6 Best Church Website Builders 2024

Best overall church website builder

Pricing range: free – $159 per month

Wix came top of the class in our research, combining ease of use with professional features and stunning designs – and most importantly, it’s super easy to use. Check out its rating below!

Editor's Choice

Wix

Best overall church website builder

Outstanding

4.8

out of 5

• Easiest to use
• Quality features
• 800+ templates

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $16 - $159 / month

Pros

• Most popular in user testing
• 12 church-specific templates available
• Extensive support knowledge base

Cons

• Can’t change template once site is live
• Less storage space than other options
• Price plans can get expensive

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Wix Overview

Wix is a popular website builder with amateurs, businesses, and even celebrities – and it’s a firm favorite of ours, too! In fact, it’s our highest-rated website builder, achieving a score of 4.7 out of 5 in our testing overall. It’s a drag-and-drop website builder, meaning it couldn’t be easier to use – you simply drag elements like pictures, text boxes, and videos to wherever you want them on your page.

Wix isn’t a specialized church website builder, but it does have specific church and non-profit templates for you to choose from. You can add donation buttons, contact, and events pages, share blog posts, and even post sermons on your site.

Wix Pricing

Wix has a free plan, but to use your own domain name, you’ll need to upgrade to one of Wix’s four paid plans. The cheapest is the $16 per month Light plan, but for better resources, we recommend the $27 per month Core plan – this is still affordable for most and will allow more traffic to your site.

Unfortunately, value for money is the one area where Wix falls down in comparison to its competitors. Although its prices aren’t through the roof, they are still more expensive than others. But since the pricing updates, Squarespace’s entry plan now costs $16 per month too, which is the same as Wix.

Still, Wix didn’t perform so well in this category, earning a score of 3.4 out of 5 in our research. However, there is a silver lining! Wix may be more expensive than other builders, but it has an ace up its sleeve – Wix achieved the best feature score out of all the website builders we tested. This is great news if you want to build a church website that has the power to do lots – those extra features could be instrumental in the way your congregation experiences your church.

Wix Features

Wix has the best features of any church website builder in our research, earning 4.8 out of 5. What’s more impressive is that the number two for that category, Squarespace, only scores 3.7 out of 5! So what makes Wix far and away the best for features?

Well, it’s the fact that Wix comes with everything you could need for a church website. While builders like Squarespace have templates for non-profits or community sites (which can be easily adapted for church websites), Wix has a selection of church-specific templates for you to use. If you are a first-time builder then it can be really helpful to see how expert designers have built their sites so that you can then add your church’s personal flair too.

On top of just being designed well, Wix also has everything a church needs – but online! Donation buttons, contact details, and blog posts for updating can be easily dragged and dropped onto your site with Wix’s intuitive editor. You are also able to create bookings and scheduling with Wix Bookings, plan and sell tickets with Wix Events, and even post filmed sermons on your site with the video tool.

Wix’s Ease of Use

Wix has very good ease of use, with a score in our research of 4.4 out of 5. When building a church website, your site must be not only easy to build but easy for your followers to use. The age range can vary wildly for churches, and you need your site to be easily accessible by anyone.

Wix earned such a high score by making everything editable, plus a solid range of accessibility features like keyboard control, site reader headings, and color options for those with impaired vision. You can also change the text size across your site so it can be easily read by everyone.

Wix Gallery

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We like that Wix has a selection of religion-specific templates.

To edit text, all you have to do is click on the words you’d like to change, and a simple toolbox will pop up.

To add contact forms and other features, all you have to do is select them from a neat library.

I was able to use AI to generate text across my website. I simply wrote what I was looking for and added what tone of voice I’d like to use.

When I clicked on the Wix Booking App, I was able to make events that others could sign up for. It was all managed from the Wix Dashboard.

Further Information

• Does Wix sound like the ideal match for your church’s needs? Find out more in our detailed Wix Review
• Discover which plan is right for you in our in-depth Wix Pricing

Best templates for church websites

Pricing Range: $16 – $49 per month

Squarespace can’t be beaten for its stunning designs. But it’s not just a pretty face – take a look below to see how it scored in our testing.

Squarespace

Best for beautiful designs

Excellent

4.7

out of 5

• Best template designs
• Best quality features
• As easy as Wix

Free trial available

Paid Plans: $16 - $49 / month

Pros

• Most beautiful template designs
• Quality events booking features
• Restore deleted posts for up to 30 days

Cons

• Slower site speed
• Offers fewer apps than Wix
• Doesn’t autosave your work

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Squarespace Overview

With its high score of 4.5 out of 5 in our design category, Squarespace wows its users with its high-quality, sophisticated template designs. If you have large images or want a truly professional-looking site, Squarespace is your top choice. However, Wix still beats it for design with a 4.6 out of 5 due to the fact Squarespace doesn’t have specific church website templates. Instead, browse through the “Community and Non-Profit” templates to find your perfect match – we particularly recommend the Clarkson template.

In recent years, Squarespace has become easier than ever due to improvements to its user experience (UX) and a more streamlined editor, becoming on par with Wix with a 4.4 out of 5 for ease of use. Squarespace has amazingly high-quality features, all of which are already built-in. For example, with the Clarkson theme, you’ll find donation, mission, and volunteering pages automatically included.

No matter which theme you choose, you can be confident you’ll end up with a professional, sleek, and powerful site to engage your visitors.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace provides the same value-for-money score as Wix with a 3.4 out of 5. Its cheapest plan costs $16 per month, but we’d recommend choosing the $23 per month Business plan, since this lets you accept donations through your website.

Like Wix, where this builder falls down is in its pricing. While you will get a lot of quality features, only a few will be directly applicable to a church website, with one crucial feature (accepting donations) being locked to an upgraded plan. Its features are some of the best, but you may be paying for a few you’ll never use.

Squarespace Features

For building a church website, Squarespace includes all the features you need like events and ticket booking, volunteering pages, contact forms, and posting videos. All of these features can be added with Squarespace’s improved editor, Squarespace Blueprint – an AI-assisted tool that builds your website for you. Squarespace has a whole host of new AI tools it revealed in a recent Refresh event, such as AI image support and AI text, which can save you time in your building.

A downside to some of Squarespace’s features is sometimes they’re locked behind its own other plans. Accepting donations, for instance, can only be used once you are on the $23 per month Business plan. The lack of a church-specific template is also slightly disappointing, but not the end of the world. In our research, we gave Squarespace 3.7 out of 5 overall for features.

Squarespace’s Ease of Use

Squarespace really improved its overall ease of use score since last year’s testing, rising 11% to become equal with Wix in our rankings with a new score of 4.4 out of 5. This was due to many UX improvements for both editors and visitors. One of our testers even said:

“My page ended up looking so much sleeker and neater than when I used Wix.”

The UX improvements involved a change to a drag-and-drop editor plus AI-generated presets for websites. This helped our testers massively when building their website, and from the Squarespace Refresh update the platform recently had, this will only continue to be improved upon.

Squarespace Gallery

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Squarespace’s “Community & Non-Profits” templates are some of the most stylish we’ve seen.

You can add your own images with just a few clicks in the Squarespace editor.

Squarespace templates are focused on visuals, so it’s easy to create a stunning website.

Squarespace Blueprint uses AI to build for me. I could choose what type of style and color I wanted but all the structure was generated for me

Squarespace’s new drag-and-drop editor made it so easy for me to add all the elements I wanted.

Further Information

• Read our full Squarespace Review to find out if this could be the perfect builder for you
• Does Squarespace fit your budget? Find out in our Squarespace Pricing Review

Fastest way to build a church website

Pricing range: $9.99 – $29.99 per month

GoDaddy is an easy-to-use builder that’s perfect for getting you online quickly, without sacrificing quality or professionalism. Take a look at how we’ve rated it below!

GoDaddy

Best for creating a website quickly

Excellent

4.1

out of 5

• Hands-off ADI building
• Speedy setup
• Good for basic sites

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $6.99 - $469.99 / month

Pros

• Quickest way to build a website
• Good if you're not tech confident
• Good marketing tools

Cons

• Limited creative control
• Websites can look similar
• No advanced SEO tools on cheaper plans

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GoDaddy Overview

If you want to build a professional-looking website and get online quickly, GoDaddy is an excellent choice. Thanks to its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) builder, you’ll be set up in no time. All you need to do is answer a few questions and hey, presto! You’ll have a ready-made website.

Speedy, easy to use, and stylish, our research endorses GoDaddy’s performance. Overall, we awarded it a score of 4.1 out of 5, which has placed it into our top three favorite website builders, making it a serious contender for building your church’s website.

So, why do we like it so much? Well, there are a few reasons, not least of which is that its designs are surprisingly modern, especially considering that GoDaddy chooses your template for you based on a few questions! Although not quite as stunning as Squarespace’s, the simple, clean layouts lend themselves well to GoDaddy’s ADI functionality, and there’s still plenty of room for you to make your own changes.

Of course, there are still areas for improvement, and it’s hard to ignore that GoDaddy’s customizability isn’t as good as Wix or Squarespace’s. The templates are more restrictive, and the drag-and-drop freedom is limited. However, you can easily add new sections, such as a donation box, calendar, or contact form, with just a few clicks.

GoDaddy Pricing

In terms of value for money, our research scored GoDaddy 4.5 out of 5 for its affordability, the joint highest score in this category. It offers four plans, the cheapest of which costs $6.99/month. It also offers a free plan, too, which is ideal if you need to keep your costs low, or you want to take GoDaddy out for a spin before you fully commit.

However, we wouldn’t recommend staying on the free plan forever. You won’t be able to use a custom domain, and your website will display GoDaddy branding at the top of your homepage. The point of your website is to attract people to your church, so you want it to look as professional as possible. Ads and a GoDaddy subdomain don’t exactly help with this!

As a result, we recommend upgrading to the $13.99 Premium Plan. You’ll get improved SEO tools and the ability to connect a custom domain. Even better, those pesky ads will disappear, too!

GoDaddy Features

Compared with Wix and Squarespace, GoDaddy can’t quite compete with the amount of features offered by those platforms. In our research, GoDaddy only managed to get a 3.4 out of 5 for this category. While it still has all the essential features, such as accepting donations and event booking, there are limitations to what GoDaddy offers.

For example, you can only accept donations via a PayPal account, meaning you and your church members will have to create a PayPal account if they want to donate – a major hassle for any non-technical church members, or those who don’t like PayPal. For events booking, only one schedule is available to be booked out, meaning you can’t advertise more than one priest or pastor’s time.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. As well as being fast, GoDaddy also has great AI integration. By answering a few questions, GoDaddy’s ADI will build you a personal church website filled with text and images. There’s also the Conversations app, which uses AI to summarize all correspondence from social media, email, and telephone, meaning you can quickly reply to multiple people without missing any details.

GoDaddy’s Ease of Use

GoDaddy comes second in our rankings for ease of use with a 4.1 out of 5, but in terms of getting a website built and online, it’s the fastest. Thanks to the ADI building the site for you, with minimal alterations your site could be done in under an hour!

But this speed has its drawback: there’s not much customization to be found. Do enough exploring after the ADI and you may find that GoDaddy doesn’t have the same capabilities or options to choose from as Squarespace or Wix. As one of our testers said:

“I didn’t see any features that were unique to GoDaddy. There was nothing different or interesting.”

GoDaddy Gallery

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GoDaddy allows you to add a variety of different sections such as donation buttons, calendars, and contact forms.

GoDaddy's ADI function builds a full website based on which category you choose.

GoDaddy's editor is simple, and you can still make changes to your website before you publish it.

GoDaddy kept a list of goals of how to make my website more popular. I‘d recommend this to all beginner website builders.

Adding sections in the editor is a breeze! I just click what I want to add, though there is less flexibility than Wix and Squarespace.

Further Information

• Take a closer look with our GoDaddy Review
• GoDaddy has good marketing tools. Get tips on crafting your Church Marketing Strategies in our full guide!

Best for selling through a church website

Pricing range: $29 – $299 per month

Shopify is an ecommerce platform designed for online businesses. If you plan on using your church website to sell products or online subscriptions, Shopify is our number-one rated choice for selling online! Let’s take a closer look at its scores:

Shopify

Best for selling

Excellent

4.9

out of 5

• Built for selling
• Quality app store
• Can get expensive

Free trial available

Paid Plans: $29 - $299 / month

Pros

• Ecommerce platform made for large stores
• Thousands of quality apps
• Integrates with everything

Cons

• Themes can cost money
• Transaction fees will start to add up
• If not selling then kind of unnecessary

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Shopify Overview

Shopify is ideal if you want to turn your church website into an online store. If your church’s followers are spread throughout the globe, then being able to buy church items is a great way to still feel part of the community and show support. And as the website owner, this is made especially easy with Shopify’s top-of-the-range app store. The Shopify store has over 6,000 apps, from international shipping apps and delivering products all over the world to accepting donations and even booking events.

Shopify integrates with almost everything. If you can imagine it – there’s probably an app for that! With the highest customer score on this list of 4.5 out of 5, you can tell that the majority of customers do appreciate this approach. However, this has also left Shopify having a scant few internal features of its own. If you are not planning on selling anything or don’t want to download any apps then Shopify won’t be the best church website builder for you. In our own research, we gave Shopify 3.4 out of 5 for features, the same as GoDaddy, due to its reliance on the app store.

Another issue with Shopify is that its apps aren’t all free, which when combined with Shopify’s rather steep starting price of $29 per month, can start to dig into your church’s budget. But if you plan to sell with your church, then this cost will get easier.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify has three main plans, with the Basic plan starting at $29 per month. This is already more expensive than other plans mentioned on this list, and Shopify can cost up to $299 per month if you choose the Advanced plan. Running an online store requires a lot of specialty software and security, so if you don’t plan on fully utilizing this online store function, then you won’t be getting the best value out of Shopify, sadly.

In our research, Shopify is number one for ecommerce with an overall score of 4.8 out of 5. However, since having an online store is optional for most church website owners, we can’t rate Shopify’s value for money on its store alone. Therefore, we rated Shopify with a 3.2 out of 5 for value for money – the lowest on this list.

It’s worth mentioning that Shopify does have a cheaper plan – Shopify Starter, which begins at only $5 per month. However, it only works via integration with social media and has no homepage to speak of, only a store, so its usefulness to most church website owners is very limited.

Shopify Features

Most of Shopify’s features that are of immediate use to church websites, like accepting donations and event scheduling, are tied to Shopify apps that you have to download. Many of these apps will also come with monthly prices, ranging from $5 per month up to $99 per month!

You may also have to pay for Shopify themes too. Shopify has 135 professionally designed themes, but only 12 of those are free. These templates all look great for online stores – as they are designed to be – but church website builders may be disappointed to see there are no church-specific templates either for free or to buy. That being said, the customization available in the editor is good, meaning if you are more building-inclined you’ll be able to make plenty of changes using tools like color picking or text manipulation. In our research, Shopify’s design scored a 4 out of 5.

Shopify’s Ease of Use

Shopify initially confused many of our testers due to its ecommerce-focused approach. Despite its reputation as the best platform for selling, the editor can be confusing for beginners, and in our research, we gave it 3.5 out of 5 for ease of use.

When you first open the editor it places you in the backend to begin adding products. If you are planning on selling, then this is a perfect and efficient way to do it! But if you only want to design and fill your website with content, you will have to navigate your way back to the editor. As one of our testers commented:

“Completely different from Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy, which are great for getting your site up and running quickly.”

Shopify Gallery

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Shopify didn’t have any church or community themes, which was disappointing. However, I used this nice plain shop template that I could mould to my liking.

Shopify opened me up in the dashboard first to add products. To go and edit my site, I had to click ‘SET UP YOUR ONLINE STORE’

Shopify has its own AI service, Shopify Magic. I tested it out, but it only works for product descriptions at this current time.

Shopify’s editor has some good depth, but I admit I did find it a little confusing sometimes

I wasn’t able to design a store that didn’t have some element of the store upfront and central. For a church website, it was a little awkward.

Further Information

• Read our full Shopify Review to find out more about this builder’s features, templates, and more
• Do Shopify’s prices sound too good to be true? Read our Shopify Pricing Review for more information

Best for church websites with smaller stores

Pricing range: $2.99 per month

Hostinger is a basic church website builder that’s best for creating simple websites and having a smaller store than other ecommerce platforms like Shopify. It will struggle to do anything complex or flashy, but it is perfect for managing a small church website and selling a few items on the side. Continue reading to find out about its strengths and weaknesses.

Hostinger

Best for smaller stores

Very Good

4.2

out of 5

• Single plan
• Suitable for small stores
• Drag-and-drop editor

Paid Plans: $2.99 - $109.99 / month

Pros

• Single plan starts at only $2.99
• Built for small online stores
• AI integration

Cons

• Limited creative control
• Hard to grow with no plan upgrades
• No app store

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Hostinger Overview

Hostinger made our list of the best church website builders because of its simple approach to website building and low starting price of $2.99 per month.

While its starting price (and only plan) is so low compared to other builders, we could still only give it a 3.8 out of 5 for value for money in our rankings. This was due to it lacking many of the necessary features for a good church website. It comes with all the basics, such as good SEO tools and built-in Instagram feed – it even has a logo maker. However, some big things are missing. For example, Hostinger doesn’t come with an app store and has limited marketing capabilities. Hostinger’s features score of 2.4 out of 5 is the second worst in our rankings.

Additionally, Hostinger’s templates are extremely structured – in other words, you have less freedom to drag and drop elements around than you would with, say, Wix. The upside of this is that the rigid templates mean it’s super hard to make a design mistake, but on the flip side, it’s pretty difficult to ensure your church’s unique identity shines through.

Hostinger Pricing

Hostinger has one plan to keep things simple, starting at $2.99 per month. If you commit to its longest term of 48 months, you can even get three months for free! This plan is perfect for trying to keep things under budget, especially for a church website where income is primarily based upon donations.

However, we’ll warn you to be aware of Hostinger’s renewal costs since there can be a considerable jump up following the initial term. For example, if you sign up for a year at $2.99 per month, it’ll renew at $8.99 per month.

Hostinger Features

With a feature score of 2.4 out of 5, Hostinger won’t really wow you with its tools and abilities like Wix, for instance. Hostinger can book events but like GoDaddy, only on one schedule. Additionally, there is no direct way to accept donations. According to Hostinger’s own help and support guide, you must either label the donation as a product in your store or use a PayPal plugin.

What Hostinger excels at is being simple, especially for its online store. While Shopify is undoubtedly great for ecommerce, it is slightly overpowered for smaller church websites. Hostinger, however, is ideal for having a small website that sells a small number of items. To sell on Wix, Squarespace, or GoDaddy, you will have to upgrade your plan to an ecommerce one, which is another cost to think about.

Hostinger has a drag-and-drop editor much like Wix, but lacks much of the customization and features of that builder. However, it does offer a unique range of AI tools not seen by other builders. With ADI, text generation, and even an AI heat map to see where your visitor’s eyes are being drawn, Hostinger may not be the most complex, but it certainly stands out enough as a solid choice for your church website.

Hostinger’s Ease of Use

Ease of use is Hostinger’s best-performing category, earning a 3.9 out of 5. Due to its simplicity, our testers found Hostiger to be very easy to navigate and build with. If you aren’t necessarily computer-savvy, Hostinger’s easy-to-understand editor may be a saving grace – as it was to one of our testers, who said:

“I had a really good experience with Hostinger. All of its main functions were intuitive and easy to navigate, even for a beginner like me.”

Hostinger Gallery

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Like GoDaddy, Hostinger uses ADI to make a website. This was my result for a church website.

Hostinger can also auto-generate small amounts of products to sell through AI. For my website, we sell hot dogs from our church!

I was able to edit my blog's SEO settings straight from the editor, a handy trick for getting my blog seen by more people.

I was able to drag and drop elements onto my site in a similar way to Wix and Squarespace.

From this dashboard I can add my products. Hostinger can’t support a large amount of items, so it’s great for selling a little on the side.

Further Information

• Read our Hostinger Review for more details on this builder

Best for church website multilingual options

Pricing range: $1 – $25 per month 

IONOS is a simple website builder with great multilingual options – an important feature if you have church followers from all over the world. IONOS also has the best consistent uptime performance, meaning it won’t crash or slow down at peak times. However, these features can’t hide its abysmal selection of features and limited design. Let’s get a closer look at its pros and cons:

IONOS

Best for performance

Good

2.9

out of 5

• Consistently fast
• Cheap plans
• Multilingual options

Paid Plans: $0.5 - $35 / month

Pros

• Multilingual support
• Good for simple sites
• Very good sitespeed and performance

Cons

• Limited amount of features
• Design can be uninspired
• No free trial

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IONOS Overview

IONOS has a few things that keep it standing out as a website builder for churches, thus making this list – but we have to admit this is the simplest website builder we reviewed. IONOS comes with a very basic selection of features, design tools, and options. Whatever church website you decide to make, it’s going to look a bit bare. The most important category for church websites is features, but this is where IONOS falls since it has the worst feature score on this list with just 1.9 out of 5.

What should save this builder is its pricing, which starting as low as only $1 per month will certainly turn heads. However, this starting price soon runs out, and after the promotion ends you’re still left paying for a builder with poor features. There simply isn’t very good value in IONOS, even at such a low price, so we scored it just 3.3 out of 5, just a point lower than Wix and Squarespace, but ever so slightly higher than Shopify.

IONOS Pricing

The Starter plan costs $5 per month (for six months), the Plus plan costs $1 per month (for 12 months), and the Pro plan costs $15 per month (for six months). Once those periods are up, you will have to pay a new “regular” price, with the Starter rising to $9 per month, the Plus to $15 per month, and the Pro to $25 per month.

As you can see, IONOS’ prices can vary. Additionally, there is no free trial or free plan, meaning if you want to test it out you’ll have to commit. That’s why it’s so important to know this stuff going in!

IONOS Features

IONOS has the worst feature score in our research, with 1.9 out of 5. It frankly just does not come with all the necessary features you may need to build a successful church website. You will need to download a third-party app to schedule events and book appointments, and the only way to accept donations is through PayPal.

The design of IONOS is equally bare, getting the lowest score on this list once again with 2.8 out of 5. Its templates feel outdated and basic, and the editor is not very user-friendly when adding elements. However, IONOS has recently been updated to allow greater AI integration, adding both an AI website builder, AI text and SEO generation, and even an AI image generator. These new features help a lot in your website creation, and while they’re not the best AI website builder tools we’ve seen, they certainly go a long way in making IONOS feel more sophisticated.

That’s not all, either. As we mentioned, IONOS has fantastic multilingual tools, meaning you can translate your website into over 30 languages, perfect for connecting with followers from all over the world. When they arrive on your site, there’s no need to worry about slow load times either. IONOS has the best site speed and uptime of any builder we’ve tested, meaning you’ll suffer no drops in performance no matter how many visitors you have.

IONOS’ Ease of Use

While a lack of features might suggest that IONOS is easier to use, that is sadly not the case. The final product, as described by our testers, is a very dull and often frustrating experience trying to find nonexistent tools and features. Our testers said the editor was:

“Very clinical – the hospital of website builders. Felt drab. Things were only there because they needed to be, rather than for excitement”

A clinical hospital design just does not create the warm, inviting vibe a church should give off. However, if you find you need help with the design, then IONOS is exactly the website builder for you. It has the best help and support of any builder on this list, earning a 4.8 out of 5 and tied with Wix and Squarespace. Its knowledge center and 24/7 phone are there to get you through any issue you may have, making it useful for beginners.

IONOS Gallery

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IONOS is a single page website, meaning you just keep scrolling down to look at it all. This makes it easier to load, but it is annoying that I don’t get a choice.

IONOS has some of the most basic text-editing we’ve seen, but you can still customize it to your size and color preferences. Just don’t expect any miracles.

I was able to embed YouTube videos into my IONOS site, but not able to actually upload a video onto my site.

This was the homepage IONOS generated for me. While coffee is certainly a major part of churchgoing, I didn’t think it would hyperfocus on it!

An AI-generated image from IONOS. As you can see, it’s mostly fine, but there is still a way to go before it's perfect!

Further Information

• Read our Hostinger Review for more details on this builder

The six builders we’ve discussed here are the best church website builders – they stand out for their ease of use, top design quality, and powerful value for money.

That said, they’re not the only church website builders out there, and it’s always worth giving every option a look before making your final choice. So with that in mind, here are a few more platforms that didn’t quite make the top six.

1. Sharefaith

Starting price: $23 per month

Sharefaith is a church-specific platform with built-in features, including sections to upload and share sermons. Amongst its many other services, Sharefaith boasts its own church website builder, which has helped over 8,000 ministries create their own websites – that’s pretty impressive!

You have the advantage of knowing all Sharefaith’s themes will be suitable for a church website – it’s just a case of picking one that suits your church and congregation. The designs are pleasing and stylish enough, but can’t challenge Squarespace in terms of design.

The downside of Sharefaith is its pricing. To build a website you’ll need its “Web + Media” package, which costs $50 per month (billed annually). This includes free hosting, template switching, and a giving and donations platform – all of which you can get with Squarespace or Weebly for a fraction of the price.

2. Ministry Designs

Starting price: $57/month ($247/month for SEO  activation)

Every member of the team at Ministry Designs has a background in church ministry, meaning you get a very tailored service geared towards your specific needs. But what about the tech side of its product?

Ministry Designs’ features are pretty standard. They include blogging tools, podcasts, and video backgrounds. Its templates are appealing, if not totally cutting edge in terms of design. All-in-all, there’s nothing to write home about, but lots of helpful features to get you started.

Before signing up, make sure you’re happy making an investment – Ministry Designs is only a viable option if you have $1,020 ready to pay upfront. You pay $1,000 as a one-time fee, then $20 per month for hosting. This does mean you’re not locked into a contract, but this pricing is pretty steep compared to other builders.

3. Nucleus

Starting price: $49 per month

Nucleus promises to be an all-in-one central hub for your church, inspiring action from your followers. Its mission revolves around “Next Steps” to keep new and existing members engaged and active with your church.

While building a central hub may sound complicated, Nucleus makes it easy for everyone with its drag-and-drop design tools and app integrations.

However, all this convenience comes at a price – for the whole package, you’ll need a spare $199 per month. The website builder on its own costs $99 per month, so we definitely recommend making use of Nucleus’ 30-day free trial first!

We’re pretty proud of our research process because not many sites can say they’ve carried out such in-depth testing before making recommendations. Here’s how our in-house research team goes about finding the best website builders on the market.

Every single builder goes through our thorough research process. We investigate important areas such as:

• Ease of use
• Design flexibility
• Value for money
• Feature quality
• Help and support
• Customer satisfaction

This helps us rate and compare the builders fairly, focusing on important factors that users have told us matter most. Not only that, but we even weigh each category based on what real people in similar positions have given us as feedback. We listen to your needs and translate that into our research, meaning you can trust our scores as a true reflection of each builder’s worth. Let’s take a closer look at these weightings:

• Website features – weighting: 35%

The tools and abilities each website builder gives you. This includes app market, blogging functionality, accepting donations, event scheduling, internationalization capabilities, domain name, email address, members area, storage space, site speed analysis, and the overall quality of these features.

This is the highest weighting for this methodology, because when we consulted with church website owners, they said that the ability to book and schedule events as well as accept donations was the most important factor they looked for.

• Design flexibility – weighting: 10%

How you can design your site to match your church. Includes templates/theme choice, ADI, UX, image editor, and mobile editor.

While designing your website is certainly important, from the feedback we were given it was considered more crucial that the website was functional and easy to use.

• Value for money – weighting: 5%

How much each of the website builder’s plans cost, what features come with each plan, and whether there’s a free plan or trial.

While cost and value for money are ever-present concerns, the desire and need to have a website outweighed many of the monetary concerns of those we spoke to, so its weighting has been reduced.

• Help and support – weighting: 10%

The help options each builder offers. Includes restore options, support options such as a knowledge center, and how much support is offered on each plan.

If you are brand new to website building, good help and support will make the process easier, though our feedback suggested that initial ease of use is a slightly more important factor.

• Customer satisfaction – weighting: 25%

A category collecting other reviews. This includes other sites’ scores, online comments, brand recognition, market analysis, and whether users would be likely to recommend.

This category was signaled as being very important by other church website owners. As churches are built upon community, reviews and comments were taken heavily into consideration when deciding on a builder, so we weighted it a much larger 25%.

• Ease of use – weighting: 15%

This focuses on how easy the builder is to use, including sub-criteria like UX design, how the editor feels to use, and whether there was any trouble in adding certain features.

We look at experience when calculating this category, not only taking into consideration how previous church website owners have reacted but also looking at our interactions with each builder. We make sure to write for our audience and never write anything we don’t believe ourselves.

We even get groups of everyday people to test the builders and give us feedback, which we then analyze. This helps us:

• understand exactly how easy (or difficult) beginners find the builder
• uncover any issues within the builder
• judge customer satisfaction

We’ve applied this process to over 50 website builders so far – all so we can bring you the most accurate results and recommendations!

Still got questions? Read our report on How We Conduct Our Website Builder Research for a more detailed explanation.

By now, you should know which of these six builders is the rock you’ll build your church website upon.

We’ve looked at features, designs, pricing, and ease of use for each builder to give you the best idea of which one is right for your church. In case you’re suffering from information overload, here’s a quick refresher.

Whether you’re as comfortable with technology as you are with Sunday sermons, or prefer unpacking the complexities of the Bible rather than the mysteries of coding, we’ve found the best builders for the job.

Wix tops our list as the best all-around church builder, thanks to the fact that it has everything you could need, and it’s easy to use, too. If design is your top priority, however, we’d suggest checking out Squarespace for beautiful templates and high-quality features. Saying this, we know that not everyone has the time to sit down and find their way around a busy website builder, so in that case, we recommend GoDaddy for getting online quickly.