[v6 General Discussion] Sell me on updating to easy worship 6

I just started at a new church in May that uses easy worship, we're on 2009. I came from a church that uses pro presenter. We're at a place where I'm looking at options to be able to bring some new things not supported by 2009 and wanted to ask why we should choose 6 over other platforms.

I don't mean this to sound mean spirited, because it's not; I'm actually hoping someone can give me a list of reasons staying with easy worship is going to add value to what we do on Sunday mornings in terms of excellence in display, workflow, and setup. This is essentially an opportunity to say "here's why we think you should update to 6 and stay with us". We're going to have to spend some money to bring things like an announcement loop and if 6 has a better workflow and will meet our needs, Id love to not have to retrain everyone. The last few posts here have made me hesitant though.

I know someone will tell me to get the trial, but I haven't seen a Mac version. Am I missing it or is it still unavailable? If there's not one out is there a beta that would let me get a feel for it?

Pastor Jrjones,

First off, congratulations on the new church! Many of us have had the experience of starting a new church, and are intimately acquainted with the opportunities and challenges of a new work. We wish you the best.

Now, to answer your question…

What Makes EasyWorship Different:

There are several similar software products on the market, and they all claim to do the same thing. So what makes EasyWorship different?

It’s not just what we do. It’s why.

If we were to show you a checklist of features, other products like MediaShout or ProPresenter could check off a similar list. We all offer the same basic features: text over video, motion backgrounds, video importing, font customization, and many more. Each product’s core function is to help churches project professional presentations for worship services.

How can products that seemingly deliver the same results have drastically different customer experiences? We believe it boils down to philosophy -- one that impacts not only the way we treat our customers but also the features we develop for them. This is what sets EasyWorship apart.

Our philosophy is simple: everything we do - and the way we do it - must fulfill our mission to serve and love the Church. That means that we’re not just about making software. We exist to help churches create a distraction-free worship experience that can bring lost people to Jesus. We help churches achieve that experience by making professional features that are easy to use and easy to afford.

So how exactly does our philosophy translate into action?


EasyWorship’s Benefits and Impact to the Church Market:

This is where the rubber meets the road. Anybody can crow about their philosophy, but not everybody can prove they are what they say they are. So how exactly does EasyWorship’s product demonstrate our philosophy in a way that matters to churches?

Built-In Site License. Our unique “One Church, One Fee” philosophy means that churches are free to use EasyWorship 6 (which costs $499) for multiple events on a single campus, on as many computers as they like, all at the same time. For the same site license, ProPresenter charges $799 and MediaShout charges $899.

Get Big Church Technology on a Small Church Budget. Churches can look like a million bucks without spending it. Our software is powerful enough for them to design awesome presentations efficiently and affordably. Churches don’t need the latest hardware to get great results.

No Risk. All Reward. When a church buys EasyWorship, they’re entitled to our 90-Day “No Regrets” Money-back Guarantee. If they’re not satisfied with our product, we’ll refund their money. Period. (To our knowledge, no other presentation software product offers this.) We make this promise because we’re confident in our product and because we understand that spending donated money is a huge responsibility, and we want churches to feel safe in purchasing EasyWorship.

Easy to Learn, Easy to Teach. EasyWorship can take your presentation from zero to worship-ready in minutes, so it’s deliberately designed to be volunteer-friendly. We’ve kept the interface simple and clean, and we’ve labeled the buttons and menu options to make sense to anyone - even if they’re not a media professional. This is ideal for churches who have limited time to spend on preparing worship presentations and training volunteers to do this each week.

We’ve tooted our own horn long enough. Read what our customers are saying about us:

“I’m technology-savvy but most of our volunteer team is not. We can train our staff in mere minutes, and EasyWorship meets all of our needs. The interface is beautiful and easy to use but the program itself is fast and powerful. EasyWorship truly is a great solution for churches of all types and sizes.”

Ben P.
Media Director, Doncaster City Church


“Great! That's how i feel about the changes you folks have made to EasyWorship 6… I can literally edit on the fly… It’s such a blessing and I can easily teach someone to take my place -- and that too is great!”

LaVern M.


“We started to use EasyWorship last Sunday in our worship service, and it proved to be an outstanding piece of software and a great tool for our service.”

Angel C.
Worship Pastor, Agape Free Church


Feature Highlights for Version 6:

EasyWorship 6 introduced some brand new features that will be game-changers for the church at large. We listened to thousands of our customers and rebuilt the software from the ground up.

Make your experience simple or fancy with Presentation Designer. With features similar to PowerPoint, this tool lets you perform basic text editing and spell check, or get fancy with reflection, shadows, transparency, and looping announcement slides. With full PowerPoint support, working with your PowerPoint files is also a breeze.

Save the styles you like and pass them on. The new Theme Designer lets you design templates using the fonts, backgrounds, and layouts you like best, so you don't have to start from scratch each time. By taking a few extra minutes to build themes and save them to your Theme Library, you’ll ensure a more consistent look and feel -- regardless of who is designing your presentations.

Simpler video integration. Import any video you like. EasyWorship now supports all of the most popular video formats -- including MP4, M4V, MOV and WMV -- for faster, smoother, easier setup.

Add Scriptures on the fly. Previous versions of EasyWorship already had a built-in, searchable song and Scripture database. But we've made it even better. Now you can keep up with last-minute sermon note changes by a simple keyword Scripture search. You don’t even have to remember the reference. Type “Jesus wept” and get results in seconds. (Other products take approximately 30 seconds to perform this search, which feels like an eternity when the pastor is waiting for it to show up on the screen as he’s preaching.)

Never be embarrassed by a typo again. With our built-in Spell Check, you can quickly catch any spelling errors. We’ve got your back.

As you can see, EasyWorship 6 is definitely going to add value to your Sunday morning in every way you asked about — display, workflow, and setup. When you install EasyWorship 6 on your worship computer, it will transfer your database from version 2009, so you won’t need to redo all of your songs.

At this point, EasyWorship is available on the Windows platform only. If you would like to try it out on your Mac, you’d need to install Windows using Bootcamp.

If you have any other questions, please let us know. We're honored to have you a customer.

Blessings,

Rodger
[color=#4000FF:1bit7lub]"With our built-in Spell Check, you can quickly catch any spelling errors. We’ve got your back."[/color:1bit7lub]
Only if you're in the US - when can we expect to see an English UK spell check available to us?
Thanks for the response Rodger. Do you have a Mac version of easy worship 6 I could demo? My understanding is that if I download the demo on our presentation computer it takes over the current install and I definitely don't want to do that. I'd like to spend some time getting to know how it feels and what the workflow actually looks like at home.
Thanks for the response Rodger. Do you have a Mac version of easy worship 6 I could demo? My understanding is that if I download the demo on our presentation computer it takes over the current install and I definitely don't want to do that. I'd like to spend some time getting to know how it feels and what the workflow actually looks like at home.


As far as I know, there is no Mac version and no published release date.

As far as EW6 "taking over", that is not correct. EW6 will import and convert your database to EW6, but it will also keep your EW2009 data intact so you can easily go back and forth between the two products.