There's a particular kind of stuck that happens when a leadership team decides to finally fix the website. Maybe you've been there... Somebody opens eight browser tabs of pricing pages, another person asks whether you need "an app too," and by the end of the meeting you've spent forty-five minutes arguing about tools before anyone's written a single word of copy.
Here's the shortcut: platform is not the starting point. It feels like it because it's the first decision a team tries to tackle and it's full of unfamiliar vocabulary, but it's genuinely one of the easier problems in this whole series to solve β once you know what question you're actually answering.
Two Categories, One Real Question
Every option on the market falls into one of two buckets: church-specific platforms built with sermon hosting, giving, and event tools baked in, or general-purpose builders like Squarespace and Wix that you configure yourself.
The real question isn't which category is "better." It's this: who's going to maintain this site, and how much of their time do you actually have? A church with a tech-comfortable volunteer and no urgency can save real money on a DIY builder. A church with zero in-house capacity will spend that same money paying someone else to keep a church-specific platform current β and that's a completely reasonable trade.
The Church-Specific Platforms
These four show up constantly in church website conversations, and each fits a different situation.
The Church Co runs roughly $39/month and up, with setup packages ranging from a free basic build to a $999 custom design package. It includes a sermon archive, online giving, events, livestream, and a small groups directory, with a branded app available on higher tiers. It's built specifically for small and mid-sized churches that want something professional without a large budget.
Subsplash is priced by church size and usage rather than a flat rate β plan on $99/month or more once you're actually quoted. What you get in return is a genuinely unified system: website, custom mobile app, giving, media hosting, and people management all in one place. It fits growing mid-to-large churches that want one ecosystem instead of five separate logins.
Ministry Designs runs two tiers: a DIY plan around $97/month, or a done-for-you plan around $247/month with a one-year commitment where their team builds and maintains everything, including unlimited change requests. It's template-based rather than custom, pulling from a library of pre-built kits and church graphics. This one fits churches with no in-house tech volunteer and a preference for predictable monthly costs over full creative control.
Nucleus is flat-rate at $99/month for the core platform, with Giving, Messages, and Media available as $49/month add-ons and notably low giving fees (1.9% on cards). It deliberately skips full church-management features, and the company itself recommends larger churches pair it with a separate ChMS like Planning Center. It fits small-to-mid churches with a capable volunteer team who are ready to retire an outdated WordPress site.
BONUS: Here's another all-in-one platform making waves...
Apollos is another all-in-one platform attracting some of the largest and fastest growing churches. It's priced by custom quote β nothing is publicly listed, so you'll have to reach out to them. It's built for a fully custom app, website, and TV presence, with a discipleship layer baked in (daily prayer and Scripture prompts between Sundays) and it syncs with Planning Center, Rock, and Church Community Builder. It also features AI-powered content creation to help churches extend the reach of their sermons and other content.
The DIY Route
Squarespace and Wix are real options, not compromises β they're just not built for churches specifically. Wix starts free (with Wix branding) and scales up to around $159/month; Squarespace starts around $19/month with no free tier but a cleaner design system out of the box.
The tradeoff is exactly what you'd expect: neither platform includes giving, sermon hosting, or a real event system natively. You'll add a giving processor like Tithe.ly or Givebutter (budget the standard card-processing fee on top), embed sermons through YouTube or a podcast feed, and build your calendar through an app or plugin. None of that is hard. It's just work someone has to actually do, and keep doing as staff and volunteers change.
Questions to Ask Before You Sign Anything
Before your team commits to a platform, answer these out loud, together:
π Who will maintain it? Not who builds it once β who logs in monthly to update a sermon, fix a broken link, or add an event, a year from now.
π° What's the real budget? Setup cost plus monthly cost plus giving-processing fees plus (if you want one) an app. Get the full number before you compare platforms, not after.
π± Do you actually need an app? A surprising number of churches pay for app functionality nobody in the congregation asked for. If your honest answer is "not yet," don't pay for it yet.
A Simple Decision Framework
If you're a small, volunteer-run church with no dedicated tech help: lean toward a done-for-you plan (Ministry Designs' managed tier, or The Church Co's included build) so the site doesn't quietly rot six months from now.
If you have one tech-comfortable volunteer and a tighter budget: Nucleus or a DIY builder like Wix or Squarespace, paired with a giving processor, gets you a clean, current site without a big monthly line item.
If you're a growing or multi-site church wanting one system for everything β website, app, giving, people: Apollos or Subsplash's all-in-one approach starts making more financial sense than stitching five tools together yourself.
Don't Let the Tool Decide the Message
Whatever you choose, remember what the last three posts in this series established: the platform is the vehicle, not the destination. A beautiful site on an expensive platform still fails if it doesn't put the guest first, tell the right story, and make Plan Your Visit impossible to miss. Jesus put it plainly when he talked about building anything worth finishing: "For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?" (Luke 14:28, CSB). Count the real cost β money and maintenance both β and then build something that actually serves the guest on the other end of it.
Action step: Before you request a single demo, answer the three questions above as a team and write down your real number: setup cost, monthly cost, and who owns it going forward. Bring that number, not just a feature wish list, to every platform conversation you have next.
Next in this series: Design & Branding Essentials for Church Websites.
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