As a preaching pastor at Joshua House, a twenty-something community of Vineyard Columbus, Jonathan Rue knows what it takes to build a church.

Unfortunately, some bad experiences with previous website companies left the church's website disheveled and in disarray. That's when Jonathan and his team made the decision to stop shopping solely based on cost, and instead focus on quality.

We sat down with Jonathan recently and asked him to share about Monk.

Tell us about your initial experience with MonkDev. What led you to start looking around?

Originally, we went with another company and had a terrible experience. They were a small development company that made claims about what they could do, claims that turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

They over-promised and under-delivered. They weren't truthful about the ownership of the CMS and the content. They were really slow, never met deadlines, and left sites in worse shape than when they started.

All these factors led to the decision to move everything to MonkDev. We decided they were the experts. We want to focus on our ministry, not being the experts in web development.

What has your experience been like after trusting Monk with your church's website?

So far, we love MonkDev. We felt they really wanted to give our church what we wanted. For me, it was the spirit of the how Monk approached things: they were honest and customer-centric, and I liked they were upfront about content ownership.

Secondly, I think Monk is smart for making the product better all the time. For instance, I put in a request for something and saw they created the feature later. Love that! The prices came down, too, which never hurts!

A story to illustrate my experience with Monk: About a year ago, Drew (MonkDev CEO) called me. He asked how my experience with MonkDev had been so far and wanted to know how Ekklesia 360 could be better.

[MonkDev] is a company trying to get better and serve the church more effectively, not just trying to make a buck or check off tasks.

That was super impressive to me because I never had a company do that before. I thought, "here is a company trying to get better and serve the church more effectively, not just trying to make a buck or check off tasks."

How has working with Monk been different than your experience with other companies?

I always feel like I'm getting the true cost of things; no hidden fees. MonkDev values honesty and good customer service. They are a great company and do great work. Really solid Christian company, not just a Christian company in the blue pages.

Our website is simple for people to use, but it doesn't sit stagnant. Monk is constantly working to make the product better. I've had experience with about 5-6 other companies and MonkDev is head and shoulders above the rest.

Conclusion

Make sure you visit Joshua House online and give Jonathan a shout out on Twitter.

If your church needs help digging out of a developer's hole, take a look at our out-of-the-box options that could put you in a new site ASAP.