3Sixty Creative Blog

Since I reviewed Church123 and Church Insight (see previous 2 posts) all 3 of the leading UK Church website content Management System providers have been developing and improving their products. I will write in-depth reviews later this year when I have had a chance to fully evaluate them (by doing live church website projects). In the meantime here is a quick overview:

Church Advance

The 'new kid on the block' is beginning to gain momentum as their small client base grows. First impressions when using the system is that from the designers point of view, it is by far the best. Probably very slightly more demanding for novice users than Church123 but ultimately very flexible and a pleasure to use. CA are adding new features at a good pace and these include a brilliant form-builder, a powerful and easy to use calendar and podcasting support. For novice users there is a built in guide which literally walks you through the set up. However documentation and online help remains a bit patchy but this is being improved.

Church123

C123 have recently launched a brand new version of their system. Highlight features include: great podcasting support and management built into the system with a huge storage allocation for sound and video media. Although the system looks much the same it is also faster to use and has better cross-browser and Mac user support. There is now the facility for RSS news feeds from the site and improved online support and documentation. Their excellent FREE telephone support is a real winner and neither of the other CMS providers can match this. From the designers perspective there are still some annoyances but the system is very much targeted at non-technical users.

Church Insight

This hugely-powerful CMS and church management system continues to develop and add new features. Improvements over that last year include; better support for audio and particularly video uploads, some small improvements to the way content is created and laid out, simpler more search engine-friendly URLs and many developments to their shop and e-commerce facilities. However there is no sign of them addressing the terrible table-based web page code generated by the system or the very steep learning curve for new users.