Last February, Active Network acquired Fellowship One, and now they have acquired Connection Power.
Active Network is the leading provider of organization-based cloud computing. This latest acquisition further solidifies Active Network as the largest provider of SaaS solutions for Churches.
Matt Ehrlichman, chief strategy officer at Active Network had this to say:
Our decision to acquire ConnectionPower.com helps solidify our reach in the Faith market and is a natural complement to our Fellowship One product portfolio. Facilitating the collaboration of these well-known Faith brands is sure to bring new innovation to the industry. We believe that faith organizations worldwide will be better served by a single enterprise-level product offering that is fully scalable to any size congregation.
It’s difficult to say what the long term effects will be. At present, this is the strategy.
Jeff Hook, the former CEO of Fellowship Technologies is now the General Manager of Active Network. Allen Ratta, the soon-to-be former CEO of Connection Power, will become Associate General Manager. He had this to say:
In the months ahead we will be working together to merge the unique ministry capabilities of ConnectionPowerª products with the Fellowship Oneª product portfolio. Eventually this functionality will be rolled out in a new, revolutionary church management product suite branded and delivered by Active Network | Faith.
If you are a Connection Power or Fellowship One user, how do you find this? Excited? Worried?
[via Connection Power & the Connection Power Press Release]
Mike says
We’ve been using ConnectionPower for a couple of years now. I honestly think this will be a good move. ConnectionPower has really not added any significant new features in a long time. They also have really neglected how social media can integrate with their product. CP has a good children’s checkin system and their main strength is the assimilation process control. The biggest weakness is the lack of customization they offer.
The biggest reason we chose them is that their product did what we needed at the cheapest cost. My biggest fear is that the new pricing will increase and move the new combined product out of reach for smaller churches. Although we really liked Fellowship One, we couldn’t afford it when we were looking at church management solutions 2 years ago.
I’m hoping they will be able to combine the best features of both and have a simple upgrade process for existing customers. If that happens, this will definitely be a good move.
Eric Dye says
Thank you so much for sharing your personal insight on this. It really adds a lot of value to the ChurchMag community. 🙂
Adam Lehman says
Weird to see “faith market” in print. I understand it and what it means, but – you know – weird…. At some point – and i’m not sure where that is – we’re going to run into the Jesus-flipping-over-temple-tables issue….
Eric Dye says
Good point, Adam.
It reminds me of the Christian music label, as well as the Worship music genre.
I understand what you mean. We should certainly take pause and tread carefully.
Eric J says
Does connectionPOWER have a high quality online giving system? Because F1 has a terrible UI.