ChMS Erfahrungen

Comprehensive and Contemporary

Kommentare: Very good experience. We have been blessed by their software. It helps us in guest follow up. We have benefited from the forms and website integration as well as the LEAD app. Customer service has always been good at follow up. The technical training videos and help sheets on their help site have been very helpful.

Vorteile:

Here is a list of the pros: 1. The software is robust. It is comprehensive in its data search and storage capabilities. 2. The software is evolving. CCB is constantly updating and improving upon the software and app. 3. There is an app that allows us to search our congregant information and follow up on processes. 4. The software was transformational to our assimilation guest ministry process. Not only did they send me a +1 gift for checking out the software, but that book, Fusion by Nelson Searcy changed our church's guest ministry process. It fits perfectly with what CCB offers in terms of process queues and data functionality. 5. We can do forms right in the software that we can upload to our website. This allows guests, members, regular attenders to complete signups, ministry applications, and registrations without ever having to write on a piece of paper. Follow up is very simple. 6. Customer service is excellent. There are a number of technical sheets and training videos on their help site. Very good.

Nachteile:

Here are some of the cons: 1. The software is so robust you almost need a dedicated position to create calendars, forms, searches, processes, keep the database clean (people who leave, etc...), and train people on how to use it. 2. The software does not do schedules like Planning Center does (not as user friendly and it doesn't connect with Songselect). Honestly, it seems like Planning Center and CCB are competing. While Planning Center does schedules better, CCB does everything else better (my opinion). Our church uses both. We would switch from Planning Center if CCB did schedules better. 3. The checkin portion of CCB, while easy to use, especially with the app, is not as easy to setup. For example, we use both ipads and Citizen Bluetooth printers as well as PCs and Zebra USB printers. They each have different challenges and can be technical to set up. 4. I wish there was a way to integrate our church app with CCB. We would like to do geofence checkin and mobile bar code checkin.

My Review

Vorteile:

donor management, online giving, and forms.

Nachteile:

lack of options to customize options on profile and various parts of the chms.

A Substantial CMS if you can afford it.

Kommentare: ChMS can go toe-to-toe with the top Church Management Softwares out there, but at the time of our utilization, we were not using the software to its full extent, and that made it hard to justify given the price of the overall tool.

Vorteile:

ChMS is a very substantial church management tool, even when we were using it several years ago before PushPay acquired it

Nachteile:

At the time, cost was the biggest issue we had, as we were not utilizing a lot of the bells and whistles that we were paying for.

Probably a great ChMS 10 years ago

Vorteile:

CCB is a beefy, feature-rich software that allows you to do almost everything that you might want to, from an administrative perspective, for your church.

Nachteile:

The main problem with this software is that while many updates are released, it feels like a software that has been piled up for a long time rather than thoughtfully integrated. As a result even the simplest tasks are often convoluted, taking triple the number of mouse clicks than they should. Just one example: editing profiles is cumbersome, finding information about a person requires multiple clicks through their profile information, and adding people requires a process that is more than simply filling out a simple page (you have to create a person, then find that person again from the list, then click into their profile, click to edit their password, and click "send password reset email" in order for them to receive a welcome email). Their sales page looks fantastic, and the software at least LOOKS good when you log in, but whenever you try to do something basic, while it's definitely possible, the whole time you're trying to do something you're left thinking "should it be this complicated"? Probably our biggest disappointment is that congregational engagement, which was a huge sales point, is virtually nonexistent. Because people cannot find other people and communicate easily (because it is cumbersome) with other people, they never log in to use the software. Even our leaders with full permissions would rather copy/paste email addresses into their own email software and communicate via email (or text message) than use this as a communication tool.

Backbone of our Data Management and Communication

Kommentare: Before we went with CCB, we had another Church Management Software System that was extremely popular. One day our man computer died that had the ChMS on it and we were unable to professionally retrieve the data that we had put in it for 20 years. Plus the backup for that ChMS had mistakenly been backing up the wrong file off site. So we lost everything. We went with Church Community Builder because it was cloud based and could be used on any system or smart phone connected to the internet and no chance of loss of data. We got SO MUCH MORE than we had planned. CCB is so robust and they are working daily making it even more robust and user friendly. Their customer support is second to none. It is very personal and they work until you are completely satisfied and understand what is happening. CCB has not become interwoven in every area of our church and being used by all the different ministries for scheduling volunteers, by al the small groups for communication and planning, for our families with children to check in both in the nursery and children's ministry, and by the church staff to not only record all the financial and member data, but to use it to make unlimited reports and planning ideas. It has become our communication hub of the church. Our members love being able to log on and control their own data, download financial information, look at the calendar, connect with other members and groups, and be informed about life at the church. This has been a win!

Vorteile:

CCB ties everything we are trying to track, retain, and utilize into one very cohesive product. While there are multiple sections where data points can be collected, you only have to put them in once and they are available throughout the program. Although recording the data is easy, the CCB program helps tremendously to sort and use the data for an unlimited amount of projects and the presentation of the relevant data is very useful. Actually, the CCB Program inspires you with many ways you can use your data that you didn't even think was possible. Plus, it helps us to communicate with all of our attenders in multiple and meaningful ways.

Nachteile:

In the past, the mobile side of the software was lacking in usability. However, CCB has really poured a lot of resources in the mobile side over the past 2 years and now it is very usable and graphic.

Good all-in-one solution ChMS for our church

Kommentare: Using ChMS we are able to manage volunteers, and members, communicate with groups of people, check-in kids, handle giving, and more from a single portal. Overall while we have had issues, it has been the best fit for our church.

Vorteile:

There are some powerful tools built in, and an all-in-one solution means fewer additional vendors to work with. Once trained most staff using the software can navigate the basics and even some advanced features without issue.

Nachteile:

Bugs, they've been many for us in the past two years. I believe that is in part due to the speed at which they are providing new features, but breaking things that have been reliable for years and then taking months to resolve many of the bugs has been painful.

Love CCB

Vorteile:

Church Community Builder is an amazing product for any Church that wants to plan for the future and help support their congregation in the best way possible. It has functions for everything a church would want to do. They are also open to suggestions and always making improvements.

Nachteile:

Their form builder and service function aren't quite as good as other programs like Planning Centre and Wufoo. But they have made huge improvements over the past years and are getting close!

Great Way To Build Community

Vorteile:

What I love about CCB is the ease of locating contacts in the database and being able to see my volunteer duties easily.

Nachteile:

The software does frequent updates and makes changes often. While this is helpful in working out glitches, it’s difficult to learn navigating through the website or teaching others to do the same.

The Heartbeat of our Church

Kommentare: We have been using ChMS for 15 years. There is no other platform available that would necessitate us moving to something else. It is truly the heartbeat of how our staff functions.

Vorteile:

All in one system that handles our most critical needs. From donor management to child checkin, we use ChMS every day.

Nachteile:

Currently there is a weakness in managing paid events. We have to supplement ChMS with a second event management platform for paid registrations (ChMS works amazing for free stuff).

It works well

Kommentare: Helpful

Vorteile:

It is well organized and easily accessible.

Nachteile:

I would have like more ways in which to print lists of names.The program does not recognize strange characters like é

Love using

Kommentare: Great

Vorteile:

Very user friendly and we are able to use various facets of the product.

Nachteile:

The only thing I can think of is if we can use it on an app but pay the same price.

Overall, CCB is a wonderful program! Great for small & big churches!

Kommentare: Easily being connected to other leaders, especially for a church run on volunteers. We are in the church at different parts during the week and don't have the benefit of having our offices filled all week with each other! So it helps with easy communication and connection. Also, for our volunteer church members & their calendars for serving! Having a place for all their information, birthday's, anniversaries, etc is so helpful!

Vorteile:

I love how everything is connected, and once you get knowledgeable about it, it is easy to use! I love how the calendar is connected to our website, how you can have groups of different ministries and send emails to them or texts and it's professional and not from a personal phone. I love overall how there isn't so much for church members to learn how to use it, so it has basic communication and information where they can go on and be connected and informed! Also, their customer service is beyond amazing! They have helped in any and every way, from email responses (even if I'm not understanding something simple) to calling on the phone to walk me through something... They truly have beyond a five star staff!!

Nachteile:

I think there are some things for them to work on, but it's all natural and a part of them moving forward. I, as a user, can detect some things when I try to do something I can't, but being a developer I understand they can't have it all perfect for us! Nothing too big of a con, for someone not to get CCB, but what is great about them is that you can email them ideas or situations you are running into and they will add it to their list of ideas and the team goes over them! I think that's really awesome! A few ideas we've had as a team, mostly for convenience sake, to move forward that could be helpful is: -When it comes to "Room Requests" having an area for a clean up list, or that if a ministry or person uses a room or resource the steps needed to put things back to the way they should be. -Another thing being when someone wants to sign up for CCB that there can be a button on the email that you could click "directly add into CCB" or "deny" type thing, so you don't have to re-type/copy everything. OR Maybe if you are an admin, have a notification that someone has signed up, so when you are logged in, you could click "approve" or "deny" just like you do when people want to put something on the calendar, or use a resource, etc. -Scheduling, that there could be an option to keep re-peat the schedules, because some ministries use the same people! And you could even remove people from it, and replace them, but leave the rest the same.

Church Directory, Follow up Workflow, and more

Kommentare: Church Community Builder was heavily used at my last church and it served three primary purposes for us and it did those things well. 1. Family Directory - Immediate and detailed information on families within the church as well as a confidential notes box to keep updates on contacts and outreaches and involvement within the church to promote spiritual health and church involvement. Mobile access to this directory also made on-the-go contacts nice and easy. 2. Follow-up Workflow Organizer - As a team, we came up with a follow-up system. For example: Week 1 - Phone Call, Week 2 - Postcard, Week 3 - Visit, Week 4 - Enroll in all newsletters applicable. One administrator was then put in charge of building this workflow, who is assigned to each section, and what they've got to do. Once the workflow was made active, as new families are added into the system, they immediately get dropped into the follow-up queue for week 1, the leader in charge of phone calls gets their info as an alert, and is able to mark "COMPLETE" after the phone call is made and info is updated. The workflow continues its cycle through each assigned party until the new family has gone through the full follow-up spectrum. 3. Event Coordination - When an event is decided upon, all details can be built into the CCB Calendar. The administrator​ can title the event, mark its date, time, space requirements, necessary supplies, workers needed, and more. Leaders then took care of their sections and that's it.

Vorteile:

The ability to build a follow-up​ workflow to go to specific people in the process has been monumental for helping us stay in touch with new visitors. Fully customizable reports and attendance sheets Confidential notes and information on families for admin eyes only Notifications and alerts queue for each member in a specific workflow to contact and report on Ability to create services, programs, special events, and more as well as break down all needs from material to personnel and have lists sent to coordinators, volunteers, or the entire church for the purposes of donation (expanded on below) Administrators are not the only ones with full access to directory. Any family can access, but won't necessarily have the permissions of an admin

Nachteile:

Not the best option for small churches Can be a learning curve with it, but plenty of resources available to get the most out of it A lot of maintenance necessary to keep all information up to date and accurate

Church Community Builder Review

Kommentare: With Church Community Builder, we are able to record any information we need for our church members, for our groups, for our events, and more. I love how you can look on someone's profile in CCB and see when they started coming, what groups/classes they are involved in, if they are volunteering anywhere, you can also see if they have been baptized and more! This tool is a great way to help people take their next steps in faith. I also love how you can automate process queues so that you can easily have a process set up for something (let's say volunteering) and you can see them through the entire process from initial interesting volunteering, all the way to helping them get connected with a team. This program allows us to not let people slip through the cracks. I could go on and on about specific elements that I like, but really the program is just a great way to organize and help people stay connected. Highly recommend!

Vorteile:

As a communications specialist for my church of 2,000 people, Church Community Builder is a huge asset to have! This software allows you to track, record, and organize any and all of your church information in one place. From creating individual profiles of those who come to our church, to creating groups, calendars, forms, and more, this database seems limitless in terms to what you can use it for. Without this software, I don't know where we would be.

Nachteile:

This program is so detailed, there are layers and layers of options on how to organize information, so sometimes it can get a little glitchy and can be overwhelming at some points. However, this program is something we use daily, and we know now how to navigate it to get the best results.

CCB is an excellent software for any church!

Kommentare: My overall experience is excellent. I really do love CCB.

Vorteile:

I really like Church Community Builder because it makes it easy to manage everything in one place. CCB has tons of features, so whatever you are looking for, there is a great chance it does what you are needing. In addition, anytime you need help figuring ANYTHING out, they have AMAZING customer support. I have never, ever felt frustrated when reaching out for help. Any time I ask for help, I get a prompt response from a live person living in Colorado Springs who fully understands the product and is excited to help me understand the product too. Further, if there is something more that you wish CCB did, or if there happens to be an area you see could be improved, they are always open to feedback and new "feature requests" because they want CCB to work for the customer and serve our needs. Just when you think CCB can't get better....it always does! I love CCB.

Nachteile:

The thing I like the least is that sometimes because CCB does do so much, there can be a long learning curve in understanding HOW to do everything. There are some areas of the software I still have never used because I've never taken the time to learn how to use them. However, anytime that I wish to learn, they make it easy by offering video tutorials, or you can submit a support ticket with questions, or they even offer live video training videos you take as a group or at times you can schedule live 1-on-1 video chats where they will walk you through the software. I have taken advantage of all of these services numerous times and have never felt let down.

CCB Review

Kommentare: Overall, we have had a good experience with CCB. It does feel like we are constantly having to create workarounds​ to make the software fit our needs. I think maybe our set up of church was not what was in mind when the software was created. The benefits it provides though, outway the frustrations we may experience. Anytime we've had to be in contact with their customer support team they have been very helpful and great to talk with.

Vorteile:

What I like most about CCB is the fact that it helps us manage our database and organize our church calendar. We use it primarily for the ​organization though and not as a platform for church members to connect with each other which I think is one main way they want the software to be used.

Nachteile:

What I like least about CCB is that you can not customize calendar views. It would be nice to be able to create calendars for different broad categories so we wouldn't have to have all attendance related events on our facilities calendar. Not being able to create custom calendar views makes for a very cluttered calendar. Especially since everything that we want to track for metrics has to be an event on the calendar. Another feature that you are not able to customize is the system reports. It would be nice to be able to combine some of these as multiple reports often have data we are looking for, but there is no easy way to combine that data within CCB.

A good option to consider

Kommentare: Many church users don't have the technical or data chops needed to think through how best to setup groups of users, permissions and access levels, and to create reports. Finding someone with that skillset in your body will be critical to getting the most from this platform. It seems like it's structured for large churches - mid-sized churches on the 300-500 range will find themselves up against missing features or budget constraints. It's a good product, but consider a few other leading options to find what meets your need and budget.

Vorteile:

Comprehensive platform with lots of features. They are beginning to do more with mobile and text integration. The end user experience is fairly intuitive. I use the people directory function on my phone several times a week which is even more useful if you encourage your body to upload pictures.

Nachteile:

CCB is somewhat difficult to administer and has a fairly steep learning curve to realize the full benefits. It seems like a lot of functions are ala carte and we are always upgrading to get this feature or that feature. For instance, we can't use mobile devices (tablets) with children's check-in unless we get a more expensive package. We are constrained to using computers or more expensive MS surface products.

CCB is easy to use, less expensive, and very intuitive!

Kommentare: I give 2 thumbs up for CCB overall. The cost is significantly less than many of the other ChMS's out there, and I feel our church gets more "bang for the buck" by using it! We regularly get comments from our attenders that show us how effective CCB is ("Wow! How did you know this was my 2nd visit?" "Thanks for the note that you were praying for me." "Really? I've been attending since 2006, but haven't attended membership, yet? How do I sign up?") I haven't mentioned one of the best features: the ability for members of groups to communicate to each other (without either having the other's email address)! Our group members feel a sense of belonging, right from the start!

Vorteile:

I'm assuming 5 stars is best in your survey. The customer support rates many more stars than I'm able to give. The team at CCB was so supportive and helpful during the transition from our "old" ChMS. CCB's Process Queues make tracking attenders so easy: we can "watch" them as they move from first-time visitors to members. The Queues also make it easy to see which volunteers have been processed (background checks, coaching/training, etc have been done or NEED to be done). Fewer people slip through the cracks now! CCB has been taking notes when we mention some of the capabilities we had in our "old" ChMS, but don't have in CCB (for example, the ability to track attendance, based on giving). They listen to our concerns/issues, then help us find a workable solution...all the while, they're talking to programmers to make programming changes that will impact CCB's growth.

Nachteile:

We have found some issues when trying to email "Parents Of", and are aware that changes to improve this feature are expected any day (first-quarter 2011). We are a large church (5,500-plus in an average weekend), and initially found CCB to be more geared toward smaller churches. In the 5 months we've been with them, we've seen them changing to be more accommodating to the large churches...but there's still room for growth in this area. Implementation packages are available, but if not used, the church may feel like a fish out of water. I highly recommend implementation be used for all churches that want to use as many CCB features as possible.

Managing church membership and activities in one place

Kommentare: It is great for managing the involvement of members, the groups their involved in, and reviewing giving, and incoming traffic to the church.

Vorteile:

I love how it is one stop shopping for managing the guests, members, and friends who are apart of our communities within the church.

Nachteile:

That we cannot remotely check in the children and print arm bracelets in order to keep this process moving along faster than manual check in. We are trying to move into a macro, automated driven world and there are still manual steps in CCB that we have to take.

Would Recommend to Churches Looking for Engagement

Kommentare: Our church has been a user for about 3 years now, and we like this product for the most part. We find that it works well with most of the systems that we had set up long before purchasing, and we would definitely choose CCB again if given the option. I wouldn't recommend this to churches just looking to save contact information, but I would highly recommend it to churches looking to further engage the members of their churches through the various tools that it offers. One nice feature of CCB is all of the preferred partners with whom they work. They allow users to use other programs and tools for the church that integrate with CCB. We have partnered with several of them (like Aware3 and Protectmyministry) in order to increase our administrative efficiency for things like background checks and apps.

Vorteile:

integrations with other online tools, customer service has been extremely helpful, updates seem to address areas of need, number of tools available

Nachteile:

cost is high compared to some offerings, but value is high as well. Oftentimes we have to change our internal systems because of the limitations of the tools available (I would imagine this is common for every system that isn't custom though).

CCB Review

Kommentare: It has been amazing for our organization with the ability for staff, leadership and church members to be able to communicate to each other and engage in ministry.

Vorteile:

So much to like about this software. The maintains of data on individuals that attend our church. The process to move people through various systems we have. Ability to do mass emails to our church members. Be able to create schedules and remind individuals of set serving times. The ability to work from any devices and their lead app. The biggest is that they hear the need of their consumers and work towards ongoing improvements. They are also very helpful with concerns or questions.

Nachteile:

Something the untimely announcement of minor changes that find out about and have to process it through ourselves. Also so many changes in small amounts of time which as a small church with not a full-time person managing the software it is hard at times to keep up.

CCB helps us track and follow up with our people in a highly effective way.

Kommentare: Enhanced ability to connect with members who meet various criteria.

Vorteile:

CCB makes it possible to provide pastoral care at a level not usually possible for a medium sized church. Now, we do far better at connecting with first time guests, fading members, sick members, and people suffering from grief.

Nachteile:

I would appreciate having CCB automatically create a leader group by gathering the names of the leaders of similar subgroups. For example, If I create lifegroups and identify the leaders, I would like for CCB to automatically generate a group called lifegroup leaders.

Good for the basics, hard to get people to use

Vorteile:

I love being able to keep track of volunteers and church member information on CCB. It's easy to customize too to keep track of whatever is important to us, like workshop attendance and other significant events. I love that they updated the new volunteer schedules feature to make saved templates for recurring schedules. It makes it super easy to produce a schedule and keep using saved versions.

Nachteile:

CCB is really hard to get our members to use. There is too much information on the page and can be overwhelming to members who just want to check their finances and serving schedules. The app is getting better, but it is way too late in the game coming out and now our church is just used to using the software behind the scenes, and our members don't know what it is. If there had been an app developed earlier it would have been easier to implement at the same time.

We love CCB!

Kommentare: We are a church that has a K-12 school, creative arts studio, cafe, and our structure is small groups. We are preparing to open another campus. CCB is the tool that keeps us in sync, allows the focus to be on people and relationships, but keeps the data and processes we need to ensure things don't get missed.
Staff use CCB for givings, calendars, communications, scheduling, attendance, resource/room booking, forms for registrations, processes, database and reporting, etc.
Volunteer leaders also use it for group communication, attendance, consolidation process, etc.
And many in the congregation use it for community communications, subscription to personal calendars, registrations for events, etc.
We have been using it since 2009.
We love the many options and flexibility that allows us to "do church" how we feel called to. Because it seems like an extension of what we do and they see value of what it will do for them, most use it.
CCB staff are really very supportive. When I have a question or think there may be a glitch/bug (often it is me!) submitting a help request is always a positive experience. You quickly get back great suggestions or assurance it is being passed on to a higher level. I also learn almost daily something from the great community of other churches using this tool from the forum where they share best practices, tips/tricks.
CCB is responsive to feature suggestions/requests. There is continual improvements and new releases are an exciting time for us.
So, with all this love, why only 4 stars?
First, we are a Canadian church so have not found a perfect solution yet to fully integrate our online giving and form payments. We also have to do a little extra work to produce CRA approved charitable giving receipts. The financial aspect is complex and I know there is continued work by CCB to find partners that may make this more possible.
The second is that a small portion of our volunteer schedules (worship team and media team) have now moved to a different tool that allowed them to more easily view who was scheduled on their mobile devices and combined with making our service plans more accessible. I was sad when that transition took place but I also understand not one tool can be the best at every area ... but CCB has taken the prize for us in everything else -- and I am confident will continue to build and improve even further what is an amazing tool.

It does just about everything

Kommentare: Great company and support. I can't say enough good things about all the work they put into making sure CCB is a comprehensive CMS.

Vorteile:

There are no other products out there that compare with the features CCB provides. They have thought of every possible thing a church needs in order to properly manage membership/events/finances/contacts/communication... etc. We used it for years at our church.

Nachteile:

Okay, here's the problem. With so many features, there's a pretty large learning curve. You need a lot of time and training of volunteers in order to roll out CCB. Then it takes commitment from your staff and volunteers to make sure they are using it appropriately.