We are looking at an app for our church where users will be able to see what’s going on at the church, see the bulletin and access their online giving records (as well as give obviously). Is anyone using a canned application from their CHMS and/or their online giving vendor? At this time we are using Seraphim for our CHMS and ACS through Vanco for our online giving. We don’t like Seraphim or ACS canned apps so are leaning towards a custom third party app. Any ideas?
It seems like every church on the planet is using subsplash so I would check them out. We don’t have an app as of today, but if we were to get an app we would likely lean towards custom as I think child check in would be a big component.
Just a reminder though, I believe Apple still has a ban on native donations through the app. You will need a mobile friendly giving site for the app to kick out to.
It’s not our ChMS, but I could get you the contact info of the company that will build this for your church.
Currently, we use onlinegiving.org for our online giving vendor, and Ministry Platform for our ChMS. Onlinegiving intgrates with MP via API.
Note: We also use Secure Give as an actual app from an App Store, for giving. This does not integrate automatically with MP, but we had Secure Give before onlinegiving.org and have held onto it due to the amount of givers that continue to use the app one time, and reoccurring.
We do all that and more with Fellowship One through a mobile version of our
website. We find this much preferred to creating a mobile app for the
following reasons.
o No mobile app to download so the number of congregants that have access
is higher and it’s more convenient for them
o Eliminates the cost of developing/maintaining a mobile app
o Lower staff costs to maintain as you have one, not two places to populate
the data
My thoughts and options are: Don’t start with a custom app. Buy one first, figure out what you don’t know and get rolling and then if the ROI is there for a custom app, then make the jump.
Custom App Dev has a much bigger cost and support tail.
I would recommend talking to Subsplash. They are good dudes and you can do quite a bit with their platform. There are other paid platforms out there but I just know other ministries have used Subsplash with success.
I also, think the mobile browser version idea that Mark mentioned is good.
Another route to consider would be building an app with React that just displays mobile web within it.
We use Ministry Platform and Onlinegiving.cc. The integration between the two is great for online and text giving. Onlinegiving also has an app, but not certain of the details. For our app we went Subsplash. They have in app note taking for the sermons. Working within their platform we can link to onlinegiving through a browser, as well as opening the Messages app for text giving.
We went with Monk Development for our website. Their responsive build and mobile build works great on a smartphone or tablet. The combination of MP, Onlinegiving, Monk and Subsplash takes a little work, but the end result provides a feeling of overall integration.
One point of clarity on my part… https://notedapp.co/ is not a custom app, but one you pay for per month for an “online digital bulletin” to follow along with for taking notes if your church does note taking/fill in the blanks during the sermon. It’s an opportunity to do so from your phone without having to grab a bulliten. It’s actually really handy, and I personally use it each weekend rather than grabbing a bulletin. The idea is to lower your printing cost over time by more and more people choosing the digital version over a hard copy.
We use it as a central hub for different systems such as the digital bulletin (fill in the blank electronically with a hyperlink of bible references), announcements, online giving (separate vendor) and ChMS (separate vendor). It’s a digital version of the bulliten.
After reading over my post, I shouldn’t have said “build you an app” as this implies a custom development solution, which isn’t what notedapp is doing. Sorry for any confusion.