Switch to ChMeetings from Shelby Arena!

What is ChMeetings?

ChMeetings is an all-in-one Church Management platform, built by Jios Apps Inc, offering various features for churches of all sizes and denominations. ChMeetings started operating in 2018 with essential ChMS features to help churches transition from paper-based membership management to streamlined, cloud-based processes. Today, it has grown into a comprehensive platform that includes most of the features churches require to keep up with our times. ChMeetings now makes it fast and easy to manage members, organize events with registration and check-in, book appointments, create follow-ups, manage accounting, collect online giving, and more.

ChMeetings might be a good choice for your church if:

• You want a scalable solution with pricing plans that cater to all church budgets;
• Your church does not have IT staff and needs an easily adoptable solution;
• Features such as Appointments, Elections, or multiple languages are a must-have for your church.

What is Shelby Arena?

Shelby Arena, built by Ministry Brands, is a church management suite of tools that provides features such as member management, attendance, check-in, interactions, accounting, giving, reporting, and more.

Shelby Arena might be a good choice if:

• You can afford to pay significantly more for your ChMS.
• Your church has IT staff and servants are familiar with complex CRM platforms.
• Features such as complex accounting and background checks are a must-have, and you don’t mind potentially paying extra for them.

Chmeetings vs Shelby Arena: Which Offers the Best Value for Money?

ChMeetings is more affordable than Shelby Arena

ChMeetings provides a free plan that lets your church store 50 people and use essential features such as organizing events or collecting giving. There is no free plan available with Shelby Arena.

Both solutions charge according to the number of members you store. With ChMeetings, paid plans start at $12/month or $120/year for 100 members. Shelby Arena’s price for 100 members is $47.70 per month. There is no annual billing available.

For unlimited members, ChMeetings charges $60/month or $600/year. Shelby Arena does not advertise a price for unlimited members. The highest price displayed on their website is $161.75/month for 998 members.

Both ChMeetings and Shelby Arena include a free mobile. Both solutions offer an optional, custom-branded app, With ChMeetings, this costs $50 / month or $500 per year with no setup fees. With Shelby Arena, the branded app costs $120 / month with no annual billing and a $1800 setup fee.

There is no pricing information available on the Shelby Arena website for features such as accounting and background checks, and they are not included in the free trial; so we can assume that they cost extra.

	ChMeetings	Shelby Arena
Starting Price For 100 members	$12 / month $120 / year	$47.70 / month No info on annual billing
Highest Price For unlimited members	$60 / month $600 / year	Unavailable
Branded App Price	$50 / month $500 / year $0 setup fee	$120 / month No annual billing $1800 setup fee

Evaluating User-Friendliness: Chmeetings vs. Shelby Arena

ChMeetings is more user-friendly than Shelby Arena

ChMeetings and Shelby Arena are both powerful church management solutions, but they each address their own audience:

• Shelby Arena is for those familiar with complex software.This means that your church needs to either already have such servants on staff, or conduct training. Adopting a more complex solution can be slower and maintaining it may require IT staff of more effort to keep up-to-date.
• ChMeetings is friendly to the average user. We know that not all churches will have very tech-savvy servants on staff, so we built a solution that can be implemented by pretty much anyone who can use a computer or smartphone. Our goal is to build an intuitive platform that makes it easy for people to learn quickly and navigate easily. We maintain and improve our platform and help resources regularly, and do our best to make it easy for you to easily get familiar with ChMeetings.

Feature Comparison

Features available with both ChMeetings and Shelby Arena

• Both ChMeetings and Shelby Arena include a mobile app, and you can find them by searching Google Play or the Apple App Store,
• Both apps allow you to create user accounts and let members access the app,
• Events with Calendars, Checkin, Volunteer Scheduling, and Service Planning are available with both apps,
• Both provide comprehensive giving features; including online giving or pledges,
• Automations are available in both apps; though Shelby Arena achieves this with custom Workflows and ChMeetings with Automated Tasks, which come with a defined set of tasks you can automate.
• Both platforms offer integrations and a developer API.

Features available with ChMeetings and not with Shelby Arena

There are several features that you can get with ChMeetings, but not with Shelby Arena:

• Ministries: This feature lets you organize your church into ministries and manage everything from users to people, events, and more, per ministry.
• Appointments:Schedule appointments between church servants to optimize your work; or between members and servants to make sure your congregation’s needs are taken care of.
• Blog: Your church can easily publish a blog within ChMeetings. It’s fully featured, providing you with an HTML text editor, post organization by category, and social features for members, such as likes and comments.
• Elections: If you choose our Unlimited plan ($60/month or $600/year) you get all the tools you need to organize the complete election process - from nomination to voting and results.
• Diocese Accounts: If you are a large diocese, you can manage all churches in a centralized platform, but also give them autonomy to manage different aspects of their work.
• Multiple Languages: ChMeetings is available in multiple languages, 20 at the time of writing this comparison.

Features available with Shelby Arena and not with ChMeetings

Here are the features that you can get with Shelby Arena, but not with ChMeetings:

• Payments Via Forms: This feature lets your church collect payments through any form you may create; not just through the dedicated payment pages for e.g. online giving or event tickets.
• Complex Accounting With Payroll: Shelby Arena comes with a complex accounting module, which also includes the ability to manage servant payroll.
• Text Giving (Coming Soon With ChMeetings):You can use texts to collect payments from givers.
• Background Checks: Shelby Arena uses Protect My Ministry to help churches perform background checks for volunteer screening.

Feature	ChMeetings	Shelby Arena
Mobile App
Free Migration		Info Unavailable
Customizable People Profiles
Unlimited Email
SMS Text Messaging
Voice Messaging
Unlimited Mobile Push Notifications
Member Access
Member Directory
Page Builder
Blog
Calendars
Events
Events
Paid Events
Volunteer Scheduling
Checkin & Child Check In With Name Tag Printing
Service Planning
Appointments
In-Person Giving
Online Giving
Text Giving	No (Coming Soon)
Giving Statements
Giving Reports
Pledges
Forms
Accept Payments Via Forms
Follow-Ups
Accounting
Payroll
Elections
Automated Tasks
Workflows
Reports
Integrations & API
User Roles and Permissions
Ministries
Ministries
Ministries
Diocese Accounts
Optional Branded App
Multiple Languages	Yes (20)

Move Into ChMeetings For Free

It’s not clear whether Shelby Arena offers free migration to new customers.

No matter the system you’re coming from, including Shelby Arena, we’ll move your data to ChMeetings for free, if you choose any paid plan. Our team prepares your data within ChMeetings, so that all you have to do is log in and start working on your mission.

Disclaimer

While we will try our best to update this guide with information relevant to ChMeetings, the information related to Shelby Arena may change without us being aware. If you find any potentially outdated information when visiting this guide, we would be grateful if you let us know. Thank you!