What ChiesApp does, module by module
ChiesApp holds the whole church in one place: the people, the rota, the attendance sheet, the calendar, the accounts. This page walks through what each module actually does and which plan it sits in. Free up to 30 contacts, no credit card.
People and families
The church membership database sits at the centre. Every person has a record with contact details, custom fields and family links, and people are grouped into households, so you can see which families have children in them and whose anniversary is next week.
Labels describe people in three ways: category (who they are), role (what they do) and free tags. Lists are built by hand; segments are built from rules, so a segment like "joined this year" or "lives in this city" keeps itself up to date. Import your spreadsheet, export whenever you want, and merge two records when they turn out to be the same person. Lists and segments live in the Communication area, which opens on the Ministry plan.
Volunteer scheduling: ministries and rotas
First you build the structure: departments, teams, roles, who leads what. The org chart comes out of it and can be exported. Then ChiesApp generates the rota and flags the clashes before anyone sees it.
A rota stays a draft until you publish it, so nobody gets a half-finished list. Once it is out, volunteers know their dates, and the rota exports to PDF for the noticeboard and to iCal for personal calendars. No more chasing people in a WhatsApp group.
Attendance at services
Someone marks attendance by hand, by category (Sunday service, small groups, events). It takes seconds on a phone. There is no biometric kiosk, no card reader and no face recognition, on purpose.
The value is in the reading: a weekly heatmap, the average, period against period, this year against last year, and who came for the first time. Export to CSV or PDF when the leadership team asks for numbers.
Calendar, events and registrations
One calendar carries services, events, rotas and room bookings, with two-way Google Calendar sync. Events can repeat, people can RSVP, and rooms can be booked with approval or through a public booking page.
For a camp, a conference or a church weekend you can open registrations: price tiers, add-ons, discount codes, a PDF ticket by email and check-in at the door with a phone camera. Registrations come with the Ministry plan, up to 300 sign-ups a month, unlimited from Growth.
- ChiesApp never touches the money for a registration. The church lists its own methods (bank transfer, PayPal, cash at the door), the person declares the payment, a staff member confirms it.
- Because the money does not pass through ChiesApp, there is no fee on the ticket price. Compare that with a platform that takes a cut of every sign-up.
Church finances, without payment processing
Income and expenses go into a ledger you can actually read: a pivot view by category and period, recurring costs, budgets per project with live spend, and a register of what the church owns. Multi-period reports can be shared as a public link, so the board reads the numbers without needing an account.
ChiesApp tracks and plans. It does not collect: no online giving, no card processing. That keeps church financial data outside PCI and PSD2 scope and matches how most European churches actually receive offerings. Finances sits in the Resources area, which opens on the Ministry plan.
The rest of the modules, and what each plan opens
- Activities and tasks: status, priority, assignee, with list, kanban and timeline views.
- Forms: eight field types, conditional logic, templates, a public link, and answers mapped onto the member record.
- Messages and chat: push notifications with automatic rules and delivery stats, plus threads attached to an event or a task with @mentions.
- Spaces: sub-communities (youth, worship, a church plant) with their own modules, theme and access code.
- Public pages: a drag-and-drop block builder for a link-in-bio page or a community showcase.
- Analytics: demographics, KPIs, custom widgets and reports you can share.
- Plans: free up to 30 contacts, no credit card. Starter adds room only (80 members, 5 admins). Two areas are paid and both open on the Ministry plan: Communication (spaces, pages, forms, lists and segments) and Resources (finances, projects, reports, café).
- Built in Europe under European privacy rules, GDPR-compliant, each church isolated from every other. Founded in 2025 by Gabriele Martucci and Lorenzo Pascalis.
Frequently asked questions
Which features are free?
Free up to 30 contacts, no credit card: people, families, attendance, labels, teams and ministries, volunteer rotas, events, activities, rooms, calendar and analytics. Paid from the Ministry plan: the two areas — Communication (spaces, pages, forms, lists and segments) and Resources (finances, projects, reports, café) — and event registrations, 300 sign-ups a month and unlimited from Growth. Starter, in between, only adds room: 80 members and 5 admins.
Does ChiesApp do volunteer scheduling?
Yes. You build the ministry structure first (departments, teams, roles), then ChiesApp generates the rota, flags clashes and keeps it a draft until you publish. After that volunteers see their dates, and the rota exports to PDF and iCal.
Can we collect donations or event fees through ChiesApp?
No, and that is deliberate. ChiesApp does not process payments. For registrations the church lists its own methods (bank transfer, PayPal, cash at the door), the person declares the payment and a staff member confirms it. The money never passes through ChiesApp, so there is no fee on the ticket price. The Finances module tracks and plans church resources instead of collecting money.
How is attendance recorded?
By hand, by category, in a few seconds on a phone. No biometric kiosk, no card reader, no face recognition. What comes back is the reading: weekly heatmap, average, period comparison, year over year, and export to CSV or PDF.
Does the calendar sync with Google Calendar?
Yes, in both directions. Church events show up in personal Google calendars and changes flow back. The same view also holds rotas and room bookings, so one calendar shows everything happening at church.
Is this an alternative to Planning Center or ChurchSuite?
Yes. ChiesApp covers the same ground: people, ministries, rotas, attendance, events and church finances. The differences are where it is built (Europe, under European privacy rules), the price (free up to 30 contacts) and what it deliberately leaves out, such as payment processing.