Is this really free church directory software?
Yes. You get the real Ministry Planner people directory — free for up to 1,000 people, no credit card and no expiring trial. Paid plans start at $49/mo and are priced by active people: Plant covers up to 250, Grow 1,000 and Multiply 5,000. Nothing you have entered changes when you upgrade.
Is this a full church database or ChMS?
Not in the way Breeze, Servant Keeper or Church Community Builder mean it, and it is worth being straight about that. There are no custom fields, no saved segments, no duplicate-merge tool, and no printed directory or mailing labels. What you get is the directory itself — every person, their contact details and address, their household, their status, tags and notes — shared properly across your staff, and free. If custom fields are the thing you cannot do without, we are not the right tool yet.
Can I import our existing spreadsheet?
Yes, as a CSV — first name, last name, email and phone come in automatically. Anyone already in your directory is matched by email or name and updated rather than duplicated, and their status stays as it is unless you pick a new one on import. The file's other columns are not mapped on import yet, so addresses, birthdays and each person's own membership status get filled in from their record afterwards. Export works the other way whenever you want the whole directory back as a spreadsheet.
Can we import straight from Planning Center or Breeze?
Not on the free plan. Planning Center and Church Community Builder sync are paid features, and Breeze is not connected at all today. From any of them, export a CSV and import that — it is the same five minutes, and your data is yours either way.
How does it handle families and households?
You link people to each other — spouse, child, parent, sibling — and the family reads as a family from any member's record. It is a link between people rather than a household with its own name and mailing address, so if what you need is one envelope per family, the printable Family Directory template below is the better fit for now.
Can we print a directory from it?
No — there is no print or mailing-label output in the app today, and it would be easy to imply otherwise on a page like this. The free Church Membership Directory spreadsheet template does print, including a one-row-per-household version with an opt-out column, and it is linked below.
Who can see it?
Only the people you invite to your church's workspace, and volunteers do not get access to it at all. Home addresses, children's names and birthdays sit behind an account rather than in a spreadsheet that can be forwarded — which is the single biggest thing a directory in a file gets wrong.
What happens when we pass 1,000 people?
The free plan holds up to 1,000 people — enough for most churches to hold their whole congregation. Paid plans are priced by active people rather than by everyone in the directory: anyone with attendance, giving, group membership or volunteer service in the last 12 months counts, and historical and archived records do not. Plant ($49/mo) covers up to 250 active people, Grow ($150/mo) up to 1,000 and Multiply ($300/mo) up to 5,000. Everything you have entered carries over exactly as it is. Nothing is deleted and nothing is held hostage — you can export the lot at any point.