- Starting price
- $97/month
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- Web · Managed service
- Developer
- Ministry Designs
- Launched
- 2013
- Updated
- Aug 16, 2026
The verdict
Sites by Ministry Designs is a credible middle ground between a generic do-it-yourself builder and a custom agency. The team starts from preoptimized design kits, migrates a typical church site, and supplies sermons, events, groups, giving links, SEO foundations, hosting, storage, and support. A publicly indexed official pricing surface lists the Site plan at $97 monthly and Site Management at $247 monthly, although the active pricing route should be confirmed by quote. The practical question is portability: before signing, put domain control, content ownership, exports, integrations, accessibility, backups, cancellation, and post-cancellation handoff in writing.
Try Sites by Ministry Designs ↗Opens ministrydesigns.com
Sites is Ministry Designs’ church website platform, previously promoted under the Omega name. Rather than handing a volunteer a blank canvas, the company offers design kits, reusable blocks, and ministry-specific managers for sermons, events, small groups, next steps, and online giving. The same ecosystem includes a large church-graphics library and visitor-focused landing-page tools.
The launch process is unusually assisted for a builder. A church chooses a kit and submits its brand and existing content; Ministry Designs says its team will rebuild up to twenty pages in roughly three weeks, keep the new site in a development environment for approval, and help with the final domain cutover. That service can remove the hardest part of switching platforms.
Publicly indexed official pricing lists a $97-per-month Site plan and a $247-per-month Site Management plan. The first includes the build, unlimited pages and storage, ministry modules, on-page SEO, support, and hosting. The managed tier adds ongoing content and design work plus search and image optimization. Because the current pricing route can be gated and managed service terms may differ, obtain a dated proposal rather than relying on an older indexed table.
We reviewed current product, builder, management, policy, support, and faith.tools materials without commissioning a website. Claims about reach, speed, traffic, and outcomes come from the vendor. We could verify the workflow and public feature set, but not editor performance, support response time, migration accuracy, Core Web Vitals, accessibility conformance, or the quality of a finished church deployment.
✓ The good
- Assisted migration - the team rebuilds a typical existing site instead of leaving the move to volunteers
- Church-native structure - sermons, events, groups, giving, holiday pages, and next steps are first-class use cases
- Low technical burden - kits and block editing are more approachable than maintaining a custom stack
- Operational support - hosting, SSL, backups, bandwidth, storage, domain use, and support are presented as included
- Managed option - churches can delegate recurring content and design updates instead of hiring in-house
- Broader media ecosystem - a substantial graphics library can support seasonal and weekly communications
- No builder contract claim - the core site-builder page says churches are not tied to a long-term agreement
✗ Watch out
- Price-page ambiguity - the live public pricing experience does not make every current term easy to verify
- Template foundation - design kits trade some originality and information-architecture freedom for speed
- Platform dependency - sermons, groups, events, forms, and layouts may not export cleanly to another host
- Managed commitment - the managed service has been described with a one-year commitment, unlike the builder
- Evidence is vendor-led - independent performance, support, uptime, and accessibility evidence is limited
- SEO is not automatic - built-in fields and layouts do not replace local listings, content quality, links, and measurement
- Governance still matters - giving, forms, analytics, video, and ChMS connections introduce separate privacy obligations
Best for
- Small and midsize churches that need a modern website but lack a dedicated web professional
- Teams moving from an outdated site and valuing assisted migration more than unrestricted custom development
- Churches wanting sermons, events, groups, giving, and visitor next steps in one supported website workflow
- Ministries prepared to document domain ownership, exports, accessibility, analytics, and cancellation before launch
Avoid if
- You need a fully bespoke application, unusual integrations, advanced multilingual architecture, or code ownership
- The church cannot verify the current fee, minimum term, annual increase, migration scope, and exit process in writing
- Your team requires complete database and theme portability to independent WordPress, Webflow, or custom hosting
- A vendor template is expected to solve weak messaging, local SEO, stale content, or unclear newcomer pathways by itself
What Sites by Ministry Designs is
Sites is a hosted church website builder plus onboarding service. It is not a full church-management database, payment processor, donor system, accessibility certification, local-SEO agency, or guarantee that visitors will attend. Connected giving and ChMS products keep their own fees, policies, and data responsibilities.
The optional management plan changes the operating model from software-and-support to outsourced website work. That can be valuable, but the proposal should define turnaround, request limits, approval authority, emergency changes, SEO deliverables, annual renewal, and what the church receives when service ends.
Why assisted migration matters more than another drag-and-drop editor
Most church website projects fail at inventory, rewriting, media cleanup, redirects, and launch ownership—not at choosing a font. Ministry Designs reduces that friction by starting with a structured kit and doing a defined initial build from the church’s existing content.
The advantage lasts only if the launch is governed. Assign one church owner, approve the sitemap and copy, preserve the old URL map, test forms and giving, validate mobile and accessibility behavior, and keep domain and analytics access in church-controlled accounts.
Design kits and block editing: fast, structured, and intentionally bounded
Churches choose a preoptimized design kit and customize pages through reusable blocks. Responsive hosting, an approval environment, domain use, SSL, storage, and backups are presented as part of the service.
Test representative pages before choosing a kit: homepage, beliefs, staff, plan-a-visit, campus, event, sermon series, giving, and a long form. Check keyboard navigation, headings, contrast, captions, form labels, mobile tap targets, image compression, and page speed.
Sermons, events, groups, and next steps: useful church structure
Dedicated managers organize recurring church content that generic builders often treat as disconnected blog posts. Group discovery, event information, sermon media, giving links, holiday pages, and visitor actions can share a consistent design.
Ask where each record lives and how it exports. A church should be able to preserve sermon titles, dates, speakers, series, media URLs, event details, group contacts, and form submissions without manually copying years of ministry history.
Managed website service: capacity without another staff position
The managed tier assigns ongoing content, design, image, and search work to the vendor. It may fit a church whose staff can approve changes but cannot reliably execute them each week.
Define service levels before depending on it. Document normal and urgent turnaround, monthly request volume, revision limits, publishing approval, holiday coverage, accessibility remediation, reporting, account ownership, and the transition plan if the relationship ends.
Pricing
Site
$97/month listed
Publicly indexed official pricing includes a twenty-page build, unlimited pages and storage, hosting, ministry modules, on-page SEO, and support.
Site Management
$247/month listed
Adds ongoing content updates, new page design, search-console management, and image optimization; confirm the minimum term.
Church plant support
Ask about scholarship
Ministry Designs advertises special help for qualifying church plants; eligibility is not universal.
Integrations and extras
Confirm by quote
Ask which giving, ChMS, email, analytics, domain, migration, accessibility, and managed-work requests are included.
A publicly indexed Ministry Designs pricing page lists the Site plan at $97 per month and describes a free twenty-page build with the core platform.
The Site Management plan is listed at $247 per month and adds recurring content, design, search-console, and image work. Confirm whether its one-year commitment and scope still apply.
The builder advertises no long-term contract, but that statement should not be assumed to govern managed service, add-ons, or a promotional proposal.
Request the complete first-year and three-year cost, taxes, price-rise rules, domain and email charges, premium integrations, over-scope migration, cancellation date, export assistance, and any reactivation fee.
Where Sites by Ministry Designs falls behind
Publish one easily accessible current price table with billing cadence, minimum term, annual increases, cancellation, refunds, migration limits, and managed-service scope.
Provide a detailed portability guide for pages, media, sermons, events, groups, redirects, forms, analytics, domain records, and design assets.
Publish measurable accessibility targets, testing practice, remediation responsibility, and a sample conformance statement rather than treating responsiveness as accessibility.
Separate objective performance evidence from traffic and attendance marketing claims, including current Core Web Vitals and uptime reporting.
Name major subprocessors and clarify retention, breach notice, data-location, deletion, and administrator controls for form and integration data.
Sites by Ministry Designs vs. SolaSites vs. a custom agency
Sites offers the strongest guided ecosystem of the three: a kit-based builder, assisted launch, church modules, graphics, and an optional content team. SolaSites is a simpler WordPress-based managed option with a lower published $500 setup and $50 monthly fee.
A custom agency can design around a complex multisite, multilingual, accessibility, campaign, or integration brief and may provide cleaner ownership terms, but it costs more and still requires ongoing maintenance. A generic builder costs less but moves information architecture, migration, and quality assurance back to volunteers.
Choose based on operating capacity, not the homepage demo. Compare the same sitemap, migration inventory, integrations, accessibility acceptance tests, service levels, three-year cost, and exit package across every proposal.
The bottom line
Sites by Ministry Designs is a persuasive option for churches that want a capable public website without becoming web developers. Assisted migration and church-native content structure are meaningful advantages, and the managed plan can solve a real staffing gap. The weak point is purchase clarity: use the current quote to lock down price, term, scope, accessibility, domain and data ownership, exports, and cancellation. If those answers are strong and the chosen kit passes a real content and accessibility test, Sites can be a dependable church website home.
Alternatives to Sites by Ministry Designs
SolaSitesLower-cost managed WordPress church websites with transparent setup and monthly pricing.
Sunday BestA higher-budget Webflow agency for custom church strategy, design, and development.ChurchSpringChurch website templates and support for teams that want another hosted platform.SquarespaceA polished general-purpose builder with broad design control but no church-specific migration team.WordPress agencyPotentially greater ownership and extensibility when the church can govern hosting and maintenance.Frequently asked questions
How much does Sites by Ministry Designs cost?
A publicly indexed official table lists Site at $97 monthly and Site Management at $247 monthly. Request a current dated quote because the active price route and contract terms can change.
Does Ministry Designs build the site?
The company says it will build a typical new site from up to twenty pages of existing content, usually within about three weeks, then help launch it.
Is there a long-term contract?
The builder page says the core website builder has no long-term contract. Confirm managed-service commitments, notice windows, renewals, and cancellation separately.
Can it connect to online giving and church software?
It advertises major giving and ChMS integrations. Verify the exact vendor, data flow, fees, authentication, support boundary, and export behavior your church needs.
Who owns the domain and website content?
The church should control its registrar, DNS, analytics, search console, media originals, and copy. Obtain written export and handoff terms for platform-managed data and designs.
Is the site automatically good for SEO?
No. Technical fields and preoptimized layouts help, but local visibility also depends on useful content, accurate listings, performance, links, structured data, redirects, and ongoing measurement.
Is Sites the same as Church Visuals by Ministry Designs?
No. Sites is the hosted website product; Church Visuals is the related media library. They share a company and ecosystem but are distinct tools.
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.