For churches · For small churches
Grounded in 1,734 small-church sites · 2026 study
A church of 60 does not need what a church of 6,000 has. It needs the four things a first-time visitor is looking for, on a phone, in under ten seconds. Here is what that takes, what it costs, and who should build it.
What the data says
Our 2026 study of 1,734 small-church websites (the full dataset is at /research) found that 83.9% had findable service times, 64.2% had a working online giving link, and 72.8% had been updated within the year. The median visible monthly spend on the website was $16.
Those are the gaps a first-time guest actually hits. Nobody leaves because a small church lacks a sermon podcast. They leave because they could not find when to show up.
The four things
Service times and the address in the first screen on a phone. Not in a PDF, not on a "Visit" page two taps away.
A short what-to-expect section: how long the service runs, what people wear, where kids go, where to park. Plain sentences beat a video tour.
A Plan Your Visit button that goes to a page with a name, a face, and a way to say "I'm coming Sunday."
The site that goes stale is the one nobody owns. A small church needs a site someone will actually update, or a plan where updates are handled for them.
What it costs
Three honest tiers. A general builder like Squarespace or Wix starts around $16 to $17 a month billed annually (vendor pricing pages, checked July 16, 2026), with no church features and a volunteer doing the work. Church-specific builders run roughly $19 to $99 a month plus setup fees on some (published June to July 2026, see the builders comparison). A custom agency build is usually a few thousand dollars up front plus hosting.
In the study, the sites paying over $20 a month (101 sites) were current within the year 88.1% of the time, against 72.9% for sites at $12 a month or less (144 sites). Correlation, not causation, but the pattern is consistent: the cheapest sticker is often the site nobody maintains.
Church Digital sits in the middle on purpose: $120 a month flat, no setup fee, no contract, and the founding rate makes the first 6 months $60 a month. Custom design, hosting, and every update handled, so a church with no web volunteer still has a current site.
Build or hire
Yes, if someone on the team will own it and keep it current, a clean template is enough, and the budget is genuinely zero. That describes plenty of healthy small churches, and a builder is the right call for them.
No, if the last DIY attempt has been half-finished for a year, the person who built the current site has moved on, or nobody wants to be the website person. That is not a character flaw. It is a staffing reality, and a flat monthly fee is cheaper than a burned-out volunteer.
Common questions
Not sure where yours stands
We record a free five-minute walkthrough of your homepage as a first-time visitor sees it: service times, what to expect, mobile, the giving link. No pitch, no call required.
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