Celebrating 16 sweet years of eCatholic!

Jun 1, 2021 by

Diane Kern

March Madness has passed, but eCatholic is celebrating another kind of sweet sixteen milestone

Did you know basketball has a small tie to eCatholic’s beginning? Our founder and CEO, Josh Simmons, has enjoyed basketball since a young age and even coaches a high school team today. Sixteen years ago, as a self-taught programmer, he received the opportunity to create a real-time scoring system for the NBA Summer League so that scores could be uploaded court-side. Sweet!

You see, that opportunity was one in a series of bread crumbs that led to the founding of eCatholic. As a former youth ministry leader, Josh created websites to relieve the administrative burdens of ministry. Getting into programming for unique needs made him realize that maybe God was calling him to leave ministry at a parish and serve the Church in a whole new way.

“It blows me away every day to think that God can take our five loaves and our two fish and just do so much if we give it to Him.”

- Josh Simmons, eCatholic Founder and CEO

You'll have to watch the entire story to fully appreciate eCatholic’s humble roots; but thanks be to God, that today, eCatholic is bigger than even Josh could have imagined. It has a lot to do with Josh stepping out onto the water, as well as our faithful customers who play a huge part in shaping eCatholic’s products and services to accomplish some of the greatest needs of Catholic organizations.

1. eCatholic has 30 talented team members working from more than 20 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

   
   See how the eCatholic team has grown exponentially in the last two years.

2. Catholic organizations in all 50 states and 20 countries utilize eCatholic technologies and services.
3. Our longest-running Catholic parish clients have been with us for all 16 years.
4. In 2011, the eCatholic 4 website platform was released, drastically changing the user experience for easily creating beautiful engaging websites.

   
   Early conceptual sketches of eCatholic 4.0 website design (circa Jan. 2011).

5. In 2014, we completed the first diocesan initiative working with the Archdiocese of New York to serve all their parishes with new mobile-friendly websites and integrated content.
6. Today, nineteen Catholic dioceses utilize integrated communication technologies through our diocesan initiative programs.
7. In 2014, enhanced features changed our website product into today’s website platform, eCatholic 5.

   
   An update from eCatholic 4 to eCatholic 5 provided the website editor that you know and utilize today.

8. In 2016, eCatholic's first diocesan school initiative went underway and helped the Archdiocese of New York successfully launch exclusively designed websites for 61 of their schools.
9. In the last six years, our design team has served hundreds of organizations with unique custom-designed websites.
10. Our design team has also delivered 60 new logo designs for Catholic organizations in the last 6 years.
11. In 2018, eCatholic closed its office headquarters location and transitioned to a fully remote company.
12. In 2019, Section Layouts transformed how eCatholic website content is styled for easily designing the most impressive websites.
13. Since 2019, our Homepage Makeover team has helped more than 150 organizations restyle and elevate their older themed websites.
14. In 2020, we launched first iteration of our Giving Success program, and saw eCatholic Payments parishes increase their online giving by an average of 39%. 
15. The eCatholic Stock Photos library now offers more than 2,500 high-quality images for subscribed customers.
16. And our Quick Flip team has been transferring website content so fast ... we’ll just say they’ve flipped thousands of sites by now. :)

Thanks for being part of our 16-year journey and making eCatholic what it is today - something that might have felt like a long shot, but has a score impacting the Church across the entire globe. Happy anniversary!