What is Church Management Software?

Church management software is a type of software specifically designed to help churches and religious organizations manage their day-to-day operations. This kind of software addresses the unique needs of these organizations, including membership management, communication, event scheduling, volunteer management, financial accounting, and donation tracking. 

Why Does Your Church Need Software?

Church management software can help with key tasks like:

• Membership Management: Keeping track of members' contact information, membership status, and other personal details.
• Communication Tools: Facilitating communication within the church community through emails, newsletters, and sometimes text messaging.
• Event Planning and Scheduling: Assisting in organizing church events, scheduling facilities, and managing event registrations.
• Donation Management: Tracking and managing tithes, offerings, and other donations. This often includes tools for online giving and financial reporting.
• Volunteer Coordination: Managing and scheduling volunteers for various church activities and events.
• Financial Accounting: Handling church finances, budgeting, and financial reporting.
• Reporting and Analytics: Providing reports on membership, attendance, giving patterns, and other key metrics.

How Does a Church Management System Work?

A Church Management System (CMS) is a specialized software designed to support the unique needs and management functions of churches. This system streamlines various aspects of church operations, including member management, financial tracking, event scheduling, and communication. 

At its core, a CMS helps maintain a comprehensive database of member information, which is crucial for effective outreach and community building. It often includes tools for recording donations and managing tithes, offering insights into the financial health of the congregation. Event management features enable efficient planning and execution of church events, from regular services to special occasions. 

Additionally, many CMS platforms incorporate communication tools, such as email and social media integration, to facilitate better engagement with the congregation. This holistic approach enables church leaders to effectively manage administrative tasks, build community involvement, and focus more on their pastoral responsibilities.

What is Breeze?

Breeze ChMS offers a comprehensive church management solution encompassing various features such as check-in systems and child safety management, volunteer scheduling capabilities, event organization tools, and a detailed contact database with customizable fields, including options for adding background check information. This platform also provides a mass communication system for both email and text messaging, efficient group management for members and faith teams, including church directories, and tools for tracking attendance. 

Additionally, it includes robust reporting functionalities, online donation options, and more, all designed to streamline church administration and enhance community engagement.

Pros and Cons of Breeze

​​Pros

Having implemented Breeze in our operations, we've discovered its remarkable ease of use and affordability. Breeze integrates online and text giving into their church management solution at no additional cost. Additionally, the platform allows for direct email and text message communication with contacts in our church database. A standout feature is Breeze's exceptional customer support team, who offer complimentary data migration services.

Cons

While Breeze excels in tracking contributions, it lacks a dedicated accounting system within its suite of features.

Who Should Use Breeze?

Breeze can be used by church administrators and leaders to make managing and running a church smooth and effective!

What is ChMeetings?

ChMeetings is a church management software designed to assist churches in managing, organizing, and engaging their congregation. It typically offers various features such as membership management, event planning, communication tools, financial tracking, and more. These systems help religious organizations streamline their administrative tasks, improve communication with members, and manage events and donations efficiently.

Pros and Cons of ChMeetings

Pros

Users say that ChMeetings is easy to use and has great support. It offers a fairly comprehensive suite of church management tools for managing a church.

Cons

Some users report that there’s a lack of integration within ChMeetings.

Who Should Use ChMeetings?

ChMeetings can be used by church staff, admin, and pastors. 

ChMeetings vs Breeze: Key Features Comparison

The main difference between ChMeetings and Breeze is that Breeze has one flat fee and ChMeetings has scaled pricing. ChMeetings also doesn’t offer communication tools itself; rather, it integrates with other platforms (which have additional costs).

Attendance Tracking

Both Breeze and ChMeetings offer attendance tracking. 

Church Accounting

Niether Breeze nor ChMeetings offer comprehensive church accounting tools, but they do provide online giving options and reporting. 

Communication Tools

Breeze allows you to build and send email campaigns and text message campaigns–you get 250 text messages free every month, you can schedule campaigns in advance, and you can even create customized email with a drag-and-drop email editor. 

ChMeetings does not provide communication tools within the platform, but instead offers integrations with external communication tools (such as with Mailchimp).

Donations Management

Breeze and ChMeetings both provide donations management. Breeze’s online giving tool offers online, mobile, and text giving; helps you track generosity; and makes it simple to send year-end giving statements. With Breeze, you can also collect payment for events, swag, and more, and give your donors the option for recurring giving! 

ChMeetings provides similar tools, allowing you to give your donors the option to give online or on a mobile phone. Plus, you can track the generosity of your donors with reporting tools. 

Budgeting and Forecasting

While neither of these tools offer budgeting/forecasting tools, both platforms offer the ability to track generosity, which can ultimately provide insight into budgeting for the future. 

Bank Reconciliation

With Breeze, you can view your bank deposits very easily, along with details like gross amounts, transaction fees, and more. ChMeetings does not publish any information specific to bank reconciliation.

Payroll Management

Breeze and ChMeetings do not offer payroll management tools.

Event Management

Breeze Events offers the capability to:

• Schedule various events effortlessly.
• Record attendance for each event.
• Instantly print name tags on-site.
• Produce detailed reports to analyze attendees' age groups, geographical origins, and other key metrics.
• Get notified if families cease attending consecutively over several weeks.

ChMeetings offers the ability to:

• Create, manage and share events
• Schedule volunteers
• Check people in and track attendance

Membership Management

Breeze People is a database management tool that allows you to store contact information, create custom fields, search quickly and easily for contacts, and sync membership data to communications. This makes it easy to connect with members and visitors, and stay organized!

ChMeetings also offers a database management system that allows you to manage people and create member directories. 

Volunteer Management

Breeze allows users to:

• Efficiently assign volunteers to designated events.
• Automate RSVP and reminder notifications for volunteers via email and/or text message.
• Implement additional features to streamline and optimize volunteer management workflows.

ChMeetings gives the ability to organize event volunteers with reminders, an RSVP tool and the option to download a volunteers sheet.

Pledge Management

Using Breeze, you can develop campaigns that enable donors to commit to pledges. These pledges facilitate tracking of who promised what contributions, allowing for a comparison between pledged and actual donations. Additionally, it provides a feature to dispatch summaries to donors, highlighting the total amount they contributed versus what they pledged.

ChMeetings also offers a Pledge tool that lets you create Pledge Campaigns, add Member Pledges and track the progress of paid amounts compared to pledged amounts. 

Worship Planning

Breeze Service Planning streamlines the process of crafting a worship service plan, allowing you to assign volunteers, stay organized with music, and create a scheduled flow that will ensure an awesome experience for your members!

ChMeetings does have event management tools, but it doesn’t have a tool specifically designed for worship service planning. 

Technical Details and Deployment

Breeze will transfer all of your data to their platform for free. ChMeetings performs this same service for free. 

Technical Support

Both Breeze and ChMeetings offer great support that can help you to use their tools successfully! That means that even users of limited technical ability can use the tools.

ChMeetings vs Breeze: Pricing Comparison

The main difference between Breeze and ChMeetings are the pricing. Breeze charges $72 per month for all their tools, no matter how large your church is. ChMeetings has a different pricing structure that depends on what you want to use, and how big your church is. In other words, as your church grows, so does the pricing. 

How to Choose the Best Software for Churches

To choose the best software for your church, you need to consider the unique needs of your church, church size, and who will be using the tool. 

Breeze ChMS requires less training than most church software, provides more extensive support than most tools, and is easier to implement. Plus, it’s more widely adopted than many platforms, indicating its usability and excellence!

Final Verdict: Which One is Right For You?

The right tool is one that meets your needs, is easy to use, and most of all, fits your budget!

It’s possible that Breeze is more user friendly, offers better capabilities, and has a more intuitive interface than ChMeetings. But it’s certain that Breeze has a broader feature set than ChMeetings and is more scalable than ChMeetings. It has better communications tools and is priced more competitively, with one flat fee for absolutely everything. That makes it more suitable for larger congregations.

Plus, Breeze receives better reviews than ChMeetings, with its higher star rating on Capterra.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Church Management Software cost?

Church management software can cost anywhere from $50 a month to $300! It all depends on what kind you use, the capabilities you’re looking for, and how many users you have. 

The best bet is to use a tool that charges one flat fee, to avoid confusion and price increase!

What are the Latest ChMS Trends?

The latest ChMS trends include increasing personalization and customization abilities (such as building custom emails and giving forms), greater database capabilities, and mobile/text giving!

Who Needs Church Management Software?

Every church needs church management software. It’s essential to helping your church stay organized and efficient, so that you can stay focused on what’s really important: Jesus!