--- description: Review of ShelbyNext Membership Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs. image: https://gdm-localsites-assets-gfprod.imgix.net/images/software_advice/og_logo-55146305bbe7b450bea05c18e9be9c9a.png title: ShelbyNext Membership | Reviews, Pricing & Demos - SoftwareAdvice AU --- Breadcrumb: [Home](/) > [Worship Software](/directory/4224/worship/software) > [ShelbyNext Membership](/software/5467/shelby-church) # ShelbyNext Membership Canonical: https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/5467/shelby-church Page: 1 / 8\ Next: [Next page](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/5467/shelby-church?page=2) > Shelby System is a cloud-based church management solution for ministries and nonprofit organizations. Key features include giving management, financial management, website building, bulk communication, background check and volunteer verification. Shelby supports multiple channels to accept and process giving, including online, mobile, text and kiosk. Donors can make donations through their credit/debit cards and even transfer funds through online modes. It offers recurring giving feature through which a fixed donation is automatically debited from the donors’ account in favor of the church every month. Shelby offers an accounting system that includes general ledger, payroll, account payable, account receivable and more. It also offers bank reconciliation feature to help ministries manage and record their financial transactions to-and-from the bank. Additionally, it offers website building tool that helps to create websites for church and nonprofit organizations. The solution is available on a monthly subscription basis, which includes support via phone, email and fax. > > Verdict: Rated **3.9/5** by 158 users. Top-rated for **Likelihood to recommend**. ----- ## Quick Stats & Ratings | Metric | Rating | Detail | | **Overall** | **3.9/5** | 158 Reviews | | Ease of Use | 3.8/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Customer Support | 3.8/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Value for Money | 3.9/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Features | 3.6/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Recommendation percentage | 70% | (7/10 Likelihood to recommend) | ## About the vendor - **Company**: Ministry Brands - **Founded**: 2005 ## Commercial Context - **Starting Price**: USD 35.00 - **Pricing model**: Per Feature (Free version available) (Free Trial) - **Pricing Details**: Pricing starts as low as $35/month. There is also a setup fee of $299 that includes data migration from older databases. - **Target Audience**: Self Employed, 2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500, 501–1,000, 1,001–5,000, 5,001–10,000, 10,000+ - **Deployment & Platforms**: Cloud, SaaS, Web-based, Android (Mobile), iPhone (Mobile), iPad (Mobile) - **Supported Languages**: English - **Available Countries**: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei and 151 more ## Features - Access Controls/Permissions - Accounting Integration - Attendance Tracking - Built-in Accounting - Child Check-in - Contact Database - Data Import/Export - Donation Management - Event Management - Event Scheduling - For Religious Organizations - Member Communication - Member Directory - Member Portal - Membership Management - Mobile Access - Mobile App - Multi-Location - Online Calendar - Online Giving ## Integrations (1 total) - Microsoft Excel ## Support Options - Email/Help Desk - FAQs/Forum - Knowledge Base - Phone Support - Chat ## Category - [Worship Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/directory/4224/worship/software) ## Related Categories - [Worship Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/directory/4224/worship/software) - [Church Management Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/directory/4520/church/software) ## Alternatives 1. [Clearstream](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/321838/clearstream) — 4.8/5 (656 reviews) 2. [Tithely Church Management](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/74955/breeze-chms) — 4.8/5 (623 reviews) 3. [ChurchTrac](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/128248/churchtrac) — 4.8/5 (859 reviews) 4. [Planning Center](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/361780/planning-center) — 4.7/5 (1137 reviews) 5. [Chmeetings](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/76053/chmeetings) — 4.9/5 (154 reviews) ## Reviews ### "Good membership management for churches that need more than just the basics" — 4.0/5 > **Matt** | *29 May 2018* > > **Pros**: It's entirely web-based, so it can be used anywhere. It comes with mobile apps for major mobile device platforms, so getting to data when not at a computer is easy. Creating individuals and adding them to families is simple and the UI is fairly pleasant to use. The integration with Shelby's giving/donation service works well and the software allows members to see their giving in simple, easy to view reports. Every action by staff and admins is logged for accountability purposes. Access to various parts of the system can be controlled granularly, so administrators and staff can see only what they need. For example, giving records can be limited so that only business office members can view them. The system also supports groups: public and private alike, so members can self-join public groups, but in other cases can't even see certain groups. This is helpful for organizing membership in various ways. Reporting is also fairly straightforward so staff can grab quick stats on various aspects of the membership. Reports can also be locked down according to what each staff member should be able to see. > > **Cons**: There's no support for custom domains (e.g. "members.mychurch.com") Reporting is too simple in many cases and there's not enough customizability for the data that the system can hold (e.g. being able to generate a report on which members are missing photos). Volunteer management is still very limited / non-existent. Churches that need to see a high level view of which members are doing what should probably look elsewhere. Scheduling conflicts between various areas of ministry is not yet trackable. The calendar functionality leaves much to be desired. There's some good stuff in place around being able to request availability of rooms, equipment, etc, but it's all silo'ed into the proprietary calendaring system. There needs to be support for managing events through Google Calendar or similar external systems that might already be integrated into the ministry. There are rough spots to the UI, especially around searching, viewing member photos, and generating reports. The giving integration aspects are nice, but I wish they were more tightly integrated. I wonder how many ministries actually use a different giving solution? Overall, it would make more sense for members to be able to give from one portal rather than having a separate offering. ----- ### "Shelby Membership Module Overview" — 4.0/5 > **Larry** | *21 August 2019* | Religious Institutions | Recommendation rating: 8.0/10 > > **Pros**: It's a really solid product overall. The best features are it's ability to easily enter, edit, combine or delete member records. The combining of duplicate records is ESPECIALLY useful. It transfers all information, including giving information, to the chosen record and misses nothing. Again, an excellent tool indeed. Plus, the entire package is just user friendly. It doesn't require indepth instruction to use and find needed information about an individual member, a group or team, and so on. Finally...the email function that allows emailing end of year giving statements is excellent. > > **Cons**: I cannot really identify a significant downside to this software package. It simply does the job in an efficient, easy fashion. > > It's just been good. As with any new system, there is some learning curve but, for the Membership Module, it's been a rather soft curve. ----- ### "Not user friendly, not intuitive, not a good value for the money" — 1.0/5 > **Verified Reviewer** | *22 February 2020* | Accounting | Recommendation rating: 0.0/10 > > **Pros**: I haven't found anything I like about it yet. Maybe the reports are good, I haven't gotten that far yet. > > **Cons**: This software is NOTHING like popular accounting programs on the market. Simple feature like using the + to advance the date or check numbers won't work. In the middle of a bank rec and need to look at an entry? Can't click on it to see details. Have to leave the bank rec to go there? Click Apply or you lose it all. That too is weird - apply means save, update means save and close. Why change terminology? Have to add lines to any type of entry? It won't automatically add them. More than one page in a report? You can't scroll to page 2. I carefully craft a journal entry to MY liking but ShelbyNext posts the lines in account number order - that is NOT how I want to see the entry. No back arrow to look at the previous transaction entered. If you are entering a list of manual checks and need to add a vendor all of the previous info entered (date, check number etc) is lost. Every time you return to the bank rec you have to tell it to only show the data for the current month you're reconciling. Date always defaults to today's date. I am entering historical data, so I have to re-enter the date every transaction. No warning for duplicate vendors, check numbers, vendor invoice numbers. My church doesn't use dept numbers, but I have to enter one to get the transaction to save. Can't search for account name directly from transaction screen, takes a few clicks to do so. When the CoA is 6 pages long, searching by acct name would save time. > > All of the cons listed are minor pet peeves, but added together it makes the software very difficult to get used to. Seems like they would be easy fixes if the developers were to ask the current users what shortcuts would make the user's life better. Wait time to get in the queue for customer support is very long...if you can even get added to the queue. I've waited over an hour a few times. So much time wasted using this product. Don't assume you need an expensive, church specific software to meet your needs, especially if your church is small and doesn't have a lot of outreach programs or a day care/nursery school. This church was definitely oversold on this product - it has many features that will never be used here. Pay close attention to how the monthly fee is calculated - monthly fee for a year for this church is equivalent to buying several user licenses for other popular software (one of which doesn't have to be replaced for 3 years). If you have to put your financials into Excel to get the format you want, then why spend more for ShelbyNext? Training to use this product is expensive on top of the purchase price. ----- ### "Almost Great" — 5.0/5 > **Bob** | *16 August 2019* | Religious Institutions | Recommendation rating: 7.0/10 > > **Pros**: The portability and distributed nature of the cloud database keeps everyone on the team and in the church connected and up to date. There is ongoing enhancement that helps make the product more user friendly. The security of the data and the ongoing updates and the redundant backup process reduces in-house IT staff time. > > **Cons**: The giving reports are not accurate. When you run a demographic of givers from three years ago against current date, the current data is wrong. The program does not look at the dates. We live in a complicated world and we must be able to show through reporting tools how the giving is coming in to the system. Shelbynext does not do this well. > > Before we migrated to the ShelbyNext Cloud platform, our ministers and staff never had current data and it was always difficult to follow-up so the database was not updated. Now, if the users perform as they should the data is always updated and communication between ministers, staff and members has increased by 100% ----- ### "Overall a Top Choice for Managing Membership" — 5.0/5 > **Matthew** | *8 November 2022* | Religious Institutions | Recommendation rating: 9.0/10 > > **Pros**: In addition to a solid database ShelbyNext has a robust groups feature that really is the hallmark of this software. The forms feature is well designed and can be imbedded on a website, used as a direct link, or generate a QR code. It also integrates well with Constant Contact. > > **Cons**: The conversion process from Shelby version 5 to ShelbyNext was excruciating, but once everything got organized correctly it functions well. Organizing family units can be a little complicated as can searching for certain parameters. > > ShelbyNext is a good solid church management software if that's all you need. There are no options for managing volunteers and planning. For that you would need to upgrade to the pricier Shelby Arena. ----- Page: 1 / 8\ Next: [Next page](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/5467/shelby-church?page=2) ## Links - [View on SoftwareAdvice](https://www.softwareadvice.com.au/software/5467/shelby-church) ## This page is available in the following languages | Locale | URL | | en | | | en-AU | | | en-GB | | | en-IE | | | en-NZ | | ----- ## Structured Data