Sometimes we’re asked for recommendations for hosting, plugins and WordPress-related services. These are services and products that we use or have good reason to trust. By good reason we mean that they are recommended by people we trust or have a generally good reputation. None of them are required.
We do not receive commission whatsoever. These are true recommendations based on our experiences.
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Web Hosting
Our recommendation is ChurchHost. Our company Sunday Pixels owns both ChurchThemes and ChurchHost. We can provide hands-on support quicker when you’re hosted with ChurchHost. Our control panel is thoroughly modern and our servers are extremely fast. We host only a few sites on each server (more CPU and memory per site than typical hosts) and juice it with LiteSpeed Enterprise. True managed WordPress, automatic backups, staging, free SSL, global datacenter location choices, optional email and everything else you need.
You do not have to use ChurchHost. Read our hosting survey results for other options.
Tips
- Choose a host whose support covers WordPress issues . Typical hosts usually don’t (ChurchHost does).
- Make sure your host includes a free SSL certificate to enable https://. Some hosts are still charging for this. It’s included with ChurchHost.
- Many hosts discount the first year’s price. This is nice, but be sure you know what the regular price is.
- Be aware that hosting “review” sites in general are commission-driven and usually favor hosts who will pay them more.
Plugins
You can search thousands of WordPress plugins in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. Commercial plugins are not found in the directory (though many are “lite” with a paid upgrade option). Give Google a search for commercial plugins. Here are some plugins that we use on a regular basis. None are required but most sites benefit from an SEO plugin and a caching/performance plugin.
- SEO Framework for search engine optimization
- LiteSpeed Cache is king for performance, especially with hosting that uses LiteSpeed Enterprise and Redis like ChurchHost.
- Ninja Forms for building contact forms
- Antispam Bee for protecting comments from automated spam (or disable comments)
- Wordfence offers a complete set of security features to help keep your website safe. See our Security Guide.
- Loginizer for securing your login form against automated password attempts (if not using Wordfence)
- Companion Auto Update to keep your plugins up to date (or email you when updates are available)
- Meow Lightbox for lightbox image display (primarily for enhancing galleries)
- Google Analytics for WordPress for automatically embedding your analytics code. Or, Plausible Analytics (paid) for something more privacy-focused.
- Simple Page Sidebars for showing custom widget areas on specific pages
- Jetpack Publicize for automatically sharing posts, sermons and events on social media
- Jetpack Sharing for showing social share buttons on your posts (also see JP Sharing)
Backup Solutions
We very much recommend having a backup solution in place.
Recommended: If you’re hosted with ChurchHost, your website is backed up automatically daily. You can also generate and download backups on demand (it’s a good idea to download a backup periodically just in case something ever happens to the host itself). Free website transfer is offered to new customers to make switching hosts easy. Watch out for hosts like SiteGround that charge you extra every month just to download your backups.
- Your web host is likely to have a backup service you can take advantage of. There are also plugins…
- VaultPress – A very good, automated backup service for $3.50/month as a part of Jetpack.
- UpdraftPlus – A good free backup plugin. There are optional paid add-ons. This is our favorite free solution.
- BackUpWordPress – Another highly-rated free backup plugin. We have not tried but the maker is reputable.
- BackupBuddy – Another paid backup plugin that we have not tested but have heard great things about.
You can do manual backups of WordPress as well. Read WordPress Backups on the WordPress Codex. See Best Backup WordPress Plugins According to 21 Pros for other options.
Stock Photos
Here are places you can obtain photos for your church website. We recommend using photos taken at your church whenever possible. In some cases, it may be appropriate to use professional stock photos.
- Shutterstock is our favorite source due to their low cost, high quality and wide selection.
- Lightstock provides church-oriented photos. We use them ourselves and recommend them.
- PhotoDune is a lower cost stock photo provider. Look here first if you’re on a tight budget.
Our theme demos use stock photography to show how a real site might look. These photos are not included with the theme. If you see a photo used in a demo that you want to use, you can find its source in Specific Themes.
Stock Videos
Some of our themes feature video backgrounds. It can be economical to buy a stock video shot and edited by a professional instead of using a video of your own.
- Lightstock has church-centric stock video footage
- VideoHive has a wide selection of lower priced videos
- Dissolve has moderately prices videos of high quality
- Shutterstock is another source worth considering
Important: Videos should not be used on the web without first converting and compressing them. Read our Video Backgrounds guide for how to prepare your video.
Online Giving
Read our How can we handle giving? article for several options for online giving.
Code Customizations
We recommend Codeable for professional code customizations. They have WordPress developers on hand. Be sure to ask them to use a child theme.
WordPress News
We recommend WP Mainline if you’re interested in keeping up with that’s happening in the WordPress community.