Free Church Website Builder: What Your Church Actually Gets

A free church website builder that's actually worth using gives your congregation a real live site — service times, address, sermons, contact form — at a free subdomain, with no card required, and no separate login from the rest of your church software. Ekkli's six-month six-month free trial includes exactly that: a website bundled with your member database, rota, not a standalone tool you'd have to buy and connect separately.

If you've searched for a church website builder free option, you've probably found two kinds of results: generic drag-and-drop site builders that happen to have a church template, and dedicated "church website" products that want a monthly fee before you've even seen how it looks. Neither is quite what most small churches need. This page covers what a small church's website actually has to do, why it works better bundled into your church management platform than bought as a separate tool, and exactly what "free" includes on Ekkli — no rounding up.

What a small church website actually needs to do

It's easy to assume a church website needs to compete with a design agency's portfolio piece — bold hero imagery, custom animations, a video background. In practice, almost nobody visiting a small church's website wants that. They want an answer to one of five questions, fast:

What time is the service? Service times, front and centre, not buried three clicks deep.
Where is it? An address and a map a visitor can tap to get directions from their phone, right there in the car park before they walk in.
Can I hear a sermon before I visit? A sermon archive or at least the most recent message, so a first-timer can get a feel for the church before showing up.
How do I get in touch? A phone number, email, or simple contact form — not a maze of social-media links with no direct way to reach a real person.
What's happening this month? Upcoming events — a baptism Sunday, a men's breakfast, a youth night — listed somewhere a visitor or existing member can actually find.

That's the whole job. A visitor deciding whether to walk through your doors on Sunday is not evaluating your web design skills — they're trying to answer those five questions in under a minute on their phone. A clean, fast, accurate site that nails that beats an elaborate custom build every time, and it's exactly what a good free church website builder should be optimised to deliver.

Why a bundled website beats a separate website tool

Here's the pattern a lot of small churches fall into without meaning to: a volunteer builds the website in one tool (a general-purpose site builder, or a freelancer's WordPress build), while the rest of church life — the member directory, the volunteer rota, Sunday check-in, presentation slides — runs in a completely different system. That means two logins, two places for someone to update service times when they change, and two vendors to deal with when something breaks.

A church website builder that's part of your wider church management platform avoids all of that by design:

One place to update service times. Change a Sunday start time in your platform's settings once, and it's correct on the website, in your app notifications, and in your printed order-of-service export — not three separate edits across three separate tools.
The sermon archive and the website are the same data. Upload a sermon recording for your congregation's own listening, and it's the same recording that shows up in the public sermon archive on the website — no re-uploading to a second system.
Events created for your team show up publicly too. An event added to your internal calendar for volunteer scheduling can appear on the public site's events page without a volunteer manually copying it across.
One vendor, one bill, one login. Instead of paying a website builder and a separate ChMS and reconciling two support relationships, it's one account, one place to ask for help, and — on the free trial — one bill that doesn't exist yet.

This is the core difference between Ekkli's website builder and a standalone site tool: it isn't trying to be the best generic website builder on the internet. It's trying to be the best website for a church that's already running its directory, rota, and presentation slides on the same platform — because for a volunteer-run church, "one less system to log into" is worth more than an extra template option.

What "free" actually includes

Ekkli's free trial is a genuine six-month trial with a countdown, and it doesn't need a card to start. On the website side specifically, "free" means:

A live church website reachable at a free Ekkli subdomain — for example, yourchurch.ekkli.net — with your service times, address, contact details, and events pages, built from the same information you already keep in your Ekkli account.
A sermon archive page driven by the sermon-audio player, which on the free trial keeps a rolling 2-hour storage window — in practice, roughly your most recent one to two messages, with older audio ageing out as new audio is added.
The rest of the Ekkli toolkit — member directory, rota and scheduling, push notifications, and presentation and worship display — all included on the same free trial, for up to 50 people, no card required.

That's a genuinely usable public website for a small church, not a placeholder page pointing visitors to a "coming soon" banner.

What requires upgrading

Two things about the free website are worth knowing before you build it, so there are no surprises later:

Custom domain. The free trial's site lives at a free Ekkli subdomain (yourchurch.ekkli.net), not your own domain (yourchurch.org). Mapping a custom domain — and removing the small "Powered by Ekkli" footer that comes with the free subdomain site — is a paid-tier feature, because domain hosting and SSL management carry an ongoing cost per site.
Long-term sermon storage. The rolling 2-hour window is enough to keep your most recent message or two available, but not to build a multi-year sermon archive or a podcast feed. Long-term gigabyte storage and podcast RSS distribution are paid-tier features, for churches that want a permanent, growing archive rather than a rolling recent-messages window.

Neither of these is hidden in fine print — they're the honest boundary of the free trial. A church of 30–40 people that mainly needs visitors to find service times, an address, and a recent sermon can run entirely on the free subdomain site indefinitely. A church that's ready to put its own domain on business cards and build a searchable archive going back years will want to upgrade for those two specific reasons — not because the free site expires or degrades.

Want the deeper build-and-design guide?

This page focuses on the free trial and the case for a bundled website. If you're planning the actual content and layout of your church's site — what pages to include, how to structure a sermon archive, how to write copy that gets first-time visitors through the door — see the full church website builder guide for the deeper walkthrough.

Start free — no card required. Ekkli's free trial includes a subdomain website, member database, rota and scheduling, push notifications, presentation and worship display, and a sermon-audio player with a rolling 2-hour storage window — for up to 50 people. Start your free Ekkli account and have your church's website live this week.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a truly free church website builder, or is it always a trial?

Genuinely free options do exist, but many "free" church website tools are time-limited trials in disguise. Ekkli's free website tier has a clear six-month runway and needs no card — it's limited by domain (a subdomain, not a custom domain) and by sermon-storage window, not by time.

Do I need a custom domain to have a real church website?

No. A free Ekkli subdomain like yourchurch.ekkli.net is a fully working, indexable website with your own service times, address, and sermons. A custom domain (yourchurch.org) is a nice upgrade for branding and removes the "Powered by Ekkli" footer, but it isn't required to have a functioning site.

Why would I want my website bundled with church management software instead of a separate builder?

Because the same data feeds both. Service times, sermon uploads, and events entered once for your internal rota and directory automatically appear on the public website, so a volunteer isn't updating the same information in two different systems.

Can I still use a free church website builder if we're not ready for a full church app yet?

Yes. The website is included as part of the same free trial as the member database and rota tools — you can start with just the website and start using the other tools whenever your team is ready, at no extra cost on the free trial.

How much sermon audio can I keep on the free church website?

The free trial keeps a rolling 2-hour storage window — roughly your most recent one to two messages — with older audio ageing out as new audio is added. A permanent, growing sermon archive with podcast RSS distribution needs a paid tier with long-term gigabyte storage.

Is 50 people enough for a church website's member directory?

For many small churches and church plants, yes — the free trial's 50-person cap covers the whole congregation's member database and rota alongside the website. Once you pass 50 people, a paid tier is needed to keep adding member database records.

Ready to see your service times and sermons live? Start free — no card required. Set up your church's free Ekkli website today.