Assemblea vs c-SPOT

Assemblea is web-based church management software for member records, giving, events, attendance, and finances, designed around evangelical and Protestant congregations. Member profiles can link families and record church acts and roles. Event tools support attendance check-in, named guests, child check-in with printed security codes, and a public calendar with an iCal feed. A guided importer has presets for exports from Planning Center, Breeze, ChurchSuite, and ChMeetings, plus a generic CSV option. Members can use a password-free magic link to update profiles, view giving, manage recurring gifts, confirm volunteer shifts, join groups, and browse events. Online donations go directly to the church’s Stripe account; Assemblea charges a 1% platform fee plus standard Stripe processing fees. The maker says data is hosted in the European Union, encrypted, and GDPR compliant. Security controls include field-level encryption for sensitive notes and prayer requests, granular permissions, and a tamper-evident audit trail. Churches can export, restrict, or erase an individual’s data using built-in tools. The responsive product works on phones and tablets without installation. The Free plan costs nothing; paid plans are Starter at $19/mo and Pro at $49/mo.

c-SPOT is a free, open-source service-planning application for small churches. It organizes Sunday and midweek services and other events, including orders of service, staff, resources, songs, and event details. Song materials can include lyrics, scores, and guitar chords, with OnSong format for musicians. Songs and other items can be shown as slides, including offline from a local cache; presentations can be controlled by a casting device such as Chromecast or a synced smartphone. Role-based permissions govern changes and access to some information, and users can communicate by email or internal messages. The project tracks song use for CCLI reporting and links to SongSelect. It runs on the web and listed desktop and mobile platforms, or can be hosted on a user's own web host. Self-hosting calls for console access, Composer, Git, a database, and configured mail-server connectivity. The responsive web interface requires an up-to-date browser and JavaScript. Synchronized lyrics, chords, or sheet music across devices work only on Apache servers.