Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. ChurchCRM is 100% free and open-source under the MIT license. No licensing fees, no subscription tiers, no per-member pricing. Your tithes and donations can go toward mission instead of software costs. There is only one ongoing expense: hosting (the server that runs ChurchCRM). A standard shared hosting plan costs $3–$10/month — well within reach for every congregation. There are no paid add-ons, no premium features behind a paywall, and no vendor who can raise prices or shut down your access. ChurchCRM is maintained by a global community of volunteer developers and church administrators who believe high-quality tools belong in every congregation, regardless of budget or size.

Self-hosting means your congregation runs ChurchCRM on your own server — not on a vendor’s cloud service. You own the hardware (or rent it from a hosting provider), you control who has access, and you hold your own data. This gives you three key advantages: data ownership (your member information never leaves your organization), cost control (hosting is cheaper than a subscription, and prices don’t change), and independence (you are not locked in to any vendor). The trade-off is that your church (or a hired administrator) is responsible for keeping the server secure, patched, and backed up — tasks that would normally fall to the vendor in a cloud service. For most churches, a shared hosting plan ($3–$10/month) handles this automatically with professional security and backup systems included.

Yes. Your data belongs to you — it is not locked in to ChurchCRM or anyone else. You can export member records, contributions, groups, events, and other data at any time through the Admin panel. ChurchCRM also provides standard database backups so you can move or restore your data if you change servers or choose a different system in the future. Because ChurchCRM is open-source, any developer can help you migrate your data if needed.

Yes. ChurchCRM runs on standard Linux hosting and scales to organizations with thousands of members. A single shared hosting plan (under $10/month) comfortably handles congregations of any size. For very large organizations with high traffic demands, you can upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server. ChurchCRM was designed to grow with your church — whether you have 50 members or 5,000. If you outgrow a shared hosting plan, you scale the hosting, not the software cost.

Yes. A live ChurchCRM demo environment is available 24/7 at no cost and requires no sign-up or installation. Your demo session is private and isolated. When it first loads, it appears empty — visit Admin Dashboard → Demo Data and click “Import Demo Data” to populate it with 60+ sample families, 230+ people, groups, notes, and contributions. This gives you a realistic sense of how the software works for your workflow. You can explore every feature and report without any obligation.

If your hosting provider supports Softaculous (available with most shared hosting packages), ChurchCRM installs in a few clicks from your hosting dashboard — no technical knowledge required. If Softaculous is not available, a manual installation takes 10–20 minutes and is documented step-by-step in the installation guide. After installation, you log in with a default admin account, set a strong password, and add your congregation’s data. For detailed walkthroughs and troubleshooting, see the complete installation documentation.

For most churches, no. If you use shared hosting with Softaculous, installation is automated and your hosting provider handles all server maintenance, security patches, and backups. Your church needs at least one person with basic computer skills to install ChurchCRM, manage admin users, and customize settings — but this is typically someone who already manages other church systems. For larger organizations or VPS/self-hosted setups, you may want to hire a system administrator, but this is not required by the ChurchCRM software itself; it is a general best practice for running any online system.

Your data lives on the server you control — either a shared hosting account rented from a provider (the most common choice), or your own hardware. ChurchCRM does not store or transmit data through any central service. Your member records, giving history, and confidential notes stay on your server, subject only to your own security and backup policies. This is a key difference from cloud-based systems where your data lives on the vendor’s servers. With ChurchCRM, you decide who has access to your data and how long you keep it.

For questions and troubleshooting: Join the Discord community — it is active, responsive, and full of experienced users and volunteers. For confirmed software bugs: Open an issue on GitHub with your ChurchCRM version, PHP version, and exact steps to reproduce. For direct support: Email info@churchcrm.io. Most questions are answered in Discord within hours. Please reserve GitHub for bugs only; use Discord for how-to questions.

ChurchCRM is available in 49 languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Filipino, Malayalam, and many others. The interface is fully translated for each locale. If your language is not yet supported, the community translation project on POEditor welcomes volunteer translators — no coding required.

The official documentation covers installation, first-run setup, administration, user guides, and troubleshooting. It is the authoritative reference for how to install, configure, and use ChurchCRM. If documentation is unclear or you get stuck, ask in Discord — community members often have experience with your specific setup.

ChurchCRM 7.x brought a complete interface redesign (cleaner, dark mode, better mobile support), a plugin ecosystem for extending functionality, OpenStreetMap integration (no API key needed), expanded check-in capabilities, and a central Export Hub for data exports. See the upgrade guide if you are moving from 6.x.