- Starting price
- Free Launcher plugin, then $99/month
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Web - no iOS or Android app
- Developer
- Nucleus, LLC
- Launched
- 2017
- Updated
- Aug 5, 2026
The verdict
Buy Nucleus if you want a church website a volunteer can maintain and you accept running it beside a real church management system: 1.9 percent on cards and a flat 25 cents on bank transfers are the lowest rates published in this category, and Nucleus adds no percentage of its own. Skip it if your finance team insists on absorbing fees so giving is free to the giver, if you need to import an existing people database, or if owning your site files matters - the terms make Nucleus the owner of the site and its templates, with no published export path.
Try Nucleus ↗Opens nucleus.church
Nucleus is a hosted church website platform sold at one price - $99 a month, or $1,188 a year - with three optional products bolted on at $49 a month each: Giving, Messages and Media. There is no cheap tier and no expensive tier. The single plan includes hosting, an SSL certificate, a custom domain, unlimited pages, unlimited admin users, a CSS editor, sermon management, forms, banners and a template library, and then asks whether you also want to take money, send email and download stock footage.
It is built by Nucleus, LLC, founded in 2017 by Brady Shearer, who also runs Pro Church Tools. The company says it operates from Niagara Falls, Ontario and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is bootstrapped with no investors, private equity or shareholders, and that more than 4,000 churches use its products. That matters in a category where the vendor holds the church's money: no venture clock means less pressure to reprice the fee schedule.
The reason to look at Nucleus rather than a WordPress theme with a giving plugin is the fee schedule. Nucleus charges 1.9 percent on a card gift with no fixed per-transaction fee, and a flat 25 cents on a bank transfer no matter the size of the gift. Its own giving page prints a comparison table putting Planning Center at 2.15 percent plus 30 cents and Subsplash, Tithe.ly, Pushpay, Givelify, Breeze, Elvanto and ChurchTrac at 3.0 percent plus 42 cents. Nucleus says it takes no percentage of a gift for itself.
There is a condition attached, and the help centre states it without hedging. The 1.9 percent is added on top of the gift and paid by the giver. Asked directly whether a church can absorb the fee instead, Nucleus answers no - the platform is not built in a way that would allow it. That decision separates Nucleus from every competitor in its own table, and it is what to settle with your treasurer first.
✓ The good
- Card gifts at 1.9 percent with no fixed fee - Nucleus's own rate table puts Planning Center at 2.15 percent plus 30 cents and Subsplash, Tithe.ly, Pushpay, Givelify and Breeze at 3.0 percent plus 42 cents, and it says it adds no percentage of its own.
- Bank transfers at a flat 25 cents - a $5,000 ACH gift costs a quarter to move, where a 3.0 percent platform would take $150. Nucleus claims 71 percent of gifts on its platform come from bank accounts against about 30 percent elsewhere.
- One price, unlimited seats, unlimited pages - the $99 plan includes unlimited admin accounts, unlimited pages, hosting, SSL, a custom domain and a CSS editor, with no per-seat or per-page metering in the published pricing.
- The Launcher is free forever and works off-platform - the help centre describes it as a free plugin, no credit card required, that installs on virtually any modern website builder, so a church staying on WordPress or Squarespace can still run the next-steps menu.
- Genuinely granular permissions - Forbes Advisor rated Nucleus 4.2 out of 5 and named it Best for Access Controls among nine church website builders, citing access limits that pinpoint down to specific pages.
- No contract, no setup fee, 15-day trial - the pricing page prints Cancel Anytime, No Contracts, No Hidden Fees, and no implementation, onboarding or design fee appears anywhere on it.
- Bootstrapped and independently owned since 2017 - no investors, private equity backing or shareholders, which is worth something in a category where fee schedules change hands with the cap table.
✗ Watch out
- Your church cannot absorb the processing fee - the help centre article Can We Pay The Transaction Fees Instead Of Donors answers no: the platform is not set up in a way that would allow it. If your policy is that giving must cost the giver nothing, Nucleus cannot implement it at any price.
- No data import - Nucleus states that importing data is not currently supported, so an existing membership roll or giver history has to be re-entered, left behind, or kept in the old system. That is the single largest switching cost here and it points the wrong way.
- You do not own the site - the terms state that all rights, title and interest in and to the Website, the Service and their contents, including our website templates, remain the exclusive property of Nucleus. Your church keeps the rights to data it stores; nothing in the terms gives you the site.
- No obligation to retain your data - the terms say Nucleus has no obligation to retain data relating to any account or donation campaign and reserves the right to delete data or terminate accounts at any time. Keep your own CSV exports on a schedule.
- Fees are non-refundable and renewal is automatic - the subscription renews on its own and Nucleus may increase fees at the end of the current term.
- It is not a church management system - Nucleus itself suggests medium-to-large churches run a two-system setup with an existing ChMS for more robust people features, and editing is a dashboard rather than a drag-and-drop canvas.
Best for
- Churches with a volunteer web team and no developer
- Congregations that can move giving onto bank transfers
- Planning Center or ChMS users wanting a better public front end
- Small and mid-size churches replacing a stale WordPress install
Avoid if
- Your policy is to absorb every donor processing fee
- You must import an existing people or giving database
- You need exportable site files or self-hosting
- You want one vendor for check-in, groups and accounting
What Nucleus is
Nucleus is a closed, hosted platform for a church's public website plus the actions people take on it. The website side covers pages, a sermon archive with transcripts and a podcast RSS feed, calendar display, banners, and Info Cards for condensing text-heavy pages. The action side covers Flows, which are multi-step forms for registrations and payments; a private prayer pipeline with a prayer wall; and the Launcher, a persistent menu in the corner of every page.
Everything else is a paid add-on at $49 a month each. Giving handles online donations. Messages handles bulk congregational email campaigns and follow-up sequences. Media is a stock library of footage, graphics and templates. Absent from the lineup is anything resembling church management: no check-in, no attendance, no accounting, no groups engine. Nucleus is the storefront, not the back office, and it says so.
The fee schedule is the product
Strip away the templates and Nucleus is an argument about money. Its giving page publishes a table of its competitors' rates - 3.0 percent plus 42 cents for Subsplash, Tithe.ly, Pushpay, Givelify and Breeze, 2.99 percent plus 30 cents for EasyTithe, 2.15 percent plus 30 cents for Planning Center - and puts itself at 1.9 percent on cards and 25 cents flat on bank transfers, with the claim that it adds no percentage of its own. On $250,000 of card gifts a year, 3.0 percent is $7,500 and 1.9 percent is $4,750 - a $2,750 gap, against $588 a year for the Giving add-on.
The catch is who banks that difference. Nucleus puts the fee on the giver by default and, per its own help centre, cannot be configured to let the church pay instead. So the saving lands with donors, not the budget line, unless the platform you are leaving also passed fees to donors. Nucleus reports 71 percent of gifts on its platform come from bank accounts, roughly double the norm.
Flows and the Launcher
Flows are Nucleus's forms, built as sequential steps rather than one long page - a registration asks for a name, then an email, then a payment, one question at a time. Payments inside a Flow mean camp fees run on the same rails as giving. The Launcher is the delivery mechanism: a fixed button in the corner of every page that opens a short list of next steps, brandable, and usable as a link-in-bio.
The Launcher is also the most interesting thing Nucleus gives away. It is free with no credit card, and the help centre says it installs on virtually any modern website builder - so a church with no intention of leaving WordPress can still use it. That makes it a low-risk way to evaluate the company before committing $99 a month.
Giving at 1.9 percent, donor-paid
Giving is $49 a month or $588 a year with no volume minimum, so a church taking $2,000 a month and one taking $200,000 pay the same platform fee. Included: GivingFlow as the donation form, recurring gifts, admin transaction tools, reporting, annual statements and receipts, custom branding, permissions and unlimited users. Card gifts deposit the next business day; bank transfers settle more slowly, and cash can be recorded manually so statements are complete.
The fee model is rigid. The 1.9 percent on cards and 25 cents on bank transfers are presented to the giver as an amount added on top of the gift, so the church receives the full donation. Nucleus's help centre states flatly that churches cannot pay the fees instead, with no exceptions or workarounds. Ask your treasurer how they feel about that sentence before you buy.
Sermons, prayer and page-level permissions
The sermon module organises messages with transcripts and Scripture references, supports private playlists and generates a podcast RSS feed, which covers both jobs a church site has with audio: make last Sunday findable and get it into podcast apps. The prayer module keeps requests private by default, with a prayer wall for what the church chooses to publish.
Permissions are where Nucleus outperforms its price. Admin accounts are unlimited and access can be scoped to specific pages - the difference between letting a volunteer edit the events page and letting them see giving records. Forbes Advisor rated Nucleus 4.2 out of 5 and named it Best for Access Controls among nine church website builders.
Pricing
The Launcher
Free
A standalone free plugin, described in the help centre as free with no credit card required, that drops a next-steps menu into the corner of any website - giving links, prayer requests, volunteer signups - and installs on virtually any modern website builder. It is a real free product rather than a trial, and the only part of Nucleus you can run without moving hosting.
Nucleus
$99/month or $1,188/year
The website platform, single tier. Includes hosting, SSL, custom domain, unlimited pages, unlimited users, custom CSS, Sermons, Flows, Prayer, Banners, Info Cards, done-for-you templates, advanced permissions and support. $99 x 12 is $1,188, so annual billing buys no discount - it only locks the price against the increase the terms permit at renewal.
Nucleus plus Giving
$49/month added
Giving is a separate product at $49/month or $588/year, with GivingFlow, recurring gifts, reporting, annual statements, unlimited users and no volume minimum. Card gifts settle the next business day; bank transfers take longer. Adding one product unlocks a stated 10 percent discount, which on a $148 combined list price is $133.20/month if the discount applies to the whole bill as the page words it.
All four products
$172.20/month by Nucleus arithmetic
Messages and Media are the other two add-ons at $49/month each. The pricing page offers 10 percent off for every product added, up to 30 percent off the entire subscription. List price for all four is $99 + $49 + $49 + $49 = $246/month; 30 percent off is $172.20/month, or $2,066.40 a year. Nucleus does not print that combined figure, so treat it as arithmetic on published numbers rather than a quoted price.
The published structure is unusually simple: $99/month or $1,188/year for the website platform, and $49/month for each of Giving, Messages and Media. No setup fee, no design fee, no contract, no minimum term - the pricing page prints Cancel Anytime, No Contracts, No Hidden Fees - and a 15-day trial. There is one website tier, so no feature is held back for an enterprise plan.
Annual billing is worth a second look because it is not a discount. $99 x 12 is $1,188 exactly, and Giving at $49 x 12 is $588 exactly. Paying a year up front buys nothing except protection from the fee increase the terms permit at renewal, and the terms say all Service Fees are non-refundable. Monthly is the better default unless you want the price frozen.
The add-on discount is stated but not totalled. The page promises 10 percent off for every product added, up to 30 percent off the entire subscription. Taking that literally: website plus Giving is $148 list, less 10 percent, $133.20/month. All four products are $246 list, less 30 percent, $172.20/month or $2,066.40 a year. Nucleus does not publish those combined figures, so treat them as arithmetic on its numbers and confirm them at checkout.
Third parties do not agree with the vendor on the entry price. Forbes Advisor's church website builder roundup lists Nucleus as starting at $49/month, while Nucleus's own pricing page prints $99/month for the platform and $49/month only for add-ons. The likely explanation is a repriced plan and a roundup not refreshed, but price it from nucleus.church, not from a review.
Transaction costs sit outside the subscription and are charged to the giver, not the church. Nucleus's table notes that the competitor figures it cites are card rates only and do not reflect discounts or incentives those providers may offer - a fair caveat, and worth applying to any quote you collect.
Where Nucleus falls behind
No data import. Nucleus states in its own help centre that importing data is not currently supported. Data flows out by CSV export and into a church management system by one-way push, but an existing membership roll or ten years of giving history cannot be brought in. Any church with records worth keeping faces manual re-entry or a permanent two-system arrangement - which Nucleus recommends for medium-to-large churches anyway.
No ownership of the site you paid for. The terms are explicit that all rights, title and interest in and to the Website, the Service and their contents, including our website templates, remain the exclusive property of Nucleus, and that your church retains rights only to the data it stores. There is no documented export of pages, templates or design, and no self-hosting option. If the price doubles or the company changes hands, what you leave with is a pile of CSVs and your domain name. That is the standard bargain with any hosted builder, but it is the opposite of a WordPress install you can pack up and move.
No church-paid fees, no exceptions. Nucleus will not let a church absorb the processing cost on a giver's behalf, and devotes a help article to saying so. Congregations whose leadership has decided giving must be free at the point of use are not addressable, and the 1.9 percent advantage never reaches the general fund.
Thin integration surface and no visual editor. The published integration story is a one-way push into a church management system, with the vendor saying it looks forward to introducing other push-type integrations - future tense. Editing is a dashboard rather than drag-and-drop, which Forbes lists as a drawback, and a church wanting an unusual design will hit the template system before it hits the CSS editor.
Nucleus vs. Subsplash vs. WordPress plus a giving plugin
Against Subsplash and Tithe.ly the argument is scope and rate. Both bundle a website into a larger suite - app, media, giving, messaging - and Nucleus's own table puts both at 3.0 percent plus 42 cents on cards against its 1.9 percent with no fixed fee. If you want a branded mobile app, streaming and church management from one vendor, Nucleus does not compete: its published lineup has no church app, and it openly recommends running a ChMS beside it. If what you need is a website and giving, Nucleus is narrower at a much lower cost per gift.
Against Planning Center the two are complements, not rivals. Planning Center is the back office - people, services, check-in, groups - with giving listed at 2.15 percent plus 30 cents; Nucleus is the front of house and pushes form, prayer and giving submissions into a ChMS one way. Planning Center for records and Nucleus for the public site is close to the two-system setup Nucleus itself proposes for medium and large churches.
Against WordPress with a giving plugin, the trade is control for maintenance. WordPress gives you files you own, design freedom and a giving stack you choose - plus plugin updates, hosting, patching and a volunteer who eventually stops volunteering. Nucleus gives you hosting, SSL, sermons, forms and giving with nothing to patch, and a card rate below every figure in its own table. What it never gives you is the export button. At $1,188 a year, the question is whether five years of maintaining nothing is worth $5,940 and the loss of portability.
The bottom line
Nucleus is unusually clear about what it charges and unusually rigid about who pays it. The platform is $99 a month with no tiers, no contract and no setup fee; Giving is $49 a month on top at 1.9 percent on cards and a flat 25 cents on bank transfers, and Nucleus takes none of that. By its own published comparison that is materially cheaper per gift than Subsplash or Tithe.ly, and the free Launcher lets you test the company without moving your hosting. But the fee lands on the giver and cannot be moved to the church, existing data cannot be imported, and the terms make Nucleus the owner of the site with no obligation to retain your data. Churches that can live with donor-paid fees and a hosted, non-portable site will find little to argue with at the price. Churches that cannot should price Planning Center Giving or a self-hosted stack - and should ask every vendor the question Nucleus answers plainly and most answer slowly: what exactly do I leave with?
Alternatives to Nucleus
SubsplashBundles website, branded app, streaming, media and giving into one suite. Nucleus's rate table puts Subsplash at 3.0 percent plus 42 cents on cards. Pick it if you need the app; expect a higher cost per gift.
Tithe.lyGiving-first platform that grew into apps, websites and church management. Broader in scope than Nucleus, but listed at 3.0 percent plus 42 cents in Nucleus's own rate comparison.
Planning CenterThe back office Nucleus does not try to be: people, services, check-in, groups and registrations, with giving listed at 2.15 percent plus 30 cents. Pairs with Nucleus rather than replacing it.
The Church CoDirect competitor on church websites and apps, with more bundled into the base plan and less emphasis on conversion tooling. Worth a side-by-side trial if the Launcher and Flows are not what is selling you.Ministry DesignsDone-for-you church sites where a designer builds and manages it for you - Forbes Advisor lists it at $97 to $247 a month, above Nucleus. Pick it if nobody on staff wants to touch a dashboard.Frequently asked questions
What does Nucleus actually cost?
$99 a month or $1,188 a year for the website platform, one tier with no cheaper or more expensive version. Giving, Messages and Media are $49 a month each. There is no setup fee, no contract and no minimum term - the pricing page prints Cancel Anytime, No Contracts, No Hidden Fees - and a 15-day trial. $99 x 12 is $1,188 exactly, so annual billing is not a discount; it only fixes the price against the increase the terms permit at renewal.
What are the giving fees, and who pays them?
Card and debit gifts cost 1.9 percent with no fixed per-transaction fee; bank transfers cost a flat 25 cents regardless of gift size. Nucleus says it adds no percentage of its own, and its comparison table puts Subsplash, Tithe.ly, Pushpay, Givelify and Breeze at 3.0 percent plus 42 cents and Planning Center at 2.15 percent plus 30 cents. The fee is added on top of the gift and paid by the giver, so the church receives the full donation.
Can our church absorb the processing fees instead of our donors?
No. Nucleus devotes a help centre article to the question and answers it flatly: the platform is not set up in a way that would allow churches to pay the fees, and there are no exceptions or workarounds. Confirm that with your treasurer before signing up - it is the one place Nucleus offers no configuration at all.
Do we own our website, and can we take it with us if we leave?
You own your data, not the site. The terms state that all rights, title and interest in and to the Website, the Service and their contents, including our website templates, remain the exclusive property of Nucleus, and separately that customers retain the rights to the data they store. You can export people, giving and form submission records as CSV and you keep your domain, but there is no documented way to export pages, templates or design, and no self-hosting option. The terms also say Nucleus has no obligation to retain account data, so keep your own exports.
Can Nucleus replace our church management system?
Not for most churches, and Nucleus does not claim it can. Its help centre suggests medium-to-large churches run a two-system setup using their existing ChMS for more robust people features, and states that importing data is not currently supported, so existing membership or giving history cannot be brought across. Check-in, attendance, groups and accounting are not in the published product lineup.
Is there a free version?
The Launcher is free - the help centre describes it as a free plugin with no credit card required that installs on virtually any modern website builder, so a church on WordPress or Squarespace can use the next-steps menu without buying the platform. The website builder itself has no free tier, only the 15-day trial.
Who builds Nucleus and how long have they been around?
Nucleus, LLC, founded in 2017 by Brady Shearer, who also created Pro Church Tools. The company says it works out of Niagara Falls, Ontario and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is bootstrapped with no investors, private equity or shareholders, and that more than 4,000 churches use its products. Support runs through a help centre, email at hello@nucleus.church and live classes over Zoom, not a named account manager.
Sources & further reading
- Nucleus - pricing ↗
- Nucleus - Giving, with vendor rate comparison table ↗
- Nucleus - legal and terms of service ↗
- Nucleus - about the company ↗
- Nucleus Help Centre - What is the Launcher ↗
- Nucleus Help Centre - Can we pay the transaction fees instead of donors? ↗
- Nucleus Help Centre - Can Nucleus replace my current ChMS? ↗
- Forbes Advisor - Best Church Website Builders ↗
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