Best Church Management Software for Episcopal and Anglican Churches in 2026
By Sankalp Jonna · Last reviewed April 2026
Episcopal and Anglican parishes have one of the most distinct workflow shapes in Christian software, and one of the least well-served. The parish register — the paper-or-PDF book that records baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials — is canonically required, signed by the rector, and is the official record of the parish. Software is the operational layer on top, not the canonical record. Almost no general ChMS understands this distinction, which means evaluating these tools requires reading between the lines of their feature pitches.
The other shape that matters: most Episcopal and Anglican parishes are small. The median Episcopal Church parish has fewer than 100 in attendance on a Sunday. ACNA parishes skew slightly larger but still trend small. Diocesan reporting — the parochial report in TEC, the equivalent in ACNA — pulls baptism counts, confirmations, communicants, average Sunday attendance, and giving. It is filed annually and reviewed by the diocese.
We tested the platforms most often shortlisted by Episcopal rectors and parish administrators. The ranking below is honest about a category where almost nothing was designed for the Book of Common Prayer.
What makes a great church management software for episcopal and anglican churches?
Here’s what we look for when we evaluate this category. Every tool below was scored against the same criteria.
Whether the system can track baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial records in a way that complements the canonical parish register without trying to replace it.
How well the platform models recurring services with assignable celebrants, lay readers, lectors, and chalice bearers across multiple Sunday and weekday Eucharists.
Whether the system produces the membership, attendance, communicants, and giving counts a diocese asks for in annual reports.
Whether the platform handles vestry, wardens, and parish committees with appropriate roles and term tracking.
Whether the system handles separate funds — outreach, building, memorial — with proper accounting, or whether you need QuickBooks alongside.
Realistic monthly cost for a 50-to-200 person Episcopal parish, since most parishes are at this size.
Comparison at a glance
| Tool | Score | Best for | Pricing | Free plan | Standout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breeze ChMS | 8.7 | Smaller Episcopal and Anglican parishes under 200 attendance who want flat pricing and a tool a part-time admin can run. | From $72/mo | — | Pricing transparency is the cleanest in the category — one number, unlimited everything. |
| Realm by ACS Technologies | 7.8 | Larger parishes that need fund accounting, diocesan reporting, and one durable vendor for membership and finance. | Custom pricing | — | The only mainstream ChMS with real fund accounting baked in, not bolted on or exported to QuickBooks. |
| Servant Keeper | 6.8 | Traditional Episcopal parishes whose long-time parish secretary already knows the desktop product and trusts it. | From $14.99/mo | — | Generational trust with longtime church bookkeepers and tax-statement workflows that just work. |
| Planning Center | 9.3 | Episcopal parishes with active music ministries — choir or contemporary band — and active lay-server rotations. | Free tier available | ✓ | Services is the best worship-planning and volunteer-scheduling tool in the entire category, full stop. |
| ChurchTrac | 8.1 | Smaller parishes who need fund accounting on a tight budget without paying enterprise prices. | Free tier available | ✓ | It's the only sub-$30/month tool that includes real fund accounting alongside ChMS and giving. |
| Tithe.ly | 8.4 | Parishes that want online giving live tomorrow with no monthly platform fee, or want a single-vendor bundle including a website. | Free tier available | ✓ | Free giving plan with no monthly fee is the most aggressive pricing in the category by a wide margin. |
| Subsplash | 8.0 | Larger Episcopal parishes with serious media and live-stream programs and a national or distributed audience. | Custom pricing | — | The custom-branded app is the best in the category and the only one that consistently feels like a real native product. |
1. Breeze ChMS
Flat-fee, simple ChMS that wins on pricing transparency for small and mid-size churches.
- One flat price means you can plan your budget for the year without worrying about hitting member-count brackets.
- Setup genuinely takes an afternoon; the data import wizard and contextual help are aimed at non-technical office staff.
- Free 1-on-1 onboarding calls are included, which is rare at this price point.
- Tagging system replaces the rigid groups/lists model used by older ChMS and is far more flexible for small staffs.
- Works as well from a Chromebook in a church office as from a phone, with no separate admin app.
- Volunteer scheduling is functional but a tier below Planning Center Services for any church with a band rotation.
- Reporting is shallow; you can't easily slice attendance against giving over a multi-year window without exports.
- No general-ledger accounting; you'll still need QuickBooks or Aplos for finance.
- Acquired by Tithe.ly in 2021 and roadmap velocity has visibly slowed since.
- No website builder and no native live streaming; very much a back-office tool, not a digital front door.
Smaller Episcopal and Anglican parishes under 200 attendance who want flat pricing and a tool a part-time admin can run.
You need real fund accounting inside the same tool or you are over 400 attendance with serious finance complexity.
Breeze is what most small-church administrators actually want: a flat $72/month bill, a database that doesn't fight them, and check-in that works on Sunday morning. It's not the most powerful ChMS — Planning Center will out-feature it on every comparison sheet — but it's the one we'd recommend to a 200-person church without hesitation. The post-acquisition slowdown is the asterisk. Tithe.ly clearly bought Breeze for the customer base, and the product hasn't made a major leap in two years. If you sign up now, you're betting it stays this good rather than gets meaningfully better.
2. Realm by ACS Technologies
Mature, accounting-grade ChMS from a legacy vendor, strongest for churches that need real general ledger.
- Built-in fund accounting is genuinely real general-ledger software, not a giving report — rare in the ChMS world.
- Pathways feature lets you build discipleship tracks and actually track members through them.
- Multi-site permissions and cross-campus reporting are mature and battle-tested.
- Background-check integration with Protect My Ministry is built-in for child-volunteer workflows.
- ACS has been doing this for 40+ years; the company won't disappear and your data won't get orphaned.
- UI feels dated compared to Planning Center or Breeze — it's functional, not delightful.
- Implementation usually requires paid onboarding and can take weeks for accounting setup.
- Pricing is quote-based with multi-year contracts; not friendly to month-to-month evaluation.
- Mobile app is competent but lags behind Subsplash or Pushpay for member experience.
- Customizing reports beyond the built-in templates can require ACS support, which adds friction.
Larger parishes that need fund accounting, diocesan reporting, and one durable vendor for membership and finance.
You are under 100 attendance and want transparent month-to-month pricing without a sales call.
Realm is a serious tool that doesn't get talked about enough in the trendier corners of church tech. If your finance team is your most influential stakeholder — and at most denominational churches over 500 people, they are — Realm's accounting module is a legitimate reason to choose it over Planning Center plus QuickBooks. The cost is that you pay in user experience: the interface, mobile app, and onboarding all feel like they were designed in 2018 and not updated since. We'd consider it a strong, slightly conservative choice for established churches that value durability over polish.
3. Servant Keeper
Long-running desktop-era membership database now offered as a cloud subscription, beloved by older staff.
- Contribution tracking and year-end statement generation are mature and trusted by long-time church bookkeepers.
- Still offers a perpetual desktop license, which is genuinely rare and useful for tiny churches without internet reliance.
- Reasonable monthly pricing on the cloud version, and tiering is transparent.
- Customer support reportedly answers the phone and is willing to walk new users through setup.
- Long track record — over 30 years in business — gives confidence the data won't be orphaned by a pivot.
- Interface and workflows clearly originated as desktop software; the cloud version still feels like a port, not a redesign.
- Volunteer scheduling and modern child check-in are essentially missing.
- Mobile app is limited and not a primary way to use the product.
- Integration with modern marketing and communications tools is shallow.
- Difficult to recommend to a younger staff that has used Planning Center or Breeze elsewhere.
Traditional Episcopal parishes whose long-time parish secretary already knows the desktop product and trusts it.
Your staff is younger and expects modern SaaS workflows with strong volunteer scheduling.
Servant Keeper is the answer to a specific question: 'Our 70-year-old bookkeeper has used this for 20 years and refuses to switch.' That's not a knock — that institutional trust is worth real money. But for any church starting fresh in 2026, this is a tool whose ceiling is low. The cloud version is a port of the desktop one, not a reimagining, and the gap with Breeze or ChurchTrac at similar price points has only widened. We respect the longevity. We'd still recommend most readers look elsewhere unless continuity with an existing install matters more than capability.
4. Planning Center
The modular industry standard for service planning, volunteer scheduling, and people management.
- Modular pricing means you only pay for the products you actually use, instead of bundling features you'll never touch.
- Services module is genuinely the gold standard for worship planning, with chord charts, rehearsal recordings, and conflict-aware scheduling.
- Church Center mobile app gives members one polished entry point for giving, groups, events, and check-in.
- Strong API and webhook coverage make it the easiest ChMS to integrate with custom tooling or third-party reporting.
- Onboarding is self-serve and well-documented; most churches go live without a paid implementation contract.
- Costs add up fast once you adopt 4-5 modules; a 500-person church can easily spend $250+/month before processing fees.
- No native general-ledger accounting, so finance teams still need QuickBooks or another system alongside it.
- Reporting across modules is inconsistent; some products have rich filters, others feel like an afterthought.
- The product suite still feels like separate apps stitched together, which means navigating between Services, People, and Giving has friction.
- No website builder, so churches needing a CMS have to pair it with Squarespace, Subsplash, or similar.
Episcopal parishes with active music ministries — choir or contemporary band — and active lay-server rotations.
You need integrated fund accounting or are a small parish that does not need worship-grade scheduling.
Planning Center has earned its reputation. Services in particular is the kind of product that ruins you for competitors — once a worship pastor has scheduled bands, sent rehearsal mp3s, and tracked declines from a phone, going back to spreadsheets feels archaic. The trade-off is that PCO has stayed deliberately narrow: no accounting, no website builder, no live streaming. That focus is the reason each module is so good, but it also means you'll be writing checks to two or three other vendors. For churches over ~150 people with a real worship rotation, this is the safe pick. Smaller churches should look at Breeze first.
5. ChurchTrac
Quietly capable, low-cost ChMS with built-in accounting that punches well above its price.
- Pricing is unbeatable for what you get — full ChMS plus fund accounting for under $25/month at most church sizes.
- Genuine built-in fund accounting at the small-church price point is essentially unique to ChurchTrac.
- Free plan is real and not a 14-day trial; small congregations can run it indefinitely.
- Owner-operator company with real responsiveness on email support, not a tiered ticket queue.
- Data is exportable and ownership is clear — no lock-in beyond your monthly subscription.
- UI is utilitarian; it works, but it doesn't have the polish of Breeze or Planning Center.
- Mobile experience is web-based primarily; the dedicated mobile app is functional but limited.
- Volunteer scheduling is basic and won't satisfy a church with a serious worship rotation.
- Brand recognition is low, so peer learning and tutorials are thinner than for category leaders.
- Integration ecosystem is shallow; if you live in Zapier, you'll feel constrained.
Smaller parishes who need fund accounting on a tight budget without paying enterprise prices.
Your staff cares about UI polish or you have a complex multi-fund finance picture.
ChurchTrac is a sleeper. It doesn't have the marketing budget of Tithe.ly or the polish of Planning Center, but for small churches that genuinely need fund accounting alongside the database, nothing else at this price point exists. We've seen it run perfectly well at 400-person churches with a part-time bookkeeper. The honest caveat is that it looks and feels like the work of a small team — because it is — and if your staff is younger or comes from polished SaaS tools, the UI will feel dated. Trade design for capability and money saved, and you'll come out ahead.
6. Tithe.ly
Aggressively priced giving platform with a growing ChMS, app, and website stack underneath it.
- Free giving plan with no monthly fee genuinely removes the financial barrier for churches launching online giving.
- All-Access bundle is the cheapest path to website + app + giving + ChMS in a single bill.
- Sites builder produces clean, mobile-first church websites without needing a developer.
- Active acquisition strategy (Breeze, Elvanto) means the platform footprint keeps expanding.
- Migrating donors from another platform is smooth — Tithe.ly will actively help move recurring gifts.
- Multiple acquired products under one brand creates a confusing UX; ChMS, Sites, and Giving all feel like different apps.
- Customer support has slipped in 2024-2025 reviews; ticket times stretched to days during peak season.
- Reporting is functional but can't match Pushpay or Planning Center for cohort analysis.
- Volunteer scheduling exists but most churches still use Planning Center Services alongside it.
- Roadmap priorities are unclear — it's hard to tell which acquired product is actually getting investment.
Parishes that want online giving live tomorrow with no monthly platform fee, or want a single-vendor bundle including a website.
You need integrated reporting across giving and membership.
Tithe.ly's bet on free giving was the right one, and it's how they got footholds in tens of thousands of churches. The harder bet is whether they can stitch Breeze, Elvanto, Sites, and the original Giving app into something that feels like one product. Right now it doesn't — it feels like a holding company. For a 150-person church just trying to take their first online gift, that doesn't matter and you should sign up today. For a 600-person church evaluating an all-in-one, the seams are visible enough that we'd seriously look at Planning Center plus a separate website tool instead.
7. Subsplash
Custom church mobile apps and media platform that has grown into a full giving and ChMS suite.
- App quality is genuinely high — fast launch times, polished sermon player, native feel on iOS and Android.
- Bundled live streaming and media hosting saves churches from paying separately for Resi or Vimeo OTT.
- Custom-branded app distribution under your church's name on the app stores is included, not an upcharge.
- Subsplash One bundle is one of the few real all-in-ones if you want app, web, giving, and CRM from one vendor.
- Customer success is responsive and includes app store submission/maintenance, which removes a real burden.
- Pricing is sales-gated and aggressive; sticker shock is the most common complaint in third-party reviews.
- Multi-year contracts are standard and difficult to exit early.
- ChMS module is the weakest part of the suite and feels bolted on compared to Planning Center or Breeze.
- Volunteer scheduling is essentially absent — churches keep Planning Center Services alongside.
- Renewal pricing tends to climb meaningfully year over year unless you actively renegotiate.
Larger Episcopal parishes with serious media and live-stream programs and a national or distributed audience.
Your priority is the database, sacramental records, or your parish under 250 attendance.
Subsplash is what you buy when you want your church to feel like a media company. The app is excellent and it's the reason most customers stay. The rest of the suite ranges from competent to noticeably weaker than category leaders, and the pricing model is firmly enterprise — expect a sales call, expect a contract, and expect renewal bumps. We'd recommend it without reservation to churches whose digital strategy is media-heavy. For churches whose primary problem is 'we need a database that works,' there are better and cheaper answers.
Verdict
For most Episcopal and Anglican parishes, the right answer is unromantic: Breeze plus Tithe.ly Giving for under-200 parishes, Realm for larger ones with serious finance and diocesan reporting needs. Neither was built for liturgical workflows, but both produce the underlying numbers cleanly and respect that the canonical register lives elsewhere.
For parishes already running Servant Keeper successfully, we would not push a migration. The contribution and member workflows are mature, parish secretaries know them, and the cost of disrupting that institutional knowledge is real.
Where we would push back: the all-in-one suites with branded apps and live streaming are usually overbuilt for an Episcopal context. The Sunday morning Eucharist is not a media production for most parishes. Subsplash and Pushpay's pitches assume a giving and audience scale that very few Episcopal parishes have. Be skeptical of any rep promising the Book of Common Prayer integration — none of these tools have it in any meaningful sense.