Pros and cons of church texting services

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You’ve been asked to research church texting services to help improve communication with your congregation. At first glance church texting seems like a great option, allowing you to send automated and pre-scheduled text/SMS messages to your congregation.

But what if you could do more than simply send outgoing messages? Let's take a look at the pros and cons of text messaging services for churches to help you decide if it's the best tool to effectively engage and communicate with your community!

Pros of church texting services

We live in a text messaging society. In fact, Americans send over 6 trillion texts each year. So churches can benefit from tapping into this popularity, right?

Well, there are some statistics that make paying for a church texting solution seem like a logical choice, such as:

• 85% of Americans carry smartphones.
• 98% of text messages get opened—an open rate five times higher than email.
• 90% of SMS messages are read within three minutes.

The bottom line is church text messaging can be effective for one-way communication from pastors to their congregations. The main benefit of texting/SMS services is that they allow you to stay connected with people in your church through text messages.

Cons of text messaging services for churches

Despite these impressive statistics about the popularity of texting, it has some significant limitations when used as a church communication tool. Before you start paying for church texting service, let’s take a look at the disadvantages:

• Text messages have to be kept short—The necessity of keeping your message under 160 characters makes it challenging to have real and authentic conversations. 
• Church texting is not relational—Church SMS messages happen between your church and a person. They can’t help people communicate with each other and form real, personal relationships. It’s kind of like receiving a text message from the company you work for compared to getting a text message from your coworker—one is simply informative while the other is relational. 
• Church texting services can get expensive—The cost of these services is based on the number of people receiving your group text messages. For example, if you have a limit of 1,500 texts per month, you can send one text message to 1,500 people or 15 text messages to 100 people. When it comes to sending mass text messages for churches, this can become very expensive very quickly!
• People already get about 100 texts every day—Too many texts can overwhelm your members with a high number of notifications on their phones. This can water down the impact of getting text messages from your church. 

As you can tell, text messaging has a lot of limitations for churches looking for a tool to effectively communicate with their congregations . So, what are the alternatives? You need a messaging solution that allows everyone (your church staff, congregation, and visitors) to have unlimited, connection-building conversations.

Subsplash Messaging vs. text-in-church platforms

Authentic communication is more than just sending occasional text messages to your congregation—it’s about creating a community where people can converse and build real relationships. 

Subsplash Messaging is the best church communication tool for churches that want to foster community and deeper relationships every day of the week (not just Sunday mornings). Instead of sending impersonal mass texts, Subsplash Messaging offers the ability to share important news and events, while also enabling community-building activities like small group discussions, prayer requests, ministry team coordination, one-on-one conversations, and visitor outreach. And this happens wherever your church members are—whether they’re on your church’s custom mobile app or on a web browser. 

Let’s take a closer look at Subsplash’s powerful group messaging platform compared with church texting services. 

• Unlimited direct messages
• Unlimited group channels & messages
• Unlimited public channels & messages
• Sends notifications to user’s phone
• Send & receive messages on any device
• Dedicated prayer request tab
• Share files, documents & photos
• Send emojis & GIFs
• Invite users via SMS or email

Equip your church community to experience effortless communication that builds real connections. Click here to get started with Subsplash Messaging today. If you’re already a Subsplash client, log in to your Subsplash Dashboard to sign up now, or connect with your Client Success Manager to learn more!