AChurchNearYou.com is the Church of England’s official church finder tool, and it also offers free websites for churches and benefices.
Information for churches
AChurchNearYou.com is the Church of England’s official church finder tool for the public, helping more people discover your church and contact you. Every Church of England church has a listing on the site.
AChurchNearYou.com receives over 70 million page views per year. By keeping your church’s listing up to date, you help more people find your church. It’s free and easy to update your listing by becoming an editor.
Throughout the year, and particularly at Christmas and Easter, the Church of England drives the public to discover churches on AChurchNearYou.com through adverts, social media posts and printed resources.
AChurchNearYou.com also offers free websites for Church of England churches and benefices. Your listing quickly becomes a full website when you populate and customise all the available sections. Using AChurchNearYou.com as your main church website could be the right choice for you if you want your church to have a modern website that is quick and easy to update and costs nothing.
If you want to, within AChurchNearYou.com you can also set up a website for your multi-church benefice, suitable if you are a Team Parish, Team Ministry or similar. You can then add events, news and whole pages to your benefice site and have them automatically copy across to your individual church sites.
Why use AChurchNearYou.com as your main church website?
- Completely free – no costs for hosting, setup or development.
- Simple to update – designed for people with no prior website experience.
- Training and support available – ‘how to’ guides and videos, regular daytime and evening webinars, and a support team to answer your questions.
- Secure – we handle security and access. Never lose access to your website again, even if volunteers leave.
- Mobile friendly and visible on search – Google search prioritises web pages which are mobile friendly. Your AChurchNearYou.com site will often appear on the first page of search engine results for your church.
- Continuous improvement – editor feedback shapes our development plans for the site.
- Solutions for multi-church benefices – save time by copying content across your benefice site and individual church sites. Customise with language of your choice (e.g. ‘Team Parish’ or ‘Team Ministry’ instead of ‘benefice’).
Getting started
The best way to explore if you want to use AChurchNearYou.com as your main church website is to register on the site and then request to be an editor of your church(es).
- Register and then log in.
- Search for your church on A Church Near You.
- Choose ‘Edit this church’ from the church’s menu and fill out the form.
- You get approved by an existing editor of that church. In case of any problems or delay, contact us for approval.
- Book onto a short editor training webinar or watch videos and read help articles when it suits you.