Altar Live

Pros: The features of Altar Live are very intuitive and are not difficult to train or teach. Our church volunteers love the training guides and tutorials that accompany the product!

Cons: While we have thoroughly enjoyed Altar Live, we anxiously await more APIs for the software. We would love to keep integrating existing tools into the processes we already utilize.

Pros: Allows members to "go to church" from the comfort of their home.

Cons: It's not intuitive for many members to name themselves and take a seat. Most stay un-named and "stand" and don't participate in chat

Pros: I love all the features of Altar Live. Especially the ability to have organized break-out rooms and the ability to assign hosts to those tables prior to meeting. Altar is easy to get started and to get people to sign up and register within the correct community. Excited to see what's ahead for Altar. My ministry excels greatly with this software and we plan on using it for years to come.

Cons: One feature I would like for Altar to provide is the ability to record meetings so others can watch them on demand if they miss the session. I am sure they will have this capability soon. Love the Altar team.

Pros: There are so may features that Altar live provides to help make online church feel exactly like that...church online. From rows to sit with your friends to tables to sit together in the lobby.

Cons: There definitely is a learning curve. I am still adjusting to the fact that it is a little more complex (because it can do so much more).

Pros: This helped us save money and create one streamlined option for our digital church small groups and events to meet. It is one easy link to send out for all participants to join.

Cons: Saying and explaining the name to other users has been a bit of a challenge. Overall, this company responds great to feedback and feature use.

Pros: The idea and concept is great. The design is nice. The functionality, if administered properly, is great in terms of being able to receive stream from different platforms. The people splitting up into smaller, virtual rooms is cool too!

Cons: In our context, it felt there were too many hurdles for users at home to jump through until they could use it. The room function was a bit frustrating. Would prefer if the altar experience was led more by an administrator type facilitator that was the one who who had the capability to be sorting people into their rooms rather than people picking and choosing.

Pros: The AltarLive team is responsive to feature requests and really know the needs of churches for online ministry.

Cons: The Apple App doesn't work well in landscape mode.

Pros: The emphasis on community interaction is great. Setting up meeting rooms that we can gather in at anytime is a great addition

Cons: I haven't used this long enough to find the things that frustrate me. That's a good thing

Pros: I love that it creates space for people to see each other and interact over audio and video online for church. It makes the experience a much less isolating one.

Cons: The chat feature could be a bit better. I wish I could add someone else to a chat after I’ve created it. I wind up having extra chats going because someone joins late and i want to include them in a conversation. For example - we make a chat for all of our greeters and if I miss someone, we have to make a new chat but I can’t delete the old chat. I’d also love if there was a tab that only greeters can see that we can add notes too for them.

Pros: We had previously been using a combination of a YouTube livestream and Zoom for our Sunday services in order to get an interactive feel to worship, but AltarLive allows us to combine that on one platform.

Cons: It seems that some of our users have experienced computers slowing down after some time on AltarLive. My best guess is that it might take a decent amount of RAM to get everything running.

Pros: AltarLive enabled our digital participants to not only livestream the conference main sessions but also interact with our digital hosts AND each other. Thanks to AltarLive, we were able to bring a great experience to both our in-person and online participants. We had participants connecting, encouraging, and praying with each other from all around the world.

Cons: There are great features on the AltarLive development plan but they weren't available for our event. Looking forward to future updates.

Pros: ease of setup for the administrator and staff

Cons: helping new users to get set up and using

Pros: That our congregation can interact during a worship service.

Cons: Very unstable. Many of our users have had trouble logging onto the platform.

Pros: That there can be interaction between attendees.

Cons: Some of the technology issues. We had issues with streaming, and in the beginning there were some issues with the video chat function. I’m eagerly awaiting the custom sized tables function.

Pros: I like the virtual performance center look and feel. I also like the tables and rooms.

Cons: I would like to have more hosting features and to be able to invite someone to the stage to present. Ability to share documents from your computer and whiteboard features.

Pros: Great innovative concept, lots of potential

Cons: It lacked features of Church Online Platform that we couldn't overcome at this stage of product maturity.

Pros: Love the ability to choose a seat and have a conversation with someone in the sanctuary. Also appreciate the lobby where you can label tables for people to have somewhere to ask questions.

Cons: Would like for set-up to be a bit more intuitive. The videos are good but it feels like it is still a bit clunky on the setting up people's roles and also events.

Pros: The responsive developers at Altar Live have created a product that makes it possible for us to engage our remote participants in real community. We have found it to be a flexible and intuitive tool for discipling people, empowering small group leaders, facilitating conversation, and enjoying real interaction. We love Altar Live!

Cons: Initially I found some of the constraints (four people in a row, for instance) to be an irritating challenge. But those "constraints" became features as we creatively adapted to the medium and the ongoing improvements to the software have made it easier to do that. Now I'm grateful for those things.

Pros: We began hosting worship online after pandemic began. We originally streamed via Facebook, which was great visibility, but did not seem like a sustainable solution. Now that we are able to gather again in person with precautions, Altar Live has allowed us to continue engaging those who can only access worship from home (due to their geographical location, traveling, health, etc.). Different from social media platforms, Altar Live allows us to virtually sit with one another and share camera/ audio. At first I wasn't sure how this would feel, but have found this feature to be a beautiful way to build community across distance and time. I now know and have worshipped with people who I have yet to meet in person. It's hard to navigate this time of in-person/ virtual, but Altar Live (and their awesome team) are working hard to find creative solutions.

Cons: The primary challenge with Altar Live is that it is a new type of platform that people have to learn. I've found it very easy to navigate; however, in order to participate in the chat and to sit with others, people need to sign in. It's simple and easy to do, but I think it may feel like a barrier to some people. I think it's a growing edge and the support team has offered tips on how to deepen engagement with those who choose to log in and participate more actively online.