ChurchWindows on premisis

By Mike Pilman
September 28, 2020, 2:49 pm EDT

We have been using Church Windows for many years. We have not upgraded to cloud version due to cost. I am very interested in switching to a modern online CMS . Primary functions, membership, directory and donation tracking.

Comments (6)

We switched to Breeze since it seemed to be the default, but it is $50/month so you can get a bit of sticker shock. I tried for a while to convert us over to https://churchcrm.io and it didn’t go very well. I hosted it on a small instance on amazon web services, but it still ending up costing $25/month. The paid service was much nicer and they did the data migration for me. That kind of stuff takes time and my data entry skills are not the best. It also didn’t take all the data we had in PowerChurch. Still, half the price and all I had to do was host it, so not too bad for a bargain option if you’re really looking at cutting costs. However, given that it’s PII on your server, I wouldn’t recommend it if you aren’t pretty well versed in cyber security. It’s the Wild West out there and the outlaws have gotten weapons upgrades.

We’ve been happy with Breeze. Well, the bookkeeper still complains, but everyone else thinks it’s great.

Bennett, are you still happy with Breeze? We at https://uubeaufort.org/ are looking to

leave ICON behind. I sold CRM to the Feds for 10 years, and I want a system that has

these features:

  1. Track names, addresses, phones, email addresses.
  2. Link individual records that are somehow related.
  3. Keep confidential conversation notes.
  4. Allow filters and indexes to be created to facilitate
  5. data access.
  6. Send individual AND mass-emails to filtered recipients.
  7. Send individual AND mass texts to filtered recipients.
  8. Create and share member directories.
  9. Add fields as needed.
  10. Apps for IOS and Android.
  11. Audit email opens.
  12. Templates for emails and web pages.
  13. Attach directory photo or other photo to record.
  14. Facilitate committee access (Membership, Care)
  15. Maintain attendance records.
  16. Potential Membership Field Values (Full, Friend, Dead, Non-Member)
  17. Send Headline News Emails.
  18. “Care Team Needed” Field.
  19. “Auction” Fields.
  20. General Notes Field
  21. Care Team Notes Field
  22. Birthday Field (MM/DD)
  23. Pledge Fields
  24. Emergency Contact Fields
  25. Control field access by field, by user type.
  26. Control field data modification by field, by user type.
  27. Control field data deletion by field, by user type.

Thanks! Rick.

Bennett, are you still happy with Breeze? We at https://uubeaufort.org/ are looking to

leave ICON behind. I sold CRM to the Feds for 10 years, and I want a system that has

these features:

  1. Track names, addresses, phones, email addresses.
  2. Link individual records that are somehow related.
  3. Keep confidential conversation notes.
  4. Allow filters and indexes to be created to facilitate
  5. data access.
  6. Send individual AND mass-emails to filtered recipients.
  7. Send individual AND mass texts to filtered recipients.
  8. Create and share member directories.
  9. Add fields as needed.
  10. Apps for IOS and Android.
  11. Audit email opens.
  12. Templates for emails and web pages.
  13. Attach directory photo or other photo to record.
  14. Facilitate committee access (Membership, Care)
  15. Maintain attendance records.
  16. Potential Membership Field Values (Full, Friend, Dead, Non-Member)
  17. Send Headline News Emails.
  18. “Care Team Needed” Field.
  19. “Auction” Fields.
  20. General Notes Field
  21. Care Team Notes Field
  22. Birthday Field (MM/DD)
  23. Pledge Fields
  24. Emergency Contact Fields
  25. Control field access by field, by user type.
  26. Control field data modification by field, by user type.
  27. Control field data deletion by field, by user type.

Thanks! Rick.

Sorry for the late reply, I just got this notification today. Most of the items on your list are straightforward within Breeze. A couple aren’t, or I don’t know how I would do it exclusively in the software.

If you want private care team notes, you can create a care team role and a care team notes field and restrict access to the note to only the team. It’s not straightforward, but not bad and it’s very customizable. I would caution that Breeze is privately owned and is not HIPAA compliant, AFAIK. 
I don’t think I’d do a live auction exclusively in Breeze. It can do the payments, for a fee of course, and you can make customized forms, but it would be clunky for a real nail biter of a bidding war. I think a silent auction would work great though. Just make a bidding form and it’ll create a spreadsheet from the results at the end of the night.