Total cost of ownership

What a church actually pays.

Pricing is what ChurchPlan charges. This is what a parish pays across every provider today — and how much of it stops the moment everything runs in one place.

That is one ordinary parish. Yours will be different.

Savings calculator

Add up what your parish spends today — and what stops.

What your parish runs today

Five sliders. Each one is something you pay for now.

Where the sliders start, before you touch anything

One ordinary parish: 400 members on a standard church management platform, 6 people who need a login, 3 ministry websites run by ministries of their own, 600 event tickets sold across the year, and 140 households still receiving post. Move any slider to make it yours — or .

none5,000

A standard platform’s entry plan runs about $79 a month and includes the first 250 people; every member above that adds roughly $0.20 a month. So a parish pays the base whether it grows or not, and pays more every time it does. On ChurchPlan, members are unlimited and cost nothing.

none50

An entry plan usually covers 3 admin logins; each one after that is about $10 a month. It is why the treasurer ends up sharing a password with the secretary. On ChurchPlan, admin and volunteer logins are unlimited and cost nothing.

none15

A parish this size typically has three — youth, Sunday School, and the annual festival or bazaar. Worked at $600 a year each, the low end of the $450–$3,000 range set out below. On ChurchPlan, every ministry page is included.

none5,000

Four or five ticketed occasions a year — the banquet, the retreat, the festival, the youth trip — at a typical $1.75 added per ticket. On ChurchPlan, ticket fees are $0 on every plan.

none1,500

400 members is roughly 140 households. Offering envelopes, posted tax receipts, mailed announcements and flyers, blended at a typical $12 a household a year with postage. On ChurchPlan these reach the phone instead; count only what you actually post, since some printing will always remain.

Your parish is paying, this year
$6,198
across every provider — all of which stops on the free plan
What you pay today$6,198
The same thing on ChurchPlan$0
Stays in the parish with ChurchPlan$6,198 a year

That is $517 a month back in the parish budget — check it against what you actually pay out.

Church management platform$1,308
Extra staff & volunteer logins$360
Ministry websites$1,800
Event ticket fees$1,050
Printing & mailing$1,680
Over five years, as things stand$30,990
ChurchPlan plan to compare against

Illustrative only. Worked at typical market rates — a church management platform at about $79 a month including the first 250 people and $0.20 a member a month above that, 3 admin logins included and $10 a month for each one after, $600 a year per ministry site, $1.75 per ticket, and $12 a household a year for printing and postage — against your own slider figures; your invoices may differ, so check them. Unlimited members, ministry pages, events, registration, ticketing and tax receipt generation are included on every ChurchPlan plan, including free-forever Essentials.

Where every figure comes from

The five lines, one at a time.

Each slider stands for a real bill a parish pays to somebody. Here is what each one is, the rate it is worked at, and what the same thing costs once it all runs in one place.

01

The church management platform itself

A base plan that covers the first 250 people — about $79 a month — and then a charge for every member above it, worked at $0.20 a month. The parish pays the base whether it grows or not, and pays more every time it does.

On ChurchPlanUnlimited members
$0
02

Staff & volunteer logins

Three come with the plan; after that it is charged per seat, so widening the rota has a price and the treasurer shares a password with the secretary. Worked at $10 a month each.

On ChurchPlanUnlimited logins
$0
03

Ministry websites

A domain, hosting, a builder plan, a payment add-on and somebody’s time — for each ministry running its own page. Worked at $600 a year each.

On ChurchPlanEvery ministry page
included
04

Event ticket fees

An amount added to every ticket the parish sells — the banquet, the retreat, the bazaar. Worked at $1.75 a ticket.

On ChurchPlan$0 ticket fees
on every plan
05

Printing & mailing

Offering envelopes, posted tax receipts, mailed announcements and flyers, postage included. Worked at $12 a household a year.

On ChurchPlanIt reaches the phone
instead
Line 03, in 49 seconds

Every ministry website you switch off is money back in the parish.

It is usually the biggest line on the list, and the one nobody has ever added up. The youth conference has a site. Sunday School registration has another. Each was built by a different volunteer on a different platform, and every one of them bills the church again next year.

One microsite · what it costs in a year

A ministry website is never one bill. It is seven.

Domain registration & renewal$20 – $40
Hosting or platform plan$120 – $400
Site-builder or CMS subscription$150 – $500
Registration, ticketing or payment add-on$100 – $600
Certificate, backups, updates & security patching$50 – $250
Developer or agency time for changes$0 – $1,200
Rebuild when the volunteer who made it moves onevery 3 – 4 yrs
Per ministry site, per yearroughly $450 – $3,000

The calculator uses $600 — the low end — so the figure it gives you is a conservative one. On ChurchPlan every ministry gets its own space, events and registration inside the platform the parish already runs. How switching works →

Not in the calculator

Two costs a slider cannot measure.

Neither of these appears in the total above, because neither arrives as an invoice a parish could total up. Both are real, and both stop for the same reason.

Cost A — what comes off the gift

$0 on the invoice. Not $0 to the congregation.

Some platforms cost the church nothing and charge the donor instead — an amount added on top of the gift at checkout, going to a technology company rather than the parish. A donor who meant to give $100 finds they paid more, and the extra went somewhere they did not choose.

  • ChurchPlan never asks a donor for a tip
  • No ChurchPlan platform fee on any gift
Cost B — the hours nobody invoices

The other currency a parish spends is somebody’s evening.

Most church offices are one part-time administrator and a rota of volunteers, and the same work comes round every year:

  • January receipting week — on ChurchPlan each gift is receipted as it clears
  • The annual directory rebuild — members maintain their own profiles
  • Re-typing registrations — they land on the member’s record as they are made
  • Matching the bank to the giving — the gift posts already reconciled
Before you ask

And the two moments software normally charges you for.

Onboarding fees, migration fees, per-record import charges, minimum terms and notice periods are where the real cost of a platform usually hides. Here is the whole of ours.

Everything it costs to start — and to stop

Both ends of the door, in full.

Setup or onboarding fee$0
Migration fee$0
Charge per record imported$0
Tax receipt generation$0 — on every plan
Ticket fees on paid events$0 — on every plan
Minimum termNone
Notice period to leaveNone
Cost to export your records on the way out$0 — any time
Staff time to startAbout an afternoon

That is the entire list. Nothing accrues in the background and nothing has to be unwound. The most a church can lose by trying it is one afternoon. See how a parish switches →

The other side of the ledger

And this is the whole of what we charge.

One subscription, published in full, with no per-member fee underneath it and nothing taken off the collection. See what is in each plan →

Essentials
$0

Free forever. Unlimited members, online giving and tax receipts included.

Engagement
$1,188/yr

Everything in Essentials, plus the engagement layer.

Education
$2,388/yr

Everything in Engagement, plus curriculum and Sunday School.

Enterprise
Custom

For large parishes and dioceses, annually. Dioceses →

Start on the free plan and keep the difference.

Essentials costs nothing, has no contract behind it and takes about an afternoon to set up. Cancel the renewals once you are sure — not before.