There are two significant reasons for building your own web Infrastructure, rather than using online services.

Security / Privacy

If you use an online service that is 'free' and you aren't paying for the service, then YOU ARE the service. It costs money to put things in 'the cloud'. These services must rent hosting server computers somewhere. If they aren't charging you for that, then they are making money off you some way. That could be by displaying ads, or it could be by sharing information about you or your file contents with others in exchange for payment for that information.

You may think that you aren't storing anything of value. However, if you upload a spreadsheet or other document that lists all the members/attenders of your church with their contact info (i.e. a 'church directory'), that information is very valuable to others - both the general data but also the indirect data that indicates that they are regularly part of your church.

By hosting your own systems you maintain the responsibility of who has access to your data. You do have to take the responsibility to learn how to keep that data secure, but you are a much smaller target for hacking as a small individual server than if your data was on a system with hundreds or thousands of other organizations data.

Availability

If you use any online service provider you are at their mercy. They may decide, with little notice, that they are going to discontinue the service. This happens not only with smaller companies but big ones also. The list of services that Google had made available free only to later shutter is growing every year.

By hosting your own services (on a server you lease or a server physically located within your building*), you can ensure that the services are available when you need them. You can decide when updates take place that may affect your access to the services.

*NOTE: We do NOT recommend hosting file or document-sharing services on your own physical servers at your own location. This is partly due to the advanced knowledge required to keep the servers running (which if you have that knowledge, you probably would not be reading this), but primarily due to the fact that most ISPs (Internet Service Providers - Comcast, Century Link,, AT&T, etc.) may limit the number of connections to your location.

Although this is a bit outside the scope of a normal church web team, if you have individuals with tech backgrounds, or and individual with time to learn and maintain a system, you can create your own online document and file sharing system that will protect the privacy of the content in your files.

The best system for this is to set-up an online web server with the NextCloud system, and then install the Only Office extension. This will give you the ability to share files but also the ability to edit them online - very similar to Office 365 and Google Docs.

NextCloud must be installed on your own online server (we recommend Linode). Someone with basic IT experience should be able to set-up a system within a few hours. Maintenance of the system should be less than 5 hours/month.

Why shouldn't we use Office 365 or Google Docs?

In addition to the cost, Microsoft has had a track record of not protecting privacy with your data files. In addition, they have begun to insert advertisements within the Office 365 interface.

Google Docs are known to be insecure, and they may share the contents of your documents with others.

Ideally, if you are able to host your own server on Linode with Plesk, you will have your own email server available within that system.

It does take some learning to manage your own email server, but if you have someone on your web team that is willing to spend a few hours, you can easily learn the skills via YouTube. Be aware that you can't just enable the email functions and set-up accounts in Plesk and expect to have everything work. You need to understand DKIM, SPF, DNS and a few other technologies so that your email server is working properly and not getting black-listed.

If you don't have someone that can learn those skills and has the time to manage the server, we recommend that you use a secure email provider like Tutanota (https://tutanota.com/) or Proton (https://proton.me/). Both of them provide secure email services that will easily work with any computer platform.

SECURITY NOTE: We do NOT recommend using Gmail. The Gmail service is known to be insecure and Google has a history of parsing individual's email accounts and turning over information to government agencies, even when the content doesn't violate any laws. It's best to stay away from all Google (and other 'free' programs).

If you have members of your web team that have some IT experience, we recommend that you build your own web hosting system using Linode and the Plesk system. You can easily build this using Linode's custom server-building options.

Please be aware that this will require you to spend at least 1-5 hours per month making sure that the server and systems are updated and secure. This is NOT a task for someone who has not had any experience with Linux or Internet security. But it will be worth the effort in the flexibility you have with your web site and features you can have. There is a monthly cost for both the Linode server as well as the Plesk system. This will generally run about $25-50/month when you add appropriate Plesk security add-ons.

If you need a hosting company, we presently recommend the A2.com hosting service.

NOTE: If you choose SquareSpace or Wix you will NOT need a separate hosting account - they provide that as part of their package.

We strongly recommend using the Joomla CMS.

This is because it provides the ability to add features in a more easy/stable means that most other systems.

HOWEVER, this will require you to invest time to get it set-up and regular time into keeping the system updated. If you have a web team, with at least a couple people willing to take this on as their ministry. It usually takes 3-10 hours to get a basic web site set-up on Joomla. It takes about 1-3 hours/month to just keep the system maintained - in addition to updating the content. If you don't have people willing to do this, then you should NOT use a self-managed CMS (i.e. Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, etc.).

Alternately we recommend that you use SquareSpace of Wix it you still want to build a custom web site, but don't have the time to manage the 'technical' part.

If you just want an 'out-of-the-box' system ready to enter content, then you should look at some of the made-for-ministry web site providers.