- Starting price
- Free; Pro $9/month
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Web · iPhone · Apple silicon Mac
- Developer
- Apollo Eleven Inc. / ShoutOut
- Launched
- 2026
- Updated
- Aug 9, 2026
The verdict
AlignedAI combines a doctrine profile, church-owned source library and general ministry workspace at unusually accessible pricing. Its Church Brain, sermon drafting, meeting capture, automation and connected-app tools can reduce repetitive work when every output remains a draft. The central caution is not whether it sounds Christian; it is whether the claim, quotation and application are true. The App Store’s “Data Not Collected” label is also hard to reconcile with the service policy’s account, prompt, document, integration and SMS collection. Churches should keep confidential ministry records out, grant the smallest connection scopes and require human source verification.
Try AlignedAI ↗Opens aligned.church
AlignedAI is an AI workspace built for pastors and church staff. A user selects a theological tradition, adds a statement of faith, chooses preferred Bible translations and can build a “Church Brain” from sermons, documents, websites, YouTube material and voice examples. The assistant then uses that context for sermon outlines and manuscripts, illustrations, applications, Bible study, devotionals, emails, social content, operating procedures, task automation, meeting notes and long-form projects. Pro adds team use and two-way SMS to a broad free product.
The promise is alignment, not a new foundation model. In practical terms, the product combines general AI model capability with saved instructions, retrieval from church sources, templates, workflow tools and connected services. That can produce language closer to a pastor’s established vocabulary than a blank consumer chatbot. It can also repeat an error already present in an uploaded sermon, make an unsupported synthesis sound consistent with a statement of faith, or imitate a voice without possessing the responsibility behind it. “Doctrine-aware” describes context and constraints; it does not mean doctrinally verified.
Current official pricing is unusually aggressive. The free plan includes the assistant, automations, Church Brain and meeting recording/notes with six requests each day—roughly 200 per month. Pro is currently $9 per month, has no trial, removes the request limit, supports up to ten staff and enables two-way SMS. Some older official June and July comparison and announcement pages still describe Pro as $29 per month with a 14-day trial. This review uses the current product and About pages, but the company should update stale articles because price and trial status materially affect a buyer’s decision.
The iPhone app is listed under Apollo Eleven Inc., while the store presentation identifies ShoutOut as developer and the bundle is church.aligned.app. Apple records a June 29, 2026 launch, version 1.1 on August 5, iOS 15 or later, about 20.5 MB and two US ratings averaging 5.0. Version 1.1 adds push notifications. The developer-selected App Privacy section says no data is collected. AlignedAI’s web privacy policy, however, says the service processes account and church information, sermons, documents, transcripts, prompts, outputs, integration data, phone numbers, messages, usage, device data, logs and analytics. A native wrapper may itself send little under Apple’s technical definitions, but the blanket label is misleading beside a cloud account whose core service necessarily handles data.
This researched review examined official product, About, privacy and editorial pages plus the Apple listing. We did not register, upload a sermon, connect Google or Microsoft accounts, send SMS, compare model outputs, inspect retrieval citations, test deletion, assess theology, verify API contracts, audit tenant isolation or conduct a security review. The tiny App Store sample reflects two ratings, not broad adoption or reliability.
✓ The good
- Church-specific context - statement of faith, tradition, translations and Church Brain give drafts more local grounding
- Generous free plan - six daily requests plus core assistant, automations, sources and meeting tools permit real evaluation
- Affordable Pro tier - $9 monthly for unlimited use and up to ten staff is substantially below many ministry AI products
- Broad workflow coverage - sermon, study, communications, meetings, tasks, repurposing and long-form projects share one context
- Editorial self-disclosure - AlignedAI says its publishing is not neutral and explains Scripture-first, source and corrections commitments
- Connected-work potential - email, calendars, Drive, contacts and SMS can turn drafts into supervised operational steps
- No public-model-training claim - the policy says customer content is not used to train public AI models
- Early native support - iPhone and Apple silicon Mac access complement the web workspace and now include notifications
✗ Watch out
- App privacy mismatch - “Data Not Collected” conflicts with the cloud service’s extensive published processing
- AI providers unnamed - the privacy policy describes model providers generically rather than naming companies, models and regions
- Broad Google scopes - Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Contacts permissions could expose far more ministry data than one task needs
- Deletion timing is vague - account content is removed within a “reasonable period” without a deadline or backup schedule
- No clear controller identity - the policy lacks a registered legal entity, postal address and jurisdiction tied to the service
- Doctrine alignment is not verification - a confident answer can still misquote Scripture, invent sources or reinforce a local error
- Pricing documentation conflicts - stale official pages advertise $29 and a trial while current pages state $9 and no trial
- Editorial review lacks named accountability - standards describe a process but do not identify theologians or reviewers for individual claims
Best for
- Pastors who want first drafts constrained by a documented church doctrine and their own source library
- Small staff teams consolidating sermon, study, meeting and routine communication workflows
- Churches willing to begin with public sermons and fictional workflows rather than confidential records
- Leaders who will verify every biblical quotation, historical claim, attribution and application before use
- Organizations prepared to review integration scopes, revoke unused tokens and require human approval for every external action
Avoid if
- You expect a theology setting to certify that an answer is biblically or doctrinally correct
- You plan to upload counseling notes, confessions, safeguarding cases, donor details or information about minors
- Your church needs named AI subprocessors, regional residency, independent assurance or a negotiated data agreement first
- Staff will publish sermons, prayers, emails or pastoral replies without checking the source and taking personal responsibility
- You cannot limit Google, Microsoft or SMS connections to accounts and data intentionally prepared for the system
What AlignedAI is
AlignedAI is best understood as a ministry-shaped layer over language models and workflow services. Its doctrine profile tells the assistant which framework and translation preferences to use. Church Brain retrieves passages from uploaded or connected sources. Purpose-built tools structure sermon planning, exegesis, devotionals, meetings and repurposing. Automations and integrations can move information between a conversation and operational systems. The value comes from the combined context and interface, not an assurance that the underlying model has become a theologian.
The product is also a publisher. Its editorial standards say official articles begin with Scripture, work within broad historic Christian doctrine, prefer primary sources where possible, receive added care on sensitive topics, use genuine dates and accept corrections. The page forthrightly says the publisher is not neutral and the assistant is not a replacement for pastoral discernment. Those commitments are useful context, while individual articles would be stronger with named writers, reviewers, revision notes and citations sufficient to reproduce claims.
Why “aligned” improves relevance but cannot establish truth
A blank chatbot has no reliable knowledge of a congregation’s statement of faith, preferred terminology, sermon archive or pastoral tone. AlignedAI lets a church make those constraints explicit and retrieve from its own materials. That can prevent obvious mismatches, locate a prior illustration, keep a series coherent and help staff draft routine material without restating institutional context in every prompt. Compared with a generic chat window, this is a meaningful product advantage.
Alignment is consistency with supplied context, not correspondence with reality. A church document may be incomplete; a transcript may mishear a word; a retrieved paragraph may not support the generated conclusion; and model instructions can conflict. Require a visible chain from claim to primary source. Open every cited passage in context, verify original-language claims with qualified references, locate historical quotations in the work named and have a responsible human decide whether the application serves this congregation. A familiar voice can make an error harder—not easier—to notice.
Sermon, Bible-study and long-form tools: acceleration after interpretation, not before it
AlignedAI advertises outlines, manuscripts, illustrations, applications, series planning, exegesis, cross-references, Strong’s-number exploration, Bible studies, devotionals and book-length work. A pastor can begin from a passage, prior sermon or topic and ask the system to organize material in the church’s chosen framework. Church Brain can retrieve related teaching, while voice context can make a first draft resemble existing communication more closely than generic output.
Use AI after careful observation and before final composition, not as a replacement for either. Make your own passage notes, audience needs and interpretive questions first. Ask the system for counterevidence, textual tensions and sources rather than only polished prose. Verify every reference and delete fabricated quotations. Disclose substantial AI assistance according to church policy. A sermon is not merely content delivery; the preacher remains responsible for study, prayer, judgment and every word spoken under the church’s trust.
Church Brain, meetings and repurposing: organizational memory needs boundaries
Church Brain can ingest sermons, documents, web pages, YouTube content and voice material so staff can ask questions and generate related work. Meeting recording and notes can create summaries and tasks. Repurposing turns one sermon into study prompts, email, social posts or media concepts. This reduces duplicate work and can make a public teaching archive discoverable to staff who do not remember the exact date or title.
Begin with material already approved for public distribution. Do not treat a shared source library as a dumping ground for staff evaluations, private minutes, counseling, donor records, prayer requests or safeguarding reports. Everyone in a recorded meeting should know the system, provider path, purpose and retention. Review generated summaries because names, decisions and objections can be assigned incorrectly. Set document owners and expiration dates, and remove obsolete doctrine or policy sources so retrieval does not quietly revive superseded guidance.
Email, calendar, Drive, contacts, SMS and automations: convenience expands the blast radius
The policy lists Google profile and email identity plus optional Gmail read, compose and send; Calendar read and event create, update and delete; Drive file access; and Contacts access. The product also supports Microsoft/Outlook connections and Pro two-way SMS through Twilio. Automations can use this context to draft or complete repetitive work. The privacy page says connected content is accessed when requested, passed transiently to an AI provider as needed, and protected by encrypted, access-controlled tokens.
These scopes can expose confidential correspondence, attendees, file names, pastoral schedules and relationship graphs. Connect a dedicated ministry account containing only approved material, not a senior pastor’s unrestricted mailbox or personal Drive. Grant the smallest scopes available, test with fictional contacts, keep sending and deletion behind human confirmation, review Twilio consent and opt-out requirements, and disconnect unused services. A prompt-injection attack hidden in an email or document is another reason retrieved content must never autonomously authorize an external action.
Pricing
Free
$0
Six requests per day—advertised as about 200 per month—include doctrine-aware assistance, automations, Church Brain and meeting recording/notes. It is a genuine continuing tier and sufficient for a pastor to test public sermon sources, citations, voice boundaries and export without entering payment details.
Pro
$9/month
The current About page says Pro has no trial and includes unlimited use, up to ten staff and two-way SMS. Confirm fair-use limits, model access, message fees, phone-number ownership, cancellation, exports and whether the displayed price is introductory before moving a team.
Older official references
$29/month and 14-day trial—stale
Several older official posts still cite a higher price and a trial. They appear inconsistent with the current direct pricing and About pages rather than a separate plan. Save the checkout terms and ask support if any screen presents a different offer.
The free tier is the right starting point for nearly every church. Six requests per day can test answer grounding, source retrieval, doctrine settings, tone and workflow fit without normalizing unlimited generation.
At the current $9 monthly price, Pro is inexpensive even for one pastor and unusually inexpensive for a ten-person team. Low price should not lower the review applied to data access and publication.
There is no Pro trial according to the current About page. A church can evaluate most core capability on Free, then pay for one month before connecting staff or SMS. Older $29/trial claims appear to be documentation drift.
Model, storage and messaging economics can change. Save the plan terms, ask about usage policies and SMS charges, confirm how content can be exported, and avoid building a critical process that has no documented manual fallback.
Where AlignedAI falls behind
The Apple disclosure is the clearest credibility problem. “Data Not Collected” may reflect a narrow distinction between what a native wrapper sends to the developer and what a logged-in web service processes, but users experience one product. A person entering prompts or opening church documents in the app reasonably expects the label to acknowledge the account and cloud service. Apollo Eleven and AlignedAI should reconcile it immediately.
The policy refers to “AI model providers” without naming them. Churches need the provider, model family, region, retention, training defaults, abuse-monitoring access and contract path for each request type. A statement that content is not used to train public models is welcome but does not describe temporary retention, safety review or subprocessor changes.
Google authorization is broad. The notice describes Gmail readonly, compose and send, Calendar read and event modification, Drive read and Contacts scopes. It says access occurs only at user request, but does not clearly map which feature requires each scope or whether incremental authorization lets a user omit risky ones. A current scope matrix and deletion behavior would make informed consent possible.
Retention lacks deadlines. Account information and church content remain while an account is active and as needed to provide the service; deletion follows within a “reasonable period.” The policy should publish production, backup, log, AI-provider, transcript and connected-token schedules, including what happens to Church Brain embeddings and derived summaries.
Legal provenance is thin. The App Store names Apollo Eleven Inc. and ShoutOut, but the site privacy notice does not clearly identify the controller’s registered entity, postal address, jurisdiction or data-protection representative. Product branding should not force a church to infer who signs a contract.
The doctrine and editorial controls need visible evidence at output level. Users should be able to see which church sources were retrieved, quote-level links, source versions and why a doctrinal setting changed an answer. Citations can themselves be fabricated, so the interface should distinguish model text from verified licensed text and retrieval evidence.
The editorial standards are a good public commitment but not item-level accountability. They do not identify a named theological editor, author credentials, denomination-specific review, correction history or how AI-written official content is labeled. Sensitive pieces deserve a visible reviewer and revision record rather than only a general process page.
No Android app is listed. The web product may work in an Android browser, but parity, notifications, offline behavior and accessibility are not documented as a native Android experience. Churches should test the actual devices used by staff instead of assuming iPhone support covers every mobile workflow.
AlignedAI vs. SermonSpark vs. Pulpit AI
SermonSpark centers on AI-assisted sermon preparation, research and related ministry content. AlignedAI is broader: its doctrine profile, Church Brain, meetings, long-form work, integrations, automations and SMS aim to become a staff workspace. Choose based on citation quality, theological controls, source retention and the exact tasks a pastor will supervise, not the longest feature list.
Pulpit AI emphasizes turning completed sermon audio or video into clips, summaries, devotionals and social content. AlignedAI also repurposes but begins earlier in planning and extends into administration. A media-heavy church may prefer a dedicated post-sermon pipeline; a small staff may value AlignedAI’s unified context. Neither should invent a quotation or publish pastoral language without review.
A general model such as ChatGPT can be more capable, flexible and transparent about model choice, but the user must build doctrine instructions, source organization and workflows. AlignedAI’s value is packaging those practices for church work. Logos Bible Software provides far deeper licensed study libraries and research apparatus without being primarily a generative staff assistant. Many pastors will be safest using Logos or primary scholarship for evidence, AlignedAI for supervised drafting and accountable humans for judgment.
The bottom line
AlignedAI has a compelling product thesis: church work benefits when AI knows the congregation’s declared doctrine, public teaching, preferred translations and recurring processes. The current free allowance is generous, and $9 Pro pricing makes serious evaluation accessible to small churches. Church Brain, sermon tools, meeting notes, repurposing and automations could eliminate real repetition. None of them can assume pastoral authority or turn statistical generation into truth. Start with public sermons, require evidence for every claim, keep confidential records out, use dedicated integration accounts, approve all messages manually and document AI disclosure. Before broader adoption, ask the company to name its AI providers and legal controller, publish retention deadlines, reconcile Apple’s “Data Not Collected” label and clean up conflicting pricing. With those safeguards, AlignedAI can be a capable drafting and retrieval assistant—never the preacher, theologian, counselor or accountable decision-maker.
Alternatives to AlignedAI
SermonSparkA sermon-focused AI assistant for research and drafting; compare citations, doctrine controls and current limits.
Pulpit AIA strong sermon-repurposing system for clips and written media after the message has been delivered.
SermonaryA structured sermon-writing workspace with templates and presentation tools rather than an all-purpose church AI.
Logos Bible SoftwareA mature research library for primary texts, commentaries and original-language study, with a different cost and learning curve.ChatGPT with a governed workspaceA flexible general assistant when a church can design its own instructions, source boundaries, privacy controls and review process.Frequently asked questions
What is AlignedAI?
AlignedAI is an AI workspace for pastors and church teams. It combines a selectable theological tradition, statement of faith, Bible-translation preferences and a Church Brain built from sermons and documents with tools for sermon preparation, Bible study, devotionals, communications, meetings, automation, repurposing, long-form writing, connected apps and SMS.
How much does AlignedAI cost?
The current official About page lists Free at six requests per day, roughly 200 per month, with the assistant, Church Brain, automations and meeting notes. Pro is $9 per month, has no trial, removes the request limit, supports up to ten staff and adds two-way SMS. Older official pages that say $29 and a 14-day trial appear stale; verify the checkout terms.
Does AlignedAI guarantee doctrinally correct answers?
No. Tradition, statement-of-faith and source settings can make output more consistent with supplied context, but a model can still hallucinate, misquote a passage, misuse a historical source, overlook a tension or reproduce an error from an uploaded sermon. Open every biblical text, verify citations in primary sources and require a qualified human to own the conclusion and application.
What does AlignedAI collect?
Its web policy lists account name, email, church and login information; sermons, documents, transcripts, prompts and outputs; connected-app data; phone numbers, consent and SMS content; and usage, device, log and analytics information. That is difficult to reconcile with the iOS listing’s “Data Not Collected” declaration. Treat the cloud policy as the more complete description and ask the developer to correct the mismatch.
Can AlignedAI read Gmail, Drive, Calendar and contacts?
The policy describes optional Google scopes for profile/email identity, Gmail reading and sending, Calendar reading and event changes, Drive files and Contacts. It says access occurs only when requested and tokens are encrypted and access-controlled. Connect a restricted church account, grant the minimum scopes, do not expose counseling or safeguarding content, require confirmation for outbound actions and revoke the connection when unused.
Does AlignedAI train on church content?
The privacy policy says customer content is not used to train public AI models and that connected content is sent transiently to model providers only as needed. It does not name those providers or publish their precise retention and review terms. Ask for the current provider/subprocessor list, model regions, abuse-monitoring rules and deletion commitments before uploading nonpublic material.
Is AlignedAI safe for confidential pastoral work?
Do not use it as a repository for confessions, counseling notes, abuse reports, donor information, personnel cases, minors’ data, medical details or protected addresses. The policy’s encryption and access-control claims are useful but do not eliminate model-provider, integration, retention and human-access risks. Begin with approved public material, apply a written prohibited-data policy and route sensitive work through systems specifically governed for it.
Sources & further reading
More Sermon Prep Apps
SermonarySermonary has quietly become the favorite of pastors who want sermon prep to feel less like wrestling with a word processor - and more like building with blocks.
Logos Sermon BuilderThe sermon-prep module that turns the Logos library into a drag-and-drop outline - the natural workflow for any pastor already living inside Logos.Pulpit AIUpload one sermon and walk away with a month of derivative content - the post-production multiplier built specifically for preachers.
Sermon ShotsThe tool that finally lets a one-person comms team keep up with a preaching pastor - by turning every Sunday sermon into a week of vertical clips on autopilot.
Sermons.comA curated sermon archive built around pastor-ready outlines, illustration packs, video clips, and a weekly inbox drop - the comfortable middle path between crowd-sourced chaos and the seminary-priced subscription.
SermonlySermonly combines a cloud sermon editor, Bible references, research snippets, templates and AI-generated outlines in one pastoral workspace—but every generated claim still belongs under the preacher’s scrutiny.