Looking to make the switch to Breeze or one of the other Church Community Builder competitors?
We'd love to make the decision as easy as possible and so we've put together some information comparing Breeze with Church Community Builder. Below we've included topics ranging from features to customer support to price on how Church Community Builder compares to Breeze.
While this article contains our opinions and bias, we truly are convinced that we're able to serve small and mid-sized churches really well and we hope compiling and sharing this list is helpful as you evaluate both options.
We have a lot of respect for the team over at Church Community Builder (CCB) and what they're doing. In fact our recommendation to large and mega churches looking for a solution that has all the bells and whistles is CCB (check out that article here).
These aren't the types of churches we're aiming to serve.
Rather, we are laser-focused on what the typical small and mid-sized church needs (more on how we define small and mid-sized can be found here). This means that we focus on what the typical church uses 95% of the time and cut away any of the excess that can often get in the way.
While the more complicated interface of Church Community Builder may work alright in a large or mega church that has the resources to employ an IT person or IT department, the typical small and mid-sized church has a high value for simplicity and ease of use. It's this simplicity that we're really focused on. In fact, this simplicity is one of our core values as you'll see from our product intro video:
We're a small team of people who have experience running churches, working in churches, volunteering at churches, and supporting churches and we're passionate about seeing churches succeed.
We also assume that most small and mid-sized churches don't have an IT person on staff. As a result we see our role as being the IT department for the churches we serve, at least in the scope of Breeze.
Church Community Builder charges for what they call "Premium Services" - training, coaching, and data migration. These services have an additional cost which can be really substantial very quickly (for instance, "Virtual Training" is $250 per session).
For small and mid-sized churches, these extra (sometimes unforseen) costs can be crippling.
In contrast, we take the opposite approach as we believe these services shouldn't be extra, they should be included.
You can call us or email us with questions whenever you'd like. We have no additional fees for support or consulting and so anyone at your church can call or email with questions. We also offer training, webinars, coaching, importing of data - whatever you need, at no additional cost. Our passion is to see churches succeed.
With our team's church leadership experience combined with our technical knowledge of Breeze, churches can call or email us with specific technical questions like:
Or broader best practice questions such as:
No matter the question, we'll be happy to help!
We also run a blog helping churches simplify and streamline their processes which can be really useful in helping churches take the next step forward.
Church Community Builder, while powerful, has an interface that can be a bit overwhelming. They've done a better job than many at creating an appealing design. However, because they include nearly every bell and whistle in their software, the interface can at times feel busy and complex.
This complexity means that church staff members may not use it or use it very minimally. For example, here's a screenshot of one of CCB's report screens:
In contrast we have a tremendous focus on simple, elegant, and intuitive designs. These allow users to quickly access the information they need without having to put together complex queries. For example, when looking for certain people, users can just tap on the criteria they'd like to search by and the results will automatically show up.
By creating interfaces that everyone can use, churches can empower everyone to use the database - staff, volunteers, and members. This takes a significant load off of the administrator by allowing others to use the database. And each user can have different permissions, ensuring they only have access to the appropriate sections.
Church Community Builder doesn't publish their prices online. Rather, they require users to fill out a form and have a conversation before revealing the price. They, like most software companies in this space, use a tiered pricing model so the bigger you are, the larger the price tag.
While we'll respect their right to reveal their prices how and when they wish, we think being transparent up front is a much better route.
Breeze is a flat $50 per month regardless of church size.
There's no set up fee, no termination fee, and we'll even import your data in from another program at no additional cost. It doesn't matter how big your church is, how many people are in your database, or how many users you have accessing Breeze. Your price won't change. A church could theoretically sign up for Breeze, have us go through the work of importing their data, and then leave after 25 days (not that we'd want you to) and they'd only be out the first month's payment of $50.
In contrast, while we won't publish Church Community Builder's prices, it's safe to say that in almost all cases, churches would be paying more, often significantly more, for Church Community Builder.
Church Community Builder's price jumps up even higher if you want training over the phone, best practice advice, and coaching.
Church Community Builder also charges for importing your data into their database, requiring churches to purchase an import package if they wish to use this service.
As we strive to serve small and mid-sized churches, we find that the simple pricing of $50 per month price point makes sense for churches in this range. We don't have additional charges for training, consulting, or importing data.
We find this to make sense internally as well, giving us the revenue to continue making great improvements that churches love while also providing top-notch support to churches.
You can find more information on why we've priced Breeze this way by checking out our article on five questions churches ask us about our price.
Currently using Church Community Builder?
We'd love to transfer your key data from Church Community Builder over to Breeze.
There's no additional cost for this and it allows you to hit the ground running.
We think this migration process is critical to churches having a successful experience and so we're happy to do it for you. And if you're technically inclined and would prefer, you're able to do the same import yourself.
We love helping churches get moved in quickly not to mention ratings like this:
We hope this comparison has been useful.
In fact we'd love it if you would give Breeze a try!
If you want to learn more about Breeze, you can do so on our home page. Alternatively you can start a live demo which starts a nearly full version of Breeze for you to play around with.
