What you can do on the first day
- Create the church account. Sign up with the church name and address, your name, your email and a password.
- Bring in your people. Import the list you already keep as a spreadsheet (CSV or Excel, including files exported from Planning Center People or Breeze), or add people one at a time, and group them into households.
- Put a visitor card online for Sunday. Turn on your church's public page and share the visitor card link or QR code. Each guest who fills it in lands in the Connection Inbox.
- Create the next event. Add the date, time and place, and share one link people can open without an account to register.
- Send the weekly email. Write it once and send it to the whole church, a group or a few people from the directory.
- Record Sunday's offering. Enter gifts by hand with the giver, date, amount and fund. Year-end giving statements come from the same records.
- Give each person the right access. Staff roles let the secretary, a treasurer or a volunteer see what their job needs.
Every step above is on the Free plan.
Who does what
- The secretary keeps the directory current, sets up events and volunteer shifts, sends the weekly email, and records giving.
- The pastor sees new guests in the Connection Inbox, keeps prayer and visit requests with a status and priority, and shares last Sunday's message from the sermon archive.
- A volunteer can run children's check-in with allergy notes and a pickup security code.
What it costs
The Free plan is $0 a month and covers the steps above. A church website is a paid add-on on the Free plan: $12 a year (or $6 per 6 months) plus the domain at its own price. Ministry Pro, $49 a month, adds texting (Pro covers 500 texts), the Broadcast Hub, automations and presentations. You do not need Pro to run the office by hand. See pricing.
What it does not do
ChurchConnect does not pay your bills or hold the church's money; payments still go through your church's bank. It does not send messages to people you have not added. For everything on each plan, see what is on the Free plan and what Pro adds.