I often get asked 2 questions ever since I’ve stopped taking new clients. One is, “can you refer me to someone who does what you do?” Because I only know my business and I don’t know the business practices of other companies and don’t want to accidentally recommend someone who might end up not being a good company, I really can’t answer this question for anyone. I just think what you want to look for is that companies client portfolio. If you cannot easily find it on their site, skip them. Any company that makes great looking websites would want to show them off. If you can’t find them, chances are they are hiding them.

Once you have found someone who can make you a nice looking church website, THEN its time to look at and play around with their Content Management System.

So here are some quick tips on finding a good church website company:

• Beware of companies that don’t offer you unlimited pages. It costs them nothing to add a new page to a site unless you always need them to add a new page for you (which if you need them to do it for you, you should avoid them). If you as the church are in charge of adding new pages (as opposed to the website company) and they only let you have a certain amount, such as a 20 page limit, they are ripping you off. I would only go with a company who can offer you unlimited pages.
• Make sure if you are paying over $1000 for a website, that it is CUSTOM built and not a knockoff of a template. No company can build customized church websites that look professional under $1000 (unless they are just starting out and trying to build up a client base like I did for a while). Anything under that price is almost always a template. A template they are using for every other site they build.
• Make sure the company clearly states on their website what price structure they have. If you have to call to get a price quote, be prepared to pay alot. The avg. cost for a nice church website varies so much, so really do your research.
• Don’t be so concerned about web space and bandwidth unless you are doing audio or video. I find that most churches not doing audio or video on avg. use about 50-100mb of web space at most. Churches that are doing audio use about 200-400mb. Churches doing video… well then you’ll start needing some massive amounts of web space and bandwidth. Do NOT fall for ‘unlimited bandwidth’ ploys as NO company can offer that.
• Don’t be sucked in by ‘unlimited email accounts’ (even though I offer the same thing! haha). Only your staff needs them so at most, maybe you’d need 40? Make sure though you can use all of your web space for email storage though, as some companies limit the amount of web mail storage to a certain quota, like 10mb. If I offer a client 500mb of web space, then the space they aren’t using for the site they can use for email storage. Not all companies allow that however.
• Test the sites in their portfolio for speed. Make sure the sites load fast. The LAST thing you want is a site that your church members find slow to load. They just won’t come back that often if they have a frustrating experience.
• Test the company’s email response time and make SURE they have a phone number.
• If you are wanting newsletters, find out how many you are allowed to send out per batch. All web hosts limit the amount you can send out per hour… usually around 200 is what most offer.
• In viewing church sites in a company’s portfolio, see how easy they are to navigate. All church website companies should advise a church on making the website as clear and easy to navigate as possible. I realize SOME churches don’t listen, so it’s not completely the web companies fault for each individual site… however if you notice a pattern that most of their sites are very busy on the front and confusing to navigate, then it’s probably an indication the company isn’t giving any advice to the church on what is best for them.

You get what you pay for. If you pay no design and setup fee (or one that is somewhere under $200), 99.999% of the time you are going to get a templated design that looks cheap, and that is the last image you want to give off for your church. So do not be afraid to spend some money on a nice looking site. You only have 1 second to make that first impression before the visitor can just click on another church site to go to.