Every week you can look forward to new features
& recently squashed bugs in Altar Live!
September 19, 2023
We get it - not every event is built the same. So, we’ve added the ability to customize your event to have either rows or tables in the auditorium, or turn both off entirely. Plus, app updates for a smoother Altar experience - no matter the device.
August 22, 2023
Introducing our new subscription tier - Engagement Basic! Now for a fraction of the cost, you can gain access to all the basic features you need to engage your community – because creating a community should be affordable, easy, and engaging.
June 20, 2023
You asked - we delivered! With this product update, we've got some great quality-of-life changes to make the Altar Live experience smoother for both you and your community.
April 27, 2023
It’s been less than a month since our last update, but our team has been busy with new features! With customizable navigation, your events can be tailored even more to your individual community's needs.
April 6, 2023
Over the past month, our team has been busy finding (and eliminating) all sorts of bugs. From auditorium seating to help buttons, we’ve got several updates that will make your Altar Live experience smoother!
December 22, 2022
As the new year fast approaches, we want to equip you with a few new features to make online church engagement even smoother than before. Now you can quickly move your attendees from room to room, and upload your pre-event slides with ease!
February 16, 2023
As the new year fast approaches, we want to equip you with a few new features to make online church engagement even easier! Not only can you now create announcements and poll drafts, but you can schedule them to send automatically during your event - freeing you up to personally engage with your digital community even further.
November 15, 2022
Product update for Altar Live - Android, iOS, and Analytics update solving crashing issues and inaccurate reports.
1 FEATURE - 4 BUG FIXES
October 21, 2022
We've added two new features - templates and favicons! Tired of typing the same announcements every week? Want to ask your audience members to fill out a poll every session, but don't want to constantly copy and paste? Try out our new announcement and poll template creation feature! Plus, make your community your own with favicons.
2 FEATURES - 2 BUG FIXES
July 5, 2022
The Analytics Dashboard isn't the only thing that's new! We released updates to improve member privacy, give more control to the Hosts, and make creating announcements & polls easier. Check out our product release update to see it all.
3 FEATURES - 1 BUG FIX
June 2, 2022
New feature alert! This week we released a new chat feature for your hospitality team and squished a pesky bug. Here’s what’s new:
3 Features - 1 Improvements - 3 Bug Fixes
May 4, 2022
Celebrate, because new features are officially here! This week released a new exciting feature that will take your Altar Live experience to the next level. Here’s what’s new:
1 Feature - 2 Improvements
April 14, 2022
Hooray for new improvements! This week we took the time to improve the chat feature in Personal Meeting Rooms, Polls, and Announcements. Here's what's new:
March 25, 2022
This week we spent some time fine-tuning and improving features to make your Altar experience smoother than ever. Here’s what’s new:
March 18, 2022
This week we spent time squishing some small bugs and ironing out some RTMP issues. Here’s what’s new and improved:
February 4, 2022
Get your bug fixes here! This week, we spent more time fine-tuning and bug fixing to resolve issues and improve your online experience.
January 27, 2022
Can you believe it’s already 2022? As we enter a new year, discover the most game changing features and updates that were brought to Altar Live in 2021. See what’s new and get excited for what’s to come!
January 14, 2022
You asked, we delivered: Host Notes! This week we’ve been hard at work getting this helpful Host feature out the door and continuing to squash chat related bugs.
January 7, 2022
New year, new features, fixes, and improvements! Here’s what’s new:
December 23, 2021
As 2021 comes to close. We’re bringing you new improvements and features to celebrate and take your church community to the next level in 2022
December 10, 2021
Pre-Event slides are better than ever. This week brings new features and fixes like new Host privileges, Vimeo API integration, and more! See what’s new:
December 3, 2021
Meetings just got a whole lot cooler! New features for attendees and privileges for Hosts and here to make your Meetings fun, interactive, and efficient. You can now raise your hand, send emojis, create rooms, and more. See what’s new:
November 19, 2021
Who’s there? New host features, a knock feature for all Meetings, screen improvements, and bug fixes galore! See what’s new.
November 5, 2021
New features are here to increase engagement, effectiveness, and efficiency! Tired of creating a new Event every week? You can now duplicate Events for all your weekly gatherings. Need more space in a Room? You can now edit an already published Personal Meeting Room!
October 29, 2021
We’re bringing you TWO product updates in a week because we’re bursting at the seams with new features and improvements.
Not sure if you want to be on camera when you take a seat with others? You can now join Events and Meetings knowing you’re in control with camera and microphone preferences before joining.
3 IMPROVEMENTS - 1 FEATURE - 1 BUG FIX
October 27, 2021
New improvements and features are here to make your experience so much better. Now, you can export member lists and if you’re joining a Meeting or Event, we released camera and microphone permissions tailored to your browser.
October 22, 2021
Online engagement is about making people feel known and a part of the community. The month of October brought a bunch of new features that encourage engagement and connection, while also turning on more video conference features. See what has already been released and what's coming!
October 15, 2021
Have no fear, the Android bugs have been squished, squashed, kersplat! Improvements were added to the Events and creation flow to create a seamless Altar Live Event experience.
October 8, 2021
Hurrah! This week brings many new features, improvements, and bug squishes. More improvements have come to smaller screens, hosts and admins have more special privileges, unneeded communities can be deleted, and so much more!
September 24, 2021
This week was full of improvements and bug-squishing! Altar Live screen content on smaller laptops, iPad and tablet screens are now scaled to size to ensure a smooth Altar Live android experience.
September 16, 2021
Raise your flyswatters, it was a successful week of bug-squishing! Now you don’t worry about getting kicked out of the Altar Android app when joining meetings, disappearing chats, or announcement confusion. We patched some critical bugs on Community Landing pages and Meetings.
September 10, 2021
Pricing Pages are live, onboarding has improved, and more Android bugs were squashed! When choosing an Altar Live plan, you will now be able to choose the number of monthly active user seats that will best suit your community.
September 3, 2021
This week brought some bug squishing, improvements to Android and a new streaming option! As you plan your next Altar Live event, you can now use StreamingChurch.tv as a livestream platform.
August 20, 2021
August brings many new features, fixes, and bug squishing! Since July we have worked to meet all your requests and bring features that will make your Altar Live experience efficient, effective, and effortless!
August 19, 2021
Community Dashboards are live! Our new dashboard style ensures organization and accessibility. Now, each Community Dashboard features personal meeting rooms, event creation portals, and areas to help you with your online engagement!
August 17, 2021
This week events and meetings are even more seamless and efficient! We have implemented the “Play a Video” screen, fixed a bug, added an “Ongoing” label, and increased pre recorded file size. Now your events and meetings will be better than ever. This week also brings two new features that will make your Altar Live experience even better than before! Our new onboarding process is simple and effective. And our 14 day free trial gives you full feature access!
4 FEATURES - 2 BUG FIXES- 1 IMPROVEMENT
July 29, 2021
Say hello to the biggest game-changer in online church tools. Our most requested feature has finally shipped: larger Rooms in the Lobby and video-conference Meetings. Are you ready to turn off Zoom? Because now you can.
4 NEW FEATURES
July 21, 2021
This is our biggest product release since we exited beta! You can now send announcements, create polls, connect via RTMP and multi-stream to Facebook and YouTube. It's all that and more!
July 7, 2021
July will be welcoming all kinds of new releases! Since June, we have been working on your requests. You will soon be able to see the many improvements we made to make your experience efficient and effective.
HERE’S WHAT’S COMING:
June 25, 2021
Community Landing Pages are out of beta with new improvements!! You can now customize your community landing page to fit your desired look by choosing the light or dark mode. We also improved the landing page proportions and added badges to featured events. You can also see updated events in real time.
Learn more about how to customize community landing pages.
June 9, 2021
Introducing the new Community Landing Pages! You can now connect Altar Live seamlessly to your website with a fully customizable event landing page. Use your own logo, color and even custom URL! Start beta testing today.
Learn more about how to set up and customize your community landing pages!
May 29, 2021
Chat just got a whole lot better! This week you will see chat notifications when someone sends a new message, the ability to turn off/on your chat notification settings, and more moderation tools for Hosts to manage the General Chat channel. Plus, so much more!
May 1, 2021
May is going to be a big month of releases! Since our exit from beta in April, we are excited to be focusing on some long-requested features. Here's what we're shipping this month...
May 22, 2021
This week is a big release! You can now upload pre-recorded videos directly to Altar Live. Once you upload a video file, the system will upload and then transcode the video to optimize your video for attendees on mobile devices and slow internet connections.
May 15, 2021
We believe in hospitality, which is why this week we've improved the automated greeter message flow so your online host team's message inbox is more streamlined. You'll also notice lots of small, but delightful improvements across the platform.
May 1, 2021
3 FEATURES • 1 IMPROVEMENT • 1 BUG FIX
This week, we're also simplifying the new community creation process, an important step in making the creation of an online community easy and seamless.
Plus did you see our update from last week about updating your recurring event links?
April 24, 2021
This week we released even more updates to events on mobile browsers! Plus, we have some important updates to your event links:
We also made some improvements to the platform this week:
April 17, 2021
Today, we’re making it possible to join events on mobile browsers, an important step in making Altar events easy and seamless to join - no matter what device you're on! Plus, we now support HLS (.mp3u8) links from DaCast, ChurchStreaming.TV, and more!
P.S. Do you use iframe embed code to connect your video feed? Check out a better way to stream with HLS links from DaCast, ChurchStreaming.TV, and other providers!
April 10, 2021
Today we’re releasing our biggest update since entering beta last December.
The Altar team is pioneering how we do the work of the church online by virtual spaces for deep and meaningful connection, where people can be heard, known and understood. It’s taken months of explorations, testing, and iterations to bring to life.
When we started our redesign process, we had three main goals:
We’re confident this update will make your experience of Altar Live delightful and marked by hospitable, virtual conversations.
April 10, 2021
After 5 months in beta, we're excited to share that Altar Live is now fully released. After months of hard work behind the scenes, we're thrilled to introduce you to our new design.
P.S. Have you checked out the new apps? Download them today from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
April 3, 2021
Spring is here and so are the long-awaited mobile apps! Online engagement should be delightful, that’s why we’ve designed frictionless and intuitive apps so your community can join your events on any device. Head to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store today to try them out for yourself.
March 27, 2021
This week we’re introducing a few big updates to our iOS and Android apps, which are currently in beta. (Want access? Send us a message and we'll send instructions.) We’re also making it easier to connect pre-recorded video to ensure synchronization.
March 20, 2021
With Altar Live, setting up and running events should be simple and straightforward, and editing should always be effortless. This week, we're introducing more improvements to recurring events, and much more!
Have you tried setting up recurring events yet? Learn more about how to create recurring events with static links.
March 13, 2021
Each week, we aim to make Altar more intuitive, more stable, and more delightful. With this week's update, we did a lot of work behind the scenes. On your end, you will see improvements!
Plus, check out our support guides for resolving common issues on Altar.
March 6, 2021
It's finally here: recurring events and static URLs! If you want to use the same URL for a certain type of event (i.e. weekly Sunday service, morning Bible study, etc), you will want to create a recurring event series. Plus, we've also changed the links on events so they are shareable on Facebook. Keep reading for more long-awaited updates!
February 27, 2021
This was a big week for optimization across the Altar Live platform. We worked on reducing data consumption needs, server distribution, and client processing power. In everyday English, this means you will see more stability in both chat and video conferencing. Read on for more specifics on what we did to the backend!
February 19, 2021
Some weeks we don't have as many updates to share because we are busy working on our next big releases behind the scenes. While this is a lighter week of updates, we did make some improvements to the flow of events in Altar Live.
February 10, 2021
Whether you created an account in Altar Live a day ago or have been with us since our launch, you know that we have been hard at work to continually stabilize the video-conference. We are excited to announce that today we released some significant updates in Altar Live. These are the first of many that will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Check out all the stability updates:
February 6, 2021
After months of hard work behind the scenes, we're thrilled to introduce you to our new design and new sign in flow. This week, we shipped:
January 30, 2021
You asked, and we heard you: deleting events is now available! Some weeks, our product updates are exploding with exciting new features. Other weeks, we focus on fine-tuning existing behavior. Guess which type of week this is? Updates include:
January 22, 2021
Let the chorus of "good mornings" and "amen's" flow! You now have a way to communicate to everyone on the event in one general chat channel. Chat also got some other updates and bug fixes this week:
January 16, 2021
We know everyone has a different setup at home. Using an external camera or mic? No problemo - you can now easily change your audio and video input. That’s not the only way we’ve improvement ease of finding, seeing and hearing other participants this week:
February 6, 2021
New year, new features. This week there’s even more to love about the lobby. Tables can now be named! Name a Prayer Table or Welcome Table, or the Donut-lovers Table. Go crazy. But that’s not all that’s new this week:
February 24, 2021
In our last update of 2020, we come bearing gifts! In this release, you’ll see:
December 11, 2020
A whole new way of doing church has arrived. Watch parties are here! You can actually turn to your neighbor online and “pass the peace” or pray with someone in real time over video. But that’s not the only good news: