- Starting price
- Free core platform; optional paid Ministry Credits
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Web · Public church websites and forms · Mobile-responsive member surfaces
- Developer
- Faith Systems, LLC
- Launched
- 2026 under ChurchRaise; eChurch heritage exceeds 20 years
- Updated
- Aug 9, 2026
The verdict
ChurchRaise’s $0 core is real in the reviewed public offer: no subscription, seat tier, feature gate, card, or stated people limit for a remarkably broad ChMS. Giving funds the business through an optional donor tip or church-selected checkout service fee, while standard processor charges remain; AI starts with 1,000 credits and additional packs cost money, but public pack prices are not shown. This is strong enough for a serious sandbox, not an immediate whole-database migration. Import synthetic or low-risk records first, test exports and financial reconciliation, map every role, disable AI where inappropriate, obtain current DPA/security/support details, and verify how donor-facing funding choices appear. The platform stores pastoral notes, prayer requests, attendance, giving, minors, communications, and AI conversations; “free” increases—not decreases—the need to understand stewardship and continuity.
Try ChurchRaise ↗Opens churchraise.ai
ChurchRaise is an all-in-one church management system from Faith Systems, LLC, the company behind the long-running e-Church Bulletins service. The faith.tools listing still names “eChurch ChurchRaise,” but the current product and canonical brand are ChurchRaise. Its public site says more than eighty tools cover people and households, groups, attendance, online giving, campaigns and pledges, donor statements, email and SMS, digital bulletins, forms, sign-ups, events, ticketing, check-in, volunteers, websites, media, social content, reports, online stores, polls, pastoral care, and service planning.
The pricing model is unusually broad. ChurchRaise says every core feature is free for churches of every size, with no monthly platform subscription, per-seat price, feature tier, contact limit, contract, card, or trial gate. For online giving, the church chooses optional donor tips or a small service fee paid at checkout; ChurchRaise says the congregation still receives 100% of the designated gift, while ordinary Stripe processing fees apply. Square and Vanco are also integrated, and QuickBooks, Google Calendar, Outlook, Twilio, MinistrySafe, and Zapier appear in the current integration set.
Nine AI assistants sit inside the platform: General Assistant, Comms Team, Giving Specialist, Design Team, Finance Assistant, Marketing Director, SEO Specialist, Sermon Studio, and Service Planner. They draft bulletins and newsletters, analyze giving, suggest reconciliation and categorization, create graphics, plan campaigns, improve local search, repurpose sermons, and build worship orders, songs, run sheets, chord transpositions, posts, and assignments. Nothing is supposed to send or publish until a person reviews it. AI, image generation, transcription, and smart design consume Ministry Credits. A new account gets 1,000; a typical assistant response uses roughly one, a still background or social graphic 75, an eight-second motion background 150, and transcription 25 plus 10 per minute. Extra packs are sold in the account, but their public dollar prices are not disclosed.
The March 2026 privacy policy is unusually specific about scope. Churches may store names, contact details, households, groups, custom fields, attendance, prayer requests, pastoral notes, donations, pledges, messages, files, registrations, check-in, volunteer schedules, media, websites, AI prompts, generated content, and screening status. OpenAI receives AI prompts and context; Google Gemini handles image generation and YouTube transcript work; Google Cloud and Firebase host the platform; Stripe, Square, Twilio, Unsplash, MinistrySafe, Google Analytics, and BigQuery support other functions. The policy says data is not sold, AI is optional, OpenAI and Google currently state API inputs are not used for model training, closure data is deleted within thirty days subject to legal records, and backups are purged within thirty days.
We reviewed the official homepage, pricing, feature, assistant, about, privacy, and terms surfaces. We did not create an account, import people or transactions, send messages, build a site, run a background check, connect a processor, generate AI content, buy credits, reconcile a gift, test export or deletion, benchmark uptime, or receive independent accounting, theological, privacy, security, accessibility, safeguarding, or support evidence. “Eighty-plus” counts many individual tools, not eighty independent mature products, and vendor time-saving claims are not observed results. This review therefore focuses on the verified public offer and the evaluation work a church should perform.
✓ The good
- Genuinely broad free core - people, giving, communications, websites, events, groups, forms, check-in, reports, and more carry no monthly platform fee
- No feature or contact tiers stated - the same toolset is offered to a fifty-person and five-thousand-person church
- No card or contract gate - a church can build a meaningful sandbox before procurement pressure begins
- Flexible giving funding - churches choose optional donor tips or a checkout service fee instead of a percentage deducted from the gift
- Nine integrated AI roles - assistants can work with platform context rather than requiring repeated copy-and-paste into a general chatbot
- Human publishing gate - product copy says generated work remains a draft until a user reviews and approves it
- Detailed privacy disclosure - the policy names sensitive data categories and major subprocessors, including OpenAI and Gemini
- AI opt-out - core church-management functions continue without using or purchasing Ministry Credits
- Useful ecosystem - QuickBooks, Zapier, calendars, payment processors, Twilio, Vanco, Square, and MinistrySafe cover common church workflows
✗ Watch out
- Free-model sustainability needs proof - donor tips, checkout fees, credits, and future modules must reliably support a high-sensitivity platform over time
- Credit prices are not public - churches can see consumption units but not a public pack table or monthly subscriber pricing
- Data blast radius is enormous - giving, pastoral notes, prayers, minors, attendance, communications, files, screening, and AI context can coexist
- AI touches real church data - the Giving and Finance assistants are marketed around actual records, increasing privacy and error stakes
- Product breadth may outrun depth - eighty-plus tools should be tested workflow by workflow against mature dedicated systems
- External costs remain - Stripe processing, SMS, background checks, credit packs, domains, accounting, and other providers may still charge
- Vendor evidence is mostly self-published - no public customer count, independent security audit, accounting assurance, uptime history, or accessibility conformance is prominent
- Minor data is church-controlled - the policy places parental-consent and lawful collection responsibility on the congregation
Best for
- Budget-constrained small and midsize churches willing to run a disciplined parallel pilot before migration
- Congregations that want one connected record across people, communications, events, giving, groups, forms, and websites
- Teams able to configure least-privilege roles and separate pastoral, finance, child, communications, and creative duties
- Churches that will use AI for reviewed drafts and analysis, not automatic ministry decisions or financial authority
- Organizations prepared to validate processor fees, exports, accounting, privacy, security, and continuity in writing
Avoid if
- Your church cannot assign an accountable system owner, privacy lead, finance reviewer, child-safety lead, and backup administrator
- You require audited financial controls, SSO, immutable audit logs, formal uptime commitments, or security certification not established in the public materials
- Staff would paste confidential counseling, abuse, medical, child, donor, or personnel information into AI prompts
- The word “free” would cause leadership to skip a data-processing agreement, migration plan, backup export, reconciliation test, or exit strategy
- A dedicated current system already performs critical workflows well and consolidation savings have not been demonstrated in a parallel test
What ChurchRaise is
ChurchRaise is both a system of record and a set of ministry-production tools. At its center are people, household, group, attendance, giving, event, communication, and form data. Public pages and workflows use those records; reports, automations, and AI derive new material from them. Consolidation can remove duplicate entry and expose useful relationships, but a single misconfigured role or compromised account can reach more of church life.
It is not simply “free AI for churches.” The core ChMS does not require AI, and the nine assistants are metered separately through credits. Treat the database and AI layers as different risk domains. Decide which roles can access which underlying fields, what may enter a prompt, which output types require finance, pastoral, theological, legal, or creative approval, and how model-generated content is labeled.
Why churches consider ChurchRaise: unusually complete operations without a subscription tier
Most ChMS products either limit the free plan, price by people, sell modules, or place important communication and giving features in higher tiers. ChurchRaise makes the entire operating surface available immediately and asks the giving and AI economies to support it. That lets a small church test a website, import, forms, email, events, people, and reports together rather than guessing which paid package it will eventually need.
The right pilot tests depth, not the feature count. Select five end-to-end journeys: a new family, a donation and refund, a child check-in, an event registration and volunteer reminder, and a departed member’s deletion or retention. Map every record and notification, reconcile money, inspect consent, restrict roles, export data, and simulate failure. Keep the incumbent system authoritative until ChurchRaise completes two real cycles without material discrepancy.
People, groups, events, and communications: one record can coordinate a great deal
The platform manages individuals, households, tags, custom fields, groups, attendance, prayer requests, pastoral notes, volunteers, schedules, events, tickets, rooms, forms, sign-ups, check-in, emails, SMS, bulletins, and church websites. QR codes and public pages connect visitors with internal workflows. Engagement weights can combine attendance, giving, volunteering, and group participation into a score configured by the church.
Do not let an engagement score become a spiritual score. Giving, disability, age, caregiving, work, transport, safety, and privacy choices make visible activity an unreliable proxy for faithfulness or belonging. Limit scoring to explicit operational follow-up, explain it, audit bias, and never use it alone for discipline, leadership, aid, donor pressure, or pastoral conclusions. Separate highly restricted notes from routine contact fields and establish lawful retention for every category.
Giving, finance, and integrations: “100% of the gift” is not the same as costless processing
ChurchRaise supports online gifts, recurring giving, funds, pledges, campaigns, peer fundraising, memberships or dues, donor statements, tickets, Square in-person payments, Vanco imports, Stripe processing, and QuickBooks integration. The Giving Specialist and Finance Assistant can analyze patterns, draft communications, suggest categorization, reconcile transactions, and prepare summaries from platform data.
Use dual control for bank, processor, refund, fund, export, and accounting changes. Reconcile gross gift, tip or fee, processor fee, net deposit, fund designation, refund, chargeback, and general ledger through multiple periods. Generated financial analysis is not an audit and must not initiate transactions. Prevent donor segmentation from becoming exploitative personalization. Verify receipt language, restricted gifts, tax-year cutoffs, retention, PCI scope, and who sees giving by pastoral role.
Nine AI assistants and Studio: integration saves copying but increases context exposure
The assistant set spans general support, communications, giving, design, finance, marketing, SEO, sermon repurposing, and worship planning. Studio creates still or motion backgrounds, social graphics, series identities, and print assets. Sermon Studio produces blog posts, devotionals, captions, clips, and discussion guides. Service Planner can suggest songs, transpose chord charts, construct timestamps and cues, and draft related communication.
Integration means users do not have to paste records into a separate chatbot, but policy says prompts and context still go to OpenAI or Gemini. Create an AI allowlist: public announcements and rights-cleared sermon notes may be appropriate; pastoral notes, prayer requests, individual giving, minors, screenings, SSNs, abuse, counseling, medical, legal, and personnel data are not. Verify Scripture, theology, music licenses, facts, names, financial calculations, images, accessibility, and originality before approval.
Pricing
Core ChurchRaise platform
$0/month
ChurchRaise says all people, giving, email/SMS, events, groups, forms, websites, reports, check-in, and other core tools are free without a card, seat charge, contact cap, feature tier, or subscription.
Online giving with donor tips
No ChurchRaise platform percentage
Donors may add an optional tip to fund the platform. The church receives the designated gift, while standard payment-processing fees still apply. Review the default tip presentation, donor control, receipts, and processor schedule.
Online giving with service fee
Small checkout fee; amount not public
A church can disable tips and use an optional fee paid by the giver. Obtain the exact rate, disclosure, tax treatment, refund and chargeback behavior, and whether the church can absorb it instead.
Ministry Credits
1,000 included; packs not publicly priced
Assistant responses cost about one credit, still and social graphics 75, motion backgrounds 150, and transcription 25 plus 10 per minute. The public page says more packs can be bought but does not list dollars per pack.
Connected services
Provider charges vary
Budget card processing, Twilio SMS, MinistrySafe screening, domains, Square hardware, Vanco, accounting, Zapier usage, and any paid stock, support, migration, or future subscription separately.
The core product is not a time-limited free trial. The current promise is $0 per month for the full platform and unlimited people, without per-seat fees. Take a dated copy of that offer and read the terms’ change provisions before moving critical records.
Giving has ordinary costs even when ChurchRaise adds no percentage. A donor tip is extra money requested from the giver; a checkout service fee is another visible charge; Stripe still processes the transaction. Ask for screenshots and receipts for every option and whether tips are preselected, suggested as a percentage, refundable, tax-deductible, and included in processor fees.
The 1,000-credit grant can support many text exchanges but far fewer media assets. Ten motion backgrounds would consume 1,500 credits; one sixty-minute transcript uses roughly 625 under the displayed 25-plus-10-per-minute formula. Create a monthly forecast from actual ministry use before buying packs.
Public pages do not show credit pack prices even though the account sells them, and the phrase “Subscribers also receive bonus credits” appears without a public subscription table. Inspect the authenticated store for pack size, expiration, refunds, auto-renewal, transferable balances, organization pooling, and model-specific changes.
Migration is never free. Include data cleanup, mapping, test imports, reconciliation, consent, templates, domain work, integrations, training, dual-running, support, backup exports, and rollback. The absence of a vendor invoice can make internal labor easier to underestimate.
Where ChurchRaise falls behind
Public credit economics. List pack and subscription prices, credit expiration, refund, pooling, model changes, usage logs, and hard budget controls outside the signed-in app.
Customer and reliability evidence. Publish verified church counts, references by size, status history, uptime, incident communications, recovery objectives, support hours, and escalation targets.
Security assurance. Provide independent penetration and controls reports, MFA and SSO details, audit logs, privileged-access procedure, key management, vulnerability disclosure, and breach history.
Accounting controls. Document immutable financial logs, approvals, period locks, bank and processor permissions, reconciliation, audit exports, SOC evidence, and country-specific tax limits.
Accessibility evidence. Test administrator and public surfaces, email, forms, sites, events, giving, check-in, media, and generated PDFs or graphics against a named standard.
AI evaluation. Publish accuracy, citation, finance, giving, theology, Scripture, safety, copyright, image, prompt-injection, and data-boundary tests by model and assistant version.
Safeguarding configuration. Provide least-privilege child records, guardians, pickup, custody alerts, medical restrictions, incident logging, consent, MinistrySafe boundaries, and training guidance.
Portable exit. Churches need complete structured export of records, notes, files, forms, communications, websites, financial history, permissions, and audit data before closure.
ChurchRaise vs. Planning Center vs. Breeze vs. a free spreadsheet stack
Planning Center has mature modules, a large church ecosystem, established mobile surfaces, and deep workflows, but a church may pay across People-adjacent products, Giving, Groups, Registrations, Check-Ins, Services, Publishing, and Music Stand. ChurchRaise makes a much wider baseline free and adds AI directly. Planning Center’s operating history and dedicated depth remain meaningful. Run identical journeys and total every module, processor, message, and staff hour.
Breeze is known for approachable people, groups, events, contributions, forms, check-in, email, and text in a paid package. It offers a narrower decision surface than ChurchRaise’s eighty-plus tools and nine assistants. A team that values mature simplicity may prefer Breeze; one constrained by subscription cost may accept ChurchRaise’s newer breadth after proving reliability, controls, export, and support.
A spreadsheet, email service, form tool, website builder, payment link, and calendar can be nearly free and individually replaceable. They also duplicate people, scatter consent, weaken access revocation, and create fragile manual reconciliation. ChurchRaise’s integration is the benefit and the concentration risk. Choose it when governance improves with consolidation, not merely because one dashboard looks convenient.
The bottom line
ChurchRaise is one of the most ambitious free church-software offers available: it eliminates the familiar bait-and-upgrade free tier and gives small churches room to test real workflows. Its honest price is not zero—it is donor-facing funding choices, processor and service costs, AI credits, implementation labor, and trust in a vendor holding a large share of congregational life. Build a sandbox, run five end-to-end journeys, reconcile money, test roles and deletion, export everything, inspect public forms with vulnerable users, and obtain DPA, security, support, and continuity evidence. If those checks succeed, ChurchRaise can remove a remarkable amount of subscription overhead. If they do not, eighty features simply create eighty places to discover the same governance gap.
Alternatives to ChurchRaise
Planning CenterA mature modular church operations suite with strong services, check-in, groups, registrations, giving, and publishing workflows.Breeze ChMSAn approachable paid ChMS centered on people, giving, events, forms, check-in, email, and text.
B1 ChurchA free open-source church platform with people, app, site, giving, check-in, groups, worship, SMS, and multi-language support.ChurchTracA long-running lower-cost ChMS with people, giving, accounting, worship, check-in, events, websites, and support.
TithelyAn integrated giving, ChMS, messaging, site, app, and worship ecosystem with different transaction and subscription economics.Frequently asked questions
Is ChurchRaise really free?
The current public offer says the entire core platform is $0 per month, without feature tiers, seat fees, contact limits, contracts, or a credit card. External services and optional AI credits can still cost money.
How does ChurchRaise make money?
Online donors can add an optional tip, or the church can enable a small checkout service fee. AI and media features consume Ministry Credits, and additional packs are sold. The public page does not list pack prices.
Does ChurchRaise take a percentage of donations?
It says it adds no platform percentage and the church receives the designated gift. Standard Stripe or other processing charges still apply, and tips or a service fee may be paid at checkout.
What do 1,000 Ministry Credits cover?
A normal assistant response is about one credit; a still background, social graphic, or series design is 75; a motion background is 150; and transcription is 25 plus 10 per minute. Actual use can vary.
Which companies process ChurchRaise data?
The policy names OpenAI, Google Gemini, Stripe, Square, Twilio, Unsplash, MinistrySafe, Google Cloud/Firebase, Google Analytics, and BigQuery for different functions.
Can we avoid AI completely?
Yes. The privacy and pricing pages say AI features are optional and core church-management tools continue without buying additional credits.
Is ChurchRaise the same as eChurch?
ChurchRaise is the current expanded brand from Faith Systems. Its policy covers ChurchRaise and e-Church Bulletins, and the faith.tools listing retains the transitional “eChurch ChurchRaise” name.
Sources & further reading
More Church Management Software
B1 ChurchA genuinely free, open-source church platform - app, website, giving and check-in on one database - run by an Oklahoma nonprofit. The catch is not the price - it is that the vendor own docs call the native app deprecated.
Involv Chat (church.chat)Involv Chat combines ministry-team messaging, rosters, blocked dates and service scheduling in a focused church workspace—useful when leaders protect volunteer consent and resist turning attendance or gifts data into a spiritual score.
ChurchSoftwareChurchSoftware—formerly StoreHouse—offers an unusually broad church-management core for $0, including giving, check-in, accounting and a shared mobile app, while charging transparently for vendor-heavy extras.
Pastor Notes AppA two-app system that lets leaders publish sermon notes and invite live congregational response while attendees use the free Bible Notes companion—but its pricing math, refund terms and app privacy disclosures need correction before a church commits.
Take RootA low-cost, offline-friendly relationship tracker built specifically for evangelism and discipleship follow-up—more intentional than a spreadsheet, but its old generic privacy policy does not adequately describe the sensitive ministry data the product exists to hold.
Develop.MeDevelop.Me packages course building, cohorts, discussion, assignments, gamification and mobile learning for churches and mission-driven organizations—with unlimited learners on paid plans, but a vague free tier and a 2022 website privacy notice leave procurement questions open.