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The best website builders for churches

Getting a website developed by a professional is very expensive but with these website builders you can create your church website yourself.

May 29, 2020 • 26 minute read

Updated on Jun 1, 2020 by Closed User

Closed User

@EdwardKost

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Learn how to build a website for your church without any coding knowledge

So your church is in desperate need of a website but you can't afford the prestigious services of a specialized web agency. What do you do?

You could spend months (or years) saving up the funds to hire a professional agency.

You could forgo a website completely and miss out on being discovered online.

Or you could build the website yourself using a simple website builder without any coding.

In this post, we'll show you how to do just that. We've evaluated 4 different website builders (Nucleus, Weebly, Squarespsace and Wix) to help you choose the best website builder for your church website.

In our evaluation, we assessed how effectively each website builder meets the following essential criteria.

Price

If it's too expensive it's not affordable, and if it's too cheap, it might be too limited.

Ease of use

Church staff need to be able to create a stunning website with as little effort as possible.

Functionality

The ideal church website builder should support the primary functional requirements of the online church. This includes:

livestreaming

Sermon archiving

Contact form submissions

Multiple logins for collaborative creation

An online donation gateway.

Why all churches need a website

There are two reasons why all churches should have a website. Most people spend a majority of their waking hours online. In fact,

33% of church attendees

discovered their church while surfing the internet and

64% of churches

use their website as a platform for engaging with attendees.

The other obvious reason why having a church website is important is the

Coronavirus pandemic

. Lock down laws have forced churches globally to close their doors and quickly adopt a livestreaming alternative to their traditional Sunday services.

While many expected this dramatic shift to be detrimental to the church, it actually resulted in a substantial spike in church attendance. Let's take a look at the numbers.

Building a church website with Nucleus

Nucleus is a dedicated church website builder focused on cultivating an active church community. Unlike conventional brochure websites that only display information, Nucleus claims that encourgaes user engagment through next step prompts.

Nucleus website builder pricing

Nucleus combines all the tools and resources needed to establish a virtual church presence into one convenient digital platform. Its pricing includes website hosting, sermon archiving and even a 4K video stock library that can be used to produce stunning social media content.

Nucleus isn't a cheap solution, so if your church has a very lean marketing budget, the other website builders in this post may be a better option for you.

The annual Nucleus subscription is priced at $1188 (or $99/month).

The monthly Nucleus subscription is priced at $125/month.

But do Nucleus's features justify such hefty pricing? To find out, we'll sign up to the platform and attempt to build a new church website from scratch.

How to design a church website with Nucleus

Nucleus does not offer a free subscription plan, however they do offer a free 14-day trial which is a great opportunity to test the ropes before committing.

To sign up, head over to

nucleus.church

and click on the purple 'Start Free Trial' button.

Once signed up, we can start building our website. First, let's create all of our pages. To do this we'll click on 'Pages' in the top menu bar. Any created pages are an addition to the home page which is already created by default.

how to build a church website with nucleus

You can either create a new page from a blank canvas, or you can use a template which is a great option if you're short on time. Let's select the template option to create our 'About Us' page.

Next, we're asked to select our template style. You'll notice that Nucleus's template library accommodates all of the primary page categories of church websites. This is great attention to detail that could significantly speed up the church website creation process, if the actual web builder is any good of course.

We'll obviously select the 'Staff/Leadership' option for our 'About Us' page.

This brings us to Nucleus's website editor. Since we're using a website template, it's now just a matter of editing the text and replacing the images of the template design.

Clicking on the 'View Page' icon in the top right will open the web page in a new tab, this is a great way to continuously monitor the progress of your design efforts.

Our selected template design consists of a banner image with headline text followed by a list of pastoral staff and their biographies.

Let's attempt some edits.

First we'll change the banner image.

Clicking on the banner image option in the Nucleus editor will instantly give us the option of uploading our replacement image.

Once uploaded, we'll hit the 'Save and Publish' button at the bottom to save our work. Clicking 'View Page' will now display our updated design in a new tab.

So far, nice and easy.

To edit any of the text, simply edit the corresponding text fields.

All of the other design elements are just as easy to edit, simply click on the photos to upload a replacement and insert your preferred text in all of the text fields.

If you want to insert additional design elements, simply drag and drop any of the widgets from the left menu.

Let's insert a paragraph element above the 'Meet Our Leadership' title.

After typing our text and hitting 'Save and Publish' our newly added paragraph will be visible in our preview window:

Let's get creative and drag an audio widget underneath one of our church leaders. Now we can insert a personalized audio greeting.

The audio editing options then appear on the left. The only option for inserting an audio is via a URL. Nucleus doesn't specify the details of the URL source. It seems like you need to host your audio files on Soundcloud and then

paste the share link

into this field.

How to publish sermons with Nucleus

Clicking on the 'Sermons' option in the top menu will take us to the sermon upload dashboard.

Uploading a sermon then becomes a simple matter of filling out all of the required field and hitting publish.

You also have the option of uploading either a video file or an audio file.

Clicking on the audio file field will instantly open your computer window browser to upload your sermon audio. So there's no need to host your sermon audio with a third party audio host (phew!).

After filling in all of the fields and hitting 'Save Changes' there's no option to view the published sermon page like there is when building a web page, so we're not sure what our sermon page looks like.

There also isn't a category field when uploading sermons, so Nucleus doesn't appear to be very accommodating to sermon series.

Another concerning fall back is the inability to preview your entire website build beyond individual web pages. So you cannot navigate to the home page or the other pages in a full live preview. Most web builders provide this option and without it, it can be difficult to experience and, therefore, optimize the visitor journey.

How to livestream a sermon with Nucleus

A year ago, the option of livestreaming was never a primary requirement for church website builders, now it's absolutely essential.

Most churches livestream their sermons via Vimeo or Youtube. Both platforms provide an embeddable code for each livestreaming session that can then be inserted into a web page. To access the embed code on both Vimeo and Youtube, click on 'share' and then select 'embed'. This HTML code will then need to be copied and inserted into an HTML editor on your selected web page.

Nucleus makes inserting HTML code, and therefore a livestreamed sermon, super easy.

Simply drag an HTML widget onto your page and paste the livestream embed code into it.

Pretty easy. Then it's just a simple matter of sharing this web page with all of your congregants.

Nucleus social media posts

Nucleus offers a library of beautiful social media posts that can be downloaded and posted on your social media channels. This offering, however, provides very little value.

Not only is the selection of social posts extremely limited, the posts can't even be edited within Nucleus which makes the 'social media package' seem more like a superficial attempt to inflate the perceived value of the platform.

The only way to edit the social posts is to download them as a Photoshop file and then edit them in Photoshop which requires its own separate (and expensive) subscription.

If there was a way of editing these posts within Nucleus and then publishing them to all social channels straight from the Nucleus platform, the social media package would provide enough value to justify Nucleus's expensive price tag.

Does Nucleus allow multiple website editors?

Nucleus does not seem to facilitate multiple editors, so only one member of the church can log in to edit the content at any time. This makes that collaboration with multiple content creators very difficult and inconvenient.

How to create a contact form with Nucleus

All church websites should have a contact form rather than just displaying an email address and expecting visitors to copy and paste it into their email browser.

With Nucleus, you can create a contact form page in a few quick steps.

Simply navigate to 'Web' in the top menu then select Pages > Add New > template > I'm new/connect card.

This will then create a new contact us page with a submission form. After editing all of the text fields, hit 'Save and Publish' and your contact form will be live.

Accepting online donations with Nucleus

Nucleus facilitates online donations by integrating with RebelGive which appears to be its sister company.

While RebelGive promises that 100% of donations are kept by the church, they do charge a yearly fee of $768 (or $84 monthly).

Once signed up with RebelGive, it can be instantly integrated with Nucleus through the 'Giving' option in the top menu bar.

Nucleus for churches final thoughts

Despite its claims of cultivating church member engagement through next step prompts, we didn't notice any unique features that elevate Nucleus above other website builders. In fact, the other website builders reviewed in this post are more feature rich and cheaper.

If Nucleus delivers on its promises of maximizing and measuring church member engagement, or at least makes these features more obvious when signed up to the free trial, the platform has the potential of benefiting large congregations that struggle to measure the responsiveness of their congregants.

Building a church website with Weebly

We're moving on from an expensive church website builder to one that's absolutely free. That's right, Weebly's most basic subscription package is 100% free with no hidden charges.

Let's see just how capable this free builder is.

Weebly pricing

Weebly offers 4 different subscription plans.

Free plan: $0/month

The most basic Weebly plan is absolutely free. It does, however come with the following caveats:

Your website displays a Weebly ad on each page.

You cannot set up an ecommerce store

Your URL is a subdomain of Weebly.

Personal plan: $9/month, or $6/month billed annually

The personal plan gives you a clean customizable URL but Weebly ads are still displayed.

Professional plan: $16/month, or $12/month billed annually

All of the Weebly ads are removed

Clean and customizable domain name

Ecommerce store establishment

Unlimited storage

Performance plan: $29/month, or $26/month billed annually

Comes with everything offered in the Professional plan with additional advanced ecommerce features such as automated abandoned cart emails and integrated shipping solutions.

How to design a church website with Weebly

Now let's dive deep into Weebly's design features. We'll be assessing Weebly's Free plan.

Once

signed up

, the first thing we need to do is specify the type of site we want to design. We'll select just a simple display website.

how to build a church website with weebly

We're then directed to Weebly's template library where we can select a template design to edit. Weebly has about 50 templates to choose from and all of the designs are conveniently categorized by industry.

Of course, you're free to select any template design you like, regardless of its industry category. We'll select our theme and then hit the blue 'Start Editing' button.

Next, we're asked to specify our domain name. Because we're using Weebly's free plan we can only settle for a Weebly subdomain. Once a subdomain becomes available for your specific search term, click 'Choose'

Now let's start editing our website template. First let's get all of our pages sorted. To view all pages, select 'Pages' in the top menu bar. You'll see a list of default pages that come with your chosen template design. To delete any of them, click on them and then select 'Delete'

To add a fresh new page, click on 'Pages' in the top menu bar, and then click the plus icon.

There are 6 different new page styles to choose form:

Standard page

Blog page

Category page

Product page

External page

Non-clickable menu

The category and product pages only apply to ecommerce websites, so we'll ignore those. We'll create a new standard page titled 'Sermons'

If you hover your mouse over the website title in the top left, you'll have the option of removing it completely,

uploading your logo

or editing the text. Editing the website title on this page will edit it throughout the entire site. We'll hide the website title to give our design a clean and spacious look.

Hitting the blue 'Publish' button in the top right will save all changes. Make a habit of clicking it after each modification to keep your hard work preserved.

When you click 'Publish', a pop up window will appear displaying your website URL. You can click on it and leave it open in a new tab to reference your design progress. Just make sure you refresh that page every time you view it.

To change the headline text, just click on it and type in your replacement.

Clicking on the background will reveal its editing toolbar. We'll change the image by clicking 'edit background'

The parallax effect will keep the background image static while scrolling down the page, creating a stunning yet subtle visual effect.

To add design elements, simply drag them over from the left widget menu. All of their unique editing options will become visible once you click on them.

We'll drop in a header widget and a paragraph widget beneath it.

How to insert anchor links with Weebly

When an anchor link is clicked, a webpage automatically scrolls down to a specified location. Anchor links are usually used in buttons within a banner image. Most popular websites use anchor links because they create an enjoyable navigational experience. So if you want your church website to be memorable, incorporate anchor links.

In this world tour template design, let's add an anchor link to this 'Enter' button so that when it's clicked, the page autonomously scrolls down to the headline 'Be one with the mountain'

First, we need to drag a code block to our intended destination.

Next, we need to give our anchor point a unique ID. You can name it whatever you want, just make sure there are no spaces.

We'll name our anchor ID 'scrollhere'

This ID will then need to be inserted in our newly added code block within the following line of HTML code. Replace the term YOURID with your anchor ID:

Here is an example of our HTML anchor link in our codeblock.

Make sure you include a space at this point so that your anchor HTML does not display any text on your page.

Now we need to connect this anchor point to our 'Enter' button.

To do this, we'll click on the button, naviagte to link > website URL and paste a URL in this format:

YourpageURL#YOURID

The URL of our current page is:

churchofrenewedhope.weebly.com

So our anchor link will be:

churchofrenewedhope.weebly.com#scrollhere

And we're done!

Hitting publish will allow us to test out our new anchor link. We, however, discovered a problem. Clicking the 'Enter' button scrolls the page a bit too far hiding the headline beneath the menu bar like so:

To fix this problem, simply drag the code block to a higher position by clicking on its 8 dotted bar and dragging it up.

How to publish sermons with Weebly

Since Weebly is a web builder for all types of websites, it doesn't have any features that are specific to church websites, that includes sermon archiving. However there is a work around.

A single sermon page can list all of the available sermons by category in a text widget that then link to their own dedicated sermon page, like so.

Here's the process for creating individual sermon pages that would link off this main table of contents

We created a new page by following the same process outline above (Pages > + > Standard Page) and titled it 'Sermon Series i' but we checked the box 'Hide in Navigation' to prevent this new page from being visible in the top menu.

To navigate back to our semon list page, we'll hit 'Done' followed by 'Publish' in the top right (don't forget to keep doing that!) and then click the back button and finally the sermon page

To link this new page to the first dot point, we'll highlight the entire text, select the link icon and then choose the destination page under the 'Standard Page' category.

Now let's head over to that 'Sermon series i' page and demonstrate the process of uploading sermons with Weebly.

If the design widget library on the left ever disappears, selecting 'Build' in the top menu will reveal it.

The free plan comes with 500MB of storage which is not sufficient to support an extensive sermon archive. What you could do instead is upload all of your sermons to Youtube and then embed the videos onto each sermon page. This process doesn't require storage space so you can build up a comprehensive sermon library without limitation concerns.

To embed a Youtube video, click on the share button and then click 'embed'. This HTML code will then need to be pasted into your sermon page through the following process.

Drag and drop an 'embed code' element into place. If you cannot see it, you may need to click on "show all elements"

Now just paste the embed HTML code from Youtube into that widget and you're done!

The process of designing all of the other web pages with Weebly are the same, simply drag your intended widgets in place and edit them. Weebly does a great job of always making all of the relevant editing options available whenever you click on a widget, so it's very difficult to get lost in the design process.

If you ever want to delete an element, simply hover over it and click the X icon in the top right.

How to livestream a sermon with Weebly

Thanks to Weebly's embed widgets, livestreaming sermons is super easy. Simply drag an embed code widget over to your page and then paste in the embed HTML from your livestreaming service (Vimeo or Youtube).

Most churches have a dedicated livestreaming page on their website that's updated every Sunday with the latest livestream session HTML embed code.

To do this with Weebly, simply navigate to Pages in the top menu, click the plus icon and then select a new Standard Page. Make sure the 'Hide in Navigation' checkbox is not checked so that your livestreaming page is visible in your top menu. Not only does this make the livestream page easy to find, it's also

beneficial for SEO

and displays your livestreaming page in search results for relevant search queries.

Then, drag and drop an 'embed code' widget onto the new page and paste in your livestream embed URL.

Does Weebly allow multiple website editors?

With Weebly it's super easy to assign multiple website editors. Simple navigate to 'Settings' in the top menu and select 'Editors' on the left. Then, hit the blue 'Add Editor' button in the top right and create all of your editor profiles.

How to create a contact form with Weebly

To create a contact form with Weebly, drag the contact form widget onto the page. If you click on the 'Form Options' button you can specify an email address each contact form submission should be sent to.

Some of Weebly's pre designed templates come with a contact us page already made, to check whether you've already got one, navigate to 'Pages' in the top menu to see all of your available web pages.

Accepting online donations with Weebly

With Weebly's free plan, you're unable to accept online payments, so the only way of accepting donations on the free plan is to display your bank account details for electronic transfers. Or, you could

insert a link to your Donorbox account

If you sign up to Weeby's personal plan you could create a means of accepting online donations, however, the process is a bit messy because you need to manipulate its generic ecommerce framework.

To do this you would create digital products as different donation amounts. Since all donations will be purchases of a digital download, you could provide a digital thank you image that can be downloaded once after each purchase. This, of course, isn't a perfect solution because donors are unable to specify their donation amounts. There are also standard transaction fees that are applied to each purchase that amount to 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction.

Weebly for churches final thoughts

Weebly is a fantastic website builder for churches on a shoestring budget. Our investigation demonstrates just how easy it is to create a stunning website that meets all of the key requirements of the online church using Weebly's free plan.