Church Website With Member Portal On One Login

A church website with a member portal means your public website and your church's admin tools share one login, one database, and one platform — not a website plugin bolted onto a separate membership system. With Ekkli, the pages your visitors read on a Sunday morning and the member records, giving history, and event sign-ups your team manages behind the scenes live in the same account. Nobody exports a spreadsheet from one tool to feed another.

That's different from most "church website builder" products, which are website tools first and stop there, or membership systems that treat the public site as an afterthought. This page covers what changes when the two are genuinely one platform. For a full walkthrough of building the site itself — page layout, design choices, getting a domain live — see our complete guide to building a church website.

What's actually on the website

Every Ekkli church, on every plan including the six-month free trial, gets a real public-facing website, not a single landing page. That includes:

• A pages CMS for the standard church site pages — About, Beliefs, Staff, Visit Us, and whatever else your church needs, built and edited without touching code.
• Blog and news posts for updates, sermon recaps, and announcements that need their own dated entry rather than living on a static page.
• Image galleries for events, mission trips, and church life photos.
• Public events with iCal export, so visitors can see what's coming up and add it straight to their own calendar app.
• Embeds for Google Maps, YouTube, and Vimeo — directions to your building, a livestream player, or an embedded sermon video, without hand-coding an iframe.
• Social feed widgets to surface your church's existing social presence on the site itself.
• A contact form that routes messages to your team.
• Built-in SEO handling for the basics — titles, meta descriptions, sitemaps — so the site is findable without a separate SEO plugin.
• Legal pages — privacy policy and terms, kept current as part of the platform rather than something you draft and paste in yourself.

None of that requires a paid plan. It's part of the free trial, alongside worship presentation, the song library, rota scheduling, small groups, and event registration.

Why one login is the actual point

The website-builder market is full of capable tools. What most of them don't do is talk to the rest of your church's admin. A calendar plugin doesn't know your event has a 40-person capacity and a waitlist. A contact form doesn't become a member record. A "give now" button links out to a payment page that has no idea who gave, or how much, until someone reconciles it by hand.

On Ekkli, the public events on your website are the same events your team manages for registration — capacity limits, a FIFO waitlist, guest sign-up with a cancel link, and headcount attendance, free on every plan, not a separate module you connect. A visitor who signs up through the public site becomes a record your team can see, without anyone re-typing a name from an email into a spreadsheet.

The same is true for giving: your website can point people to your church's own giving page, and because giving runs on the same platform, a gift made there shows up in the giver's own giving history and your church's records — not in a separate processor's dashboard someone checks on its own schedule.

People who join through the website — an invite link, a QR code at the welcome table, or a join form — land in the same member database your team already uses for rota scheduling, small groups, and communications, with the same GDPR-compliant double opt-in consent flow. For the full picture of how that member database works, including what it deliberately isn't, see our member management and GDPR page.

Free subdomain, paid custom domain

The free trial gives your church a website on an Ekkli subdomain — live, functional, and free for the full six months. It carries a small "Powered by Ekkli" footer, which is how the trial stays free.

Every paid plan — Small, Sunday, Ministry, and Network — removes that footer and lets you connect your own custom domain, so your site lives at your church's actual web address instead of an Ekkli subdomain. That's a genuine white-label upgrade: visitors see your church's domain and no mention of the platform behind it. Paid plans also add longer-term media storage for things like your sermon archive (see sermon and podcast hosting), and email campaigns for reaching your congregation beyond the website itself. See pricing for the exact monthly and annual figures, including lower regional pricing available outside the standard band.

The six-month trial runs on an Ekkli subdomain with a small "Powered by Ekkli" footer; a custom domain and footer removal come with a paid plan.

What this looks like day to day

• Your admin publishes next month's outreach event on the website's public events page. The same event already has a 60-person capacity and a waitlist set up in the events tool — no second entry, no copy-paste.
• A visitor fills in the contact form asking about joining. Your team turns that into an invitation to the member database directly, rather than adding them somewhere else by hand.
• Someone finds your church through search (helped by the built-in SEO handling), reads the About page, and gives online — the gift lands in the same records your treasurer already checks.
• A member logs into their own self-service profile to update contact details or check giving history — a different login screen than your admin's, but the same underlying account as the public website.

None of this requires connecting third-party tools or reconciling exports between systems — fewer logins, fewer places for a member's information to fall out of sync, and fewer separate bills.

Getting your church website live

1. Start on the free trial. Your church gets a working website on an Ekkli subdomain immediately — no card required.
2. Build your core pages first. About, Visit Us, and a way to contact you cover most of what a first-time visitor is looking for.
3. Connect your public events and giving page so visitors researching your church can find both without hunting.
4. Invite your existing members via a join link or QR code, so the website and your admin tools work from the same list from day one.
5. Add a custom domain when you're ready — during your six-month Ministry trial or on a paid plan — to move off the subdomain and remove the footer.

For a deeper, step-by-step guide to designing and building the site itself, see our complete church website builder guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is the church website really free, or is it a trial?

Free for six months, for up to 50 people, with no card required. The website on an Ekkli subdomain, member database, rota scheduling, and event registration are all part of the six-month free trial. Paid plans add a custom domain, remove the footer, and unlock higher people caps and extra storage.

Can members log in to see their own information?

Yes — members get a self-service profile to view and update their own details and giving history. A different login than your church's admin tools, but the same underlying platform and record, so there's nothing to keep in sync.

Does the member portal let visitors browse a directory of other members?

No. The member database is an admin-facing tool for your church's leadership to manage the congregation — not a public or member-browsable directory where people look up each other's contact details. Members manage their own profile; they don't browse everyone else's.

What happens to public events published on the website?

They're the same events your team manages for registration — capacity limits, a waitlist, and headcount attendance are built in and free on every plan, not a separate add-on. A visitor who registers through the website becomes part of that same event record your team sees.

Do I need a custom domain to launch, and can I add one later without rebuilding?

No custom domain is needed to launch — run your church's website entirely on a free Ekkli subdomain with no card required. When you're ready, a custom domain is available on any paid plan or during the six-month Ministry trial. Connecting one is a plan-level change, not a rebuild: the site itself doesn't move to different software.

This page is maintained by the Ekkli team, who build and run the church website and member portal described above. Have a question about how the pieces fit together for your specific church? Reach out — we're happy to walk through it, whether or not you end up using Ekkli.