ChurchBuddy vs ParishSOFT
ChurchBuddy
church.worshipbuddy.orgParishSOFT
parishsoft.comSide by side
| Figure | ChurchBuddy | ParishSOFT |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 7 |
| Spec score · Church Scheduling Software | 8.2 (#13) | 8.3 (#12) |
| Founded | 2025 | 1998 |
| Integrations | The ChurchBuddy site lists connections to WorshipBuddy songbooks and BibleBuddy resources, along with cloud storage, background checks, live streaming, and automated workflows. | ParishSOFT Families connects with ParishSOFT Giving, Offering and Pledge, Religious Education, Tuition, Intelligent Query, and Ministry Scheduler. |
| Purpose | ChurchBuddy is a church management platform for scheduling volunteers, planning services, running events, teaching Sunday school, and reaching a congregation. | ParishSOFT provides technology for Catholic parishes and dioceses, including accounting, church management, giving, websites, and streaming. |
| Security | The maker says data is stored on AWS with encryption at rest and SSL in transit, and production data access is limited to a few trusted team leads. | The company says ParishSOFT Giving is PCI compliant and uses SSL certificates, encryption, intrusion detection, and transaction security. |
| Support | The maker provides a ChurchBuddy guide for documentation and setup help. | ParishSOFT provides a support ticket option and an online help center covering Family Suite, Accounting, diocesan products, websites, and online giving. |
Plans
ParishSOFT
- ParishSOFT Giving Consulting Plan$250, paid once
- Family Suite Guided Consulting Plan$900, paid once
- Family Suite Basic Consulting Plan$1,700, paid once
- ParishSOFT Accounting Basic Consulting Plan$1,700, paid once
- Family Suite Standard Consulting Plan$3,200, paid once
- ParishSOFT Accounting Standard Consulting Plan$3,200, paid once
- ParishSOFT GivingPriced on request
In their own words
ChurchBuddy
ChurchBuddy is a free church management platform for coordinating ministry work across web, Android, and iOS. It handles volunteer scheduling, worship-service planning, recurring service templates, availability, conflict detection, automatic and bulk scheduling, and schedule export or printing. Churches can maintain congregation directories, family links, teams, groups, profiles, and Excel imports, with granular access control. Event tools provide registration forms, CSV responses, QR and badge check-in, plus transportation, housing, and meal management. Sunday school functions cover classes, curricula, teacher, parent, and student portals, attendance, gradebooks, report cards, and check-in scanners. The platform also lists announcements, push notifications, texts, email, targeted messaging, a unified calendar, room and resource booking, service timers, dashboards, analytics, form building, and online giving with payment processing. Integrations include WorshipBuddy songbooks, BibleBuddy resources, cloud storage, background checks, live streaming, and automated workflows. The maker says data is encrypted at rest and in transit, with no ads or data sales. The plan is free, billed Forever, with no hidden fees, premium tiers, or add-ons.
ParishSOFT
ParishSOFT provides church management software and related tools for Catholic parishes, dioceses, schools, and ministry organizations in the United States and Canada. Families manages household and member details, sacramental records, communications, and reporting. Accounting supports budgets, payroll, purchasing, and financial reporting; the maker describes it as GAAP compliant. Giving handles online and recurring donations, reports, payment forms, and contribution and pledge tracking. Family Suite also supports religious education and ministry scheduling, and connects with several ParishSOFT products. MinistryOne offers digital giving, media, event management, prayer requests, group messaging, and push notifications. The listed platforms include web, Android, iOS, and an API. Pricing for the main products is on request. Separate consulting plans range from $250, paid once for ParishSOFT Giving Consulting to $3,200, paid once for Family Suite or Accounting Standard Consulting. ParishSOFT Giving has a stated free 30-day trial. The maker says its tools are used by more than 185 dioceses and 12,000 parishes across the United States and Canada.