Free Church Management Software: What "Free" Actually Means

If you've searched for free church management software and ended up with a dozen tabs open and no clearer idea which one costs nothing, that's not your fault. "Free" is doing a lot of different jobs in this category, and vendors rarely explain which one they mean until you're three screens into a signup form.

This page sorts that out. It covers the four things "free" actually means in church software, how to tell within two minutes which one you're looking at, what to check before you move a congregation onto anything — and, plainly, what Ekkli offers and where its limits are.

The 45-second answer

There are four kinds of "free" in this market: a short trial, a permanently feature-limited tier, an ad-supported or donation-funded product, and self-hosted open source. They fail for different reasons, and the one that suits you depends less on price than on who maintains your software on a Tuesday night when something breaks.

Ekkli is the first kind, and says so. You get six months of the full platform, free, with no card required. After that you choose a paid plan. There is no permanently free tier — and if you're specifically looking for software you'll never pay for, the self-hosted open-source section below is the honest place to start.

The four kinds of "free"

1. The short trial

Fourteen or thirty days, usually with a card required up front. It's enough time to click around, not enough to run a real Sunday. Most church software defaults to this because it's cheap to offer and converts quickly.

The problem for a volunteer-run church is that thirty days is roughly four Sundays, and the first two are spent finding out where things are. You reach the decision point before you've genuinely used the thing.

2. The permanently limited tier

Free forever, but gated — usually on people count, storage, or a feature everyone eventually needs. These are real, and for a very small congregation they can be enough indefinitely.

The catch is that the gate is chosen to be one you'll hit. Check what happens the day you cross it: does the software keep working with a nag banner, or does something stop?

3. Ad-supported or donation-funded

Rare in church software but it exists, usually as a volunteer side project. No bill, but the provider's branding sits on your public site, and the roadmap depends on whether the maintainer still has time next year.

4. Self-hosted open source

Genuinely free of licence cost, permanently, with no vendor able to change the terms. ChurchCRM and OpenLP are the established names — ChurchCRM for membership and giving records, OpenLP for worship projection. Both are mature and used by real congregations.

What they cost instead is technical ownership. Someone in your church has to run a server or a hosting account, apply security updates, take backups, and be the person who fixes it when it breaks. If you have that person and they're committed, this is the cheapest honest answer available and we'd rather point you at it than pretend otherwise. If you don't, the software is free but the risk isn't.

What Ekkli offers, exactly

Six months free. The full platform, not a cut-down version. No credit card to start, and no card needed until you decide.

Within those six months you get worship presentation and live display, a church website on an Ekkli subdomain, an admin-facing member database, volunteer rotas with confirm/decline and swaps, service plans, small groups with chat, a staff-managed forum, a public events calendar with RSVP and waitlists, push notifications, sermon audio hosting, and the installable congregation app. Everything a small church touches in a normal week.

Three things are capped during the trial, because they cost real money to provide:

• Media storage is 2 GB. Enough for a running sermon archive; not enough for years of uncompressed video.
• No bulk email. Push notifications cover announcements and are unlimited. Email campaigns start on paid plans.
• No SMS. Not during the trial, and not on paid plans today either — see below.

What Ekkli does not have

Worth stating plainly, because a feature list that only lists wins isn't useful when you're choosing software:

• No children's check-in. It's in development. If safeguarding check-in is a requirement now, look at KidCheck or Kidddo alongside whatever else you pick.
• No SMS sending. Push notifications are the built-in alternative.
• No multi-campus support and no public API. Both are scaffolded but unbuilt.
• No member-browsable directory. The member database is an admin tool. Members manage their own profile and see their own duties; they don't browse each other.
• No two-way calendar sync. There's a subscribable iCal feed, not a Google or Outlook push-sync.

How to judge any vendor's free offer

Four questions, in order. They take about two minutes and they work on any provider, including this one.

1. Is a card required to start? If yes, it's a trial with a conversion step built in, whatever the badge says.
2. What is the gate — time, people, storage, or a feature? Then ask how close your church already is to it.
3. What happens on the day you cross it? Read-only, nag banner, or hard stop? This is the question vendors answer least clearly and it matters most.
4. Can you get your data out? Before you put six months of song sets, rotas and member records in, confirm there's a full export that isn't a support ticket.

Ekkli's answers: no card; time, at six months; a hard stop until you choose a plan; and a full self-service export of everything, available throughout.

What happens in month seven

You pick a plan or you stop. Paid plans start at €15/month, and pricing is banded by country so churches in lower-cost economies pay less than the headline — the pricing page has the bands and the exact figures.

We'd rather say that here than let you discover it in month five. Six months is deliberately long enough to run two full seasons, train volunteers, and find out whether the software actually fits how your church works — which is a fairer test than thirty days, and a real commitment either way.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ekkli free forever?

No. It's free for six months, then you choose a paid plan. There's no permanently free tier. If you need software with no ongoing cost at all, self-hosted open source like ChurchCRM or OpenLP is the honest route, provided you have someone to maintain it.

Do I need a credit card to start?

No. No card at signup and none during the six months. You only enter payment details if you decide to continue.

What happens to our data at the end of the trial?

Nothing is deleted the moment the trial ends, and a full export of everything — people, songs, service plans, website content — is available to you throughout, without asking support for it. Getting your data out is never gated.

Is the trial a reduced version of the product?

No. It's the full platform, with three caps: 2 GB of media storage, no bulk email, and no SMS. Everything else works exactly as it does on a paid plan.

How many people does the trial cover?

Up to 50. Paid plans scale to 200, 500 and 750, with custom arrangements above that.

Is there a discount for very small or newly planted churches?

Pricing is banded by country rather than by church size, so a congregation in a lower-cost economy pays materially less than the Band A headline figure. The pricing page lists which bands apply where.