not have a free plan, and its available paid plans are more expensive than those offered by Wix. It does have a free trial which you can try out, though.
The Personal plan costs $12 when paid per year. It includes a free custom domain, SSL security, unlimited storage and bandwidth, SEO features, access to templates and extensions, and 2 contributors, website metrics, and 24/7 customer support.
The Business plan costs $18 per month when paid annually. It includes more features such as accepting donations, creating promotional banners, and many more tools which will be suitable for the church website.
Before creating a beautiful website for your church at Squarespace, check its full pricing guide here.
3. Weebly
The best budget-friendly church website builder
Weebly is a budget-friendly website builder with a free plan and inexpensive paid plan options. This makes it an excellent choice for those of you on tight budgets.
Pros:
- A completely free plan which will allow you to create a website and even a fully functional online store
- The paid plans are affordable
- It has built-in features which will grow with the website over time, and more apps are available
Cons:
- The templates are not as stylish and as professional-looking as those offered by Squarespace or Wix
- There are no templates that are church-specific
- It is not as customizable or flexible as Wix
Overview of Weebly
Weebly is a preferred website builder for small starting businesses because it offers a 100% free plan that includes useful tools for promoting the business and selling digital and physical products and services. Still, the free plan does not include a custom domain name and includes ads, which is something you should keep in mind.
Although Weebly offers a variety of templates for its users, there are not quite as sophisticated and professional as those offered by Squarespace or Wix. And also, they are not as easy to customize as the drag-and-drop templates of Wix.
One downside of Weebly is that the website builder doesn’t have a church or non-profit-specific choice of templates. Then again, if you pick the right theme, you will receive a built-in donations page for your church website.
There is an option to preview the different templates to choose the most suitable one. Even if you change your mind after that, you can easily switch themes when the website is ready.
The website builder has helpful setup guides, and you can add some essential elements to your church website, like a button for donations very easily.
Check our comprehensive Weebly review!
Weebly pricing plans
As mentioned earlier, Weebly offers a free plan that does not include a free custom domain name and has ads on each page of the website.
If you want a more professional-looking church website, we suggest that you choose one of the affordable paid plans offered by Weebly.
To connect the site to a custom domain, you will need to pay $6 per month, but if you want to remove the ads from your website and receive access to unlimited storage, you will need to pay for the Pro plan, which costs $12 per month when paid annually. This is the most suitable Weebly paid plan for a church and includes a free domain, SSL security, unlimited storage, site search, $100 credit for Google Ads, and the ads’ removal.
If you want to create a church website and at the same time save money, we suggest that you check out Weebly pricing plans here.
4. Strikingly
Related: Strikingly: The Easiest Solution for Single Page Layouts?
The best church website builder for newbies and for ease-of-use
Strikingly is our top recommendation if you want to create a church website with minimal investments and minimal effort and time.
It is easy to use, and suitable for people with no previous web development skills and experience.
Pros:
- One of the simplest and easy-to-use template editors
- There is a free plan, and the paid plans offer great value for money
- No experience or learning curve is required for using it
- There is useful 24/7 customer support
Cons:
- The designs of the templates are not as outstanding as others
- They are not as customizable and flexible
- The integrated features and tools are fewer than those offered by the other website builders
Overview of Strikingly
If you have no experience with creating websites and minimal computer skills, then Strikingly is the most suitable option to choose if you want to create your own church website.
You can sign up and use this website builder and create a decent website even with zero coding skills.
The platform has a drag-and-drop template editor, which is simple to use.
Unfortunately, the templates offered by Strikingly are not so “striking.” Then again, they are clean, easy on the eyes, and can be improved with your own images when needed.
One of the top features of Strikingly is that the company offers reliable live chat support available 24/7.
It also has a free plan and very affordable paid plans, which come with a 14-day free trial.
Strikingly pricing plans
The Strikingly website builder has a 100% free plan, which does not give you a custom domain name and displays ads on each page.
If you want a more professional-looking website for your church, with its own domain name and zero ads, you can choose the Limited plan, which costs $8 per month when paid annually, or the Pro plan, which is $16 per month when paid per year.
The Limited plan should be sufficient for most churches. It is affordable, including a custom domain and two sites, 50GB of monthly bandwidth, 1GB of storage per site, online store features, and access to 24/7 support.
5. Jimdo
The best website builder for creating a simple church website
If you want a more austere and less flashy church website, then you may want to check out the Jimdo website builder.
Pros:
- A free plan and affordable ad-free paid plans
- Well structured, non-flashy templates
- A simple editor which doesn’t allow for making designer mistakes
- Perfect for basic sites
Cons:
- A limited choice of templates
- Limited flexibility and customization options
Overview of Jimdo
Jimdo is among the most suitable church website builders mainly due to its simple editor and its affordable prices.
The website builder is the top choice if you want to create a simple church website in just a few hours.
Making a website without risking any designer mistakes is so easy because Jimbo offers limited options for customizing the ready-made templates and adding or removing features and elements.
While this provides structure, it can be off-putting to others who want to be able to customize their website more to their liking and to their preferences.
There are no church-specific templates offered by Jimdo, but there are some non-profit ones that should work fine for most church website needs.
Jimdo pricing plans
You can try out Jimdo for free with the free Play plan, but it includes add, no custom domain, and limited features, as well as only 500MB of storage.
If you want your website to have its own unique and easy-to-identify domain name and no ads, you can sign up for the Start plan. It costs $9 per month when billed annually and includes a free domain name and an ad-free website.
If you want to add SEO, visitor statistics tools, and personalized support, you will need to sign up for the Grow plan, which costs $15 per month when paid per year.
Find out which are the best website builders for 2023!
How about alternatives to the best church website builders?
While the website builders included in the list above are our top picks for the leading church website builders. There are, of course, many other platforms and website builders which you can choose for creating your website.
Here are some alternatives which you may want to consider when choosing the most suitable website builder for your church website:
1. Sharefaith
Sharefaith is a dedicated website builder for churches and worship, so it has the most church-specific templates and features of all other website builders.
Then again, the prices for using Sharefaith start from $50 per month, which is much higher than the prices of other starter plans offered by our top picks.
The church-specific website builder and media site advertises itself as being the preferred platform by more than 8,000 ministries for creating their own websites.
Sharefaith also offers Media plans with graphics, templates for bulletins, newsletters, videos, social media, and other church graphics and media. The Media plan starts at $25 per month when billed annually.
If you want to combine the media plan with a website builder with web hosting, domain, templates, and lifetime support, you will need to pay $50 per month when billed per year or $55 per month when paying month to month.
Of course, the templates and features offered by Sharefaith are the most suitable for developing a perfect church website, but the pricing for this builder is much higher than that asked by our other top picks.
If money is no issue, then Sharefaith is possibly the best church-specific website builder available.
2. Ministry Designs
Ministry Designs is another platform specifically created for churches and ministries.
The website offers church web design, church graphics, sermon series, and other related services for creating an innovative church community and service.
The designs offered are church-oriented, but the tools and editing features are pretty limited and not as impressive as those offered by Wix or Squarespace.
You will need to pay a $1,000 activation fee to start using Ministry Design and sign up for a paid plan starting from $20 per month to build, host, and maintain your website using this platform.
Once again, the price for this website builder is relatively high compared to that asked by other website builders, and the features offered are not as impressive as those offered by our top picks, Wix and Squarespace.
Still, if you are interested in finding out more about Ministry Designs, you can browse through their website.
3. Nucleus.church
Nucleus.church is an online platform or hub for managing a church, keeping its members active and engaged, and attracting new ones.
Nucleus makes this all-in-one central hub church management quite easy, thanks to the included app integrations and the easy-to-use drag-and-drop editing tools.
But then again, we have not included Nucleus among our top recommended church website builders due to its high price.
The package price is $199 per month, and if you want only to use the website builder, you will need to pay $99 per month.
The good news is that Nucleus.church offers a free 30-day trial, so you can try out its features for free before committing to a paid plan.
Are you new to the website building? Check our list for the best drag and drop builders.
Final words about the best church website builders for 2023
Hopefully, we have helped you select the most suitable website builder for your church website, no matter how much experience you have with building and maintaining websites.
Our top picks were chosen based on their templates, ease of use, prices, and church-specific features and are as follows:
- Wix – the best overall website builder for churches
- Squarespace – the best designs for church websites
- Weebly – the best budget-friendly church website builder
- Strikingly – the best church website builder for newbies and ease-of-use
- Jimdo – the best builder for creating a simple church website
Suppose you are looking for a website builder dedicated to developing church websites only. In that case, you can check out our top alternative choices, including Sharefaith, Ministry Designs, and Nucleus as well.
FAQs about the top-rated church website builders
Which of the website builders is the easiest of all to use?
Our overall favorite website builder platform Wix is also the easiest to use of all. This is due to its intuitive interface, its artificial intelligence design features, the drag-and-drop editor, and the hundreds of apps and extensions available for customizing your website.
If you are afraid of messing up the design of the website by being given so much creative freedom, then you may want to opt for Strikingly, which is the easiest to use to make a simple website for your church.
Which platform is the best choice for limited budgets?
All of the website builders on our top 5 list except for Squarespace have free plans, so they will cost you nothing if you are looking for a way to start your church website without paying a cent.
Still, if you want a more professional-looking site with its own domain name, without ads and more features, then one of the best bangs for the buck is offered by Wix.
As for the top budget-friendly option, then we recommend Weebly.
Should I choose a general website builder or a church-specific website builder?
The answer to this question depends on your particular needs.
If you want a beautiful website design, you should consider using Squarespace over Sharefaith. But if you could do with more church-specific features, support, and help, you may want to pick Nucleus.church, Sharefaith, or Ministry Designs instead of one of our non-church-specific top picks.
How to pick the best domain name for the website of my church?
Try to stick to a name that is close to the church’s name and is still short enough and easy enough to be remembered by the church members and other visitors.
How to choose the hosting for the website, and do I need it?
Yes, you need hosting for any website, but if you pick one of our top suggestions, then you don’t have to worry about paying separately for hosting because it is included in the plans offered. Hosting (with limited storage) is also included in the free plans offered by our top picks for the leading church website builders for 2023.
The hosting is included in the plans offered by all the church-specific website builders, except Ministry Designs.
Related – The Cheapest Website Builder in 2023
