Integrations

Under Settings → Integrations, an Administrator can connect services your church already uses. Today that’s your own email server: Announcements can send its emails through your church’s own email account instead of HolyCRM’s.

You can also connect up to five webhooks to pass announcements and what happens in your church (new visitors, members, prayer requests, registrations, serving answers) on to your own automations (see below).

If your church has its own website, your developer can also show your events, groups, service times and ministries on it straight from HolyCRM, with public data feeds (see below).

Why send through your own email account

• Emails come from your church’s address (for example office@yourchurch.org), so replies go straight to you and people recognize the sender.
• No HolyCRM monthly limit. Emails sent through your own account don’t count toward the 1,000 emails a month that come with HolyCRM. Your email provider’s own sending limits apply instead (see below).

Before you start

You need an email account that allows sending through SMTP, and its settings. Most do:

• Google (Gmail or Google Workspace): server smtp.gmail.com, port 587. Use an app password, not your normal password: in your Google Account go to Security → 2-Step Verification → App passwords. Google Workspace accounts can send about 2,000 emails a day.
• Microsoft 365 / Outlook: server smtp.office365.com, port 587. Your Microsoft 365 administrator may need to allow “Authenticated SMTP” for the mailbox.
• Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Brevo and similar sending services: use the SMTP credentials from your account with them.

If you’re not sure, ask whoever looks after your church’s email for the “SMTP settings”.

Setting it up

1. Go to Settings → Integrations.
2. Choose your Provider. This fills in the server and port for you, and shows a tip for that provider.
3. Enter the Username and Password, the From address your emails should come from, and the From name people will see (usually your church’s name). The from address must be one your account is allowed to send from.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Send test email. HolyCRM sends a test to your own email address through your server and shows the result after a few seconds. Check it arrived (look in spam too).
6. Click Turn on.

From then on, Announcements shows “Sending through your own email server” instead of the monthly limit, and every email goes out through your account.

You can only turn it on after a successful test, and saving any change turns it off again until you send a new test. That way it’s never on with settings that don’t work.

If the test fails

The screen explains what went wrong in plain words, with the technical message underneath:

• The server rejected the username or password: check them again. With Google, make sure you used an app password.
• Couldn’t reach the server: check the server name and port.
• The secure connection failed: port 587 goes with STARTTLS, port 465 with SSL/TLS.
• The server refused the email: the from address is probably not one this account may send from.

Problems with real sends show up in the same place, as Last problem, and under the send in Announcements’ Recent sends. If your server can’t deliver an email, that email fails: HolyCRM never sends it through its own email instead.

Turning it off or removing it

Turn off goes back to sending through HolyCRM’s email, which counts toward the monthly limit again. Your settings stay saved, so you can turn it back on later. Remove deletes the settings; emails still waiting to go out through your server will fail.

Webhooks (automations)

A webhook sends things to a web address of your own, usually an automation tool such as Zapier, Make or n8n, where you decide what happens next: send it on through WhatsApp or Telegram, add the person to a spreadsheet, notify the welcome team, and so on. It’s meant for whoever looks after your church’s tech; nothing changes for members. You can add up to 5 webhooks, each with its own address and its own choice of what it receives.

What a webhook can receive

Tick what each webhook should get:

• Announcements you choose to send to webhooks (see Announcements).
• New visitor: anyone who fills in the “New here?” form or is added in Visitors.
• New member (never children).
• New prayer request: who asked and how to reach them. The request itself is never sent: your team reads it inside HolyCRM.
• Event registration.
• A volunteer confirmed or declined a serving slot.

Privacy: deliveries include names, email addresses and phone numbers. Children (members marked as minors, with guardians, or under your church’s minor age) are never included in anything sent to a webhook, and notes, addresses and birthdates are never sent. Only connect services your church trusts and is allowed to share this information with.

Setting one up

1. In your automation tool, create a flow that starts with “receive a webhook” (Zapier: Webhooks by Zapier → Catch Hook; Make: Custom webhook; n8n: Webhook node). Copy the address it gives you; it starts with https://.
2. In Integrations → Webhooks, click Add a webhook, give it a name if you like, paste the address as the Webhook URL, tick What to send and click Save.
3. HolyCRM shows a signing secret once. Copy it and keep it with your automation: it lets your automation check that each delivery really comes from HolyCRM. If you lose it, click New signing secret (the old one stops working).
4. Click Send test. The screen shows what your webhook answered.
5. Click Turn on.

Changing the address or the format turns the webhook off until a new test succeeds; changing what it receives doesn’t. If a webhook doesn’t answer, HolyCRM tries again several times over the next hours; problems show on that webhook as Last problem, and for announcements also under the send in Recent sends.

Format: HolyCRM JSON or custom

By default each delivery is the same JSON for every tool, which Zapier, Make and n8n read without any setup. Every delivery includes a ready-made line in your church’s language, summary (for example “New visitor: John Smith”).

If the place you send to expects something else, choose Custom (for developers) and write the body yourself, with placeholders HolyCRM fills in, plus extra headers if needed. Start from an example fills it in for two common cases:

• ntfy (phone notifications): a plain-text message with a title.
• Telegram (a bot posting in a group): replace YOUR_CHAT_ID with your chat’s id and use https://api.telegram.org/bot<your bot token>/sendMessage as the URL.

For developers: every request is signed. The X-HolyCRM-Signature header is sha256= + the HMAC-SHA256 of <X-HolyCRM-Timestamp>.<raw body> with your signing secret (also with the custom format, over the body actually sent). X-HolyCRM-Event says what happened, and X-HolyCRM-Delivery stays the same when a delivery is retried, so you can ignore duplicates. Templates use Go template syntax over the delivery: {{.data.summary}}, {{.data.subject}}, {{.church.name}}, {{range .data.recipients}}…{{end}}, and {{json …}} to insert a value as JSON. A template error makes the test fail with the error. More in the Developer guide.

Public data feeds (for developers)

If your church’s website is built by a developer (not the website that comes with HolyCRM), they can show your events, small groups, service times and ministries on it, taken straight from HolyCRM and always up to date. Nobody has to copy anything by hand.

1. In Integrations → Public data feeds, tick the feeds you want and click Save.
2. Copy each address and give it to your developer.

Each feed shows exactly what your HolyCRM website shows, never more: events with their public description and photo, groups marked “Show on the website” (name, description, day and time, never the host or the address), service times marked “Show on the website”, and active ministries. No member information is ever included. Anyone who has the address can read it, so turn on only the feeds you need; untick one and click Save to stop it at once.

For developers: the Developer guide lists every field, with an example.

Only Administrators can see and change Integrations, and it’s part of the Pro plan.