Fellowship One is a church management software solution from Fellowship Technologies, a relative newcomer to the software development field, having been founded in 2004. It wanted to develop a completely web-based SaaS enterprise-level church management system, and Fellowship One was the result. In 2010 Fellowship Technologies was acquired by ACTIVE Networks. Fellowship One includes a suite of tools designed to make church management more effective in the long term.

It has features to serve all the different constituencies in your church, including ministry leaders, staff, members, lay leaders, visitors, volunteers, and children. The 11 main features include the following: Member Care; Visitor Connection and Assimilation; Administrative Essentials; Multi-Purpose Check-In; Church Communications; Small Groups and Community; Online Giving; Volunteer Management; Event Management and Scheduling; Multi-Site Management; and Comprehensive Reporting. Plenty of training for making the most of each of the modules is available in both instructor-led and self-paced formats. In addition, there’s also a comprehensive learning center where you can quickly find out about specific features, as well as online help tools within the software itself. Fellowship One is geared towards larger churches that have at least 1,000 attendees and at least 10 employees. It is also accessible on iPhone and Android mobile devices.

Pros

Users seem uniformly impressed with the sheer power of the FellowshipOne solution. It seems capable of handling just about anything, and can clearly keep growing as your church grows (if you’re lucky enough to have that “problem”). Several users note that the number of details that can be tracked on individual members feels infinite. And many users seem to keep finding new functionalities that make church management easier, such as discovering that it can be used to allow members to search out a small group and sign up to become a member of it, all online. Quite a number of users praise the Fellowship One technical support staff as both knowledgeable and responsive, especially highlighting the report writing team as outstanding in their ability to build useful, flexible reports. Robust reporting was mentioned by other users as being one of the most attractive features of the software. The giving module is also praised for its simplicity and streamlining abilities. Others note that upgrades always result in good improvements.

Cons

One drawback cited by users is the lack of a mobile interface for online registrations. If that’s something you really want, you’re going to have to find a third-party app that integrates. Others noted that the email system is a bit too simplistic and not very robust in its functionality. While most seem to like the reporting capabilities, others have questioned it, especially when two reports run at different times that should have the exact same results come out with different numbers.

The Fellowship One solution is clearly powerful, and users are largely very satisfied with it. There are some who need specific functionalities that it lacks, and others who don’t quite trust its reports, but overall it’s a very solid church management software solution.