Unforeseen costs in Church Website Building

How much does it cost to build a church website?

While building any website, there are a lot of costs to consider, and a website for your church is no exception. In Luke 14:26-33, Jesus talks about counting the cost to follow him by illustrating a man who didn’t properly plan for building a tower. Similarly, you should know all of the costs before building a website.

Every website will have the initial costs for setup and the ongoing maintenance costs. Similar to most things in life, your website cost will have complexity, time, and money tradeoffs. Reducing money will decrease complexity and increase time, etc. This article will help you better understand these tradeoffs and understand the overall cost of building a website for your church.

Initial Costs

Your initial costs will greatly vary depending on the complexity of your website. Here are some considerable common costs.

Domains

Your domain is the thing people type in the search bar to go to your website. There will be an initial domain registration fee, for .com domains, this is usually around $10-$20. Additionally, if the domain you want is already registered, you might have to buy it from someone else (vast majority of people won’t have to worry about it though).

If your church can afford it, you can also get custom emails using your domain. This allows you to set up emails for your staff/volunteers using name@your-church.com. This shouldn’t be expensive (as of writing this, Google has emails for $6 per month) and goes a long way for professionalism.

Website Design

The website itself will need to be initially built. This will be the biggest line-item for the initial investment into your website. There are two main approaches to this design.

Template

There are a lot of free and premium templates available regardless of what platform you build your website on. These templates reduce the cost since you only need to tweak it for your specific church. Most templates out there still provide a beautiful website that your congregation can be proud of.

Custom

A custom website allows you to have a unique website specific to your church and your church’s needs. However, this increases complexity and, generally, costs more than templated websites.

Hiring a professional to custom build a website from scratch usually starts in the 4-digits and can even get into the 5-digits depending on your complexity. These are usually done in a platform called WordPress but doesn’t have to be.

A lot of drag and drop builders today allow for quick web development without knowing a lot of code (once you learn their platform that is). This can lower the cost of a custom website. Even hiring a professional will be less expensive using a drag and drop builder since development is faster with a lower bar-to entry.

Photography

Your church isn’t common so don’t use stock images! Recognizing faces from the website makes newcomers feel welcome. Most churches have someone with a camera that can take photos of your congregation, building, events, etc. Depending on your congregation, hiring a photographer to take photos of Sunday morning can take your website to the next level. Don’t forget quality headshots and/or family photos of your staff.

Logo Design

A logo isn’t necessary per-say but helps significantly with church recognition. A good logo allows for a church to be identified on shirts, social media, any published material, and even a website! This can be done in-house for free, freelance platforms usually cost around $50-$250, and a company can cost over a thousand.

Maintenance

After the initial set-up, websites have on-going maintenance costs. These include the monetary cost to upkeep the technology as well as the time keeping the website up-to-date. Here are some on-going maintenance costs.

Domains

There are annual fees required to maintain your website. See above for more information. Server Costs: Every website on the internet is stored on a server. Most website hosting companies require either monthly or yearly fees to keep your website available. You can self-host a website to save money but this takes a lot of time and effort to maintain the computer and isn’t recommended.

Updating

Your church is constantly changing with new events, Bible studies, etc. Each of these changes will take time to update the website. The more complicated the website is, the more time and effort it’ll take to update. When choosing a web hosting service, note how easy it’ll be to update the website in the future. You’ll want a dedicated person(s) to keep the website content updated. A neglected website isn’t useful to anyone.

Training

Life happens, people move away, get busy, or get called to be with the Lord. If something were to happen to the individual(s) maintaining the website, a new volunteer should be able to hop-in and help. However, there will be a learning curve for any new worker. When setting up your website, have a plan in place to be able to transfer knowledge so anyone can hit the ground running.

Security

The cyber security world is constantly changing and adapting to new exploits. As such, security updates will need to be applied. Some website providers will handle security for you, others providers will require you to manually update.

Long-term Thinking

We do not know tomorrow and we shouldn’t be too prideful about our plans (James 4:13-17). Most likely, your church website will be around for many years and should be designed around such. Be prudent about the long-term and don’t assume Miss Sally will always be there to maintain the website. The initial cost of a website can be steep and you don’t want to be redoing the site annually.

How Phos Site Helps

Phos Site does not want your website to be a distraction to your ministry. Phos Site aims to create excellent websites that can be maintained long term. Our template-based builder is designed for any volunteer to be able to quickly and painlessly change the website. Additionally, our prices are aimed for those who want to be prudent about their budget. Check us out at www.phossite.com.