I am researching options for my church. First of all I am a web developer (23 years) and have offered to build the church a new site. Will be building on the WordPress/DIVI platform.
They are currently doing their live stream on the website with a chat function from life.church. It really does not integrate into the upcoming new site as much as I would like so I am looking for better options. I bought Advanced Sermon Pro which should handle the live and archived services but need to figure out a chat option so visitors can post during the service. I have no issue with scrapping what I bought if there is something better that will integrate chat.
Sorry this hung out here, but hopefully I can give a useful response for you.
I think most of us use the church online software from life.church - not because it’s the best integrated thing ever - but because it’s stable, easy to use, and holistic once your inside of it.
It has the chat, notes, and video all in one well integrated package… did I mention life.church runs it as a donation to the Church at no cost?
I totally understand the desire to do something which integrates better with the look and feel of your site. But I also know the pain that is managing an online church digital platform. For most churches, spending time on people is better than spending time managing technology.
If the organization your helping doesn’t have the budget and desire to spend a significant amount of energy yearly maintaining the technical platform for online church - I would probably just use the church online platform and accept the limitations of it.
If the organization does have those resources, then don’t think about a singular answer - but rather a collection of them. If Advanced Sermon Pro works for you - then great. Maybe consider adding something like the atomchat or rumblechat platforms, which offer plugins for Wordpress and possibilities to integrate into your own apps, etc.
Budget is not an issue as I plan to cover all cost and do all the work for them. They can also continue to spend time on people and not have to focus on messing with this technology.
Just to be clear I was not bashing life.church. It works well and I appreciate them making that available for the masses at no charge. Its just a little dated in design and as I said does not implement well into what I am doing. Or potentially could be said I don’t implement well in what they are doing
It appears that minimal people are using it anyway. I have had my notebook running while working in the tech booth the last few weeks and just not much going on via the website chat. Most chatter is happening on Facebook. I might consider some implementation of Facebook next to the live video in Advanced Sermons. I just don’t know at this point. Have mixed emotions about this function anyway.
