Posts Tagged ‘Learn How to Find Good Church Membership Software’

he field of church membership software is extremely competitive and finding the one that’s right for you can be flat out scary. How will you find that one software among thousands that has all the features you need that will grow with you that will maximize the price per feature and that will be easy and enjoyable to use? If you don’t know what you’re doing it can be very difficult. That’s why we decided to put together some observations from our own experiences so you can see the habits we’ve seen that lead to people getting relevant and complete information. Not that any one church membership software company would try to give you incomplete information it’s just that every church is different and if you don’t ask the right questions the company won’t know what is and is not relevant to you.Don’t start looking until you know what you wantThis seems like a pretty weird thing to say. Isn’t the point of looking to find out what you want? Yes and No. You should know from the start what you want. The thing you’re trying to figure out is actually who has what you want. So start your search by describing your ideal membership software. What features do you need? What is your main problem right now? If you could do anything with your software what would you want it to do? List it all out. Most church membership software companies do their best to include a few awesome features those things that help them target their ideal customer and really take a niche. Those features come in every shape and size and may or may not apply to you. But the one common denominator is that they are all really really cool. It’s pretty easy to let their coolness sway you into preferring one software over another even if the software you prefer doesn’t offer anything special in the areas you’ll actually use. Making a list of the features that matter to you helps insulate you from impulsive preferences. It also helps you compare the church softwares against a standard. You can rank each software against your list so you come up with scores that can be compared. You can even make a spreadsheet that lets you see them all side-by-side so you can better understand the pros and cons of each software.Decide on your questions before you call any software companyAds by GoogleThis has a similar function to making the list of features. I can’t tell you how many people call in to Excellerate and don’t really have any definite topics they want to cover. Instead they ask what all the program can do (but I don’t know what their needs are so it’s a hit or miss answer). Then as I describe one thing a question pops into their head and they want to go over here then over there then somewhere else. Often we jump so fast that I never get a chance to fully describe any given topic. I have no problem moving fast and I’m willing to answer any question someone has about our church membership software. However if someone doesn’t get all the information they will not be making a fully informed decision. You will after all have ten or twenty companies all jostling around in your head and you have to try to keep them straight. If you are only partially informed about them your confusion will only be worse.Try the demos for every church membership software you considerThis is pretty self-explanatory so I won’t say too much about getting the demos. But I would like to remind you to do more than just mess around with each one. Make these tests as tough as you can. Think over any hard tasks you’ve had to do in church and try re-doing them on a smaller scale using the membership software in question. Let your mind go nuts as you think up reports you might want or ways to segment your church. Don’t worry if some of the reports are too crazy just try them out anyway. It’s better to realize you went a little overboard than it is to not go far enough and find out after you bought the program that it can’t help with the hard tasks (the very place you need it the most). If you want to try the demo for Excellerate church membership software sign up here.Decide an appropriate total cost for your church membership softwareThis step is very important not just for budgetary reasons but also because web-based church membership softwares are pretty common and these charge monthly or yearly fees. Granted you get more convenience and if that’s what you need and the price isn’t too much that’s fine. Just be sure to calculate the total cost because it’s easy to think $50 a month is cheaper than a one-time $295 fee but it’s only cheaper for a few months. Then the monthly fee is costing you more. In cases like this you have to figure out how long realistically you’ll use the software and figure out the cost over the life of your usage. Make every purchase fully informed.List the pros and cons out in an easy to compare formatProbably the easiest way to do this would be in a spreadsheet or something similar. Start by making a different row for every feature you need then add in the features you’d like but could live without if the cost is too high then at the end put features you didn’t think of but that you discovered as you searched for various softwares. Then on the columns list all the companies you’re looking at and mark off which feature each one has along with the price. This way you can see who does the best at covering your needs and you’ll have an easy way to do a side-by-side comparison.Talk to friends and users of the softwares you end up leaning towardThe most common way I’ve seen people get the real story on various softwares is via twitter just because it’s so easy for word to get around really fast. Definitely tweet around to see if any of your friends already use the software then get them to call you. Another thing you can do is go to your twitter homepage and search for any mention of the softwares you’re looking at so you can see whether they are tweets of joy or angry rants. Then send messages asking about the software and getting more info.