Email newsletter software for churches

Why the BCC email and the printed bulletin stop working

Most church newsletters start the same way. Someone in the office pastes every address into the BCC line of a Gmail message, or prints the bulletin and hopes people pick one up on Sunday. Both work for a while. Then the list grows.

• Gmail has a ceiling. Google's help page says a personal Gmail account can hit a sending limit at more than 500 recipients in one email or 500 emails in a day. A growing congregation reaches that quickly.
• One mistake exposes everyone. Put the list in To or CC instead of BCC once, and every member can see every other member's address.
• Nobody can unsubscribe cleanly. People who want off the list have to email the office, and someone has to remember to remove them.
• Paper misses the people you most want to reach. Members who are traveling, homebound or only attending online never see the bulletin.

A newsletter tool fixes all four. Each person gets their own copy, there's an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and the email looks the same on a phone as it does on a computer.

What to put in a church newsletter

The weekly email that people actually read is short and predictable. A simple order that works for many churches:

1. A two or three sentence note from the pastor.
2. This Sunday: sermon title, scripture, service times, who's serving.
3. The week ahead: Bible study, youth group, choir practice, with times and rooms.
4. One feature: a ministry spotlight, a mission trip update, a new member welcome.
5. Ways to help: volunteer sign-ups, meal trains, the food pantry list.
6. A button to give online, and the office phone number and hours.

If you're stuck on what to write, we keep a list of church newsletter ideas by season, from Advent to Vacation Bible School.

A word of caution on prayer requests

Prayer requests are often the most read part of a church newsletter, and the most sensitive. Email is easy to forward, and once it leaves your list you can't pull it back.

• Ask the person before you include their name, and ask again if the news changes.
• Keep health details general. "Recovering from surgery" is usually enough.
• For anything more personal, consider a separate list just for your prayer team, or share it by phone instead.

What it costs for a congregation

MailWild is priced by how many people you can email, with unlimited sends each month. For most churches that means:

• Up to 500 people: $9 a month. That covers a congregation list of 300 with room to grow.
• Up to 1,500 people: $19 a month.
• Up to 2,500 people: $33 a month, which covers a list of 2,000.

You only pay for people you can actually email. Setting up is free: import your list, write your first newsletter and send test emails to yourself. You pay when you send to your list. See every size on the pricing page.

If you already use church management software

Before you buy anything, check what you already have. Many church management systems include email. Planning Center People can email a list, though its help page says lists of more than 500 people must be sent through its Mailchimp integration. Tithely's church management plans include email and text messaging. If your system's email does what you need, keep using it.

MailWild makes sense alongside those tools when you want a newsletter that looks like a newsletter, with photos, video, buttons and a layout that reads well on phones, without learning Mailchimp. You can export a list from your church software as a spreadsheet and import it in a minute. MailWild doesn't sync with church management systems, so you'd re-import when your list changes.

New members can join from a link in the bulletin or a signup form on your website. One honest limit: a small "Sent with MailWild" badge appears at the bottom of every newsletter.

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