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Free and/or open-source software alternatives for churches
I've been seeing some cool software in the church space lately with lots of fancy bells and whistles that handle many different aspects of running a church (social, presentation, tithing, etc.). However, not all churches, especially small ones, can afford them or have members savvy enough to set it all up and maintain/operate them. I thought this could be a cool thread for free and or open source software that churches can use can use (Does not necessarily need to be design specifically for churches).
EDIT
Here is a list of paid examples:
- Renewed Vision
- ProPresenter
- ProVideoPlayer
- ProVideoServer
- Scoreboard
- ProContent
- Microsoft Office
- PowerPoint
- Excel
- Google
- Slides
- Sheets
- Forms
Here is a short list of FOSS alternatives:
- Free Show
- Owncast
- Rock RMS
- Choyr
- OBS
- OpenLP
- WorshipTools
Could you give some examples about the available software for churches? Even software that is closed-source, it could interesting to see what it's all about. You are basically describing software that could be used to handle any non-profit organization.
Off-topic: I don't have any idea about your need but it seems to be an interesting project especially for the open-source community.
"The City" is one, though I can't seem to find a link to the website so I don't know if they are still a thing.
If you take away the religious aspects of it, OP is essentially looking for CMS software. However, my guess is that the reason why there are no OSS solutions for churches specifically is because the use case is too narrow. The number of people who have the technical skills to build such a platform let alone install and maintain the platform are probably rather small. For a small church to hire an IT team to maintain it is likely cost-prohibitive and why such platforms exist.
OP, depending on just how small your church is, if it's less than 100, I'd just do mailing lists and forums. Tithing can be done via direct deposit or checks. If you don't want to maintain donations for tax purposes, there are services that cater to just that, which might be more cost effective.
I used to be a Christian and sat on a church board as well as a non-profit board. And being in IT, I dealt with this a lot.
Yeah, I guess I am basically just looking for a CMS software but more polished and specified. I did not really think about it that way. I'm not really looking for a church though. I am specifically interested and have been for many years in building something that's easy for small churches to start up and maintain. There are a few things I've seen so far like ROCK RMS (Which from the outside looking in seems to be a little too complicated like you said. Not impossible though.) and Choyr (Which outside of their website I can't find any real evidence that it works but is the closest to what I'm looking for/ looking to build).
If you're looking to build and maintain this yourself, your competition is going to be the already established platforms. Like I said, the cost for a small church (or any small organization) to maintain the infrastructure needed to host the platform is likely going to exceed the pricing for something that is already out there. Not only that, but the ability to just "set it up and go" is much more attractive than trying to install the software, set up permissions, maintain users, etc.
Not trying to discourage you. But understanding the problem is step one. If this is something you really want to pursue, maybe instead of creating something bespoke, you can do like addons/plugins of an already open source CMS system.
This comment right here is exactly why I posted. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel or necessarily start from scratch. I'm trying to get a better understanding of what is out there and what ideas people bring to the the table that I have not seen or thought of. It would be ideal to take existing FOSS things that work great at what they do and get them to work together. So looking into FOSS CMS like you said is a great starting point. My goal is easier and cheaper engagement and management.
My apologies, I should have been more specific. I don't have a specific need for it, however; I've have had the desire to create a all in one church app for sometime now and so seeing and hearing from people to see what they use and recomend is really helpful.
I kind of have two separate software categories I suppose. One is presentation. So this is like ProPresenter for example. The other category is like the all in one: social, managerial, and financial software (basically like a program called Choyr which actually almost does everything and is supposedly free aside from payment processor fees). So church members could use it to stream the service or chat with different church groups, see upcoming events, volunteer, tithe/donate. The "workers" would also be able to do all that but also (depending on roles and privileges) be able to see their schedule/plans, create events and groups, post articles and services, and view tithing information.
I'm more so looking for Progressive Web Apps so that it can be downloaded without the need for it to be beholden/dependent on app stores. Also something that is scalable and has the option for self hosting.
I've have had the desire to create the second application category for sometime now and so seeing and hearing from people to see what they use and recomend.
Not OP and I can't give specific examples off the top of my head, but I can attest that church-focused software does exist. I worked for an MSP that serviced several churches in our county (among our broader client base), and I can recall seeing apps for things like Bible refrencing, sermon writing (akin to script writing software), church-focused newsletter/marketing, etc. We generally didn't support super niche software like that, which is why I don't remember much specifics, but that market does exist.
Are you looking for like.. a website or something?
I don't think managing personnel and schedules is outside of the range of something like libreoffice (though I'd use Excel, but you said foss).
As far as communication with visitors you don't need to be a programming savant to type up an html website in notepad.
Are you looking for something specific?
Yeah if it amore about organizing, I think a libre office document saved somewhere in a cloud site of your choosing (say, run your own next cloud) could already do everything you need.
If you also need a detailed budget breakdown and don't shy from the steep vertical learning cliff, GNUcash got you covered!
If I understand correctly your need, is not that different than any solution for a small company or group. So, for documentation Nextcloud + Onlyoffice / Collabora, etc?
So I'm not really focused on like the entirety of the churches finances, but more so specifically tithing and having a way that people can tithe/donate easily and for the church to see analytical information about it. But also having it being in the same "app" as basically a mini social network for the specified church.
My apologies, I should have been more specific. This is more of an addition to a website.
So I kind of have two separate software categories I suppose. One is presentation. So this is like ProPresenter for example. The other category is like the all in one: social, managerial, and financial software (basically like a program called Choyr which actually almost does everything and is supposedly free aside from payment processor fees). So church members could use it to stream the service or chat with different church groups, see upcoming events, volunteer, tithe/donate. The "workers" would also be able to do all that but also (depending on roles and privileges) be able to see their schedule/plans, create events and groups, post articles and services, and view tithing information.
I'm more so looking for a Progressive Web App so that it can be downloaded without the need for it to be beholden/dependent on app stores. Also something that is scalable and has the option for self hosting.
I've have had the desire to create the second application category for sometime now and so seeing and hearing from people to see what they use and recomend.
So Here's my two cents, and I mean this with the intent to help you though it may come off as insulting: I'd stay away from anything labeled as "for a church" [¹]. Looking at the software you mentioned it just looks like rebranding, like if I just got a broom and sold it to you as a special church broom.
[¹] Very common bad faith (no pun intended) marketing strategy in creating a pseudo-niche that takes advantage of marketing something generic as something specific. Not always the case, but it's a rule of thumb to consider.
Now with that aside, I took a look at Choyr. Looks like they use stripe, so Choyr doesn't actually take a fee for payments, that's just Stripe (and that one pretty popular in general). Their privacy policy doesn't seem to have any red flags either. I am actually surprised this service exists for free, so if I were you I'd dig deeper into it. If they try and say it truly is completely free either there's actually a little pocket of humanity trying to do good, or they are making good use of having access to opinions of all the churches on their platform.
The pro presenter one leaves a bad taste in my mouth.[²] They glued together some video and image editor and slapped together a user interface.
[²] Although for $300 that's honestly not bad at all. Given that they had enough glue for android, apple, and mac, but based on reviews it looks like they ran out of glue mid way for windows.
All in all, for presentation you could easily learn the native video editors on either mac or windows which comes for free and there isn't that much of a learning curve. Sounds like it would be a lot less work than pro presenter.
As far as social networking, Choyr seems OK, other than all your messages being stored on their servers (again find out how they are paying for their servers.. looks too good to be true) But really it's just based on the members of your church. It looks like a simplified stripped down version of facebook (this is a huge compliment).
ProPresenter would be more akin to Powerpoint or Keynote than a video/image editor. As they've grown over the years they've added some basic editing features to make it more convenient and quick to prepare content for presentation in app. They also added in a built in streaming encoder during COVID which I haven't used, but I get the appeal for users who are already using ProPresenter and needed a quick way to get a stream up and running during the Pandemic.
The main hook of ProPresenter, at least for me, is the way they handle the editing and arrangement of song lyrics. Each Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Etc.. is it's own group that can be incredibly quickly put into arrangements without having to move 3/4 individual slides. The groups also allow you to very quickly make changes to the lyrics on one slide and have it automatically propagate to any other references to that group in the arrangement.
There's also the convenience of having a stored library of lyrics to songs you've done before which also can have multiple preset slide arrangements for the songs as well. It makes throwing together a group of slides for a worship service a 5 minute job rather than a 30-60 minute job of trying to assemble and edit a powerpoint presentation as was the standard in years past.
There's so many more features that make ProPresenter a no brainer purchase for me, and I've been a customer of their's for over a decade now.
As far as alternatives to ProPresenter, I've been so happy with it I've never even looked, but doing a google search now here are a couple more comparable alternatives I've found outside of the standard Powerpoint, Keynote, Google Slides alternatives. @Ris I've never actually used these apps before so make sure you test them out before you try to implement them in a service.
Yeah I've been working on getting away from PowerPoint/ Google Slides. It has its time and its place but it is definitely the way of the past for services (depending on the type of service you have of course). I've seen ProPresenter used many times but it is really expensive for smaller churches. But if a FOSS application can do a compliable job, the money could be better spent elsewhere. Thank you for your suggestions! I will add them to the list. Perhaps this post can be a place for people to come and see what their options are. I think WorshipTools excites me the most out of them.
This does not come across as insulting at all. I appreciate your thoughts. I've been trying to look into Choyr. It really does seem to be too good to be true. I'm hoping to locate a church that uses it and see just how free it really is. I just have to find one haha. As for ProPresenter, I thought it did more than that like lighting or something, but I have not begun as much research into that just yet so I may be wrong.
Logically speaking, you're right. It's all manageable view stock or already available through free software. I was kind of more so wanting to unify everything. like all things presentation and all things member engagement.
Again, thanks for your input!
I helped work on Rock RMS way back in 2015. It was designed and maintained by a group of "megachurches" so it was designed to be scalable.
Growth-driven church planning aside... Its a pretty solid piece of software that you are free to download and self host for free. They recommend an annual donation based on the size of your church that they use to fund development, but they wont invoice you.
This looks really awesome! It looks like more advanced and modular options as apposed to Choyr. I love the payment model as well. be able to let churches get started with it and grow and then be able to give back is such an amazing thing.
I help run the Zoom service for my local UU church and I'm working on migrating us to OBS to simplify that process. Right now the standard process is cycling between using our camera and screensharing in Zoom, which is very clumsy. With OBS we can just screenshare the entire service and switch to a scene containing the camera in OBS whenever we need to show the stage.
Our tech budget is only a couple grand or so for the year, and we've got big plans to overhaul our sound system and invest in some accessibility tech for use inside the church. So being able to use something that's completely free and still has a massive impact on the quality of the service is really helpful right now.
Awesome! Thanks for the recommendation!
Deckboard would be a good app for the cheap switching of scenes. I have a stream deck for work that gets used once a month to produce a newsletter. For what I use it deckboard would have done the job wirelessly and for a much more reasonable price.
Interesting. I will have to look into this... I have also heard about Free Show.
That's awesome, I'd love to hear that all goes! OBS definitely sounds like a way smoother and reliable option for sure! Being able to produce such great results under budget or free is always a bonus!
I was doing some research for my church a while back and I ran into Free Show which is presentation software. We were a smaller church with maybe 100 people and didn't have enough money to pay for something like ProPresenter. It was nice and had a lot of good features and runs on Mac, Windows, Linux.
For reference, we were using PowerPoint and while that was working pretty well for a while, being able to have actual software built for what we were doing was a game changer in terms of setting up slides and having song lyrics, bible verses, etc.
I've since moved to another church that is a bigger and does use ProPresenter. That set up seems pretty nice too from what I've seen of it, but I know that it is pretty expensive.
ProPresenter is one of the really nice but not Free/Open Source options I was talking about. I will have to look into free show and see what its all about. Its awesome that you were able to find a free alternative for your church!
Owncast is good if you want to stream on your own terms - https://owncast.online/
This looks, awesome. Thank you for the recommendation!
Like.....Netflix for church people kind of app but free? I've been out of the mega church scene for a while so I don't know what all they use now. And I would imagine most Tildes members don't step foot in a big church either. My Church runs on little old ladies, so I'm no help there.
I'm sure you can get some good recommendations if you describe a few of the cool new ones you've seen. I'm not sure if you self tagged tithing: some kind of accounting software for folks to log in and check their contribution limits and get a copy of their records for taxes? Maybe something to manage the kids programs' rewards (digitized Ye Olde Bible Bucks)? Free streaming and audio/visual software for putting services online and managing cameras and mics? A calendar system so members can see which services and events are happening, which campus/building/room, whether online or on site? Sign up sheets for small groups and bible study groups? Light weight oganizational charts to keep track of all the small group leaderships?
Curious about your answer :) snoop a bit into other churches.
Edit: found this old thread for praying the rosary.
Haha, I have never been to a true "mega" church, nor really have the desire, but I have been in mid size churches all the way to 5 people in a room churches. My family has been involved with running churches since before I was born.
The main one that that I have seen on the presentation side is presenter pro. It's basically good enough to run a full blown concert (and probably does all the time).
The other side is the Social networking, managerial, tithing/donation all in one church managing app that both church staff and members can use alike to get more involved and engage. An awesome example of this is [Choyr] (https://choyr.com) . At least from what I could gather from their website. You basically described this one plus that cool idea about adding digital rewards for the kids in youth group but church members could use it to stream the service or chat with different church groups, friends, or leaders, see upcoming events, volunteer, tithe/donate. The "workers" would also be able to do all that but also (depending on roles and privileges) be able to see their schedule/plans, create events and groups, post articles and services, and view tithing information.
I'm more so thinking a Progressive Web App so that it can be downloaded without the need for it to be beholden/dependent on app stores. Also something that is scalable and has the option for self hosting.