- Starting price
- $60/month for churches up to 249 users
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- Web · iPhone · iPad · Android · Apple-silicon Mac
- Developer
- Concierge Contacts Pty Ltd
- Launched
- 2024
- Updated
- Aug 9, 2026
The verdict
Pastor Notes App has a coherent ministry workflow: leaders publish outlines, Scripture and announcements; attendees join by church code or QR in Bible Notes, take timestamped notes and respond to polls, prayer prompts and Q&A. The idea is stronger than the commercial documentation. Annual “savings” do not match displayed monthly rates, one tier contains the wrong capacity, refund clauses conflict, placeholder text remains in the terms, and Apple says the app collects no data despite account and interaction features. Require a corrected written quote and data agreement before purchase.
Try Pastor Notes App ↗Opens pastornotesapp.com
Pastor Notes App is the leader side of a paired church-engagement system from Australian company Concierge Contacts Pty Ltd. A pastor or ministry leader creates sermon outlines, inserts Scripture, publishes messages and documents, manages a calendar and invites live participation. Congregants install a separate free app called Bible Notes, connect through the church’s QR code or short code, receive the shared material, take their own notes and respond to polls, prayer and praise prompts, questions and a “Follow Jesus” response. The product attempts to bridge sermon preparation, in-service interaction and follow-up without asking every attendee to buy a subscription.
Bible Notes contributes the most distinctive attendee features. Auto-Verse expands a typed Bible reference inside a note. Audio recording can capture the sermon while a note is timestamped to the corresponding moment, making review easier. Preacher names, folders and tags organize a personal archive. The leader app can update content live, support multiple pastors and distribute files. This is more structured than emailing a PDF and less operationally broad than a full church-management system handling households, giving, child check-in, volunteer scheduling and accounting.
The published US-facing plan page currently shows three church sizes: one to 249 users at $60 per month, 250 to 749 at $100, and 750-plus at $300. Annual cards show $720, $1,200 and $3,200. The first two annual amounts equal twelve displayed monthly payments exactly, yet both claim a $120 saving. The largest actually saves $400 against $3,600, not the claimed $120, and its description mistakenly says it gives “up to 250 users” inside the 750-plus tier. The monthly $60 card also displays a “50% OFF” label without a visible undiscounted price or duration. These are not minor cosmetic issues when a church is approving a recurring budget.
Legal and privacy pages add more uncertainty. The terms mention a 14-day trial, a 14-day money-back guarantee, a general no-refund rule, a requirement to give 30 days’ cancellation notice, and placeholder text such as “[support email]” and unspecified turnaround days. The website privacy policy says it applies to information collected through the website and lists account/contact and marketing data, but does not explain sermon audio, prayer requests, polls, Q&A, response decisions or congregant notes. Apple’s developer label says Data Not Collected, a claim that is difficult to reconcile with even the app’s stated need for accounts and live church data. We did not open an organization, submit protected information, buy a plan or audit the system.
✓ The good
- Clear two-sided workflow - leaders and congregants receive purpose-built apps rather than the same overloaded interface
- Free attendee access - the church subscription includes the Bible Notes companion without per-person checkout
- Auto-Verse convenience - typing a reference can place the biblical text into a listener’s notes
- Timestamped sermon notes - audio recording and linked notes make later review more practical
- Live engagement - polls, prayer and praise, Q&A and response prompts can connect listening with action
- Simple church joining - QR code or church code avoids a complicated directory search
- Leader publishing - outlines, Scripture, messages, calendars and documents can update in one church channel
- Multiple-pastor support - the product is not limited to a single weekly preacher account
✗ Watch out
- Pricing math is wrong - two annual tiers save nothing at the displayed monthly rate and the third saves $400, while all claim $120
- Capacity copy is contradictory - the 750-plus annual card says it provides up to 250 users
- Terms contain conflicting remedies - no-refund, post-trial nonrefundable and 14-day money-back clauses coexist
- Legal template is unfinished - placeholder support email and response-time fields remain visible
- Privacy scope misses core app data - prayers, audio, polls, Q&A, sermons and congregant content are not addressed
- Apple’s Data Not Collected claim lacks credibility without explanation - accounts and shared church interactions necessarily require handling somewhere
- Narrower than a church-management suite - no published giving, groups, check-in, volunteer scheduling or household database
- Minimal review evidence - one US Apple rating cannot establish reliability for hundreds of congregants
Best for
- Churches wanting sermon-note distribution and in-service response more than full administration
- Congregations willing to standardize on the separate Bible Notes attendee app
- Pastors who publish structured outlines, Scripture, files and weekly messages
- Listeners who want time-linked audio and notes for later review
- Organizations that can obtain corrected pricing and privacy terms before launch
Avoid if
- You need an all-in-one church database, giving, check-in and volunteer platform
- Your legal or safeguarding review requires a complete app-specific data map
- You cannot reconcile annual price, capacity, renewal and cancellation in writing
- Your sermons or prayer workflows contain confidential pastoral information
- You need a mature integration catalog, public API or formal service-level commitment
What Pastor Notes App is
Pastor Notes is a publishing and participation layer centered on a weekly message. Leaders prepare content in the Pastor Notes side; attendees use Bible Notes. A church code binds the two. The shared experience can include sermon outlines, Scripture, announcements, calendars, documents, live polls, prayer and praise submissions, Q&A and response invitations. The attendee’s personal layer can record audio, timestamp typed notes, expand verse references and organize messages by preacher, folder and tag.
This architecture deliberately separates authority. A leader controls what the church publishes; an attendee controls personal notes and responses. The public documentation does not fully explain whether every response is private to staff, visible in aggregate, shareable to the congregation or retained in the listener’s account. Before launch, the church must map each interaction, assign staff roles and explain to members who will receive what they submit.
Why the two-app model is clearer for Sunday use—and harder to govern
Many church apps place sermons, giving, events, groups and administration into one navigation tree. Pastor Notes narrows the leader experience to creating and broadcasting message-related material, while Bible Notes gives listeners a personal notebook. That makes the value proposition easier to explain: scan the church code, follow today’s outline, expand references, take time-linked notes and respond. A visitor need not learn the church’s entire operations system to participate in one sermon.
Two apps create a data boundary that must be explicit. Is a prayer request personal until submitted? Can a pastor see a draft note? Does a poll identify the voter? Who hears the sermon recording, and does it include nearby conversations? Does leaving a church remove shared outlines while preserving private notes? Product pages describe the experience but not this permission model. A church should document it in onboarding, use test accounts for every role and never invite sensitive responses until staff can demonstrate exactly where they go.
Sermon publishing, Auto-Verse and live updates
Leaders can create and organize sermon notes, add Scripture references and share outlines and weekly messages with their connected congregation. Bible Notes receives that material. Its Auto-Verse feature turns a typed reference into displayed biblical text, reducing app switching and transcription. The vendor says updates can occur live, allowing a corrected point, added reference or response prompt to appear while the message is underway. Multiple pastors and a calendar support a ministry team rather than one author.
Automation still requires textual care. A reference can be mistyped, a verse can be extracted from context and translations have different rights. Leaders should specify the edition, verify every expanded reference and provide enough surrounding passage for meaning. Do not make real-time editing so active that attendees watch the app instead of listening. Publish a stable outline before the service, reserve live changes for genuine corrections or planned participation, and keep an accessible non-phone route for people who prefer paper or cannot use the app.
Audio recording and timestamped notes: valuable review with consent obligations
Bible Notes can record sermon audio while the attendee takes notes. Each note can be tied to a moment in the recording, so tapping the note later returns to the related portion. Folders, tags and preacher names organize the archive. This can help a listener revisit a complex explanation, recover a missed citation or build a long-term personal record without manually writing time codes.
A phone microphone may capture more than the sermon: nearby conversations, a prayer response, a child’s name or copyrighted music. Churches should announce the feature, define where recording is allowed, protect pastoral and prayer moments and consider music licenses and speaker permissions. Users need to know whether audio stays on the device or uploads, how much storage it consumes, whether it syncs and how to delete it. The current privacy policy does not answer those questions, so recording should not be enabled casually in sensitive services.
Polls, prayer requests, Q&A and “Follow Jesus” responses
Pastor Notes promotes real-time polls, prayer and praise requests, questions and a direct response invitation labeled Follow Jesus. These tools can help a preacher learn where clarification is needed, let a quiet attendee ask something without approaching a microphone and create a path for follow-up after the sermon. Calendar and document distribution keep later actions near the original message rather than losing them in a general inbox.
Each response type needs its own expectation. A poll may be anonymous or identifiable; a prayer request may be public, staff-only or emergency-sensitive; Q&A may require moderation; a faith response should lead to human contact without becoming a marketing record. Never promise confidentiality the software does not establish. Name the receiving team, expected reply window and urgent-help alternative. Limit access by role, export only when necessary, and delete data according to a policy the congregation can read before submitting.
Pricing
Small church
$60/month or $720/year
Advertised for 1–249 users and currently marked “50% OFF.” Twelve monthly payments equal $720, so the displayed annual price provides no saving even though the annual card says “save $120.” Ask for the regular price, promotion end date, exact user definition and corrected annual quote.
Medium church
$100/month or $1,200/year
Advertised for 250–749 users. Again, twelve monthly payments equal the annual amount exactly, while the page claims a $120 saving. Confirm whether annual service includes a missing discount, extra month, onboarding or another benefit not reflected in the displayed numbers.
Large church
$300/month or $3,200/year
The 750-plus tier. Monthly for a year totals $3,600, so $3,200 actually saves $400, not the advertised $120. The annual card’s description incorrectly says “up to 250 users.” Require a written capacity and overage schedule before budgeting.
Bible Notes for attendees
Included free
Congregants download the companion app without buying an individual subscription and connect with a church code or QR. The church plan funds shared content and engagement. Ask whether inactive members count, whether guests consume seats and what happens to personal notes when the church stops paying.
Trial and guarantee
14 days stated in terms
The terms mention both a 14-day trial and a separate 14-day money-back guarantee, but also say post-trial payments are nonrefundable except in narrow circumstances. Because placeholder fields remain, obtain the trial start, charge date, cancellation route and refund commitment by email before supplying payment details.
Pastor Notes prices by a published user band, not by pastor count or a small base fee plus seats. The starting $60 per month is therefore meaningful for a church of 200 and steep for a church of 30. The page does not define whether “users” means registered accounts, monthly active attendees, connections or simultaneous users.
No annual saving exists at the visible small and medium monthly rates: $60 × 12 = $720 and $100 × 12 = $1,200. The large tier’s $3,200 annual rate does save $400 against $300 × 12 = $3,600. All three annual cards say $120, so the copy cannot be used as a quote.
The $60 monthly plan’s “50% OFF” badge implies an undisclosed $120 regular rate. Terms permit price changes after the current period. Ask how long the discount lasts, whether renewal jumps, how notice is delivered and whether an annual commitment locks the rate.
Terms name credit card or PayPal and refer to Stripe and PayPal processing. They also combine a trial, money-back promise, no-refund language and 30-day cancellation notice. The correct practice is a signed order form stating the charge date, term, notice deadline, refund promise, tax, capacity and post-cancellation data access.
The attendee app is free, which prevents a per-member purchase barrier. That does not make migration free. A church should pilot onboarding, train staff, create paper alternatives, decide who supports forgotten accounts and establish a plan for exporting content if the subscription ends.
Where Pastor Notes App falls behind
Pricing quality is below procurement standard. Arithmetic errors, an undefined discount, a wrong user allowance and identical “save $120” text across mathematically different tiers make it impossible to approve the webpage as a reliable quote. Fixing these should precede sales outreach.
Terms are visibly unfinished. Placeholder text for a support email and response timing remains in a customer contract. Refund sections contradict one another, and cancellation both stops renewal and appears to require 30 days’ notice. A church should not guess which clause the vendor will enforce.
Privacy scope omits the data that makes the product valuable. The policy names email, phone, password, name, username, cookies, service providers and direct marketing and says it covers the website. It does not address sermon documents, audio, timestamps, notes, polls, prayer requests, praise reports, questions, response decisions, church membership or admin audit. Nor does it publish retention, deletion, encryption, breach process, child use or subprocessors for the apps.
Apple says Data Not Collected, which appears incompatible with the product unless the label is narrowly scoped or inaccurate. A leader account necessarily submits some credential; shared sermon content has a server route; and live responses must be delivered somewhere. “Not collected” may mean certain data is not collected by the native binary under Apple’s definition, but the developer needs to explain that boundary and update the label if necessary.
Core church-management functions are missing or unadvertised. There is no public evidence of household records, contribution accounting, online giving, groups, room booking, volunteer scheduling, child check-in, background checks, workflow automation or a broad integration marketplace. Pastor Notes should be purchased as a sermon engagement layer, not assumed to replace Planning Center, Breeze, Tithely or Subsplash.
Accessibility and non-phone inclusion need documentation. Apple lists no declared accessibility features. Live polls and QR codes can exclude people without smartphones, vision, motor ability, sufficient data, an account or comfort with technology. Every participation prompt needs a verbal or paper equivalent, and the apps need tested large text, screen reader, focus order, color independence and caption behavior.
Pastor Notes App vs. Subsplash vs. Planning Center
Pastor Notes is narrower and more sermon-specific than Subsplash. Subsplash offers branded apps, media, messaging, giving, websites and broader engagement in a mature platform; costs and configuration are correspondingly larger. Pastor Notes wins when time-linked personal sermon notes, Auto-Verse and live message response are the center of the decision. Subsplash wins when the church needs a consolidated media and communications ecosystem with established organizational operations.
Planning Center is an operations suite assembled from products for people, services, groups, check-ins, giving, registrations and publishing. It is stronger for staff workflows, permissions and integrations. Its Church Center experience can distribute sermons and events but does not center the same timestamped notebook concept. A church already invested in Planning Center should compare integration and duplication carefully rather than replacing core records for one attractive sermon feature.
Sermonary and ordinary Bible-note apps address the two sides separately: a preacher prepares, a listener takes notes. Pastor Notes creates a live bridge between them. That bridge justifies a dedicated product only if enough attendees actually use it and leaders follow up responsibly. Pilot with one service, measure voluntary adoption and useful responses, and compare the annual fee with sending a clean web outline or PDF plus an existing prayer form.
The bottom line
The two-app design is smart. Pastor Notes gives leaders a message-focused console; Bible Notes gives listeners a free personal space with Auto-Verse, audio and timestamped notes; live prompts can turn a sermon from a one-way document into a starting point for questions, prayer and follow-up. But churches buy trust as well as features. The present plan page contains objective pricing errors, the terms retain placeholders and contradictions, and the privacy documents do not explain the app’s most sensitive data. Treat the product as a promising pilot, not procurement-ready infrastructure, until Concierge Contacts provides a corrected order form, app-specific privacy terms and a demonstrated permission and deletion model.
Alternatives to Pastor Notes App
SubsplashA mature branded church-app, media, messaging, giving and web ecosystem; broader than sermon notes and usually a larger commitment.
Planning CenterA modular church operations suite with strong people, services and permission workflows, but less emphasis on timestamped attendee notes.
Tithely Church AppA church app within a wider giving and management platform, useful when sermon content must sit beside events, messaging and donations.
SermonaryA preacher-centered sermon writing and delivery workspace; better for preparation, without Pastor Notes’ linked congregation app.
Bible Notes AppA simpler personal sermon-note option when a church does not need the full paid leader-to-congregation workflow.Frequently asked questions
How do Pastor Notes App and Bible Notes work together?
Church leaders create sermon outlines, Scripture, messages, polls and other content in Pastor Notes. Congregants install the free Bible Notes companion and join through a church QR code or code. They can follow shared material, expand references with Auto-Verse, take personal notes, record timestamped sermon audio and submit enabled responses. Public documentation does not fully map which responses are private, aggregated or visible, so churches should test every role before launch.
How much does Pastor Notes App cost?
The plan page shows $60 monthly for 1–249 users, $100 for 250–749 and $300 for 750-plus. Annual amounts are $720, $1,200 and $3,200. The page’s claimed annual savings are wrong: the first two save $0 at those monthly rates and the third saves $400, not $120. One annual description also lists the wrong capacity. Obtain a corrected written quote.
Is there a free trial or money-back guarantee?
The terms mention a 14-day trial and say payment is deducted afterward. They also contain a 14-day money-back guarantee, while elsewhere saying post-trial charges are not refundable except when the service cannot be provided or at discretion. Placeholder support details remain in the text. Ask the vendor to state the trial start, first charge, cancellation deadline and refund rule in the order form before entering payment.
Is Bible Notes free for every congregant?
The vendor says the companion is free to attendees and included with the church’s plan. The organization pays according to a user band. The public plans do not define a billable user, guest, inactive account or overage, and do not say what personal notes remain accessible after the church cancels. Those definitions matter especially near the 249- and 749-user thresholds.
Does Pastor Notes collect prayer requests and sermon recordings?
The product advertises prayer and praise responses, Q&A and audio-linked notes, so those data types can exist in the overall workflow. The website privacy policy does not describe them, and Apple says the leader app collects no data. That mismatch prevents a reliable public answer about storage, recipients, processors, retention or deletion. Churches should request a complete data-flow diagram and app-specific policy before inviting sensitive submissions.
Can Pastor Notes replace our church-management software?
Not on the published feature set. It focuses on sermons, Scripture, documents, calendar communication and live engagement. It does not advertise full household records, giving, contribution statements, volunteer scheduling, child check-in, groups, facilities or accounting. It may complement Planning Center, Breeze, Tithely or another ChMS, but integration and duplicate data entry should be demonstrated first.
What should a church verify during a pilot?
Test onboarding by QR and code, every staff role, note privacy, poll identification, prayer-request audience, Q&A moderation, audio storage, Auto-Verse accuracy, live updates, accessibility, member removal, exports, cancellation and data deletion. Use invented content rather than real pastoral situations. Record adoption and support burden across several services, then require corrected pricing, refund language and privacy terms before moving beyond the pilot.
Sources & further reading
More Church Management Software
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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.
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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.
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VisitorReachVisitorReach combines managed digital advertising, local texting numbers, AI-assisted replies, automated follow-up journeys, a mobile inbox, NFC connection cards, coaching, and church-database integrations—but unpublished prices and the sensitivity of seeker conversations make this a procurement decision, not a simple app download.