About Ekkli

About Ekkli, in one sentence: we build one honestly-priced, all-in-one platform so a small-to-mid-sized church doesn't have to run its Sunday on five different logins. We're an EU-first team, and Ekkli exists because we kept seeing the same pattern — a volunteer-run church stitching together a presentation tool, a separate giving platform, a spreadsheet for the rota, a mailing list app, and a website builder, each with its own bill, its own password, and its own learning curve for whoever gets stuck maintaining it.

Why Ekkli exists

Most church software was built for one job and one job only: run the slides, or take the giving, or build the website. That's a reasonable way to build software, but it's a hard way to run a church, especially a smaller one. A 60-person congregation rarely has a paid IT person — it has a rota of volunteers who each own a slice of Sunday, and every extra tool is another password to reset, another invoice to reconcile, another thing that breaks quietly because nobody was watching it.

We started Ekkli to close that gap: one platform, one login, covering worship presentation, your church website, your member database, rotas and volunteer scheduling, small groups, and event registration — built as one product instead of a pile of separate ones glued together with exports and workarounds. That's the whole idea. Not a bigger feature list for its own sake, but fewer seams for a volunteer team to fall through.

What we believe about pricing

Church software pricing has a habit of assuming every church is the same size and sits in the same economy, which is exactly backwards for a global, largely volunteer-run sector. So we built pricing around three commitments instead:

• A genuinely six-month free trial, not a disguised trial. Ekkli's free trial runs a full six months — worship presentation, a church website, member management, rotas and event registration for up to 50 people, with no card required and no catch lurking in the fine print.
• Regional, fair pricing. A euro doesn't buy the same thing everywhere, so paid-plan pricing is banded by country rather than set at one flat global rate. A church in a lower-cost region pays less for the same plan than a church in a higher-cost one — that's a deliberate design choice, not a discount code you have to hunt for.
• No card, no catch, to start. Those six months are the whole platform rather than a cut-down demo, so a church can genuinely test the tools in real use before deciding whether to pay for them at all.

You can see the actual numbers, plan by plan and region by region, on our pricing page.

What we believe about the tools themselves

Two convictions shape how we build the product day to day:

• Worship tools should run in a browser, not require an install. A tech volunteer shouldn't need admin rights on a shared church laptop, a license key, or a specific operating system just to run Sunday's slides. Open a browser tab and it works — on the church's laptop, a borrowed one, or a phone in a pinch.
• The tools should feel like they belong to the same church, not five different vendors. The same member record that signs up for a small group is the one that shows up on the rota and in the giving history — because it's genuinely one system under the hood, not separate products with a shared login screen bolted on top.

Data handling, built EU-first

Church member records are sensitive by nature — attendance patterns, giving history, family details, sometimes pastoral notes. We built Ekkli's member management with GDPR expectations baked into the workflow from day one: double opt-in consent when someone joins, self-service access so members can see and manage their own profile, and careful CSV import handling. We're an EU-first team building for an EU-first (and EU-adjacent) audience, and that shapes decisions across the platform, not just a privacy policy page.

Who Ekkli is built for

We build for the church that's doing real ministry on a volunteer team and a tight budget — broadly evangelical, free church, Pentecostal, charismatic, non-denominational, Baptist, Brethren, or similar congregations, typically somewhere between 20 and 500 people. Not a large operation with a dedicated IT budget, and not a one-off hobby project either — the church in between, where the person running the sound desk on Sunday might also be the one who set up the website and keeps the rota running, and where every tool needs to earn its place.

That's also why we're upfront about what Ekkli doesn't do yet. We'd rather a church know exactly what they're getting on the free trial and each paid tier — clearly listed on our pricing page — than discover a gap after they've already committed a Sunday morning to it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ekkli a startup, and is my church's data safe with a smaller company?

Ekkli is a small, EU-first team, and we think that's an advantage, not a risk, for the kind of church we build for: decisions about pricing, privacy, and features are made by people who talk directly to churches like yours, not by a distant product committee. Member data handling follows GDPR-first practices — double opt-in consent, self-service access, and careful import handling — from the ground up.

Is the free trial really free, or does it expire?

It runs six months, then you choose a paid plan. Ekkli's free trial covers worship presentation, a church website, member management, rotas and volunteer scheduling, small groups, and event registration for up to 50 people, with no card required.

Why does Ekkli's pricing differ by country?

Because a flat global price doesn't reflect what churches can actually afford in different economies. Paid-plan pricing is organized into country bands, so churches in lower-cost regions pay less for the same plan than churches in higher-cost ones. The full breakdown is on our pricing page.

What makes Ekkli different from buying separate tools for each job?

Mainly that it's one system, not several products stitched together. The same member record, the same login, and the same admin dashboard cover worship presentation, your website, rotas, and event registration — so there's one place to manage your church's tech instead of five logins, five bills, and five sets of settings to keep in sync.

Who is Ekkli not a good fit for?

If your church already runs a large paid media/IT team and needs deep, specialized tooling in every single category — broadcast-grade video production, for instance — a suite of best-in-class specialist tools might serve you better than an all-in-one platform. Ekkli is built for the small-to-mid church where one team, often volunteers, needs to run everything without a specialist for each tool.

This page is maintained by the Ekkli team. If you have a question about how we handle pricing, data, or a specific feature that isn't covered here, reach out — we're glad to answer honestly, whether or not you end up using Ekkli.