You’ve got a great congregation, and you can feel the close-knit sense of community every Sunday. While your church has an amazing website that everyone enjoys, why not bring your congregation even closer together by creating your own app?
But wait, doesn’t creating an app require coding skills and a considerable amount of tech knowledge? Actually, it doesn’t.
Today, you can build your own app without knowing how to write even one line of code or possessing any tech know-how. Building your own app is possible with the help of no-code technology.
The only difficult part of building an app is selecting the right app builder for you and your needs. There are dozens of no-code app builders on the market today. Fortunately, we’ve done all the digging for you and have shortlisted the best app builders for building your church app.
In this article, we’ll give you a three-step process you can follow to build your app, and we’ll introduce you to our three favorite app builders to create your church app.
Step 1: Getting Started: Conceptualize Your App
Before building your church’s app, you’ll need to know what functions you want your app to perform and how you want your app to appear. Get out a sheet of paper and start listing and sketching out your ideas.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Community Notices: Let your congregation know about upcoming events and sermon topics. For instance, plan out Bible study topics in advance and let your congregation know which books and verses to study before class.
This feature will keep everyone on the same page, allowing each person to contribute to useful conversations.
- Scheduling Events: Create an events calendar that each user can access. You can provide your congregation with all the info about next month’s camping trip and let everyone sign up with just the tap of a finger.
This feature allows you to seamlessly organize lists of people so you can simplify signups for events. You’ll never have to deal with messy paper sign-up forms again.
- Donations: Accept cashless donations directly with your app. You can allow congregants to schedule revolving donations to your church each month. This donation feature will make organizing your church's finances a breeze.
- In-App Messaging: Build a messaging feature into your app so your congregants can contact you personally when they just need to talk to you or if they have a probing question about a St. Thomas Aquinas passage from your reading class.
You can also create a group messaging feature so your congregation can discuss topics together or share insights.
After you finish listing out the ideas you want for your church app, sketch out a few rough pictures of how you want your app to appear. Your sketches don’t need to rival Da Vinci - all you need is to draw out the general idea of how you want your app to appear.
Refer to these sketches when you encounter mental blocks during your app-building process.
Step 2: Choose an App Builder
The app builder you choose will be crucial in constructing an app to your exact needs. We selected app builders that have an easy-to-use building interface while providing useful tools, so you can tailor your app with ease.
Any one of these three apps will be a solid choice for building your church app:
Adalo
Adalo is the most versatile of app builders and can be used to construct any kind of app. It has a super-friendly and easy-to-learn user interface, a huge template library, and robust customization. When you choose Adalo, you’ll get a drag-and-drop interface that allows for more design freedom than any app on this list.
What Makes Adalo Special
- Adalo is battle-tested. Over the last few years, thousands of Adalo users have created over a million apps. If you want to check out some of the top-notch apps, look no further than Made In Adalo, which features several apps made by lots of different people.
- Have any questions about how to use a certain tool? Consult the Adalo Forum to connect with Adalo users, or browse the Adalo App Academy for tutorials. You’ll find that Adalo is a great choice for first-time app builders.
- Adalo is also connected to PayPal, Square, and Stripe, so you can easily manage donations. You can also offer your app to your congregation for free, download on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
Pricing
Adalo’s pricing starts at $36/month.
Shoutem
Shoutem features a slick and easy-to-understand drag-and-drop interface, so you’ll be able to begin making your app with very little instruction or research. You can find the elements of your app in its huge library of church-themed templates. When you finish your app, you can publish it for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
What Makes Shoutem Special
- If you want to share your podcast or clips of your ministries, Shoutem comes equipped with special features that let you share multimedia. These features will help you spread your message to your congregation, even after Sunday.
- Before publishing your app, releasing new features, or sending push notifications, you can use the Disclose function to see how they will appear to the public. This preview function can keep your worries about how people may perceive your app at bay. If you catch any glitches, simply go back to the drawing board and fix them.
- Leverage Shoutem’s analytics platform to determine how your congregation is working with your app. You’ll be able to pinpoint parts of your app that aren’t performing well and improve them or cut them if necessary.
Pricing
Shoutem’s Android-only plan is $49/month. If you want to be able to use Apple iOS for design, you’ll have to pay $79/month.
Subsplash
Subsplash is an app builder that’s uniquely made for building church, ministry, or other religious apps. You’ll discover a mammoth amount of church-themed templates, tools, and other features in the vast library. Find a suitable church or ministry-theme template and design and use Subsplash’s responsive drag-and-drop interface to create your church app.
What Makes Subsplash Special
- Subsplash comes with built-in features that cater to churches, like a prayer request feature. Simply drag this pre-made feature onto your app and allow your congregation to submit prayer requests. Implementing this will help build your congregation and bring it closer together.
- You can also find a giving platform on Subsplash. You can take donations and send them to your church, or you can create donation drives for charities of your choice. This feature allows you to spread the gift of giving.
- Each Subsplash plan comes equipped with a Bible - in both audio and electronic book form. Giving your congregation an app that can access the Bible is quite handy - every inspired congregant is just a thumb tap away from reading Paul’s letters to the Romans!
Pricing
Subsplash has two versions of its app builder: Subsplash One and Enterprise. You’ll have to contact Subsplash directly to get pricing. They do offer a free demo, so you can get an idea of how Subsplash works before jumping in.
Step 3: Build, Test, Release, and Maintain Your App
Once you’ve chosen your app builder, it’s time to get to work! Experiment with different templates and find out what design works best for you. Don’t forget to refer back to your brainstorming notes and sketches that you drew earlier, as these can help guide you to your final product.
You may have some questions when you’re building your app. If you choose an app builder like Adalo, make sure to ask questions on the community forum. A forum user will most likely answer your question in no time. Other ways to work through issues are to contact support or look up tutorials on YouTube.
Once you have a rough version of your app, refine it by following this quick guide:
- Review and use each feature on your app.
- Make certain that navigating between app features is seamless and error-free.
- Do certain features take a long time to load? Are some features not even loading at all? You’ll need to iron out issues within your app and make sure all the features work flawlessly.
- Refer back to your built-in analytics features daily, and try to improve your results with each new iteration of your app.
- When you think everything is ready, use iOS Test Flight and Google Play’s Beta Testing program to test your app. These programs let random people test your app and provide feedback about their experience. Use their feedback as guidance to improve your app.
Once you’re certain your app works flawlessly, and the people who’ve tested your app are certain about its flawlessness, too, publish your app. Getting to this stage takes significant work, but once you have your own app, you’ll know all its ins and outs, as it will be an app built exclusively by you.
Build Your Congregation’s App with Adalo
If you’re ready to get started on building your app, Adalo is the perfect choice and is trusted by hundreds of churches with their own unique app.
Adalo has a plentiful amount of customizable templates, so you’ll be able to find the right combination for your needs. Leverage features that let you craft the perfect app for your congregation.
Adalo has a super easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that’s powered by no-code tech and requires zero coding or technical skills. After creating your app, publish your app on the Apple iOS and Google Play App stores. With Adalo, you have the design freedom to create any app you can imagine.
