FellowshipOne

Fellowship One can really do everything you hope for!

Pluspunten:

Fellowship One is a very dynamic and thorough program! It has the capabilities to capture every detail you want in relation to your congregation.

Minpunten:

I do wish the program had a little more ease of use. Maybe include some more shortcuts to access information on the go.

Fellowship One is Robust, but dated.

Opmerkingen: Overall, we tend to see a huge benefit to our ministries by using this software, but in the future, we'll be looking to something more updated if we don't see a progressional change for F1.

Pluspunten:

The amount of functionality for F1 is incredible. We use it in so many ways for our different ministries, from small groups, attendance for services/serving, to tithing/finances and sending mass emails to specific groups of people, it covers a ton of bases. I like that this is a discipleship based software tool. We have to put our hands on almost every part of an account to make sure that we're intentional with the data we record. The security when fully implemented for check-in systems on Sunday services is impeccable. We have really made an effort to improve our security within the past few years and you can dig deep by using jobs that are connected to specific check-in activities and only people with specific assignments can check-in. It's very dialed in.

Minpunten:

The software, while being functionality-wise amazing and broad? It lacks an updated style for the UI, while also using some outdated ways to process what you need. While requiring a hands-on approach to discipleship by having to change every little detail on an account, this can be so tedious and cumbersome to other tasks you might have. The learning curve is also a bit hefty, for users who don't understand systems or pick up understanding quickly? It can be very confusing at first.

As a user this software was difficult to use

Opmerkingen: My church used this software to manage members, events and groups. As a group leader I was tasked with using it to track group attendance and report issues to church leadership. I personally didn't like it even in my limited use because the interface was not clear and it was tough to use. Adding members to the group was very confusing, the software just isn't designed very well in that regard. One constant I heard from pastors and staff at the church was how much they disliked this software. We recently just switched off to a new software that is much easier to use. Personally I am glad as I was not a fan of this platform.

Pluspunten:

- Tracks group attendance really well. - Once you got into the place you needed to be getting data entered into the system was fairly easy. - Allowed leaders to make edits to meeting attendance fairly easily.

Minpunten:

- User interface is not friendly, the system was honestly difficult to find your way around. - Even church staff could not fix simple issues like user information being in the system incorrectly; there was only one staff member that really knew how to fix a mix up where our account had incorrect information in it. The system would not let us correct the error ourselves as it was limited to an admin. - Did not take imports from other systems well so data had to constantly be manually entered by staff which created loads of extra work for them. - Adding members to your group was a pain as they had to be added to Fellowship One, sent a request and then you could add them. If I had a guy just visiting the group there was no way for me to put his attendance in without having to officially add him to the group which was not great for tracking purposes as a leader.

Fellowship One keeps track of people and processes

Pluspunten:

It helps me keep track of people and processes in my church attendees and volunteers. We use it to track finances as well. You can set up workflows that will help you automate certain functions and that's a huge help.

Minpunten:

It's definitely not the easiest software to use. You have to really dig into it to learn it and be committed to it, because if you're not, the team will try to find workarounds so they don't have to use it.

Great product for managing church members

Pluspunten:

This product is great for creating multiple groups with different schedules and purposes and integrates well for FellowshipOne users from the church to access their information and groups

Minpunten:

The reports are so hard to run! They are not very intuitive which makes it difficult to find what I am looking for on the first try so I end up running things like ten times.

Unsatisfied

Opmerkingen: The online event registration and giving management were the most successful aspects of the software for our organization. There were other versions that came available besides what we were using, but due mainly to the extra cost and we remained in that version. Since our experience with support was not stellar we felt it would be better to switch companies that to change products within the Fellowship One offerings.

Pluspunten:

Online giving worked well and there are lots of built-in reports.

Minpunten:

We found that the support was inadequate for our needs, with slower than desired response times. We are no longer F1 customers mainly for that reason. We also wanted more flexibility to add on to the functionality and found that the competition was ahead of F1.

Fellowship One Experience

Pluspunten:

This software met our basic needs as an organization, so it was sufficient when we were first starting out. The reporting functionality is relatively intuitive and the platform is pretty easy to use.

Minpunten:

As we grew, the type of reporting we were looking for just wasn't available within this platform. We needed a more robust reporting functionality but did not have that option. We also had issues with security as there were erroneous charges to contributors at one point, which decreased the level of trust in the system from both us and our users.

This may have a place still for smaller churches, but it's not for us anymore

Pluspunten:

We used it for 15+ years. It did it's job fairly well and we saw some development over that time-frame, but not much.

Minpunten:

Stale. It looks like it was made in the 90s still. Not mobile friendly. Expensive. Support literally had tickets for us over a year old go unresolved. Multiple giving errors led us to finally leave for a 3rd party giving provider and an open-source CMS for user management. Couldn't be happier with that choice.

The once king of CFMS is no longer the even a pawn in the game

Pluspunten:

What I used to like about Fellowship One was that it was the central hub for all data for the church organization.

Minpunten:

What I have come to not like about Fellowship One is that after a number of mergers and acquisitions the software is no longer fully supported as it once was. It's cumbersome to use and even harder to modify to fit our needs. We have since gone elsewhere for FMS.

Fellowship One has gone from being one of the best, to one of the worst

Pluspunten:

F1 beginning as a strong cloud solution and as packed with features. The good news is they haven't lost any of those features.

Minpunten:

The bad news is they have stopped developing the core of their product for about 10 years. They are far behind competitors in the technology space and focus more on add-ons, not the day-to-day ministry tasks.

Poor customer support

Opmerkingen: This company started out great and has gone downhill. In the past year, we spent months trying to get a response from the billing department on an issue. The woman who was assigned to our company did not respond in a timely manner and, when she did respond, gave us wrong information or did not answer the initial question. We even purchased wrong equipment because we were misinformed about what we needed. We also spent time leaving messages for our account rep, only to find out 3 weeks later that he no longer worked there and we had a new rep. We were not informed and our old rep's voicemail was still active. Our experience with F1 was very disappointing and we decided to leave. In order to cancel, you must give 60 days notice & pay 30% of each month left in your year, according to the contract. And, no matter when you turn in your cancellation paperwork, they don't run the cancellation until the end of the month. So, if your contract month begins on the 14th, you still have to pay because F1 runs the cancellation on the 31st, even if you turned it in at the beginning of the month. The only positive thing I can say is that F1 did let us out of our contract one month early, so we had a 30 day cancellation notice instead of 60. But, that was a small thing after so many months of problems.

Pluspunten:

The software is helpful and you can run reports from your database for many different needs. Check-in works well.

Minpunten:

Customer support and especially the billing department caused us many problems. The software is expensive and the contract will nickel & dime you if you try to leave early. The software is expansive and a lot of setup & upkeep has to be done manually.

Good at lots of things, but not the best at anything

Opmerkingen: We've moved away from F1 to Rock, and we couldn't be happier.

Pluspunten:

Excellent people-management system: the perfect church rolodex. Tracks finances well, handles basic check-in features, handles simple email communication, and has a very extensible reporting system.

Minpunten:

Other than looking up people's contact info, it's not great at anything. You'll end up using third-party volunteer tracking (PCO integration would be a snap, but they won't do it), third-party finance partners (because their payment gateway is poor), third-party email clients (because their email system is poor), third party registration systems (because inFellowship is a nightmare from which you can never awake), and third-party groups sign-ups (ditto). This wouldn't be such a problem if the Fellowship One design team didn't refuse, as a matter of principle, to cleanly integrate with anyone who provides a competing product. Since almost any electronic service for churches is a competing product, that means F1 doesn't really integrate well with anyone.

Great product, even better staff!

Opmerkingen: The team at Fellowship Technologies is top rate. They strive to make sure that each church is focusing on ministry and not on the administration of the product. I love what Fellowship One offers our church. A single centralized place for our church's data, the security of their child check-in system, the ease of online giving, integrated event registration and ease of their new Groups 2.0 online group finder and registration piece is fantastic. Fellowship Technologies continues to improve the their product with new offerings while working at improving their infrastructure, keeping the product strong and ready for future growth.

Pluspunten:

- Software as a service (SaaS) is the way to go for us. Our staff has 24/7 access to the data they need. - One central location for our data means no more data silos for us. Everyone has access to up to date information. - Very active user community shares tips and tricks with each other - Great, secure, easy child check-in program - Easy to use online giving - Event registration integrates with our website - Excellent small groups search and registration tool. - Great teaching video library and documentation - Best Practices documentation is very helpful - Ever improving API integration

Minpunten:

The report library can be tough to navigate because there are so many reports to pick from. This can make it tough to find the report you need when you need it. BUT, on the plus side, once you find the report you are looking for you can save it to a personal library and find it again easily. If you can't find the report you are looking for, the customer service team is very knowledgeable, the help information is good, and the online user base is very helpful.

Great Solution for Smaller to Medium Church

Opmerkingen: Overall, we have been pleased with member tracking, volunteer assignments, and groups created. Customer Service is most often quick to respond.

Pluspunten:

It is fairly customizable in regards to fields available. And, has a great report library.

Minpunten:

Even though there are a vast number of Core reports that can be customizable, it is oftentimes difficult to get the exact information that is needed on a report. And difficult to troubleshoot when you create a report that seems to pull no data at all.

Good Totally out of the box ChMS solution

Opmerkingen: We used F1 for about 10 years. It's a great out of the box ChMS system that has a ton of different functionality. They will send a team out to help you implement the system, and they have built in support (the timeliness of resolution does leave something to be desired) and it really does do the majority of things a church would have a need to do. The downside for us was the lack of flexibility that some of the features had, and the lack of new features being released in a timely manner. The company has gone through a lot of change in the past few years, which has left a lot of customers feeling unsupported. While I would recommend a church taking a good look at F1, especially if they need something that can just be configured and run with, we decided to switch to a different system.

Pluspunten:

Out of the box solution that includes most every feature a church would need, including support.

Minpunten:

Support hasn't been great, multiple changes in company ownership has left things feeling unstable.

It works, but it’s a bit frustrating...

Opmerkingen: Overall, it’s a goof software if you are looking for it to provide customizable reports and if you are looking to get your feet wet with a basic check in app, but if you want something that is more intuitive and user friendly, look elsewhere.

Pluspunten:

Simple enough to use as a check in software for children’s ministry, but volunteers are almost always required to assist. The customer service and ability to customize reports for the church works great though.

Minpunten:

As far as a self-service system, it is not intuitive and does not provide a very user-friendly experience. So if you are looking for a fully autonomous self-check in system, I would look elsewhere (for now). Also, we were having a lot of technical issues with the printer not connecting to the software or intermittently disconnecting and then we would need to reboot the app.

F1 at The Village Church in Texas

Opmerkingen: As things stand right now with what is available today, if your church is looking for a very good, if not great, Church Management System Fellowship One is the system you want. The old adage, "You get what you pay for" applies with a SaaS product you are no longer supporting a server and software yourself or trying to develop something on your own. Having said that the company's "development to production agility" needs improvement as there are still things that need to be done on the congregation facing side of this system that hopefully will be taken care of in the very near future and make F1 one of the most complete systems available.

Pluspunten:

Excellent implementation team! F1 software has delivered what they said it could deliver in response to our RFP. Support is responsive. Communication has been good. We have the benefit of many Active Network/Fellowship Tech employees attending and in membership at The Village. No server or site to manage is great (obviously that is a big part of what we pay for) Functionality is really good. Access to the data via API is great and getting better with every new API realm.

Minpunten:

Implementation Team could have been more assertive with some suggestions and less with others. Though F1 has delivered it has not delivered at the level we had hoped for, specifically public facing via weblink where the UX has left a lot to be desired. The back-end functionality is great but the interface needs a makeover now. Support though responsive has been dismissive with some of our requests and we have experienced some delays on what we consider a pretty serious request.

Poor Expectations - but powerful system

Opmerkingen: I would recommend F1 but with high caution. Make sure you have a point person that is highly computer literate. Be very patient... I gave 5 stars to "Meets our needs" on the premise that eventually when we get all our questions answered - it will meet our needs. That's why we chose F1.

Pluspunten:

This software is very feature rich and capable. It has resolved some of our immediate needs with check-in for kids, contributions, and mobile app for access to our data base as well as our small groups. When you read my cons please don't think I would not choose F1 again. I am just highly displeased with how they set expectations and how they train.

Minpunten:

They do a very poor job of setting expectations. While the system is capable of a lot of features...good luck figuring them out. They are very limiting on what they will show you during implementation of the product. We also paid for the certification training and even that is limited to what information they will release to you. It seems that their attitude is "You need to figure it out". They do host a one hour weekly call for Q&A, but that's still not satisfactory to us. I can't even send an all church email out!! Something that should be the simplest process is cryptic at best to figure out. If something isn't working you have to submit a trouble ticket. There is no customer service line. They should have a customer service line for those who have paid the $700 fee for training and certification.

User Friendly Access to your Member Database

Opmerkingen: This company understands the meaning of "Service Industry". They truly serve their customers and are constantly adding enhancements that bring efficiency to the workplace.

Pluspunten:

The thing I like most about this software is the Ease of Use and training support.

Minpunten:

Since the new CEO came on board, I have experienced a great improvement in training and communication.

Mr

Opmerkingen: It provides a good foundational system for all church data to be captured and stored.

Pluspunten:

You can do a lot with this system and it spans the entire church, from infants all the way through adults and small groups. Tracking people's activities among all the different activities helps you better understand what you are doing right and what needs work.

Minpunten:

Reporting is lacking (why collect all of that data if you can't get good information out), as is the rules surrounding specific activities. You end up creating workarounds for a number of different areas just to get most of what you want out of the system.

Powerful But Not Very User-Friendly

Pluspunten:

Fellowship One is a tremendously powerful tool that meets most of the needs we have for our church database. We are able to track an infinite number of details related to each person in the database. Recently, we began using F1 to allow our church members to search and find a small group, then sign up - all online. I am still learning all the ways we can use F1.

Minpunten:

The most frustrating aspects of F1 are: 1) It doesn't have a mobile interface for online registrations - and online registration is a huge part of how we use F1. We have begun using a third party app that integrates with F1 so that our online registration process is mobile friendly. 2) F1 is not very user-friendly and they don't offer easy-to-find support. This is the most difficult aspect of the product.

Fellowship One

Opmerkingen: I have use fellowship one for several years with several different organizations, It is a dated software in my opinion. The GUI is old and inefficient, however, it does have a good array of features, and tons of features you may never need or know exist because of the complexity of the program. However, I still found the software very useful despite the outdated GUI

Pluspunten:

I like the wide array of features.

Minpunten:

The GUI is outdated and somewhat difficult to use.

Fellowship One was a great experience while it fit the needs of our organization.

Pluspunten:

It was easy to track people and get information on individuals in our ministry. It provided consistent data and made communication easy.

Minpunten:

There were certain data trends that we wanted that were difficult to track using this program. It also didn't serve our needs of being able to integrate with our other platforms.

Used for 2 years with our church

Pluspunten:

Great for tracking members and groups. easily access with cloud based data so we can use from home or church.

Minpunten:

Would be nice to have a scan and enter feature. Also, the reports are cumbersome and more filters/options/breakdown would be beneficial.

Fellowship One has been good to us but we are moving on

Pluspunten:

It's a complete church management software system that has grown with us over the years. As we grew, Fellowship One was able to handle our growth.

Minpunten:

Their report writer is really lacking for our needs. There has even been times where two different Fellowship One reports were to have the same results, but the two reports gave me different results. That was very troubling. Also, recently their response time to support tickets has been very slow.