There are other church database providers with roughly similar functionality that are more expensive than Easy Jethro. Because we leverage the existing Jethro PMM open source software (built and used by a bunch of churches over several years), our costs are around the hosting, maintenance, security and support of your system - we don't have to pay a team of developers to build it from scratch.
The Jethro PMM software is free. But to run it, you need to know how to install it on a web server. Then you need to make sure the web server is secure enough. Then you need to make sure it's regularly backed up and the server is kept up to date with security patches. With Easy Jethro you don't need to worry about any of these details - you pay us for the service and you get a reliable, secure Jethro system that just works.
Many churches run their own Jethro PMM systems and for some churches that's a great option. But the cheap web hosting you might use for your website probably doesn't have an appropriate level of security for storing personal information like you do in Jethro. For example you'll generally be sharing the server with a bunch of other users who may have installed insecure software, and the lack of SSL encryption means your username and password can be eavesdropped on the network.
We use industry best practice to make sure your data stays secure and intact. This includes
The US Patriot Act does give the US Government access to private data. It applies to servers that are located in the US or owned by US companies. This has raised some questions about whether Australian organisations can store private information on US servers without breaching the more stringent Australian Privacy Act. Easy Jethro is an Australian company that stores all your raw data physically within Australia on Australian-owned hardware so you can be confident that by using our service you are not breaching Australian privacy laws.
Please see our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for all the details.