Church Website Builders: Service Times, Sermons, and Giving

A church website has five concrete jobs - showing service times and location, hosting sermon audio or video, taking online giving, listing events including a recurring weekly service, and keeping some content members-only - and general-purpose builders and church-specific builders document these differently, not just with different templates. Squarespace and Wix are general-purpose builders that can do all five with existing blocks and apps. Tithely is a church-specific builder that bundles the same five jobs into tools built only for churches. Here's what each vendor's own pages say, checked September 2026.

What does a church's site actually need to do?

• Service times and location - where you meet and when, ideally with a map.
• Sermon audio or video - a place to host or embed messages, ideally as a growing archive.
• Online giving - a real payment path, with fees you can see before committing.
• Events, including a recurring weekly service, not just one-off items.
• Member privacy - a way to gate some content (prayer lists, member directories, internal documents) from the public.

How do I show service times and location?

Squarespace builds this into its Contact page template: "You can add a contact page to your site with content like your contact information, a form, a map, and hours of operation" (Squarespace, "Creating a contact page", checked September 2026). The map itself is a separate block, and Squarespace states plainly that "map blocks can only display one location pin. To create maps for multiple locations, add multiple map blocks to a page" (Squarespace, "Map blocks", checked September 2026) - fine for one location, a real limit for a multi-campus church.

Wix's Google Maps element documents a different ceiling: you can "pin one or multiple locations," and each pin takes an address, a title, a short description and a link (Wix Help Center, "Wix Editor: Adding and Setting Up Google Maps", checked September 2026) - one element for multiple campuses, where Squarespace needs one block per campus.

Tithely's Sites product folds this into a purpose-built feature instead: "Plan Your Visit Tool - Let guests schedule their visit, get a personal welcome, and show up feeling like they already belong" (Tithely, "Church Website Builder", checked September 2026) - a first-time-visitor workflow, not just a static address.

How do I host sermons, and can people find past ones?

Squarespace handles sermons through existing media blocks rather than a dedicated sermon feature. Its Video block supports "upload or embed a video file visitors can view directly on your site," and "for videos hosted on other services, or to use advanced playback options for any video host, use an embed block" (Squarespace, "Video blocks", checked September 2026) - YouTube and Vimeo URLs drop straight in; anything else needs an Embed block. The Audio block accepts direct uploads in ".mp3 and .m4a" format and includes a "Podcasting" option to "set up metadata tags for a podcast" (Squarespace, "Audio blocks", checked September 2026) - a documented path to a real podcast feed.

Wix's sermon-archive equivalent is its YouTube feed integration: "Once a YouTube feed is connected, each new video you add from the linked YouTube channel or playlist automatically syncs to the widget" (Wix Help Center, "Wix Video: Adding a YouTube Feed", checked September 2026). Squarespace's own video-overview page documents uploading to "Video blocks," "Course pages," "Videos pages," and "Section backgrounds" plus embedding elsewhere, with no mention of an auto-syncing feed (Squarespace, "Upload videos to your site", checked September 2026) - weekly sermons update automatically on Wix, and by hand on Squarespace.

Tithely bundles sermon hosting as a named product feature: "Easily share your sermons, create a podcast feed, and make it easy for people to hear your message using the built-in Tithe.ly Sites sermon player," alongside support for embedding a "live-stream or premier" from "Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo" (Tithely, "Church Website Builder") - packaged specifically for a sermon library rather than assembled from general-purpose blocks.

What does each platform document for online giving, and what does it actually cost?

Squarespace's Donation block needs a connected payment processor ("to use donation blocks to collect donations, connect your site to a payment processor"), and "you can create recurring donations on sites connected to Stripe or Squarespace Payments only" (Squarespace, "Donation blocks", checked September 2026). The same article notes that "transaction fees apply to donations." Squarespace's fee guide lists the commerce transaction fee, which covers donations, by plan: 2% on Basic and 0% on Core, Plus and Advanced (the plans it is rolling out in waves), and 3% on the older Business plan (Squarespace, "Transaction fees and payment processing rates", checked September 2026). That is on top of a US card-processing rate starting at 2.9% + $0.30, so a church on Basic pays more per donation than one on Core or above.

Wix Donations runs on whatever payment method you connect, and Wix's donation pages don't list a separate donation fee. Wix's service-fee page states the card rate as "2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD" for most US cards, and PayPal through Wix Payments at "3.49% of the transaction amount + 0.49 USD" (Wix Help Center, "Wix Payments: Service Fees", checked September 2026). Accepting donations through Wix Payments also requires that "your cause must be registered as a charity in a country where Wix Payments is available" (Wix Help Center, "Accepting Donation Payments", checked September 2026).

Tithely's Giving carries no subscription fee - "No monthly fees or contracts - EVER" - and states processing rates directly: "Credit/Debit: 2.9% + $0.30 per trx. ACH/Bank: 1% + $0.30 per trx. AMEX: 3.5% + $0.30 per trx" (Tithely, pricing page, checked September 2026). Donors "can cover processing fees," and Tithely states "60% of donors do" - the ACH rate is roughly a third of the card rate.

How do I list events, including a weekly service?

Squarespace's Calendar pages are built for one-off listings, and Squarespace is explicit that recurring items aren't supported: "It's not possible to set up recurring or repeating events. You can manually duplicate events to create identical events without reentering the same information" (Squarespace, "Calendar pages", checked September 2026). A weekly Sunday service means duplicating that event by hand every week.

Wix Events documents the opposite: a purpose-built recurring-event feature, with two display modes. Wix explains you can "save time by creating recurring events instead of recreating the same event from scratch again and again," and choose between showing "each occurrence of the event... listed separately" or collapsing them so "only the occurrence of the closest upcoming date appears in the event list" (Wix Help Center, "Wix Events: Creating a Recurring Event", checked September 2026) - a real fit for a weekly service that shouldn't need re-entering every Sunday.

Tithely covers this with its own "Interactive Events Calendar," described as a way to "keep everyone in the loop about services, small groups, and special events" (Tithely, "Church Website Builder") - bundled with the same sermon and giving tools rather than a separate app.

How do I keep some content members-only?

Squarespace's Member Sites gates pages behind a signup: "Pages you add to a member site are automatically hidden behind a paywall," and "it's free to build a member site, but you need a website plan to sell memberships" (Squarespace, "Member Sites", checked September 2026) - our Squarespace member areas guide covers the full setup. It's built around selling access, which works as a free-signup gate too, but it's a different model than a simple internal-only page.

Wix's Members Only pages are more direct: "Create Members Only pages, available exclusively to your logged-in members. Choose whether to display this page to all members or members with certain roles and pricing plans" (Wix Help Center, "Wix Editor: Creating Members Only Pages", checked September 2026) - any existing page can be switched to member-only access, scoped to specific roles. Our Wix members area guide covers the setup.

Tithely's Sites product page doesn't cover members-only or password-protected pages; if you need a private area, check Tithely's help center or ask Tithely before you choose it.

What does each route look like side by side?

Which platform fits which church?

• Pick Wix if you post sermons to YouTube weekly and want them to appear automatically, you run more than one campus and want one map with multiple pins, or a real recurring-event feature matters more than a general-purpose calendar.
• Pick Squarespace if you want a podcast feed with Apple Podcasts metadata built into the audio block, and you're on Core or above so the donation platform fee drops to 0%.
• Pick Tithely if you want service times, sermons, giving, and events bundled into one product built only for churches, and confirm with Tithely how it handles members-only pages if you need them.

Where does Figment fit in?

Nowhere on the five jobs above - Figment publishes a website from a Figma design through its Figma plugin, with no donation block, sermon player, events calendar, or members-only page of its own. A church choosing this route would design the public-facing pages in Figma and run giving, sermons, and events through separate embedded tools - the same tradeoff covered for donation-specific needs in our guide to website builders for nonprofits. It fits a church that wants full visual control over its marketing pages and is comfortable handling the other four jobs separately.

Bottom line: every platform here can technically do all five jobs, but giving fees and recurring-event support are where the real differences sit. Check the current fee and plan pages before committing - all three vendors state figures that can change.