Managing data is important but not always easy. On the one hand, we know how important it is to get rid of data silos (where you have different data in different places). On the other, we also know that having an all-in-one system is never ideal because most all-in-one systems do everything ‘ok’ but nothing really well.
So, we’ve taken an ‘AND’ approach.
We’ve created PastorsLine to be the best at mobile communication, including text and voice messaging. We want you to be able to use other ‘best at’ apps for your other needs such as a super app for sending emails and a church management system (ChMS) for managing your church database(s).
Hence, PastorsLine integrations.
We’ve made this process easy for you, so you can connect your data and avoid mistakes. As often as we can, we’ve built two-way integrations (pull data in to PastorsLine from your other app + push data back from PastorsLine to your other app).
Integrations are expensive.
Each integration costs thousands and thousands of dollars to build (design, code and test) and hundreds more to maintain each month. Most businesses would charge a ‘per app fee’ to help recover their development costs.
But for churches, we know it’s all about ministry, and we support this approach. So, we’ve chosen to spread our development costs over many people, ‘sharing the load’ so to speak. In this way, PastorsLine’s pricing stays sensible—and possible—for most churches.
There are three kinds of integrations.
Regular integrations—Integrations which we use as part of our service to you. At the moment, there is one: MailChimp because we currently use MailChimp as our mailing system. MailChimp does mail well, and their generous free tier covers the needs of most churches. So, we have a one-way integration with them, allowing you to send automated emails as well as pull your data in to PL. Eventually, the integration will be two-way, allowing you to push your data back to MailChimp, too. (see our FAQ on MailChimp for more info). ***Regular integrations can be found by clicking on the 'Free' tab on the Integrations Page.
Premium integrations—Integrations which cost hundreds of thousands more than regular integrations because they are very data-intensive, take lots of effort to maintain, and require a large amount of system resources daily for automatic and manual syncing. ***Premium integrations can be found by clicking on the 'Premium' tab on the Integrations Page.
Alpha integrations—Generally, these are new integrations which have been released and are currently available to all, regardless of your plan. Once this integration goes into beta testing, it will mostly likely be considered a premium integration and move to that section. At that time, all users will be alerted, so they can decide whether or not they want to continue using the integration and having it count toward their plan's integration quota. ***Alpha integrations can be found by clicking on the 'Alpha' tab on the Integrations Page.
PastorsLine integrations are free of charge.
Our business model is to include all our integrations for free, so you can use which integrations are best for your church. In other words, we don’t charge you per integration. Rather, we allow you a certain number (a quota) of simultaneous integrations according to your PastorsLine subscription plan.
Regular integrations don’t count towards your simultaneous integration quota. So, at the moment, no matter which plan you have, you can use our PastorsLine—MailChimp integration. That means even with our lowest cost plan, you get the core modules of our powerful PastorsLine platform (automated messages, contests, campaigns, etc.) AND the MailChimp integration. How much does our lowest plan cost? Pay each month = $10 per month; Pay annually = $8.33 per month because you get two months free.
Premium integrations do count towards your simultaneous integration quota. Typically, though, we’ve found that churches are using only one integration at a time, and our subscription plans reflect this. At the moment, our premium integrations are Church Community Builder and Planning Center.
Here are some of our plans and the number of simultaneous premium integrations allowed for each one:
Plan name vs. # of Simultaneous premium integrations
Inception - 0
Dash - 1
Locomotion - 2
Velocity - 3
Launch - 5
Mach 1 - 10
Mach 5 - 20
Based on how churches are actually using PastorsLine, we think our pricing is very fair. Our pricing lets us cover our monthly costs and some of the costs of development. In comparison to the pricing of similar apps, our pricing is the same or better—keeping in mind that most of the powerful, core, PL modules (automated messages, contests, campaigns, etc.) AND the MailChimp integration are included in EVERY PLAN.