ChMS Erfahrungen

The Industry Standard for Web Based Church Administration

Kommentare: Church Community Builder allows me to keep track of everything that I need to keep track of in one place. It allows the church to empower each ministry to easily do the administration that's required.

Vorteile:

Church Community Builder is the leader and industry standard for web-based church administration. The software is intuitive and easy to use. I have implemented the software at two churches in which I have worked and helped others get the most out of their subscription. What I like most about the software is that it is comprehensive. I've seen too many churches build separate and unconnected systems for children's check-in, group sign ups, payments for events and donor records. When these systems don't "speak" to one another, it creates more confusion and work for the church staff. The goal of church administration is to remove the burden of administration away from the ministry team. They typically excel at being with people and doing the work of the ministry. However, many struggle with administration basics such as keeping track of groups, communication, attendance data, etc. Church community builder allows our staff to be "efficient with things, so we can be effective with people". Everyone benefits from a centralized system - whether you log in daily or rarely. We always know where we can find the information we need. Saving time makes the churches dollars go farther.

Nachteile:

The mobile computing revolution took place since CCB launches their 2.0 platform. Getting the software to work and interact well with mobile devices has been a slow process, but I'm happy to see the progress that's been made with the Lead App.

Not the Best - But Inexpensive

Kommentare: Frustration! I did discuss this with my boss, and his response was related to the cost. So, my understanding is that this software is well worth the cost. (I beg to differ sometimes.)

Vorteile:

The best thing about the software at the moment is that there is an app available. The app however, does not do all that I would like for it to do. It does make the most basic items available, but a deeper use is not available. Customer service is phenomenal. They have a beta program that is very responsive and are available is many ways...even through Facebook!

Nachteile:

Customer service is phenomenal, but the problem is that I constantly need help. The software is CONSTANTLY in flux (which is good for those who like seeing how responsive the company is to their requests) but not everyone can be pleased. At some point I would like to see a solid program that is user friendly. Even if I don't like "where they put stuff" I would like to be able to get into a routine. It took me a very long time (3 years) to learn how to perform an in-depth search that would give me the results I actually needed.

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.

CCB Saved Our Church!

Kommentare: Love, love, love! seriously, though....Church Community Builder definitely has saved our church. We started as a church plant on a college campus where we were mobile on Sundays and very heavy small group based. CCB allowed us ease of communicating with people and keeping up with visitors and regular attenders alike. We use literally every feature CCB offers that we can afford and it has served us immensely well. Another major bonus is their customer support. They are always improving the software and are very open and willing to listen to ideas of "hey, could the program do this??". Any time we send any suggestion in, we get personal responses and results very quickly. we are VERY pleased with CCB.

Vorteile:

I cannot stress how much we LOVE Church Community Builder!!! It has brought the communication of our church together like nothing else ever could. Mostly, we love the ability for our church members to connect with one another through the groups in CCB and how this allows our leaders to effectively communicate throughout the week.

Nachteile:

The only con I can think of right now is that we're not super excited about the new schedules feature. Taking schedules out of groups is very effective for some areas, but there are teams that we have that need schedules locked within their group and the new way of doing it makes this process more difficult.

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.

CCB helps your church make sure nobody falls through the cracks!

Vorteile:

CCB has a variety of features that allow you to create systems that serve your church. The group features, along with process queues, calendars, forms, and individual profiles help you keep track of the details so you and your staff team can keep track of and keep up with your people. For children's ministry, we use the check-in feature every Sunday, which volunteers operate with ease! The customer service is also something worth talking about... they're AWESOME at answering your questions, helping you troubleshoot, and keeping you informed with what's coming and what they're working on!

Nachteile:

I know it's something they're working on, but the scheduling aspect of the software isn't usable for scheduling children's ministry volunteers at our church. However, they have come a long way in creating an app for group leaders and ministry leaders, which I think is an important step towards creating an app for volunteers to use to respond to schedule requests, etc. It's not there yet, but I would bet that within a few years they have this figured out and nailed down.

I LOVE CCB! You are an awesome company to work with and you have an amazing product!

Kommentare: See my comments in the "Pros" section. :)

Vorteile:

I really like the functionality of the Process Queues, Needs, Check-In and Mail Merge features. They are all used as a vital part of the staff's daily tasks to communicate, coordinate, and keep track of important details for our church family.

Nachteile:

The mobile-friendly options offered to date have very limited features/abilities; so much so that I get too frustrated and do not use the mobile-friendly version of CCB on my iphone.

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

Learning a New Product

Kommentare: Overall, I have been highly pleased with this program. We came from a program that was not very user friendly and no one used it due to how much work it took to enter in info. We are able to communicate better as a team using CCB and we are learning so many new ways to store and use our data. The customer service team has also been very helpful and quick to help with any issues we have had. I have been highly impressed by their overall service and products.

Vorteile:

I love the ease of use with this product. I use the scheduling software on a daily basis and they have made it easy to schedule my teams and keep everyone informed about upcoming needs. I also like how easy it is to add new members to the software and the ability to share important information with those on staff. The program is easy to navigate and easy to learn.

Nachteile:

There are a few things I wish it would let you do: 1) I would like to have groups be linked to the schedules section. For instance it would be great when a member leaves a group that it would also delete them from the schedule for that group and when a need is created it would be great if it could be shared with just one part of the scheduled group (for instance week 1 team or week 2 team instead of always needing to be shared with the whole group). 2) There are certain options that are only available on one page. For instance, the reports for schedules is only available on the beginning page of scheduling so once you go past that page you no longer have the option to run a schedule report. It would be nice to have that option on more than one page so you don't have to backtrack to get to it.

A great overall product that is absolutely necessary for our church.

Kommentare: In my opinion, Church Community Builder is the best church management software out there. It allows you to be able to track all of data points you need, has a great event management system, a great volunteer scheduling system, a build in business intelligence system (called Metrics), and a unique system for managing manual processes. It does everything that you'd expect and more.

Vorteile:

Church Community Builder has a bunch of great features that I could list out 1 by 1, but if I had to pick what I like most about the software, it's their commitment to updates. The release a new update every 8 weeks. Sometimes the updates are bug fixes, which you expect a software company to release, but often they are new features. It's this persistence in bettering their product, that has given me the most confidence in the company. I know they are working on the features that their customers want.

Nachteile:

The things that I like least about the software is the lack of support for custom branding and reporting. Our church has worked hard on branding and Church Community Builder (CCB) doesn't support it much. The CCB portal is plain grey in color. You can choose custom color themes, but they are preset color themes, not user-defined. Also, they have a feature that allows you to send mass emails out and at the bottom of the email there is the CCB name and logo. It can be confusing to people that don't know what CCB is. They see an email, then see it's coming from CCB. As far as the reporting goes, it's pretty much been the same for several years. You can create custom reports that allow you to search on very specific criteria, which is great. The downside is, you can't always display the results of that criteria in the viewable report. You'll be able to see which people met the criteria, but not be able to see the actual data point. Most of their reports allow you do see the criteria, but a few important ones you can't (most notably the process queues and individual notes). CCB does have some built-in system reports that allow you to view some of the data you can't view in the custom reports, but you can't edit those reports to allow you to add other data points.

It has been an excellent experience moving our church management system to CCB.

Vorteile:

I will start with the people. We have had a great experience with the CCB team - our coach who helped us with our rollout over many months, the database team who helped with the migration of data, and the customer support team have all been fantastic. The software itself is very robust with all the features we expected and needed. Our transition to CCB went very smoothly because of the easy-to-use functionality, excellent help videos and documentation, and a great team to help us when we get stuck. I also appreciate that new features are rolled out regularly - this is not a stagnant set of features. They seek feedback from churches to make the software more useful, give us beta releases to test and provide feedback, and then we see the features released in the baseline quickly afterwards. They invest in the future and we are seeing a new look/feel and mobile-friendly approach rolling out. As an example of ease-of use, our children/youth check-in was running well with another application but we wanted our full attendance in CCB. This could have been a difficult sell to our NextGen team, but the features and ease-of-use made it a very straightforward transition. As a point of reference, we are a church of approximately 4,000 attendance each weekend.

Nachteile:

A few things that are already on their list to improve: - full mobile features - already rolling these out - Improved/Full giving capabilities (app, text-to-give, web, kiosk) so that we don't need a separate vendor/app for this. - Improved reporting - CCB offers lots of canned reports and the ability to build very good custom report but the custom reports are mostly focused around people interactions.

Our eyes are opened possibilities we never knew existed!

Vorteile:

We replaced an aging church database, hosted on an internal server, with Church Community Builder. Having our data in the cloud has brought so much more reliability! In addition, what had been a simple tool for staff now became a multi-dimensional interactive platform not only for us as staff to keep track of vital information, but for our attenders to interact with us, with their groups, and to be able to manage their own information, print their own giving records, etc. Church Community Builder was a quantum leap up from what we had, and we are still discovering ways to streamline and use it more effectively and fully. The support is VERY good. If you go with Church Community Builder YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. Also, BUY THE COACHING for implementation. If you don't, you will be missing out on so much in the software. If you're like us, you will go at the project with the mindset of the software you had before, and you may miss out on a whole different way to think about things that will revolutionize your experience.

Nachteile:

The hardest thing about the software is not the software itself, but our own people. Getting our staff and others to fully utilize the software and break their old habits/inefficient ways of doing things manually has been the biggest challenge.

CCB is great for churches of any size

Kommentare: CCB works constantly to improve their products and provides a lot of free training. I have been impressed with the way customer service sends a video to show you how to walk through any steps needed to correct an issue I am having. There is a lot of components involved and they work hard to make it work well together.

Vorteile:

Customer service is quick to respond and follows up to make sure your issue has been resolved. They also take note of improvements suggested and act on them. The metrics to track attendance and giving are very easy to adapt to each church's needs. Giving statements are easy to run. The ability to use mail merge and link files is very helpful. Groups are easy to design and allow people to interact easily. New schedules are a huge improvement.

Nachteile:

The team has worked very hard over the last couple of years to improve the software. Most issues I have had in the past have been resolved. The only issue we have now is that in order to use the serving portion of the software, individuals have to do a lot of date input to get it started. Because we didn't make it a focus of our original log ins, we don't have the date needed to get this portion working well. Wish we could find a work around to get this portion working well for us.

Very satisfied with Church Community Builder

Kommentare: It helps us manage our large church organization with 3 campuses and several thousand records quite easily. People profiles, groups, giving, serving, sign up forms, communication, etc. It is web-based so we can log in remotely.

Vorteile:

CCB has just recently updated people profiles and is now getting ready to launch their new Schedules module, which I have seen in training and it is fantastic. They are working through updating all of the areas of the software. For administrative users, the software is very functional. It's easy to create groups, enter information, see a person's involvement on one screen, and communicate through group messages and mail merges and group promotion. There is a lot to this software. Their customer service is quick to respond and their user's groups are great for ideas and help as well. There is a lot of training available through articles, videos and webinars.

Nachteile:

There are some limits to reports or how to set up metrics, limits to some mass changes, not being able to match a form to more than one person, so parents fill out a form for each child when signing up for something like VBS., not being able to schedule an email message or mail merge.

Very robust and mature package with lots of functionality.

Kommentare: We primarily purchased it for the Process Queue functionality, but use it for all our daily Membership, giving, etc., needs.

Vorteile:

Many functions are integrated well, and Process Queues are well implemented. There are constant updates and feature additions. Customer support is very responsive and makes an inititial contact almost immediately.

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.

Truly built with churches and discipleship in mind!

Kommentare: Ease of use and powerful reporting

Vorteile:

Church Community Builder (CCB) is a power packed data base with the ability to customize and create systems that work best for your individual church. We love that it doesn't have the look or feel of typical database and how user friendly it is. CCB understands the heart of church discipleship is relationships and therefore their product helps to facilitate relationship while maintaining high level data power. We searched through many Church Management Solutions before landing on CCB and have been very pleased over the last 2 + years. I appreciate that they are always looking for ways to improve and value our input to build the best system.

Nachteile:

There are a couple of reporting features that I wish were a little more robust. As the data guru I still find some frustration with how certain reports are built or why I can't include certain fields or columns when I am building a custom report.

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.

We moved from Power Church which not web based so there is no comparison. Great application!

Kommentare: An updated congregational database. An easy way to communicate with our congregation, a framework for small group ministry to thrive, integration with our financial package.

Vorteile:

The database, functionality is very good, customer service is the best their training videos and help/support material is very good. Our implementation coach was amazing. He prepared us well for our implementation and issues we may have, options we might want to consider. It was and continues to be a great relationship with CCB. I highly recommend them and their products.

Nachteile:

Some of the functionality is based on US business processes. We are a Canadian Church. However CCB is always receptive to feedback and has a list of enhancements where we can put our requests on. Some of our church users don't find the software inuitive to use. They are Apple users. I am from a PC world and I find CCB incredible. The training videos are helpful

Robust Church Management Software!

Kommentare: Complete management of every aspect of every data point across our entire church congregation. From small groups to giving. CCB handles it all.

Vorteile:

Church Community Builder is packed with powerful features and tons of extras that help keep everyone involved within the church in the loop with information right at their fingertips. Their 'Lead' app is awesome, extremely user friendly and packed with valuable features. Their customer service is top notch. Anytime we have ever had a question or concern about something, they make it their mission to resolve it as fast as possible. We love CCB and will continue to partner with them to grow our church for as long as possible! Definitely recommend.

Nachteile:

It can be a bit pricey, but you know what they say? You get what you pay for and that definitely rings true here. For what you pay, you get SO MUCH.

Ok sometimes, but needs work

Kommentare: I use this software as a volunteer in church. It's cute, but there are some headaches. It's VERY limited in its ability to generate reports. For example, we have a team of elders who pray over prayer requests and praise reports weekly. My team collects the requests and compiles them in a MS Word document. We would LOVE to be able to add the prayers to each person's record and then run a report for new prayers added that week, but its impossible because you can't run a report with notes in them. Also, the scheduling of volunteers is a nightmare! It's hard to schedule my team for shifts and I have a small team of only 13 people.

Vorteile:

It is church focused and let's you be able to collate information and put people in process queues for follow up.

Nachteile:

Just overall, this is a pretty basic CRM. As your church grows you may well outgrow this CRM.

Excellent Church Management CRM. Consistent easy to use experience with a lot of functionality.

Kommentare: Effective Church Management tool that enables the organization to care for the individuals who walk through our doors.

Vorteile:

It's a easy to use all in one solution to manage church. Platforms for communicating with congregation, managing events, groups and facilities. Also an excellent tool for follow up with people in the organization. Excellent customer service support with quick response time. Support team is friendly and professional. Continues to improve product to take it to the next level. Actively improving the mobile experience.

Nachteile:

Some of the feature are a "light" version which requires us to continue to use 3rd party solutions for specific applications such as email campaigns and some volunteer scheduling. Mail merge feature is lacking due to the inability to easily customize and embed video. No metrics provided.