Welcome to the

Quaker Meetings Network

a digital home for Quaker meetings

What is
QMN?

An alternative to
the FGC Quaker Cloud

The Quaker Meetings Network was setup in the UK in 2018 to provide a centralised system for Quaker meetings to create beautiful, modern websites.

In September 2023, we learned that the FGC Quaker Cloud was being closed down toward the end of 2023. We were approached by Friends in the US to see whether our system could extend to the US.

Although our system is tailored for Quakers in the UK, we think it could offer a great alternative to those looking for a similar solution the Quaker Cloud. So we invite you to join our pilot program for Quaker meetings in the US, including a free trial of our system. Register before April 1 for a 2 month free trial.

What we offer

We provide a bespoke website builder that has been designed and built by Friends for Friends, that is fun to use and easy to maintain by anyone, no matter their technical expertise. Importantly, we offer a continuous source of support so that when roles change hands, we'll be here to support your meeting.

Since launching in its current form in early 2020, we've also grown to offer many other services and tools, which are covered below. Our community keeps growing month-on-month, QMN currently consists of over 50% (over 170 meetings) of all the Quaker meetings in the UK and over 1800 Friends have their own personal account on our network.

How we support you

Our network offers many optional tools and resources for your Quaker meeting or group.

Website

Two kinds of websites to cater for small and large meetings. Our website builder has been designed by experts to be easy and fun to use by non-specialists.

Private Intranet

A private space for your community to gather online, providing tools like discussion forums and document storage. Private sub-groups can be created for committees to work together online.

Meeting Database

Join our search engine at quakermeeting.org and manage your data there.

Domains

Your website can be run for free at a subdomain of quakermeeting.org or at your own custom domain (e.g. examplequakers.org.uk. We can handle all the technical administration relating to running a custom domain.

Email Mailboxes

Run centralised role-based email accounts like clerk@examplequakers.org.uk to keep your meeting correspondence archived and easily transferable when roles change hands.

Events Calendar

Promote your events and Meeting for Worship scheduling on your outreach website, private intranet, and also on our nationwide search engine.

Websites

The primary purpose of our network is to provide modern, attractive websites to Monthly Meetings. We may also be able to support Quarterly and Yearly meeting. Our system has been designed by Quakers for Quakers and is enjoyable and easy to use no matter your technical background. Our network was designed to provide a solution to the problem many Meetings end up facing: that helpful, techy Friend who setup your website has moved on and nobody knows how to maintain it.

Our websites have been designed and developed by experts. One of our developers has built and currently maintains five websites for Britain Yearly Meeting. Our websites are secure, cookieless, and constantly being updated by our support team.

Big & Small Websites

We offer two kinds of websites that cater for meetings of all sizes. Our single-page websites are perfect for smaller meetings who just need a simple site for outreach. Our multi-page websites are ideal for larger meetings with more to say, with dedicated space for different topics like outreach, historic information, and promoting room lettings.

100% Green Powered

Our entire network runs on fast, scalable, 100% green energy powered servers. Website traffic is unlimited and we provide ample space for image storage. We also donate monthly to the National Trust's Plant a Tree fund to further reduce the carbon footprint of our network.

SSL Certified

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is now ubiquitous on the internet. If your website does not have SSL, web browsers now warn your visitors that your site is not secure. Every single website on our network has its own SSL certificate. In fact, our network only runs over HTTPS.

Secure & Backed-Up

High levels of security and daily security audits provide strong safeguards for our network. We backup the entire network daily, and we store long-term weekly and monthly backups, so you can rest assured everything is safe and backed-up.

No Cookies, Total Privacy

We uphold the highest degree of privacy protection. Our websites do not save any cookies on your visitor’s browsers so no need for cookie banners. We do not use Google Analytics. We never pass any of our data to any third parties.

Stock Images

Getting high-quality images can be a challenging prospect. Our websites come pre-packaged with a large and ever-growing library of professional Quaker-related stock photos to help you build a dynamic website without needing to hire a professional photographer.

Automatic SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is critical to ensure your website appears on the first page of Google, Bing and other search engines. It is rather complex, but don't fear: our system completely takes care of SEO for you, it's completely automatic.

Updates & Upgrades

Our network is updated weekly to ensure all system is running on the most up-to-date versions of the software that powers our community. Development and upgrades are included in our annual plans, so there's never additional fees when your site is improved.

Intranets

We quickly discovered that Meetings needed a separate space from their outreach website where they could provide information for their membership. Our network provides a private intranet where your community can gather online, so that you can keep your outreach website focussed on its main purpose.

Notice Board

Your notice board is the homepage of your private intranet and ensures your intranet users see critical information.

Discussion Forum

A place for your group to hold discussions organised by topic. Subscribe to forums and topics to get email notifications when discussions happen.

Document Storage

We offer a dedicated space for your meeting to share important documents. Our network shouldn't be your primary document archive, but it is a place to share information.

Sub-groups

Create sub-groups within your intranet for committees and closed interest groups with their own managed membership management and private forums/storage.

Tailored Access

Intranet administrators control which areas of the intranet each user can access to make sure your users can only access the parts that they need to.

Community Management

The only way to join your intranet is using a special invitation link. You can also elect to manually approve connection requests. User management is straightforward and painless.

Domains

Every Monthly Meeting on our network gets its own subdomain of quakermeeting.org. For example, you will find the website for Wandsworth Quaker Meeting at https://wandsworth.quakermeeting.org. We also operate the ".org.uk" version of this domain which redirects to the ".org", so if someone types the address wrong we'll still be able to send them to the correct place!

Your Meeting can also choose to run its website at its own custom domain. For example, Hampstead Quaker Meeting can be found at https://hampsteadquakers.org.uk. Note that their website is also accessible through their natural QMN subdomain (visiting https://hampstead.quakermeeting.org will redirect your to their custom domain).

Managing the administrative and technical aspects of a domain name can be a daunting task for Meetings, especially for the non-specialist. We offer domain services to take all this off your hands – simply transfer your domain to our network and let us handle it all.

Email Accounts

Meetings who run their own custom domains can also run centralised email mailboxes on our network. Create accounts like clerk@examplequakers.org.uk and treasurer@examplequakers.org.uk to keep role-based correspondence separated from personal correspondence. When the role changes hands, the account access can be easily changed without needing to transfer records.

If your Meeting already runs centralised email accounts and wants to move them to our network, we offer free mailbox migration when you move to our network to make moving straightforward.

Do you use an external mailserver for your email accounts already? For example, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365? No problem – you can continue to use these services for your email when your move your website to QMN.

Support

One of the best reasons for joining our network is for the centralised support system it provides. We have a Support Center dedicated to supporting you getting the most from our resources.

Manuals

Everyone can access our in-depth, comprehensive documentation written by the developers with screenshots to help you interact with our system.

Tickets

Users who are administrators of your Meeting's account get access to our Support Ticket service where you can get direct support from the QMN team.

Information Pack

Further resources for discover who we are and what we do.

Download Info Pack

Register

If your meeting or group has taken the decision to join our network you can begin the registration process.

Start Registration Process