Looking to make the switch to Breeze or one of the other Fellowship One competitors?
We'd love to make the decision as easy as possible and so we've put together some information comparing Breeze with Fellowship One. Below we've included topics ranging from features to customer support to price on how Fellowship One 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.
Fellowship One, while powerful, has an interface that was really built for engineers rather than church workers. Setting up complex queries and options are required for generating simple reports. This often means that church staff simply don't use it or use it very minimally.
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.
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.
While Fellowship One requires long, pre-scheduled training sessions that can cost a lot of additional money, training in Breeze is included. Churches using Breeze typically find they are able to dive right in and start using it, asking questions as they come up (although we're happy to set up a webinar if something more formal would be helpful).
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.
A common reaction we hear from churches that are coming from Fellowship One is that Fellowship One was just "too much". There were too many features, too many options, and too many buttons which ended up complicating the interface and ultimately overwhelmed the church.
In contrast, we aim to be 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 Fellowship One 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:
Fellowship One doesn't publish their prices online.
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 Fellowship One's prices, it's safe to say that in almost all cases, churches would be paying more, often significantly more, for Fellowship One. That price goes up even more if a church uses Fellowship One's training service, something that Breeze has included.
As we strive to serve small and mid-sized churches, we find that the flat $50 per month price point makes sense for churches in this range. 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 Fellowship One?
We'd love to transfer your key data from Fellowship One 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.
