ChurchPress vs. Ekklesia 360: Strategy-Led CMS or Done-for-You Site

Ekklesia 360 is a church website content management system built by Monk Development, and its site today carries Ministry Brands Holdings copyright. It describes itself as simple enough for a church plant and powerful enough for worldwide ministry. Around the software sits a full agency-style team: web strategy projects, custom design, branding, development and integrations.

ChurchPress takes a different path to a great church website. Instead of giving your team a CMS and a design team to plan with, it builds the site for you from your current website, and then your team keeps it up to date by describing changes in plain language.

Ekklesia 360 has deep roots. Monk Development began in 2006, founded by Drew Goodmanson, who had started a church and saw the need for an easy yet powerful way to manage a ministry's presence online. Ekklesia 360 says it is trusted by over 8,500 ministries in more than 20 countries, serving over 220,000 sermons and 277,000 events.

Its strength is range. A church can start with an e360 theme, tailor a theme, bring its own designs, or go fully custom with a dedicated team. Ekklesia 360 emphasizes that you are never stuck in a box, with total control over the look and feel of your site, while its team handles software updates, backups and security patches.

Ekklesia 360 is a natural fit for a church with a communications team or web volunteer who enjoys a robust CMS, for multi-ministry churches that need many pages and articles, and for churches that want a strategy and design partner shaping the site around measurable goals. If you want a custom design or developer-level integrations, its services are built for exactly that.

ChurchPress is designed for churches that want the website done well without running a CMS. It studies your current website for your logo, colors, photos, ministries, service times and voice, and you confirm the key facts before anything is drafted. After about five minutes of questions, it designs your homepage first, usually within 15 to 45 minutes, and one click builds the remaining pages to match: typically Plan a Visit, About and Beliefs, Ministries, Sermons, Events, Groups, Giving, Staff and Contact.

Updates are conversational. A pastor can type "add a page for our grief support group with meeting times" and see it in a private preview. One-click undo and version history protect every change, and nothing goes live until someone presses Publish.

The included tools cover what most church visitors look for: a searchable sermon library with speaker and topic filters, events with RSVPs and a printable check-in QR code, a small-group finder, serving opportunities, staff pages, and forms that route to a dashboard Inbox and to the recipients you choose. Search-friendly titles, descriptions, a sitemap and structured data are built in, and the publish review checks key pages on phone, tablet and desktop.

Here is a practical comparison of how each one works.

When we checked the Ekklesia 360 pricing page in October 2026, theme-based sites listed a one-time $500 fee for onboarding, training and setup, and custom websites were quoted on request. Monthly plans were Basic at $70 (20 pages), Plus at $95 (50 pages), Advanced at $190 (100 pages), and Pro with custom pricing. Ekklesia 360 notes there are no contracts, you can move between plans anytime, and paying yearly saves 10%. Online giving and ChMS are additional. Please confirm current pricing with Ekklesia 360.

ChurchPress has no setup fee because the build is free. Publishing on the Founders offer is $97 per month or $997 per year, locked while your subscription stays active, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment and no long-term contract. That includes managed hosting, SSL, connecting your domain, unlimited plain-language updates and redesigns, all site tools and support from real people.

The comparison comes down to what you are buying. Ekklesia 360 offers a flexible CMS plus access to strategy, design and development expertise. ChurchPress offers a finished, maintained website and a simple way to change it.

Choose Ekklesia 360 if you want a custom-designed site, a strategy partner, developer access, or an established CMS that your communications team will enjoy running. Its service menu gives you room to grow into a large, highly tailored web presence.

Choose ChurchPress if you want your current website's identity carried into a fresh site quickly, you do not have a web specialist on staff, and you would like anyone on your team to make updates by asking. A small church or a busy pastor-led team often fits this description.

Moving is low risk either way. Your current website keeps working while you build a ChurchPress preview privately, and your domain is pointed to the new site only when you decide. A good next step is to build a free preview from your existing site and compare it with an e360 theme from the Ekklesia 360 portfolio.