|
Aspect |
Church Insight |
Church Advance |
Church123 |
Church Edit |
|
USABILITY |
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Overall ease of use rating (out of 5) |
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Proper WYSIWYG interface |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
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Speed/responsiveness of back office |
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|
FEATURES |
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Overall range of features offered |
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Calendars |
Yes - extensive calendar and rota support with RSS feeds |
Yes - very well designed and easy to use. |
Requires 3rd party but excellent Google Calendars |
Yes - works like Outlook. |
|
Podcast Support |
Yes - extensive media management (level 2 & 3) |
No - coming soon |
Yes - excellent |
Yes but £50 + VAT per 100 members per year extra |
|
Form builders |
Yes - extensive |
Yes - exceptionally good |
Yes - easy to use |
Yes - up to 30 fields |
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Church member management features |
Yes - extensive and class-leading features (not all listed in this document) |
No - Some bolt-on support coming soon |
Yes 3rd party bolt-ons available |
Yes - Member logins and subgroups |
|
Email Hosting |
No - recommend using Gmail |
None (Lite) |
Yes - unlimited |
Yes - unlimited |
|
E-commerce functionality |
Yes - extensive |
Offer another product that can be integrated |
Yes - integrated support for 2 systems. |
No but has a catalogue system for books, cds etc |
|
RSS Feeds from the site content |
Yes - extensive |
No |
If specially requested |
No |
|
Integrate RSS feeds from other sites |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Rotas and Auto reminders |
Yes (level 2 and 3) |
No |
No |
No |
|
Forums |
Yes - extensive and |
Can add third party forums |
Can add third party forums |
Yes- Plus version only |
|
Polls |
Yes (level 2 & 3) |
No |
If specially requested |
Yes - homepage only |
|
Members chat facility |
Yes (Level 2&3) |
No |
No |
No |
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Free templates available |
Yes some - mixed quality. Library of expensive |
10 good quality templates |
Over 150 templates ranging from bland to top quality. |
25 templates in 5 colours available - variable quality |
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Password protected areas |
Yes - extensive permissions control |
No - coming soon |
Yes - very flexible |
Plus version only |
|
Email address encoded against spamming |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Number of editors allowed |
Unlimited |
1 (Lite) 5 (Classic) |
Unlimited |
Plus version - up to 20 |
|
Photo Gallery |
No - would need to add link to 3rd party site manually |
No - would need to add link to 3rd party site manually |
Support for 3rd party sites built in |
Yes |
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Integrated Donation Support |
Yes |
No |
PayPal, Just Giving and Charity Choice |
No |
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Automated Bible verse feeds |
No - would need to add link to 3rd party site manually |
No - would need to add link to 3rd party site manually |
Uses 3rd party but integrated into the system |
Yes |
| PRICING |
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|
Level 1 (inc. VAT) |
Classic (inc. VAT) |
£195 +VAT per year |
Starting Prices - increase based on church size £149+VAT per yr Plus version |
|
| SUPPORT |
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Telephone and email Support |
Email (level 1) Phone & email (Level 2 &3) |
Free for one week (Lite) |
Yes - free and unlimited and exceptionally friendly |
Yes - free and unlimited |
|
Online Tutorials |
Support site coming soon |
Yes with video |
Yes - separate help website with written guide |
Yes |
|
Training courses (at additional cost) |
Yes at CI premises in |
Yes by request at CA premises in Hove. |
No |
No |
|
Online documentation |
Yes but not really adequate to cover the complexity of the system |
Yes - very good with some video tutorials and guided help |
Yes |
Yes - in downloadable PDF format. Good tool tips within system |
|
Number of employees of the company providing the product. |
Around 20 |
Less than 5 |
Less than 5 |
Less than 5 |
| TECHNICAL |
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Quality of code generated by system |
Terrible - table based and out dated. Causes pages to load slowly. |
Excellent - CSS only and fully standards compliant |
Standards-compliant based on CSS. Using mix of CSS and tables for layouts. |
Poor - some CSS but reliant on tables for layout |
|
Accessibility to disabled users rating (out of 5) |
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Drop-down navigation menus |
Yes |
Depends on template |
Depends on template |
Yes |
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Navigation levels supported in menu system |
Infinite |
Infinite |
Infinite |
3 |
|
Ability to edit HTML source code |
Yes but limited to individual components within a page |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes but limited to individual components within a page |
|
Bespoke Templating system |
Constructed using a very complicated system via browser |
Designer can add and edit templates themselves |
Designer - creates template and passes to C123 for integration. Direct upload of templates coming soon |
Constructed using a system accessed from the browser. Fairly easy to use but some limitations on design. |
|
Search Engine Friendly URLs |
Partial |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Set Meta tags on per-page basis |
No - coming soon |
Yes |
Yes |
No - Site wide only |
|
Visitor statistics provided |
Yes |
No - use Google Analytics |
Yes - extensive and well presented |
Yes - basic but well presented |
|
Built-in image optimization |
No |
Yes and integrated photo editing tools |
Yes |
Yes |
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Technologies underpinning system |
Microsoft ASP /SQL |
PHP/MYSQL/AJAX |
Microsoft ASP/SQL/AJAX |
PHP/MYSQL |
|
Browsers needed to use Back-office |
IE & Firefox |
Firefox |
IE, Firefox, Safari & Chrome |
IE or Firefox |
Information is accurate as of June 2009 but systems are always developing.
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