There are many church management software solutions out there, but it is always nice to have another free option. ChurchInfo runs on PHP and MySql, so there are hundreds of web hosts that can run this program. It is open source, so you can change the code to customize something inside of it. It does not look web 2.0 like many applications nowadays, but it is extremely functional, and will work for most small to medium-sized churches.
Pros
- Online/Offline – Can be used online or off. Install on a server on the web, so people can work from home. Install it on one computer in your church for greater security.
- Family Organization – Keeps people separated by family. People in families can be assigned specific roles within the family.
- Person Management – Make a person a member of a family and one or more groups. Keep important information about the person inside the program. You can also have people mapped out in Google Maps for visitation.
- Tax Forms – One of the nicer features, prints out a customizable letter for all families that gave tithes that year.
- Volunteer Tracking – Organize opportunities, and put people in those opportunities.
- Events – Ability to make events, and add people as attendees to the event.
- Fundraiser – track fundraisers and pledges.
- Reports – print out many different kinds of reports to track information.
- Help Files – Help documents for all the parts of the program.
Cons
- User Interface – The user interface is not very intuitive. The UI looks like something that was designed 10 years ago. So if you normally use flashy online programs, you will be disappointed by the UI.
- Old Technology – It does not use Ajax, so everything has to be done with a page reload. A page reload takes just seconds, but when entering large amounts of information, it can be annoying.
Conclusion
ChurchInfo is not perfect, but it is free. It has a lot of features, and many options. So it can probably fulfill any requirement needed by a small to medium-sized church.
To learn more and download, visit the ChurchInfo website.
kenny jahng says
Great to see another open source ChMS platform. I am actually sitting in a sales presentation by a major ChMS SaaS platform as part of a review of several vendors.
If open source is a real interest, I would also recommend looking at http://www.BVCMS.com. Dave Carroll has been quite impressive over there at BVCMS.
Kenny Jahng
Eric Peters says
Thanks for the recommendation of BVCMS, it looks really slick. They seem to put a lot of time in putting a polished product out. I will have to download it and take it for a test spin.
web church connect says
Great information here on ChMS. There are a lot of faith based organizations that really down play the importance of ChMS.
So if you’re a church leader it’s best you demo and test out a bunch of products before you make a decision.
Douglas says
I am currently looking for a software to manage our community. Can anyone help?
Samuel says
i need a good one time pay-off software for my church. I DONT NEED ONLINE
Charles Crossan says
For those who are (or have used) ChurchInfo, we’ve started a “modernized” fork of the project called ChurchCRM (http://github.com/ChurchCRM/CRM).
We’re keeping the opensource model, and we’re maintaining an upgrade path from anyone who is running ChurchInfo!
Anthony Mims says
I am trying to add data to my events but I need the number that’s assigned to everyone in my databases. Is there away to display the everyone assigned number under their name or sometimes?
Bree J. says
Greetings. Does Church Info offer a leads database or lists for marketing?