Wow, I’m really impressed.
AppChurch, a simple iPhone application that’s small in size but big in features, allows you to easily access your church’s microsite.
You can get church information, links to relevant websites, see upcoming events, and even download sermons.
Developed by Godios, Inc, the business model is a basic subscription service that you pay monthly. You really can’t beat $7.00 a month, especially if all you need is what’s being offered here.
I see it as a great way to get your ministry’s feet “wet” in the iPhone app game and see if it’s effective and a reasonable solution for your ministry long term. Then go after the bigger fish if necessary.
But, I can see a lot of smaller ministries (and even decent sized ones) using this for a long time.
What a simple win!
Again, I’m impressed.
Q: How do you setup "your church's microsite?" I suspect it is with CSS at which I'm a n00b learning. I've graduated from Front Page to nvu but still make quick and dirty hacks with notepad.
Can list your church for free. There are others like this out there. Not a true "unique" app for your church as far as i can tell… In other words, people download AppChurch, then pick a church from the listing as their "home church"…
There are places that will develop a unique app for your church, but this is at least something and probably worth using the free listing anyway.
$7.00 dollars a month !?! Am I the only one that feels that is a little steep?
This is clever. $7.00 per month sounds very cheap to me. It sure beats creating your own iPhone app. However, a mobile website would be cheaper of course. But this looks like a good way for a Church to give easy access to sermons and events to members of their Church on their iPhone at a very low cost.
@Abijah if it made your own iPhone app it would be worth it, but $7/month for a listing in their app?
Tried it out yesterday. One of our members said the app kept crashing, and AppChurch wouldn't load onto an iPod Touch (and I have the latest generation iPod Touch). Not impressed…
SAD!
A big thanks to John for this post. We realized after the launch that unless you type REALLY slow in the search function, the app crashes. We're working to get an update out very soon to fix that. Also, AppChurch is not compatible with the iPod Touch, because it uses the iPhone's GPS technology to display churches and events nearest you. We're really excited though, because we've seen a good response so far, and we're already working on some great new features to appear on the next update that will be coming SOON.
Thanks for stopping by! keep us in the loop!
I agree with Abijah, being a new thing and not having the greatest Alexa rating (which I know is not an accurate way to determine a websites possibility) but it does give you a general idea. Also 1.5 star rating, I think they should have a free version and some other paid versions.
Hi – AppChurch does offer a free account as well as paid accounts. Also, we're confidently hopeful our ratings will continue to go up, as we just came out with our 1.1 update, which fixed the search glitch we were experiencing. Today, we just made AppChurch available to iPod Touch users, and within the next couple of days we'll offer the ability to connect an existing sermon podcast RSS feed, so account holders won't have to upload sermons in two places. More features will be coming very soon, so stay tuned.
thanks for the update!