Most church website conversations start in the wrong place. Themes. Hosting speed. Which builder looks nicest in a demo.
Ask this instead: who is going to change the service times next month, and what happens if that person is gone?
Small churches do not have a web team. You have a volunteer who is good with computers, a pastor who should not be the webmaster, and a high chance that person moves, burns out, or leaves the login on a laptop nobody can find.
If the site only lives in one person’s head, you do not have a church website. You have a favor that expires.
Here is how churches actually run sites — and when each path is the honest choice.
WordPress (volunteer-built, or hosting the church pays for)
This wins when you already have a healthy site, you want real design control, or someone on the team actually likes WordPress. Keep it. A church-owned host account, a church-owned domain, a short plugin list, automatic updates, and a written “here is how you change an event” note will carry you a long way.
It fails the other way. Plugins pile up. The backup lives on one laptop. The hosting login is a personal Gmail. A new volunteer cannot publish an Easter banner on Saturday because “the WordPress guy” is out of town.
That is not a knock on WordPress. It is a knock on a site with no handoff. If you cannot picture a new volunteer changing an event in one afternoon, this is the wrong stack for you — even if the homepage looks great.
Squarespace, Wix, and tools like them
These win on teachability. Hosting and security are not on a volunteer. Sit someone down, show them the editor, and they can change a page the same day.
The tradeoff is a second system. Your calendar, sermons, and giving live somewhere else, so someone still copies. The site and the church software drift. You also pay twice: once for the builder, once for church software.
That is fine if the Squarespace (or Wix) site is healthy, a volunteer can edit it, and you are willing to treat the calendar as a copy job. It is a poor fit if you hoped the website would just know about Sunday.
Church-specific site builders
Tithe.ly Sites, Clover Sites, Subsplash and Pushpay sites exist so you are not inventing church pages in a generic builder. They are a good fit if you already live in that stack — giving, app, and site from the same vendor — and you are not looking for a new home.
They are a weaker fit if you picked them because a conference booth looked nice, and the rest of church life is in another product. You still have two places to update. The templates are just church-shaped.
A site inside your church software
This only works if two things are true:
- A volunteer can edit it without calling the person who set it up.
- Pages pull live events, service times, groups, and sermons — not pasted copies from last month.
Then “update the calendar” is not a website task. It is an events task, and the site follows.
Not every church product gives you that.
Planning Center is not a full church website. Churches that use it well usually keep a separate site next to it (often WordPress or Squarespace) and link over. Do not buy Planning Center expecting a homepage.
ChurchTrac has a simple built-in site. For a tiny church that already uses ChurchTrac and does not need a custom design, that can be enough.
TimelyChurch’s Website Studio is another example of this path, not the reason to read this article. It is a drag-and-drop, section-based editor in the same admin as people and events. Dynamic sections read the church database — events, service times, groups, sermons, prayer, giving — so you are not retyping Sunday in two places. A Website CMS permission lets you give someone the site and not the giving reports. If they leave, you turn off the login. The pages stay on the church account.
Public URLs can be `timelychurch.com/c/your-church`, a subdomain, or a custom domain you already own. Custom domains need a TXT record to prove you own it, then a CNAME to `custom.timelychurch.com`. HTTPS on a custom domain usually means putting Cloudflare in front and using its certificate. You do not self-host TimelyChurch.
That is one option. It is not a reason to rip out a site that already works.
You do not have to throw out a healthy WordPress or Squarespace site
If someone else can edit it, keep it. Point people to the calendar or giving page you already use.
A Giving section on a TimelyChurch page can send people to Stripe, PayPal, Pushpay, or Tithe.ly if that is where you already collect. You do not have to move giving just because you looked at a website builder.
The test is still the same: can the next volunteer change it without a treasure hunt?
Ask these out loud before anyone picks a theme
- Who will edit this in 90 days, by name? If you cannot name them, pick the tool they can learn in one sitting.
- Where does the live calendar live? If it is not the same system as the website, someone will forget to copy.
- If that volunteer left this Friday, could another person publish a page by Sunday — without a hosting account?
- Are you paying twice, once for a builder and once for church software, because nobody wanted to look at the built-in site?
- Do you already have a healthy WordPress or Squarespace site? If yes, keep it until it fails the questions above.
Build the simple thing. Service times, how to get there, what you believe, real photos, a way to give, a way to say hello. Pretty is optional. Maintainable is not.
If you want to try a church site that lives next to your people and events, you can start free here: https://app.timelychurch.com/register
No credit card.