Two of my churches have been talking to one degree or another about setting up websites. There are always two obstacles: one is cost, and the other is time. We have now found a solution, and it’s from those kind philanthropists at Microsoft. As part of their Office Live offering for small businesses, you can sign up for Office Live Basics, which gives you a free website and domain name. The site is designed online, and anyone with word processor skills can contribute. No coding knowledge is needed. Up to 25 email addresses can be assigned to the domain – more than enough for the relevant departments of my churches.
There are disadvantages, but none of them is critical for my churches. There aren’t all the bells and whistles of similar paid-for offerings in the church community, such as the excellent Church Edit. So we’ll have to shrink our JPG photos before uploading, rather than having it done automatically for us. And we won’t be able to podcast the services or sermons, due to bandwidth restrictions. But then, it’s free, and Church Edit, Church 123 and 2Day understandably have to charge fees.
Likewise, there is a limited number of templates. But Church Edit and Church 123 also have a finite selection of templates. The Microsoft ones are as reasonable as any.
So watch this space – hopefully before long Broomfield Methodist and Hatfield Peverel Methodist will have decent-looking online presences, to join St Augustine’s, who have had a simple site for a little while.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, OfficeLive, OfficeLiveBasics, churchwebsites, ChurchEdit, Church123, 2Day, BroomfieldMethodist, HatfieldPeverelMethodist, StAugustinesSpringfield
Big Circumstance 
Dear Dave,
Sadly Microsoft pulled their free offering leaving numbers of churches high and dry. I noticed that only one of the three churches you mentioned has a website. I guess, like us, they may have run aground. On the plus side we managed to find an independent review of the web builders you mentioned. It’s available here: http://3sixtycreative.com/Church_CMS_Comparison.pdf
As a result we’ve been trying church123 who have been (so far) excellent and are going to save us so much time that they are worth every penny.
Kind regards,
Sam P
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Hi Sam,
Thanks for your comment and the link to the independent review. I have moved appointment since those websites were set up and noticed recently that a couple of the sites no longer existed. Without wishing to sound harsh, that is now their problem and not mine. However, I have certainly heard good things of Church123 and I hope you continue to have a good experience with them. Where is your website with them? I’d be interested to have a look.
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