ChurchCMS · Church management
Church management software: how ChurchCMS is built and adapted
ChurchCMS is a church management system with two halves — a web admin panel for the church office and a mobile app for members. GegoSoft wrote both and still maintains them. This page is about the engineering, and about what happens when a congregation, a denomination or a network needs something the standard product does not do yet.
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Go to churchcms.app →What is church management software?
Church management software is a system that holds a congregation's membership records — individuals, families, contact details, groups and ministries — and supports the work built on top of them: giving and donations, event calendars, communication with members, and media such as sermons and bulletins. Systems built in the last decade typically add a member-facing mobile app, so the congregation can give, request prayer and follow church life without going through the office.
- Built for
- Small and mid-sized churchesOne congregation per church
- Two halves
- Admin panel + member appNot admin-only software
- Stack
- LaravelMySQL
- Licence
- MIT - Open Source with Commercial Add-on
- Deployment
- Self hosted
- Maintained by
- GegoSoftSince 2021
Architecture
Most church software is built for the office. This is built for both sides.
That decision shapes everything underneath it. A system that only serves the church office can keep its data in one admin application. A system that also puts giving, prayer requests and sermon media in a member's hand has to expose all of it through an API first, and then let two very different interfaces consume it.
What the church office runs
The record-keeping half. Membership and family records, groups and ministries, the event calendar, communication, media libraries and reporting.
- Member and family directory with professional and contact details
- Groups: choir, ministry, fellowship, Bible study, Sunday class
- Events, galleries and bulletins
- Donations and giving records
- Reporting on new members, giving and group involvement
What the congregation holds
The engagement half. The reason a member opens the app on a Tuesday rather than only hearing from the church on a Sunday.
- Giving and donations against named funds or campaigns
- Prayer requests, and praying for other members
- Sermon library: video, audio and podcasts
- Live event streaming
- Notifications, birthday and anniversary wishes, daily quotes
Because the member app consumes the same API the admin panel does, the app can be restyled, rebuilt or replaced without touching the record-keeping half. That is what makes a branded app for a particular denomination or network a normal piece of work rather than a fork.
Scope
One church, running as it comes
Worth stating before anything else on this page: a single congregation can use ChurchCMS as it stands. Nothing on this page is a prerequisite.
As it comes
A single congregation
Membership records, groups, events, giving, sermon library and the member app, set up and run for one church without any development work from us.
Everything a small or mid-sized congregation needs is in the standard product.
Where we come in
Denominations, dioceses and networks
A denominational body, diocese or church network overseeing many congregations is a different shape: shared oversight, reporting across churches, and terminology that belongs to that tradition rather than a generic one.
The same applies to a language your congregation reads in, a giving gateway your church actually banks with, or a module nobody has asked for yet.
Adaptation
What churches actually ask us to change
Not a menu of services. These are the requests that recur, and each is ordinary engineering because we hold the source and the people who wrote it.
Denominational terminology and structure
Parish, assembly, congregation, cathedral, circuit. The words a tradition uses are not cosmetic, and neither is the structure beneath them.
Local giving gateways
Donations through the gateway your church banks with, in your currency, rather than the one the product happened to ship with.
Language and localisation
The member app in the language the congregation reads, including scripts and date conventions the standard product does not carry.
A branded member app
Your own app identity, or a front end rebuilt against the same API, without disturbing the records underneath.
Oversight across many churches
Consolidated membership and giving reporting for a diocese, denomination or network running several congregations.
Migration off what you run now
Membership rolls, family records and giving history moved across from spreadsheets, a previous system or paper registers.
If it is not on this list, ask anyway. The list describes what has been requested, not what is possible. A short call is usually enough to say whether something is a setting, a module, or a change to core behaviour we would rather not make.
Boundary
What ChurchCMS is not
It is a membership and engagement system. It holds who belongs to the church, what groups they are in, what they gave, what is happening and what was preached. It records giving; it does not keep the church's statutory books, and a treasurer will still need accounting software beside it.
It is also built around a single congregation as the unit. A network of churches works, but as an adaptation rather than out of the box — which is the honest version of an answer other vendors give vaguely.
If what you actually want is a church website builder, or a streaming platform, or donor fundraising software, those are different products and we will say so on the first call.
Questions
Frequently asked
What is church management software?
Church management software is a system that holds a congregation's membership records — individuals, families, contact details, groups and ministries — and supports the work built on top of them: giving and donations, event calendars, communication with members, and media such as sermons and bulletins. Systems built in the last decade typically add a member-facing mobile app, so the congregation can give, request prayer and follow church life without going through the office.
Why does a member-facing app change how the software has to be built?
Admin-only church software can keep everything inside one application. Once members give, request prayer and watch sermons from their own phones, the same data has to be exposed through an API that two very different interfaces consume. That has a practical consequence: a church or denomination wanting its own branded app can have one built against the existing API, without forking the system that holds the records.
Can a denomination or diocese manage several congregations?
ChurchCMS is built around a single congregation as its unit. Oversight across several churches — shared reporting on membership and giving, and structure matching a denomination's own hierarchy — is an adaptation rather than something the standard product does, and it is work GegoSoft carries out.
Can members give through a local payment gateway?
Giving is part of the standard product. Connecting it to the specific gateway a church banks with, in its own currency, is a customisation — and a common one, because the right gateway differs by country and by the church's own banking arrangements.
Does ChurchCMS handle church accounting?
No. It records donations and giving against funds and campaigns, which is a membership record rather than a set of books. Statutory accounting stays with an accounting package, and integration between the two is a customisation.
Who builds and maintains ChurchCMS?
GegoSoft Technologies, a software development company based in Madurai, India. The same engineering team maintains the product and carries out customisation work on it.
Next step
Two different questions, two different places
If you are evaluating the product itself, the product site has the features, the trial and the pricing. If you are asking whether it can be made to fit your denomination, your language or your network of churches, that conversation is with us.
Tell us the church or body, roughly how many congregations, and the one thing the standard product does not do. That is enough for a first answer.