ChurchPress vs. Ministry Designs: Design Team or Chat Edits

Ministry Designs is a church-focused company with two website paths: Sites, a builder your team runs with a free 20-page build to get started, and Site Management, where its design team becomes your website team and handles your update requests.

ChurchPress sits between those two. It does the initial build for you, working from your current website, and then gives you a chat editor so updates happen when you ask for them in plain words. You review every change in a private preview and decide when it goes live.

Ministry Designs has served churches for well over a decade, and its About page lists 13 years of experience. The company says more than 67,000 churches worldwide trust it. Its platform is purpose-built for ministry, with a Sermons Manager, Events Manager, Small Groups Manager, Holiday Bundles and online giving.

Site Management is the standout for busy church offices. Ministry Designs describes it simply: you make a design request, and they take care of the rest. The pricing page lists unlimited content updates, unlimited new page designs, 24/7 content update requests, a 24-hour website update turnaround, a personal update portal, direct communication with designers and weekly content update reminders. The team also handles image optimization and ongoing SEO maintenance.

There are thoughtful extras too. Ministry Designs offers a library of more than 80,000 free church graphics and says it adds about 500 new ones each month. It also offers scholarships for church plants and says it integrates with every major online giving provider and church management system at no additional cost.

ChurchPress begins with your existing website. It studies your logo, colors, photos, ministries, service times and the way your church talks, and asks you to confirm key facts before it drafts. With no website, it asks a few questions instead. After roughly five minutes of questions, your homepage is designed first (usually 15 to 45 minutes), and one click builds matching pages such as Plan a Visit, About and Beliefs, Ministries, Sermons, Events, Groups, Giving, Staff and Contact.

After launch, the person who notices a change is the person who can make it. A pastor can type "move the fall retreat to October 18 and add a registration link" and see the result in a private preview. Nothing publishes until someone presses Publish, every change can be undone with one click, and version history can restore an earlier published version.

Sermons can be imported from a podcast feed or YouTube channel, and events from Google Calendar or a Planning Center public calendar, each time someone presses Sync.

Both services build the site for you. The difference shows up in what happens on an ordinary Tuesday when something needs to change.

On Ministry Designs' pricing page when we checked in October 2026, Sites was listed at $97 a month with no contracts and cancel any time, including a 20-page website build. Site Management was listed at $247 a month, with new accounts subject to a one-year term. Please confirm current pricing with Ministry Designs.

ChurchPress Founders pricing is $97 a month or $997 a year, with the price locked while your subscription stays active. There is no long-term contract, the first payment has a 30-day money-back guarantee, and the plan includes managed hosting, SSL, custom domain connection, unlimited chat updates and redesigns, and support from real people. So the practical comparison is this: Site Management buys you a dedicated design team, while ChurchPress gives your own staff a way to make changes themselves without technical skills.

Ministry Designs Site Management is likely the better fit if nobody on staff wants to be involved in website updates at all and you value having designers who know your site. It is also a natural choice if you want giving built into the same platform, or you love having fresh sermon series and holiday graphics ready each season.

ChurchPress is likely the better fit if you want the site to reflect what is already on your current website, want to see the complete result before committing, and like the idea of a staff member or volunteer making a change in a sentence and checking it before it publishes. It also suits churches that already use a giving provider and Planning Center and want the website to link to them cleanly through Connections.

If you are a current Ministry Designs customer, there is no need to change anything to explore. ChurchPress builds privately while your current site stays live, and your domain is pointed to a new site only when you decide to make that move.

A simple next step is to build a free ChurchPress preview from your current website, then walk through it with whoever handles your updates today and compare it with your Ministry Designs site page by page.