My church is beginning the process of preparing the 2025 budget.  My elders are responsible for our worship-related expenses, which includes our subscriptions to software and licensing.  They are questioning our need to be paying upwards of $300/yr for vMix and $300/yr for Easyworship.

I was asked to see if there are less expensive or even free options available for putting words on screens and livestreaming.  I know about the other software out there for livestreaming (OBS, Dacast, etc.) and the costs, limits, and benefits over vMix.  I also know of other software out there that could take the place of EasyWorship such as ProPresenter, Proclaim, Media Shout, etc., along with their features, limits, and costs.  I am also aware of the free software that, with many limits, could at least get us by.

The trouble is that EasyWorship is, among most of them, the easiest to use and works quite nicely with vMix.  Yes, this means we spend upwards of $1,000/year on licenses and copyright licenses, but I, after playing around with these other apps, am still convinced that EasyWorship with vMix is what works best for us.

However, as and IT guy, I also know that, with no updates in nearly 4 years, little communication in the forums, and little to no changes to a brand's website, that this is a sign of a company and its software near EOL or outright leaving the market.  Even the copyright information in the About section of your software and on your website are out of date.

I need to know, before I make a recommendation to my board and ultimately to the voters at my church, is EasyWorship still active, continuing to provide updates and add features, and will be around for the long haul?  It's been nearly 4 years since a software update!  There's been a LOT of feature requests over the past few years that have not been, nor are there any signs of implementation.  Few of the Support topics are answered anymore.  Your website hasn't been updated with new information in a very long time.  Do I go to my congregation and give a thumb's up to keep EasyWorship as our presentation software for another year, or is it time to move on?

Guys at Easyworship, you need to engage with your customers and provide updates and do software updates and add features.  It's just good business.  Yes, your software is great, but things have changed in the past 3-4 years, NDI has come out with at least a new version, Windows is coming to the end of version 11 and going on to 12 soon, new technologies have developed which EW could take advantage of.  there are still improvements in the EW software that could use fixing.  For example, I wish EW was Cloud-ready and would work seemlessly with OneDrive and other cloud platforms.  I wish the resource backup system was built-into the software rather than a separate piece of software, and that backups could be run with a click of a button.  I wish you had unlimited outputs to screens/monitors through NDI or whatever vs. just a few.  It would be great if Easyworship had MIDI OUT fully implemented so we could control vMix with MIDI and only need one operator in our booth.  These are just a few things that have been requested over the years.

If it is your intent to close shop, then release your software as public domain so we can continue to keep it alive and continue to make improvements.  Or, if you're going to continue as a company, please let us know, very regularly, what you're doing, when betas come out, when you're doing updates, etc.  Don't keep us in the dark.  We love you guys and we love your software, but we need to know you're still with us too.

A few points of clarification here. First, I am not an employee of Softouch/EasyWorship, I am just a user attempting to help other users where and when I can.

Second, this is a USER helping other USERS forum and as such most questions are answered by users, not EW Support Staff. That said, EW Support does chime in at times as necessary.

Third, EW 7 was last updated in March of 2023. That is roughly a year and a half, not even close to the 4 years you claim.

They do let us know when Beta versions are released. They have stated in these forums that they are nearing a new release of EW as well as one for Mac computers. They haven't stated exactly when at this point as they don't know at this point. They will be released WHEN THE SOFTWARE IS READY.

Also, have you checked out the EW User Group on Facebook? The last time I checked, it had a lot more traffic than these forums do. 

You bring up great points, we used Power Point and vMix for the longest time until someone showed Easy Worship to use from other churches in our district. We get vMix for free through their church license program you can apply here. I find this product complex for our church need and difficult to get others trained so I ask my self the same question is ProPresenter the correct solution or spend some time with EW.

I tinkered with ProPresenter.  For volunteers who are mostly teens and young adults, it's a bit much.  EW works great in our context.  I just want to know what updates are coming and see more major software versions.  The one in 2023 was a minor update.  There's a lot of feature requests we've made since the last major update and we're waiting...

From what I understand they are focusing more on getting the next version of EW (let's call it EW8) and including new features in that instead of spending time putting new features into the existing EW7. They have limited resources and it doesn't make sense dividing them developing EW8 for Windows, EW for Mac, and doing more features in EW7. 

EW also tries not to make promises they can't keep. Announcing updates before they are ready to be released has backfired a couple of times (remember how long it was between EW2009 and EW6). 

Thanks for the reply.  I just want to let my folks know that our continued purchased of the subscription isn't for not.  Knowing now that there's a new version in the works is all I need to keep people happy.