About AChurchNearYou.com
AChurchNearYou.com is the Church of England’s official church finder tool for the public, but did you know, it also offers free websites?
Your church or multi-church benefice can easily get a website through AChurchNearYou.com, if you wish. It’s ideal for busy people who want their church to have a modern website that is quick to update and costs nothing.
Alternatively, if you already have a website that you’re happy with, your AChurchNearYou.com listing can continue to work alongside it, helping more people discover your church.
How it works
Every Church of England church has a listing on AChurchNearYou.com, but it’s up to you how you use it. You have two options:
- keep your listing short and simple, with a button to take people to your separate, church website
- build out your listing into a full website, hosted within AChurchNearYou.com
If you want to, within AChurchNearYou.com you can also set up a website for your multi-church benefice, suitable if you are a Team Parish, Team Ministry or similar.
“This Sunday one of the Church Wardens came up to me after the service and said that she had had an email from AChurchNearYou.com from a lady asking where the service was in the benefice. She had replied immediately and lo! the lady was in Church with us!”
Benefits
- Completely free – no costs for hosting, setup or development.
- Simple to update – designed for people with no prior website experience.
- Training and support - 'how to' guides and videos, regular daytime and evening webinars, and a support team to answer your questions.
- Secure – we handle security and access. never lose access to your website again, even if volunteers leave.
- Mobile friendly and visible on search – Google search prioritises web pages which are mobile friendly. Your AChurchNearYou.com site will often appear on the first page of search engine results for your church.
- Reach new audiences – at key times of the year, such as Lent and Easter and Advent and Christmas, the Church of England drives the public to discover churches on AChurchNearYou.com through adverts, social media posts and printed resources.
- Continuous improvement – editor feedback shapes our development plans for the site.
“We love the new benefice feature and works really well for two of our locations in the same parish.”
Key features
- Customisable homepage – highlight upcoming events and key news, add online donation button.
- Services and events calendar and news pages – keep everyone up to date.
- Add your own pages – option to add custom pages if you wish.
- Contact form – all messages you receive via the site are sent direct to an email address of your choice for you to reply from.
- Embed video – easily display your latest recording if you film your services.
- Solutions for multi-church benefices – if you wish, list your content at benefice level and have it automatically display on all your church sites as well as the benefice site. Customise with language of your choice (e.g. 'Team Parish' or 'Team Ministry' instead of 'benefice').
- Web address options - if you have an existing web address you can redirect it to your AChurchNearYou.com site, or you can get a new one of your choice and use that.
“For a church with no one who understands the underlying technology it is a good idea, especially as mobile devices can be used to edit. Thank you very much for providing this service.”
Getting started
The best way to explore if you want to use AChurchNearYou.com as your main church website is to register on the site and then request to be an editor of your church(es).
- Register and then log in.
- Search for your church on A Church Near You
- Choose ‘Edit this church’ from the church’s menu and fill out the form.
- You get approved by an existing editor of that church. In case of any problems or delay, contact us for approval.
- Book onto a short editor training webinar or watch videos and read help articles when it suits you.
