My first impression of ACS Technology was that their website was hard to navigate and I could not find an organized list of specific features, then I found there CMS service, ExtendPlatform.com. They offer templates and custom design with conventional imagery and navigation layouts. ACS does not offer a ton of add-ons, but there was one major bonus I found only here- church accounting software integration. One of the major drawbacks searching through their current client sites was the lack of web standards, SEO friendly URLs and multi-campus support.
Features:
• Flexible Design Capability
• Templates and Predesigns
• Unlimited Pages
• Sermon Module
• Events
• Member Manager
• Member Site Integration
• Blogs
• Custom Development
• Flash Integration
• Ecommerce
• Donation manager
• Custom Form Creator
• Tech Support
SCORE: 13/37
Click the images and links below to see examples and learn more.
ACS Technologies says that they have tens of thousands of customers, but I am not terribly sure if that is for their Extend Platform or their financial management software and other church management goodies. Does anyone have any experience with ACS as a website CMS? Can someone actually share their personal experience both from the perspective of the website CMS as well as a church management tool?
Dan,
To give you an idea, we are leaving ACS as quickly as possible. And the church is looking for a new system for financial and member management as well. The ACS Extend product (web CMS) is fairly easy to get used to, but is a bit stange. There is no ability to use FTP and if you want to make a site backup, eac file must be downloaded individually. They also have a tendency to “fix” things that are not broken. I have had many times when they have “upgraded” the CMS causing my site to break.
The biggest issue is the cost. ACS is not doing churches any favors (I have used the term “raping and pillaging” to describe the pricing). For $150 a month you get access to the CMS and 1 gig of storage. After that it’s a-la-carte. The CSRs are friendly, know their stuff and have helped me fix things quickly when needed, so it’s not the people, it’s the cost and the often destructive upgrades. We are having our site redesigned by Pulse Creative Partners (www.pulsecreativepartners.com) and they are setting us up with everything, including our own hosting system for all our websites. Our monthly cost will drop from about $175 to $20 and we can consolidate all our hosting for that $20…which will make for even more savings (we run multiple sites).
Sam (SPC webmaster)