Faithlife

What Faithlife is

Faithlife is a Christian software company headquartered in Bellingham, Washington, founded by Bob Pritchett, Kiernon Reiniger and Dale Pritchett in 1992. For its first two decades it was known as Logos Research Systems, focused on digital Bible study software. In 2014 the parent company rebranded to Faithlife to reflect a much broader catalog: a church-community platform, a streaming service, presentation software, a website builder, an academic publishing arm (Lexham Press) and several smaller tools. Logos remained the flagship product. In 2020 Faithlife acquired Bible Gateway from HarperCollins Christian Publishing, adding the most-visited Bible website in the world to the portfolio.

Today faithlife.com functions as the umbrella landing page for that entire ecosystem. Some products (Logos, Proclaim) are paid subscriptions or one-time library purchases. Others (Faithlife Group, the base Bible Gateway site) are free. The unifying thread is a single Faithlife account that logs you into all of it, plus a shared backend of Bible texts, commentaries and media that the different products draw from. The company is privately held and does not publish revenue figures, but the install base is large — millions of Logos users, tens of millions of monthly Bible Gateway visitors, and an active church customer list for Proclaim.

Why churches end up in the Faithlife ecosystem

The single biggest practical difference between Faithlife and the church-tech alternatives is that Faithlife sells the study software too. Planning Center, Tithe.ly, Subsplash and the rest are operational layers — check-in, giving, app, website, scheduling. None of them touch what the pastor does on Tuesday morning when he sits down to write Sunday's sermon. Faithlife does. A pastor who already builds his sermon in Logos can push the outline into Proclaim slides, post the audio to Faithlife Sites, archive the sermon on Faithlife TV, and discuss the passage with elders in a Faithlife Group — all through one login.

That vertical integration is the real pitch, and for the churches it fits, it is genuinely valuable. The catch is that it only pays off if you are actually using Logos as your primary study tool. Churches that preach out of a paper Bible and a Google Doc get almost nothing out of buying into the rest of the stack, because the connective tissue — the shared Logos data — is the thing that makes the ecosystem feel like an ecosystem rather than a grab bag.

Faithlife Group: the free church-collaboration layer nobody quite uses

Faithlife Group is the social and collaboration product at the heart of the rebrand — a private online space for a congregation, small group, ministry team or family. It includes threaded discussions, prayer lists, a shared calendar, a digital bulletin, sermon archives, a group photo album and per-member roles. There are free reading plans, group Bible studies and downloadable media kits a leader can drop into the group feed. It runs on web, iOS and Android. There is no paid tier; the entire product is free even at large scale, supported by the rest of the Faithlife catalog.

On paper this should be the connective tissue of the ecosystem. In practice it has never won the church-community space — most congregations that signed up settled into Planning Center or Subsplash for operations and a Facebook Group or GroupMe thread for actual conversation. Faithlife Group still works well for what it does, particularly for a small group leader who wants a private, non-Meta space with built-in Bible content and no monthly bill. But the network effects are not there, and Faithlife has not invested in it the way they have in Logos or Proclaim, so the interface feels older than it should in 2026.

Faithlife TV: the Christian streaming service that quietly grew up

Faithlife TV is the company's streaming service — a Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, web and mobile app with a catalog of Christian films, Bible documentaries, kids content and teaching series. The headline assets are the Lumo Project films (the four Gospels shot verse-by-verse on location in the Middle East), the Torchlighters animated series for kids, a long list of licensed BBC and PBS religion documentaries, and a growing slate of Faithlife originals on biblical archaeology, church history and the lives of the Reformers. There is a free ad-supported tier and a paid Plus tier at around $9.99 a month or roughly $99 a year.

It is not trying to be Netflix, and it is not trying to be Pure Flix or Angel. The catalog is smaller and more documentary-leaning than either of those, which makes it a better fit for adults who want serious Bible-background content than for families looking for movie-night entertainment. The Lumo Project alone is worth the subscription for a teacher or small group leader — a verse-by-verse visual reading of all four Gospels is a remarkable resource and not easy to find elsewhere. Where Faithlife TV falls short is depth: outside the documentaries and kids content, the catalog rotates and the original-series pipeline is modest.

The Logos connection: the gravitational center of everything

Logos Bible Software is reviewed in detail on its own page, but no review of Faithlife is complete without naming what Logos is to the parent company — the gravitational center. Every other Faithlife product is, in some sense, a satellite. Proclaim pulls verses and passage data from Logos. Faithlife Sites can embed Logos-powered scripture reference pop-ups. Faithlife Equip is sold as a way for churches to get bulk Logos licenses for staff and members. Lexham Press exists in part to feed original scholarship into the Logos library. Bible Gateway, since the 2020 acquisition, increasingly cross-promotes Logos at the bottom of its pages.

This matters for two reasons. First, it explains why some Faithlife products feel like first-class citizens (Logos, Proclaim) and others feel secondary — the company is structured around the study-software flagship, and resources track that priority. Second, it means a Logos customer gets dramatically more value out of the rest of the ecosystem than a non-Logos customer does. If you are evaluating Faithlife as a stack, the honest question is whether Logos itself is the right Bible software for you. If yes, the rest of the catalog gets much more interesting. If no, several of the satellite products are beaten by their best-in-class single-purpose competitors.

Pricing

Where Faithlife falls behind

No clear front door. Faithlife.com is the umbrella site, but it does not do a great job of telling a first-time visitor what Faithlife actually is. You land on a page that asks whether you are an individual, a church or a publisher, and from there you are routed to one of half a dozen different product pages, each with its own pricing language and signup flow. Most visitors arrive looking for one product (usually Logos) and never form a coherent picture of the rest.

No design parity across products. Logos looks like premium scholarship software. Proclaim looks like modern presentation software. Faithlife Sites looks like a church CMS from the late 2010s. Faithlife Group looks like a social product that paused development. The visual and UX gap between the flagship products and the secondary ones is wide, and it makes the ecosystem feel less unified than the marketing implies.

No competitive answer on modern church websites. Faithlife Sites still works, but Tithe.ly Sites, Subsplash, Ministry Brands and even Squarespace's church templates have all moved past it on design, mobile responsiveness and integrations with giving and check-in. Churches that prioritize a beautiful, modern marketing site usually do not pick Faithlife.

No traction on the social layer (yet). Faithlife Group is a fine product and it is free, but it never became the church-Slack or church-Discord that the 2014 rebrand seemed to be aiming for. Most ministries that need real-time conversation use a general-purpose tool and reserve Faithlife Group, if anything, for archive and bulletin functions.

Mixed support reputation. Search Reddit or the Logos forums and you will find recurring threads about billing confusion, hard-to-cancel subscriptions, downgrade friction and slow response times. Faithlife is not unique here — most multi-product SaaS companies have the same complaints — but it is a real pattern worth knowing about going in.

Faithlife vs. RightNow Media vs. Tithe.ly

These three are the closest things to direct competitors at the ecosystem level, but they are aimed at different jobs. Faithlife is a study-software-first company that has expanded into church operations and streaming. RightNow Media is a video-streaming-first company that has expanded into church training and small group curriculum. Tithe.ly is a church-operations-first company (giving, ChMS, websites, apps) that has expanded into media. All three want to be the one vendor a church uses for everything, and none of them have fully gotten there.

Different strengths. Faithlife is broader and deeper on Bible content — nobody else in this group has Logos, Bible Gateway and Lexham Press under one roof. RightNow Media is better at video-based small group curriculum and church staff training; their library of teaching videos from well-known pastors and teachers is unmatched at the price point. Tithe.ly is better at the operational layer — giving, check-in, websites, the church app — with a more modern interface and per-product pricing that is easier to understand.

For most churches the right answer is not one of these three but a mix. Logos for study, Tithe.ly for giving and the church app, RightNow Media for adult curriculum, and whatever website tool already works. Faithlife wins outright if the church is built around Logos-driven preaching and wants the rest of the stack from the same vendor. It loses ground if the church treats Bible software as a personal pastoral tool rather than a congregational platform.

Alternatives to Faithlife