HOW MUCH TO CREATE A CHURCH WEBSITE

A church’s website is a necessity for any healthy, growing church in 2020. This was made abundantly clear when the global pandemic took the world by surprise earlier this year. What was once a must-have tool for the church quickly became the only communication for the church.

Most churches know they need a website to stay accessible to the younger potential visitors and guests; however many, if not most, churches with less than 200 in weekly attendance still either do not have a website or have an outdated or poorly designed DIY website for their church.

Which begs the question—why?

From our experience, it boils down to underestimating the power of a quality website to help the church grow, while the other is a lack of priority in budgeting. We see churches with "no budget" for web design services spend hundreds of dollars each month on coffee and snacks, printables, or worse—direct mailers.

With a little budgeting, every church in America can have a great website.

So how much does a great church website cost? The simple answer—it all depends.

Just like anything you buy, the devil is in the details.

We get questions like “how much for a website for my church” or “how much for a basic website”?

Before we can offer any usable prices, we first need to understand what you want, how many pages, what you hope to gain from the new site, do you require any customized development, who will manage the website, and so on.

Let’s look at it in another way. What if you approached an architect and asked how much it would cost to build a house? It is unlikely that they will have an itemized price chart. Not that easy, right? How many rooms, where do you want to build, what kind of fixtures, what kind of materials, etc...

In both cases, the details will affect the final price. But here is the good news. Because we have worked with so many churches, we have a good idea of what you can expect to spend.

Before we discuss the price, let's talk about the details.

The first thing to understand is that we are talking about high-quality customized websites, not DIY builders and templates.

Also, understand we are not talking about a complete custom-coded website either. There is a time and place for those types of sites but certainly not for a church. Even extremely large churches do not need a custom-scripted website.

The next thing you need to understand is that your church does not need every tool that you have seen on larger church websites.

Keep in mind if you are paying for a church website, it should scale or be able to grow as your church does. It should also have a content management system, which is just a fancy way of saying that you can edit the website without code.

So to recap, having a great quality website does not mean you have every tool available; it means you have the ability to add every tool available at the right time. In other words, it is an investment that can grow with you.

Most churches need to start with the basics of a great design. Design is a huge factor in a successful church website (or any website, for that matter). Without great design, no one will stick around your website to learn about your church or ministry. Websites are designed to encourage the user to take action, and not all web design works for all industries.

This is why using templates is not a good investment for your church. Your church has Kingdom-minded goals and needs Kingdom growth design to grow the Kingdom of God through your church.

Next, it is imperative that your church website does its primary job, that is—to speak to your potential visitors and extend your guest experience.

We covered what the primary goal of a church website should be in another article. You can learn more about it here if you missed it.

As your church grows, you can add secondary functions like resources for your existing members. We covered that in another article also. You can learn more about that here.

However, based on the design requirements of most growing small-medium churches (35 - 200 in weekly attendance), a high-quality website will set your church back about $3,500. A general range is - $2,800 - $3,500, again depending on the details.

Almost any church can budget for—and raise that much with little effort. But what an excellent investment it will be. By doing so, you are budgeting and investing in the future of your church and its growth.

In addition, most agencies will have a payment plan for your church.

To be clear, this is only the upfront design, development, and consulting costs. To maintain a high-quality website, you need a high-quality hosting service to keep it secure and running fast. Then you will require at least one domain email.

A domain email is an email address with your domain name. For example, name@yourchurchwebsite.com. It is not a good practice to use a free email service like Google or Yahoo.

You can expect to pay between an extra $200-$400/year for all the required services.

Now you know your church can have the high-quality website and tools the big churches have—all for a lot less than you thought.

Be sure to check back for other tips to consider when you are looking for a church website design/redesign.

Are you interested in a new church or ministry website? Do you have questions about our process? Are you unsure if and how a website may help your ministry? Let's talk. We are here to answer your questions. Complete the connection card below to get started. Do you prefer to hop on a quick call? Schedule a time that is convenient for you here.

Blessings!