Many of us have been there, the Church we serve either has no budget or has no money to spare for technology or resources that would help the ministries they already do go from one stage to another so that the Church can better thrive in the places they are ministering. It is difficult, and there are not many solutions to a money problem. However, there are resources that can help a Church function better that are free if you are needing something that won’t break the bank while trying to grow your Church or ministry area. Here is a list of ten Free Alternative Software solutions when money is an obstacle.
- GIMP Instead of Photoshop
There are a lot of people that will tell you that you can only use Photoshop if you need to edit pictures, that GIMP is not a valid alternative. Honestly, Photoshop is amazing, we don’t discourage using any product that helps you get the job done. However, what one man finds inexpensive may be too much for another. The basic Adobe Cloud Photoshop plans run around $10.00 – $20.00 USD per month depending on your need and package. The math translates to $120-$240.00 USD of your budget for tech would be consumed in great software. If your Church is blessed to have a tech budget that might be more useful somewhere else. If your Church does not than you are doomed to have not photo editing software for your burgeoning ministries.
Introducing GNU Image Manipulation Software, or GIMP for short. GIMP is a fully functioning Photo editing Software capable of most functions found in Photoshop. The major cons of using GIMP as opposed to Photoshop are:
- The learning curve for non-photo related projects
- Limited tools for editing RAW photos.
- Doesn’t support CMYK color which are used for high end print jobs.
That’s it for the most part, GIMP is powerful enough for most applications and it is free. You can also set GIMP so it can open Photoshop files which means you will be able to work with others or move to Photoshop later when finances are more available. If you are learning, you can make the interface of GIMP look like Photoshop as well so if you have to switch between GIMP and Photoshop later on you wont be relearning the interface which means the learning curve will be softened. Interested in learning how to use GIMP? Check out this course! If you want to download the software click here.
2. Overhead Projection: Worship Extreme
There are many software options available in the overhead projection space. Whether you are using Hymns, Contemporary, or Blended songs in your worship service – if you use a projector or tv to display lyrics you will need software to handle this efficiently. Projection software will have a library you can build over time with songs, be able to show images and video, and display powerpoints all on your screens within the one software.
Some of the paid options are Propresenter (PP) and Easyworship (EW). Those are most likely the most popular but not the only software options available in the paid world. Many will tell your Propresenter is the premier software, but if you don’t need everything that Propresenter is capable of then other software like Easyworship may be fine for your use case. How much does EW7 and PP7 cost?
EW7 currently has a sliding scale based on Church size and offers two packages. The starting price is $15.00/month or $23.33/month if you go with the premium package. This is based on a Church size 1-99 attendance. The price would change if you need more or did not pay the monthly fee annually. So you are looking at a fee of $180.00-$280.00 per year as the cheapest option if you are a small Church. You can find out more from their pricing page; Here.
PP7 has a different fee model. Similar to EW, PP offers many options that are buy outs. PP7 has a 1 time cost of $399.00 USD per device until you hit 5 presenting devices at which point you can get a bulk discount, if you are a Church though you can pay $999.00 USD for a campus license which includes 20 sites (if you are just editing; this is free). You can add extra support with a yearly subscription cost $159.00 USD per year or $399.00 if you need the campus license. You can find out more by visiting Renewed Vision’s website; here.
Okay that is the heavy hitter prices and you can look up their features, but you are here for a free alternative. Worship Extreme (WE) is my go to free option. There are other options but we will only cover WE in this article. WE actually has three tiers, free and two paid. WE also offers complimentary software that offer more options for ministry such as sheet music software. WE is great if you don’t have a budget and want to use a larger suite of maintained software with support. The software can integrate with Powerpoint and Google slides, has a buildable song library, and can integrate with CCLI’s Song Select all for free. The free version does have limitations however, such as a limited cloud storage and 1 motion background and 1 slide template. You are also limited to one output, so you can’t operate a separate confidence monitor configuration and you would need to hardware duplicate your singular feed if you wanted it on multiple outputs. Check out Worship Extreme here.
3. Davinci Resolve Instead of Premier
Another Adobe program called Premier Pro is once again fantastic software, we are not anti-Adobe. We realize that there are many tools to get the job done. However, probably the best free alternative to Premier Pro is a software built by a company called Blackmagic. Davinci Resolve is a fully function video editing platform, and the best part? It is free for almost every feature you could possibly need or want. There is also a paid version that includes lifetime updates and support for $299.00 USD if you want to upgrade because you need a particular feature later down the road. Personally, I use Davinci Resolve and have the paid version. I don’t use hardly any of the paid features…I can’t honestly say when I used a paid feature the last.
Pound for pound Davinci Resolve is probably the most feature reach alternative to Premier and even offers things that are not built into Premier but are built into other Adobe Software. Adobe relies upon its creative cloud suite to give a robust set of features with software detailed to the task, but you can do a non-committal month to month plan and only subscribe when you need the suite such as Easter or Christmas. Blackmagic has built an industry standard software capable of video, audio, motion graphics, and even detailed color correction. If you are not using the suite of Adobe products Davinci Resolve should most definitely be on your list of free alternative, yet powerful software. You can find Davinci Resolve information on the Blackmagic’s website; here.
4. OBS instead of VMIX
If you are trying to get into the livestreaming game there are many considerations. If you are streaming with a computer you will need to decide on what kind of encoding software you will need to get your stream out into the world. There are many options. Two that are very popular are VMIX and OBS. Your decision to use one over the other really may come down to the feature you need, and that might determine if you need to do some board convincing to get extra money for software. Lets start with the price comparison though.
OBS is free, not qualms about it. There is a vast amount of plugins available to make OBS do a myriad of features as well. Chances are if you need OBS to do something there is probably a plugin for it and the plug in is probably free. However, free also means no official support really. There are official communities and a large user base of tutorials on for learning OBS though. Find OBS; here.
VMIX has a free 60 day trial and then has a starting price of $60.00 USD depending on what features you need. VMIX usually just works. There are not a lot of bugs unless a new version comes out or Microsoft updates the operating system and essentially breaks the software (it is rare but does happen). Many of the features you may need in order to make your stream look or behave the way you want come standard with vmix. Things like VMIX social integrate comments from your social platforms automatically. VMIX also comes with a library of media and an easy to use interface for color corrections. The interface for VMIX just makes sense and is easier to navigate in my opinion than OBS. Check out VMIX; here.
With that said, weigh your needs. Even though my Church can afford VMIX we opted to use OBS. It fits our workflow better and we felt gave us more options to do things on the fly as needed than if we used VMIX. However, if your Church is more structured than mine, you may prefer something like VMIX that gives you more tools at your fingertips immediately. If I need a plugin I have to go looking for it, chances are you won’t need to look too hard if you are using vmix.
5. Google Workspace Instead of Office
Google workspace is and online office suite by Google designed with collaboration in mind. All of the products you are used to from G Suite are at home here except they have been given the business treatment. You will find Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and a host of other features. This replaces things like office 365.
Isn’t Google Workspace expensive? How did it make the free list? Well it is sort of free. Google Workspace is free for approved Non-Profits. So if your Church is registered as a 501c3 you should be able to apply for Google’s free package.
Not so fast though. What about Microsoft’s Nonprofit program? While Microsoft does have a free grant for non-profits we find that the free version of what Office 365 offers is for less when it comes to features.
Conclusion:
There are a ton of free options available, it just depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Some are better than others and of course this is just our opinion. If you are interested more in those products we encourage you go to their websites and do some reading! As always check out our courses here at Church On A String to get a head start on taking your skills up a notch. We have course on many of these very software options for an affordable price.