Support

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers for churches deciding whether to sign up, and for churches already using SanctuaryCMS — the same answers are also available right inside your church portal.

Before You Sign Up

Is there a free trial?

Yes — explore a full working demo with sample church data any time, no credit card and no waiting required. When you're ready to move forward with your own church's data, just sign up for a plan.

How much does SanctuaryCMS cost?

Plans start at $25/month for up to 75 active members and scale up to $120/month for unlimited members — see the full breakdown. Every plan includes every feature; the only difference between plans is how many active members you can have. Save two months with annual billing.

Is there a contract, or can I cancel anytime?

No contract. Plans are billed monthly (or annually, if you choose that option) and you can cancel anytime — there are no cancellation fees.

Can I change plans later?

Absolutely. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately; downgrades take effect at your next billing cycle.

What happens if we go over our member limit?

You'll receive a notification as you approach your limit. Adding new members will be paused until you upgrade. Existing member data is never deleted.

Do you offer discounts for small or startup churches?

Yes — we have a discretionary program for new church plants and small congregations. Learn more, or help fund it for others, or contact us directly.

Does text messaging (SMS) cost extra?

Not through us — Text Notifications is included in every plan at no added subscription cost. You do connect your own Twilio account to send texts, and Twilio bills you directly for what you send (typically a small fraction of a cent to a few cents per message, depending on your country), so there's never a markup on your texting volume. A one-time carrier registration step is required before you can start sending; our setup wizard walks you through it.

Is the member portal hosted by you?

Yes — we handle all hosting, backups, SSL certificates, and updates. Your portal runs at a URL like members.yourchurch.com or church.sanctuarycms.com.

How is member data kept private?

All data is stored in a dedicated database for your church only. Members control their own privacy settings — what contact info is visible to other members. You own your data and can export it at any time.

What support do you offer?

All plans include email support. Church and Unlimited plans receive priority response. We also offer a guided setup call for new installations.

We're on another system already — can we switch to SanctuaryCMS?

Yes. During setup you import or manually add your congregation — family groups, photos, and contact info — so you're not starting from a blank slate. Try the demo to see the system first, then reach out to support@sanctuarycms.com if you have data from another system you'd like help bringing over.

Account & Features

account

How do I reset a member's password?
Go to User Accounts, find the member, and click Reset Password. They'll be emailed a temporary password and required to set a new one on their next login.

billing

Can I change how many people can log in?
The only limitation you have is the number of members, which depends on your plan tier. Each member that you assign an account to will be able to log in to the system. Check your subscription card for details on your plan tier.

features

How do I add a new church event?
Go to Church Events and click "+ New Event." You can mark events as Members Only to keep them off your public website.

general

How do you handle duplicate family records and keep member contact details, giving history, and directory privacy settings accurate when records change?
SanctuaryCMS scans for likely duplicate members and families automatically — matching exact phone/email, matching names within the same household, and catching typos or name variants (like “Jon” vs “John”). Nothing merges on its own, though: a staff member reviews each match side-by-side and approves it before anything combines. Once approved, giving history, attendance, and other records move over to the record that’s kept, directory privacy settings stay intact, and the old record is preserved (not deleted) for an audit trail rather than silently discarded.
How are online gifts processed, and what happens if a donation is refunded, disputed, or assigned to the wrong fund?
Online gifts are processed by your own Tithe.ly account — donors give through your church’s Tithe.ly-hosted giving page, and Tithe.ly handles the actual payment. Because SanctuaryCMS never touches the card data, refunds and disputes on an online gift are handled directly in your Tithe.ly dashboard, just like with any other payment processor. For gifts your team enters by hand — cash, check, bank transfer — you can correct the fund, amount, or any other detail on the record at any time before (or after) the deposit session is closed.
Can we restrict prayer requests, giving records, and nursery schedules to specific roles, and audit who viewed or changed sensitive information?
Yes. Giving records have always required admin-level access, and we’ve now added a dedicated “Giving Access” permission so a treasurer or financial secretary can see and manage giving without being handed full administrative access to the rest of the system. Nursery schedules are already scoped to nursery coordinators and admins only.

Prayer requests are the one exception, and it’s by design rather than a gap: that screen exists so any member can submit a request and the whole congregation can see it and pray — that’s the intended use, not something that needs locking down. A church that also wants a private, staff-only prayer channel can still handle that separately.

On auditing: every view and change in Giving — sessions and records created, edited, or deleted; statements viewed or emailed; exports run — is now logged with who did it and when, both right on each giving session’s own history and in a dedicated, filterable activity log leadership can review anytime.
Can we set up recurring gifts, pledges, and designated funds, and reconcile contribution totals with our bank or accounting records without double-counting gifts?
Yes to all of that. Designated giving is built in — every gift is tagged to a specific fund (general, missions, building, etc.), with reports and year-end statements that break out by fund automatically. Pledge and Faith Promise campaigns are their own feature too: you can run several at once, each tied to a specific fund, and fulfillment is calculated automatically from actual giving rather than needing someone to track it by hand.

For recurring gifts, online giving runs through your Tithe.ly giving page, which lets a donor set up a gift to repeat on its own schedule — those still land in your records the same way any other gift does.

On reconciliation: every giving session can be exported to Excel formatted for matching against a bank deposit, and if you use Xero, QuickBooks Online, or Aplos, we can sync giving sessions straight into your books automatically — with safeguards built in so a session never gets posted twice, even if it gets reopened later to fix something.
If a member’s email address is shared by several family members, can we target messages to the right people and tell which recipients opened them?
Yes. Messages go out to individually selected members or groups — by office, age range, or a hand-picked list — not by household, so two people in the same family can be on completely different lists even if they share a phone or computer. And when more than one person shares an email address, each of them still gets their own separate message addressed to them by name, rather than one shared email going out — so a husband and wife on a shared inbox each get their own copy if they’re both included.

Each of those messages is tracked individually too, so you can see whether that specific message was opened, by whom it was addressed to, and when.

migrations

Can we import member, giving, and event data from our current church software, and how do you validate the records before they go live?
Yes. You can bring in member, giving, and event records from your current system as a CSV or Excel export. If it’s a Planning Center or Realm export, we recognize the columns automatically; anything else just needs a quick one-time mapping (which field is “first name,” which is “email,” etc.). Before anything is actually added, you get a full preview — every row is checked for problems and matched against your existing members so you don’t end up with duplicates, and nothing goes live until you review it and click Commit. You can cancel at any point with nothing written.

Still have a question? Email support@sanctuarycms.com or try the demo for instant access.