Building a church website or app that truly reflects your congregation's mission while reaching both new visitors and existing members presents a unique challenge. Most church leaders lack coding expertise or the budget for custom development, yet today's congregations expect more than a basic website—they want native mobile apps, push notifications, and seamless access across every device.
That's where Adalo comes in. Adalo is a no-code app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms. AI-assisted building and streamlined publishing enable launch to the Apple App Store and Google Play in days rather than months.
Why Adalo Is Perfect for Building Your Church Website and App
Adalo is a no-code app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms, published to the Apple App Store and Google Play. This makes it the perfect solution for churches that want to reach their congregation wherever they are—whether members prefer browsing on desktop, downloading from the App Store, or finding you on Google Play.
For churches, app store presence is essential. Your congregation can receive push notifications about service times, prayer requests, and community events. Members can access sermon archives, submit prayer requests, and stay connected throughout the week—all from an app that lives right on their phone alongside their other daily tools. With Adalo's AI-powered platform, you can create this complete digital presence without writing a single line of code or stretching your ministry budget.
Creating a church website involves more than just building your site. Your site's essence must illustrate your church's message and mission while reaching new members and engaging your current congregation. But in today's mobile-first world, a website alone isn't enough—your congregation expects to find you in the Apple App Store and Google Play, receive push notifications about upcoming services, and stay connected throughout the week.
Adalo, an AI-powered app builder, solves this challenge by letting you create database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps from a single codebase. One build publishes across all three platforms, making it the ideal solution for churches looking to connect with their congregation across every device without needing technical expertise or a large budget.
Before You Build: Articulate the Goals and Purpose of Your Church Website
Describing your church's unique qualities gives curious visitors a clear idea of what makes your community special, your activities, and why they should attend your services. Before diving into design and development, take time to reflect on these foundational questions:
- What is the main message my church seeks to spread?
- What lessons does my congregation learn from sermons?
- How do I encourage congregation members to put my sermon messages into action in their daily lives?
- How does my church foster a strong sense of community?
- What does my church do to make first-time attendees feel welcome?
- What is the overall feeling my congregation gets from sermons and activities?
Jot down answers to these questions. Include anything else that describes your church's overall goals and purpose. These notes will serve as a resource when you start building your site and app, ensuring every digital touchpoint reflects your ministry's heart.
Why Adalo Works for Building Church Apps
Having your church app available in the Apple App Store and Google Play means members can easily find and download it, receive push notifications about upcoming services and events, and stay engaged with your community throughout the week. Whether congregants prefer browsing on their phones, tablets, or computers, Adalo ensures a seamless experience that keeps your church's message accessible to everyone.
With over 3 million apps created on the platform, Adalo's visual builder has been described as "easy as PowerPoint." The platform processes millions of data requests daily with 99%+ uptime, meaning your congregation can rely on your app when they need it most—whether checking service times Sunday morning or submitting a prayer request at midnight.
Begin By Building an App
Before you build your site, create an appealing and interactive app with an app builder like Adalo. The platform's AI-assisted features require zero coding or technical knowledge and feature drag-and-drop functions that make app creation accessible to anyone.
Magic Start generates complete app foundations from a simple description. Tell it you need a church community app with event scheduling and prayer requests, and it creates your database structure, screens, and user flows automatically—what used to take days of planning happens in minutes. Magic Add then lets you expand functionality by simply describing what you want: "Add a sermon library where members can browse by topic or speaker."
Here are some app ideas you can build out that will foster a greater sense of community in your congregation:
- Event Management: Create an app that schedules and manages church events such as services, Bible studies, retreats, and volunteer activities. Have the app automatically break a large group of attendants into small groups or teams. Assign specific jobs for optimal coordination at volunteer activities.
- Prayer Requests: Seamlessly build an app where congregation members can submit prayer requests. Allow all members to view the requests and pray for each one. After a member prays, include a function that notifies the prayer-submitter that specific members have prayed for them.
- Your Sermon Library: Build an app serving as a library containing past sermons, where users can listen to or watch recordings of sermons. Categorize each sermon by topic, speaker, or date.
- Daily Devotional: Make an app offering daily Bible passages and reading plans. Enable users to comment and share insights on each entry. Features include letting users save favorite passages, sharing insights with other members, and tracking reading progress.
- Donation App: Build an app that allows congregations to donate money for offerings or to various charities your church supports. Adalo is connected to most payment systems, making this an easy integration.
Adalo lets you put your app in the Apple iOS and Google Play Stores directly from the platform. This app store publishing capability is crucial because getting your app into the hands of users through proper distribution channels is often the hardest part of launching any new ministry initiative—Adalo removes this barrier entirely. You can get your app to congregation members before you even finish building your website.
Choose the Right Platform and Tools to Build Your Site
Choosing a website builder is an important decision. We only included platforms that integrate drag-and-drop website building, a method that can transform people with zero tech knowledge into website-building experts. Using any of these builders will allow you to build your church site with ease and artistic freedom.
Wix
Wix is an exceptionally user-friendly website builder boasting a wide range of professionally designed templates. One particularly delightful aspect of Wix is its category of religiously themed website templates. Choosing a website template from Wix can significantly reduce the time needed to build your site without sacrificing quality.
What Makes Wix Appealing?
- Wix includes a built-in SEO optimization tool powered by the leading SEO service provider SEMrush. This tool makes optimizing blogs and other content for SEO a breeze.
- If you send an email newsletter, Wix is a great option. You can send 200 subscribers up to two monthly for free. Wix also has paid options to send to more subscribers, starting at $14/month.
- To get you acquainted with how its website builder works, Wix offers a free trial for all plans.
- Not interested in any templates? Wix also allows users to build their site from scratch, using drag-and-drop color schemes and shapes.
Pricing:
- Lite: $16/month
- Core: $27/month
- Business: $32/month
- Business Elite: $159/month
Weebly
Do you have a bare-bones budget and no need for a specialized domain? If so, Weebly may be your best choice, as they offer a free version, although your domain name will always be yourname@weebly.com. For those on a budget, Weebly provides the cheapest option.
What Makes Weebly Appealing?
- The free plan has site analytics, so you can track visitors and determine which pages are the most popular.
- Weebly is part of Square's business tool suite. So, you can easily integrate Square's payment system into your site, which makes accepting donations or selling merchandise incredibly simple.
- While Weebly offers fewer templates than other options, they are very high quality in appearance and usability.
- Weebly integrates its proprietary SEO tools, allowing you to SEO-optimize each page and blog.
Pricing:
- Personal: $13/month, or $10/month when billed annually
- Professional: $16/month, or $12/month when billed annually
- Performance: $29/month, or $26/month when billed annually
Squarespace
Squarespace offers more templates than most website builders, and they work hard to ensure their templates are the most visually appealing. Their drag-and-drop system is perhaps the most intuitive on the market, meaning you can build your site more quickly using Squarespace.
What Makes Squarespace Appealing?
- Squarespace crafted its editing interface with beginners in mind, making each step simple while implementing features that prevent creating sloppy pages.
- It provides an SEO checklist and website builder so you can incorporate SEO while simultaneously building your site.
- Squarespace offers an extensive suite of sales features allowing users to control product management, customer account creation, and shipping and fulfillment.
Pricing:
- Personal: $16/month
- Business: $23/month
- Basic Commerce: $27/month
- Advanced Commerce: $49/month
Determine Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your site's address on the internet, i.e., "www.yourchurchesname.com." All the above offer domain name registration services, letting you set up your domain immediately before building your site. Each service will inform you if someone else is already using the domain you want. Conveniently, these sites recommend domain names if the one you want is already taken. Domain pricing and renewal costs start at around $20/year.
You should ensure the word "church" appears somewhere in your domain to inform searchers that you are indeed a church. Consider using a ".church" website extension if ".com" or ".co" is already used.
Choose an Appealing Theme, Layout, and Structure
Each of our selected website builders is chock full of themed templates with unique color combinations. Choose these carefully—they should match and flow together nicely. If your church has a special color combo featured on the building or signage, make these the primary theme colors of your site for consistency.
Building Your Church Site in Four Easy Steps
Once you've chosen your colors and template, it's time to start laying some digital bricks! Get your paper with the answers to the goal-related questions we asked at the beginning of the article, and follow these steps to start building out your website:
- Create a unique home page by featuring a live video of an inspiring sermon moment, drone footage featuring an aerial shot of your church, or a captivating image.
- Here's the golden rule for links from your home page to other places on your site (also called "internal links"): create just a few links, and put them in the top right-hand corner of your homepage—most templates will follow this format. Your essential links must include:
- Location and Sermon Hours: Don't forget to complete a Google Profile so your church's location can go live on Google Maps. You can embed a Google map onto your site.
- About Us: Tell your church's story and introduce your ministry and other leaders.
- Our Message/Blog: You can share sermon clips and blog topics on your approach to preaching.
- Contact: This page allows people to contact you directly with questions.
- Build out each page, and ensure it follows the same colors and themes on your homepage.
- Link to your social media accounts from your homepage.
- When you finish building your site, preview the site before publishing. Doing this will show you exactly how your church's site will appear to the public.
Once your site is up and running, review it periodically. Changing up your site's multimedia, like adding pictures from last year's nativity story at the start of the holiday season, will keep your website fresh. Visitors will see that your church is actively staging fun events.
Continually Create Engaging Content and Add-ons
After you publish your site, add content to it. Adding blog and video content lets you spotlight what makes your church and congregation unique. Those looking to join a church might find your insights inspiring.
Blog Articles
Keep up with your blog by posting at least one 300-500-word article weekly. Topics can include anything making your church unique, your church's viewpoints on aspects of your religion, or what you discussed during your last Bible study session.
Invite viewers to post comments and reviews of each entry for engagement, keeping the community active. Don't forget to post links to new blogs on social media!
Video Posts
You can embed clips or full videos from your YouTube or TikTok accounts to your website. Leverage this feature to showcase fun events your church hosts or compelling nuggets of wisdom from sermons.
Does your church have a band? Showcase some performances—everyone likes a band! As with written blogs, always notify your social media flock when you upload new videos.
Tend to Your Site
In addition to adding blog and video content, always ensure your site is a current, accurate reflection of your church. Did you just onboard a new youth pastor? Don't forget to add them to your "About" page.
Ensure that your site is optimized for both desktop and mobile viewers. The website builders we recommended have easy-to-use features to make your site flawless for mobile and desktop experiences.
Occasionally, you might want to change your site's appearance or add a few new colors, pages, or features. Each website app builder simplifies this function so you can seamlessly switch your site's appearance. With today's website builders, constructing and maintaining your church's website has never been this easy.
Why Your Church Needs Both a Website and a Native App
While a website serves as your church's digital front door, a native mobile app creates deeper engagement with your existing congregation. Website visitors are often first-time seekers researching your church. App users are committed members who want to stay connected throughout the week.
Push notifications alone justify having a native app. When you need to announce a last-minute service cancellation due to weather, or remind members about the volunteer signup deadline, push notifications reach people instantly. Email open rates hover around 20%—push notifications see engagement rates of 90% or higher.
The key is choosing a platform that handles both efficiently. Building separate solutions for web, iOS, and Android multiplies your workload and creates inconsistencies. Adalo's single-codebase approach means updates you make once appear everywhere, keeping your digital presence unified and manageable for volunteer-run tech teams.
Comparing App Building Options for Churches
Churches evaluating app builders should consider several factors: ease of use, cost, and whether the platform produces true native apps or web wrappers.
Adalo starts at $36/month with unlimited usage and no record caps on paid plans. This predictable pricing matters for churches operating on fixed budgets—there's no bill shock from unexpected usage charges. The platform publishes directly to both app stores with unlimited updates after publishing.
Alternatives like Bubble start at $59/month but use a web wrapper approach for mobile, which can introduce performance challenges as your congregation grows. Bubble also has Workload Units that create usage-based charges with calculations that can be difficult to predict. Glide starts at $60/month but doesn't support Apple App Store or Google Play Store publishing at all—your app lives only on the web.
For churches specifically, the ability to publish to app stores matters. When a new member searches "First Baptist Church" in the App Store, finding your official app builds credibility and makes downloading frictionless. Web-only solutions require members to remember URLs or save bookmarks—extra friction that reduces adoption.
Connect to Your Congregation with Adalo
Is that customizable app we mentioned earlier still on your mind?
Adalo comes packed with plenty of customizable, ready-to-go templates. You'll find customizable features that can give your apps a divine feel: schedule and manage events, accept donations, host an interactive Bible study, and more. The platform's X-Ray feature identifies performance issues before they affect users, ensuring your app runs smoothly even during high-traffic moments like Easter Sunday check-ins.
Several churches like yours already use Adalo's intuitive AI-assisted app builder. Conveniently upload to the Google Play and Apple iOS App stores for easy availability. As a bonus, Adalo is compatible with most payment systems like Stripe, PayPal, Square, and more. With no data caps on paid plans and modular infrastructure that scales with your congregation's growth, Adalo gives you the liberty to build custom apps without any coding knowledge—and without worrying about outgrowing the platform.
Start building your church's app for free.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Why choose Adalo over other app building solutions? | Adalo is an AI-powered app builder that creates true native iOS and Android apps. Unlike web wrappers, it compiles to native code and publishes directly to both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store from a single codebase—the hardest part of launching an app handled automatically. |
| What's the fastest way to build and publish an app to the App Store? | Adalo's drag-and-drop interface combined with AI-assisted building through Magic Start and Magic Add lets you create complete apps in days rather than months. The platform handles the App Store submission process directly, removing the technical complexity that typically delays launches. |
| Can I easily build a church app without coding experience? | Yes, with Adalo's AI-powered app builder, you can easily build a church app without any coding experience. The platform features drag-and-drop functionality and customizable templates that let you create event management systems, prayer request features, sermon libraries, daily devotionals, and donation apps for your congregation. |
| What features should a church app include? | A comprehensive church app should include event management for scheduling services and volunteer activities, a prayer request system where members can submit and pray for others, a sermon library with categorized recordings, daily devotionals with Bible passages, and a donation system integrated with payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, or Square. |
| How much does it cost to build a church app with Adalo? | Adalo starts at $36/month with unlimited usage and no record limits on paid plans. This includes publishing to both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store with unlimited updates. There are no usage-based charges that could create unexpected costs for churches on fixed budgets. |
| What website builder is best for creating a church website? | Popular options include Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace, all offering drag-and-drop functionality and religious-themed templates. Wix offers built-in SEO tools and email newsletters, Weebly provides a free option with Square payment integration, and Squarespace features the most intuitive interface with extensive template options. |
| What essential pages should every church website have? | Every church website should include a compelling homepage with engaging visuals, a location and service hours page with embedded Google Maps, an About Us section introducing your ministry leaders, a blog or message page for sermon clips and insights, and a contact page for direct inquiries. |
| How can I accept donations through my church app? | Adalo integrates with most major payment systems including Stripe, PayPal, and Square, making it simple to build a donation app for your congregation. Members can easily contribute to offerings or support various charities your church endorses directly through the app on their mobile devices. |
| Do I need coding experience to build a church website or app? | No coding experience is required. Website builders like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace use drag-and-drop interfaces for websites. For apps, Adalo's visual builder has been described as "easy as PowerPoint," and AI features like Magic Start can generate complete app foundations from simple descriptions. |
| Can my church app scale as our congregation grows? | Yes. Adalo's modular infrastructure scales to serve apps with over 1 million monthly active users, with no upper ceiling. Paid plans have no database record limits, so your member directory, prayer requests, and event history can grow without hitting storage caps or requiring plan upgrades. |
