Do you really want one-size-fits-all?
When Fellowship Technologies first started we had a single edition called Fellowship One – Enterprise Edition. As a customer of Fellowship One – Enterprise Edition a church has unlimited everything of what we offer – unlimited check-in stations, unlimited transactions, unlimited storage, unlimited users, etc. – get the drift? As I have said before, we want our customers to use as much of the system as they can without the fear of it costing more to have one more user access the system or to do one more report or to do that extra mailing list.
However, as time went along, we came to understand that although we believe a church should use all aspects of our system not all churches had that same feeling. Some churches wanted all of the features but based upon their size and/or maturity, did not believe they could afford it. And it is true – if a church only uses Fellowship One as they would use their legacy client-server system, the access fees for Fellowship One could be considered high. However, if you use Fellowship One to its full potential, it is inexpensive compared with the features and functions you get, especially when you consider the impact of those features. We call these the FBI’s – Features | Benefits | Impact. The impact of what a church can do with a system like Fellowship One is the true value of the system. In the case of Fellowship One, the value is far higher than the cost.
To meet our customers’ needs we were persuaded to offer Fellowship One in different editions and thus adjusted the access fees accordingly. For smaller churches that need just the basics of a church management system, we now offer Fellowship One – Basic Edition – no fluff, just the basics – but at very, very low cost. For the small yet growing church that needs more functionality, yet may not need check-in capabilities (such as a church meeting in a temporary facility), we offer Fellowship One – Growth Edition. To add website integration and data integration with that edition, we offer Growth Plus.
For the church that has decided to not leverage real-time attendance for all activities, yet desires check-in capabilities for something such as the children’s ministry, we offer both Starter and Starter Plus editions. For the church that believes it needs an enterprise web-based church management system, yet because of its congregation does not believe web site integration is needed, we have Standard Edition. And for those churches that are just looking for a check-in solution, we offer Fellowship One – Check-in Only. And we continue to offer our Enterprise Edition which includes all of that we have to offer.
Why so many editions? Because in church management systems, one size does not fit all. If you don’t need it, we don’t think you should pay for it. As we mature as a company and further architect the solution to easily administer a true custom setup, we may offer our solution at an even more granular level – but for now, this is what we have chosen to administer. So why wait for the value that Fellowship One has to offer for your church and congregation?
Grace to you as you go out and SIZE UP what you need!
Jeff Hook