Top 10 Best CRM for Churches 2022

CRM stands for customer relationship management. While CRM typically applies to for-profit organizations that want to manage leads and customers, it’s also essential for effective church management. In church nomenclature, CRMs are more commonly referred to as ChMS (Church Management Software). In this post we will use the terms interchangeably.

For businesses, having a CRM can increase sales by up to 29%. For churches, that kind of increase translates to more effective management of members, volunteers, and donors; more frequent communication; and potentially a growth in commitment to the church. Not only that, but having a CRM or Church Management Software can help you cut down on time and labor and reduce user error. 

There’s plenty of software for churches that performs the role of a CRM. In the following article, we’ll take a look at the top 10 CRM’s for churches, including church management systems and hybrid church management solutions that were created to make running a church simpler, more efficient, and more effective. 

In just a minute, we’ll look at factors like ease of use, range of capability, and pricing for evaluating CRM’s for churches. But first, it’s important to understand what a CRM actually is, what it does, and the big-picture benefits (and potential drawbacks) of using a CRM.

Table of Contents

What Is a Church CRM?

Common Features of Church CRM

How Is Church CRM Priced?

Benefits and Potential Issues of CRM for Churches

Best Tactics to Select a New CRM for Churches

Best CRM for Churches

The Bottom Line

Church CRM FAQs 

What Is a Church CRM?

 A church CRM is a cloud-based church management system that helps church admin and church leaders with people management, financial management, donor management, daily operations, and more without a ton of spreadsheets or manual work. 

Ideally, a church CRM automates tasks like sending reminders, inputting data for members and donors, and keeping contact information organized. Maybe most importantly, it consolidates all data and church operations into a single platform. This makes it a powerful solution for churches and other faith-based organizations that have a lot to juggle. 

Common Features of Church CRM

 A church CRM will typically include the following core features:

• Communication tools for sending out important information to members via email, text message, and more. 

• A system to track donations and manage online contributions. 

• Worship and event planning tools for planning Sunday services, coordinating logistics on the worship team, and more. 

• A volunteer management tool used for volunteer management, including performing background checks, a child check-in system, checking in volunteers, and more. 

• Tools for attendance management and tracking church growth. 
• Church giving features provide multiple options for donations, and make it easy to track giving. 

Of course, every church CRM will differ to some degree, offering a different suite of tools to match the needs of churches (and potentially, other faith-based organizations). 

How Is Church CRM Priced?

Most church management systems have a monthly price. They may offer tiered pricing or pricing that ranges according to the features you’d like to use, and many platforms offer pricing according to users and member tracking. One exception to this is Touchpoint (which you'll learn about soon), which has a single yearly price. 

In any case, affordable church management software is readily available, regardless of church size or budget. 

Benefits and Potential Issues of CRM for Churches

Using a ChMS/CRM for churches can:

• Help you cut down on administrative labor (saving you time and money)
• Reduce user error by automating data input
• Act as a complete church management software, performing a range of functions to help you tackle your projects, initiatives, and responsibilities with confidence
• Provide a better experience for church members, volunteers, and donors by creating better, faster, and more transparent communication
• Free up time, resources, and energy to focus on big-picture goals and dreams (like starting new church plants, raising up ministry leaders, and impacting your community for the Kingdom!)

Considering how affordable a church CRM can be, there aren’t many downsides to using a CRM. However, pricing plans can become an issue if you’re paying for a tool that has more advanced features than necessary for your church. 

And if the CRM isn’t easy to use, you may end up wasting time on troubleshooting errors and onboarding new users.

Best Tactics to Select a New CRM for Churches

 When looking for a church CRM, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind. 

First, consider your current “problem areas.” Where are you wasting the most time, or facing the most frustration? Make sure to pick a tool that allows you to troubleshoot your most prescient problems. 

Second, think through your budget and potential pricing models. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find an affordable church management software, but you’ll want to consider what makes sense for your budget. 

Finally, think about your future needs. While choosing a CRM that fits your current needs is critical, you’ll also want to choose a system that helps you scale and reach your goals, whether that’s to create an app, build a branding strategy, or increase digital communication with your members. 

Best CRM for Churches

Ready to take a deep dive into the top 10 CRM tools for churches? More than relationship management systems, these are church management systems (ChMS) that provide a range of capabilities for churches–from providing donation options to give church teams a way to communicate to overseeing daily operations. 

1. Tithe.ly

 Tithe.ly is an all-in-one, comprehensive church management system that acts as a CRM, a project management system, and a tool for tracking donations and giving. Not only that, but Tithe.ly can help you build a killer website, launch an app for churches, and create amazing content for your social accounts. 

Here’s a quick rundown of the key features on Tithe.ly:

• Tithe.ly Church Giving for managing donations, gifts, and tithes. Tithe.ly also offers a range of options (even giving via cryptocurrency) for giving to make it simple and convenient for users. 

• Tithe.ly People–Tithe.ly’s CRM–for centralizing contacts, running background checks, grouping people according to volunteer or staff role, and more. It also acts as an engagement platform to help people connect with your church more conveniently. 

• Tithe.ly ChMS, or church management system, for helping church admin and staff to automate workflows, manage members, generate reporting, and much more. 

• Tithe.ly Sites to make it affordable and easy to build a beautiful, high-functioning site for your church, complete with an events calendar, giving feature, and more. 

• Tithe.ly Apps to make it easy to create an app where your members can give, listen to sermon series, and even make prayer requests. 

• Tithe.ly Events for making it easy to manage church events. 

• Tithe.ly Worship for coordinating worship services with a setlist and lyrics syncing. 

• Tithe.ly Media for accessing an unlimited amount of free, customizable media for your website, sermon series, social media accounts, and more.

• Tithe.ly Messaging is a powerful texting platform and communications tool for sending emails, texts, and group messages all within the app.

The pro’s of Tithe.ly? It’s the most comprehensive platform for churches, allowing you to streamline all of your needs onto a single centralized platform. Using Tithe.ly, you can access your CRM, your internal project management system, your volunteer information, and your media within a single hub. You get all of these features for just $119/month, or you can pay separately if you want to use features à la carte.

Finally, it’s user-friendly, simple to set up (check out some of our user reviews), has excellent customer support, and has a pretty snazzy UI. 

The only con may be that Tithe.ly is a bit too efficient in getting the job done. In other words, be prepared to create new tasks for your church admin before Tithe.ly steals their entire workload!

2. Breeze

Breeze is a church management software that’s simple to use and comes at a very affordable price ($72/month). Acting as a CRM and a project management system, Breeze offers the following features: 

• A CRM for managing contacts at your church. Breeze even includes customizable fields so that you can “think outside the box” when it comes to contact management (e.g. including details such as spiritual giftings!)

• Administrative tools for automating workflows and saving time on tedious tasks. 

• Online contribution and giving tools for making it easy to give (and receive) gifts online and via text message.

Breeze is a simple to use, super efficient, and extremely affordable church software.  However, it doesn't provide tools for building a website or an app, and it doesn’t offer robust communication tools. 

But recently Breeze joined the Tithely family and so Breeze and Tithely are bound to make a splash together in the ChMS universe soon.

3. ParishSOFT

ParishSOFT is church management software and cloud-based system designed with Catholic churches and parishes in mind. Its core features include: 

• A CRM feature called Family Directory for managing member records and communicating with members.

• Religious Education for tracking and managing Catholic education and faith formation.

• Accounting for Parishes and Dioceses, including tools for managing payroll, accounts receivable, and more.

• Giving tools for Parishes and Dioceses, making it simple for parishioners to give online, via text message, and more. 

ParishSOFT is an excellent option for Catholic churches. It includes features designed specifically for the needs of Catholic parishes, making it simpler to manage bulk communication with dioceses and Catholic education. 

The cons of ParishSOFT are that it doesn’t offer wider functionality for building a digital presence, and its features designed for Catholic churches may only confuse the UX for non-Catholic churches.

ParishSOFT has a unique pricing structure that charges per user, per month ($19). Again, while this may be cost-efficient for a Catholic church, it may not be realistic for churches with large staffs of 25 or more people. 

4. Planning Center

Planning Center is a set of software tools designed to make running a church easier and more efficient. At the heart of Planning Center is its CRM–Planning Center’s “People”. 

Here are some of Planning Center’s key features:

• People–a membership database that integrates with all of Planning Center’s other tools. 
• Publishing for creating landing pages, an app experience, and more.

• Calendar for managing your master schedule and tracking resources and inventory. 

• Groups for bolstering small groups through messaging, tracking weekly attendance, and sharing of resources. 

• Giving, which provides different options for donations, reporting on data and trends, and managing donor information. 

• Registrations to make getting sign-ups (and receiving payments) simple. 

Planning Center is one of the more comprehensive church management systems, and provides a lot of flexibility for churches with different needs. However, there are a couple drawbacks. 

First, Planning Center doesn’t provide super robust tooling for creating an online presence. For example, it doesn’t provide free church media, and its “app and site” tool is an extension of another platform (Church Center). 

Next, its pricing structure is also somewhat confusing. While Planning Center allows for flexibility in pricing according to individual needs, that can make it confusing to estimate how much it actually costs. And the more features you add, the higher your price goes (rather than providing a single low cost for access to all tools, like Tithe.ly).

5. Servant Keeper

Servant Keeper is a church software tool that offers tooling for church management, donations, reporting, and operations. Like ParishSOFT, it's tailored more to meet the needs of Catholic churches. 

Here’s a rundown of Servant Keeper’s key features:

• Personal and family profiles–Servant Keeper’s CRM–for managing contact information. 
• Groups keeper for managing and communicating with different ministry segments. 
• Reports for communicating about important and relevant information involving different members. 
• Contribution tracking for keeping track of donors and transactions. 
• Attendance tracking for keeping track of new and existing members. 

Servant Keeper is a cost-efficient solution for very small churches, at only $9.99/month for churches with 50 families or less (pricing goes up to $99.99/month for unlimited users and unlimited members). However, its capabilities are limited, and it doesn’t offer a very user-friendly experience–even on its website. 

6. FellowshipOne

Fellowship One is another cloud-based software tool that includes additional tools for managing finances, planning services, communications, and more. Here are some of their notable features:

• Church accounting and payroll tools for providing visibility and streamlining finances. 
• Online giving and payment to make it easy to give with different options. 
• Worship planning to make it simple for worship teams to coordinate and plan services. 

• Mobile app building for creating a mobile app for your church. 

• Church website redesign and hosting for creating a mobile-friendly website. 

• Background checks for running checks on volunteers and staff. 

FellowshipOne has a comprehensive suite of powerful tools that potentially make it a good choice for churches looking for a range of features and capabilities. However, it’s a bit pricey, at $169/month. 

7. ChurchTrac

 At its core, ChurchTrac functions as CRM for managing church members and contacts. But it also offers additional features for managing finances, upcoming events, and more. 

• People–ChurchTrac’s CRM–acts as a directory, simplifying mass communication and contact organization.

• Giving provides online and text giving and reporting to make it simple for members to give. 

• Accounting has tools for creating budgets, monitoring funds, tracking expenses, and more–streamlining finances. 

• A check-in system makes it simple to track volunteers...and helps keep kids safe. 

• Worship planning helps church teams–including the worship team–efficiently plan services. 

• Events provides tools for tracking attendance and event registration. 

ChurchTrac provides a great suite of tools for churches looking for basic functionality. But it doesn’t offer many features for marketing or creating an online presence. 

8. Church Community Builder

Church Community Builder is a cloud-based software with a CRM at the center. It’s primarily designed to manage and organize members and help build church community. 

Let’s take a look at some of the key features:

• Their “People” feature is basically a CRM that allows staff or admin to oversee small groups, giving, and volunteers. 

• Check-in makes volunteer check-in simple.

• Schedules helps churches to plan services with ease. 

• Giving allows members to give from any device. 

• Groups is ideal for ministry or group leaders for tracking membership and activity. 

• Processes make it efficient to follow up with first-time guests, remember important dates, and more. 

Church Community Builder does a great job at doing what it says: building community. But it doesn’t offer the sort of robust tooling needed to create brand awareness or build an online presence. 

And, pricing is unclear: while tiered packaging should make pricing simple, Church Community Builder doesn’t offer set prices for each package on its website– and instead asks site visitors to request a quote (suggesting it may vary widely from church to church).

9. ChurchDesk

UK-based ChurchDesk is a church administration software package that helps to meet administrative needs, including member management, registration, donation tracking, and more. 

Here’s a quick rundown of ChurchDesks’s features:

• Their “People” feature acts as both a database and communication tool, making it simple to build data on members, send mass emails, and more. 

• Calendar helps churches with event scheduling and service planning. 

• Forms simplifies registration. 

• Homepage helps you to create a church website and boost your online presence. 

• Payments and Giving allows you to receive–and integrate–payments into your system.

ChurchDesk provides the administrative tools needed to efficiently run a church. But it doesn’t offer a couple of key tools needed to create a digital presence, including a tool for building an app. 

ChurchDesk is also aimed more at UK churches, with pricing in pounds and a structure more generally aimed at liturgical churches (for parishes and deaneries, for example). That being said, it may not be the best option for non-denominational church plants.

10. TouchPoint

TouchPoint is a cloud-based church management system that’s specifically tailored for mid-to-large sized churches, and includes the flexibility to scale as needed. Here’s an overview of their features:

• A customizable church management system to allow you to scale with church growth.

• The tools to build a mobile app for your church, increasing communication with members and creating a better overall experience. 

• A single hub for all your data, consolidating important information into one place. 

• Tools for giving, including different options for giving and the option to cover donation fees when giving. 

TouchPoint’s customizable platform makes it a great option for churches that want to scale. But it functions primarily as a church management system, and not a fully comprehensive suite of tools. For example, it doesn’t include a feature for building a website, and doesn’t touch heavily on church branding. It also charges a single annual fee (undisclosed on the website), representing a potentially heavy one-time cost–and a longer-term commitment that some churches may not want. 

The Bottom Line

The bottom line? There’s a range of church relationship management tools that each come with their own pro’s and con’s. At the end of the day, Tithe.ly comes out on top in the church software world, with an affordable price for the widest range of functionality. Tithe.ly also offers amazing customer support, has a freemium option, and is used in a range of countries–making it a great choice for churches all over the world, of every size, type, and denomination. 

Church CRM FAQs

What are the Benefits of Church CRM?

How Much does Church CRM Cost?

What to Look For in a Church CRM?

What Does a Church CRM Do?

What are the Benefits of Church CRM?

A church CRM helps save on time, labor, and labor costs. It can also reduce human error and make it easier and more efficient to run events, reach goals, communicate on a church team, and more. Ultimately, a church CRM helps churches to better manage their own people–and create a better overall experience for members, donors, and staff. 

How Much does Church CRM Cost?

A church CRM cam range in cost according to need, church size, and more. But you can generally expect to pay between $50-$150 per month for a CRM. 

What to Look For in a Church CRM?

Look for a CRM that will meet your existing and future needs. Remember that a significant part of building a church in 2021 isn’t just management, but marketing. Think through what will create a stellar experience for your members as well as your staff. 

What Does a Church CRM Do?

By itself, a church CRM will help you manage and consolidate contact information, send out communications, and do anything else related to contact info. But many CRM’s are combined with additional features and church software, such as church giving features, marketing tools, and more.