The legend surrounding the humble beginnings of SmartChurch, a church app that is free for churches to use for life, continues to dissipate through technology circles. I’ve heard it all. Some believe SmartChurch is run by a wealthy benefactor while others have asserted that their goal will be to keep the church app free for now but charge people once they are fully “hooked” on their services. There is also a fear that they have started with the plan to sell advertising in the near future.
As one of the founding members of Lockeland, the parent company of SmartChurch, I can dispel all of these rumors. SmartChurch was created in 2013 to serve church planters and missionary churches all over the world. It was and remains a simple concept: a free church app to help churches grow. And it’s funding comes from the revolutionary concept of “giving” a percentage of income from the parent company to the sustainment and future development of SmartChurch.
Today, this goal remains the same. The team at SmartChurch have a conservative and steady growth plan that they believe is sustainable for at least the next few decades. As they build, they are careful to build things the right way in a “native” environment. This approach ensures the app is less dependent on other technologies going out of business or changing their systems which can add time and cost to other church apps.
Other than new development, the costs are very low for SmartChurch. Almost everything in SmartChurch is automated giving the control to the church which reduces the need for large numbers of Smartchurch staff to run the app. In fact, SmartChurch continues to build new features in direct correlation with the biggest concerns or issues facing their customers today. This process has greatly reduced the cost and burden on their customer service department.
SmartChurch also welcomes third party apps to build off of their API or to fund our costs to integrate with their services. When these integrations make sense to the overall strategy and when the outside third parties are willing to financially contribute to this integration, SmartChurch will do this.
