How to Create a Mosque Website

Why your mosque needs a website

If your mosque still relies on a Facebook page and a WhatsApp broadcast list for prayer times and Jumu'ah announcements, you're losing new Muslims, converts, and visiting families who search "mosque near me" before they ever walk through your door. A proper mosque website fixes that.

There are currently over 2,191 mosques and prayer rooms in the UK alone (MuslimsInBritain.org, February 2026). Research on mosque digitalization consistently shows that digital tools — websites, apps, and management systems — increase community participation, improve financial transparency, and extend the mosque's reach beyond its physical walls. A 2025 qualitative study on the Great Mosque of Kudus found that digital presence via website and social media attracts greater public participation and enables the permanent dissemination of Islamic knowledge — while also improving the mosque's visibility in the community.

Three reasons your board should stop delaying this:

• Discovery. Google is where people find a mosque before they find the building. No site means no ranking, no map listing tied to a real domain, no credibility check for a first-time visitor.
• Trust and transparency. Donors want to see where Zakat and Sadaqah go. A clear donations page with a breakdown of programs builds trust that a bank flyer never will.
• Operational load. Every "what time is Maghrib today?" text to the imam's phone is a task your website should be handling automatically, 24/7, in every language your community speaks.

Your website is the digital foundation — but it's not the only screen your community interacts with. To complete the picture inside the mosque, read: Mosque Digital Signage: The Complete Guide →

And if you're thinking beyond the website to how you manage your mosque day-to-day, read: Mosque Management Software: The Complete Guide →

Step 1 — Choose a domain & hosting

Your domain is your mosque's digital address. Get it right once — you'll live with it for years.

Pick a domain that:

• Uses your mosque's actual name, not an abbreviation nobody searches (e.g. greenlanemosque.org, not glm-uk.net).
• Ends in .org if you're a registered nonprofit or charity — it signals legitimacy instantly to visitors and to Google.
• Is short, easy to spell over the phone, and free of hyphens or numbers.

Registering it:

1. Pick a registrar — Namecheap, IONOS, Bluehost, or your platform's built-in domain tool all support .org registration.
2. Register under your organization's legal name and an institutional email (info@, admin@), never a personal one.
3. Turn on domain privacy protection and auto-renewal so the domain doesn't lapse silently.
4. Register for at least two years — lapsed nonprofit domains get squatted surprisingly often.

If you're using an all-in-one builder or a platform like Masjidbox Pages, hosting is bundled in and you can skip this entirely. Masjidbox Pages supports connecting existing domains from all major registrars — step-by-step guides are available for Namecheap, GoDaddy, OVH, and Gandi. If you're going the DIY WordPress route, budget for separate hosting and make sure it includes a security certificate (the padlock icon in the browser) — non-negotiable for a donations page.

Step 2 — Pick the right platform

This is the decision that determines everything downstream — your timeline, your budget, and how much ongoing work falls on volunteers.

DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress + plugins)

• Pros: Cheap to start, huge template libraries, full design control if someone on your team has time to learn the tool.
• Cons: No mosque-specific features out of the box. You'll be bolting on a prayer times plugin, a separate donation processor, a translation plugin, and an events calendar — then maintaining all of it.
• Best for: Small mosques with a volunteer who's comfortable with basic web tools and has time to maintain the site long-term.

Dedicated mosque website platforms (like Masjidbox Pages)

• Pros: Prayer times, donation forms, event calendars, and multi-language support are built in from day one. No coding required — just drag and drop, as easy as stacking Legos. No tools that stop working together after an update, no separate logins for five different systems, hosting included with no hidden costs, support is usually included.
• Cons: Costs more per month than a bare-bones builder plan; less granular design freedom.
• Best for: Mosques that want a professional site live in days, not months, without needing an in-house developer.

Masjidbox Pages gives your mosque a complete website — prayer times, donations, events, and multilingual pages — without needing a developer. Over 2,500 mosques are already using it, and the average setup time is a few days rather than the weeks a DIY route typically takes.

Ready to get started? The Masjidbox Pages documentation walks you through every step — from creating your first page to customizing your prayer times widget.

Must-have features

Don't let scope creep turn this into a six-month project. Ship these four and you cover 90% of what a visitor or donor actually needs. Masjidbox Pages comes with pre-built templates for each: Homepage, Prayer Times, Donations, Location, About Us, and even a dedicated Ramadan page.

1. Prayer times

• Live, auto-updating Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha times for your exact location — not a copy-pasted PDF from last year.
• Tools like AlAdhan let developers connect accurate, location-based prayer times automatically; dedicated mosque platforms like Masjidbox Pages have this built in with no technical setup required.
• Show Jumu'ah time prominently — it's the single most-searched piece of information on any mosque website.
• Masjidbox Pages also offers a small prayer times widget you can embed on any existing page — useful if you want to add live prayer times to a site you've already built.
• Your worshippers can also receive prayer time notifications directly on their phones with Masjidbox One — free and ad-free.
• Want to display prayer times on a screen inside your mosque? See the Masjidbox Player setup guide → or explore Masjidbox Screens for a complete digital signage solution.

2. Donations

• A dedicated, mobile-friendly donation page — not a PDF with a bank account number.
• Separate categories for Zakat, Sadaqah, and building funds — donors want to know exactly where their money lands.
• Recurring giving option — most masjids that add this see a meaningful lift in monthly revenue within the first quarter. For proven strategies beyond the donation page itself, read: How to Increase Mosque Donations →
• Masjidbox Pages includes a free integration of Masjidbox Donations — no separate Stripe account to set up, no additional monthly fees for the donation module itself.
• Check the actual fee structure before picking a processor: some platforms charge 0%, others 3–5% on top of standard card processing (roughly 1.4–2.9% via Stripe).

3. Events & announcements

• A live calendar for Jumu'ah, Eid prayers, Islamic classes, and community events — synced so nobody's relying on a printed flyer taped to the door.
• RSVP or capacity limits for events like Eid prayer, especially useful for overflow planning.

Once your events page is live, automate your announcements on Instagram and social media too — prayer times, Jumu'ah reminders and Ramadan timetables published automatically with Masjidbox Social.

4. Multilingual support

• If your community speaks Arabic, Urdu, Somali, Bengali, Turkish, or French alongside English, your site needs real translated pages — not a bolt-on Google Translate widget, which mistranslates religious terminology constantly.
• Masjidbox Pages supports 18 languages out of the box: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Turkish, Swahili, Malay, Bosnian, Albanian, Indonesian, Somali, Urdu, Japanese, Danish, and Russian — covering the most common congregation languages without additional setup.
• Prioritize the two or three languages your congregation actually uses daily over trying to cover everything.

Cost breakdown

Free / near-free DIY route

• Domain: ~$12–20/year (.org)
• Hosting: $3–10/month on budget hosts (Hostinger, basic Bluehost plans)
• Website builder: $0–17/month (Wix free plan has ads; paid tiers start ~$17/month)
• Donation processing: 0% platform fee options exist (Givebutter, some Zakat-specific platforms), but you'll still pay standard card processing fees (~2.9% + $0.30)
• Prayer times widget: free via APIs like AlAdhan, or a free WordPress plugin
• Total: roughly $50–250/year, plus your own time — expect 15–40 hours of setup and ongoing maintenance.

Dedicated platform route (Masjidbox Pages)

• Free plan available — 1 page, 5 components, standard support. No monthly fee.
• Silver plan: €15/month — unlimited pages, advanced customization, custom domain, analytics, donation campaigns, priority support.
• Hosting included — no separate hosting bill, no security certificate to configure, no hidden costs.
• Masjidbox Donations is entirely free — no platform fee, just standard card processing fees.
• Total: €0/month on the free plan, or €15/month for the full Silver experience — with close to zero volunteer hours after launch.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to build a mosque website?

Expect $50–250/year for a DIY setup using free or low-cost builders. Masjidbox Pages offers a free plan and a Silver plan at €15/month (€180/year) with unlimited pages, custom domain, and donation campaigns included. The hidden cost is always volunteer time — a free builder that requires 30 hours per month of maintenance is not actually free.

What features does a mosque website need?

At minimum: accurate, auto-updating prayer times; a donation page with Zakat/Sadaqah categories; an events calendar; and multilingual pages for your congregation's main languages. Basic accessibility (readable text, keyboard navigation, image descriptions) is a fifth feature worth budgeting for from day one.

Should a mosque use .org or .com for its domain?

.org is the standard for registered nonprofits and religious institutions — it signals legitimacy immediately. .com works too if .org isn't available, but always pick the domain that matches your legal name.

Can a small mosque build a website without a developer?

Yes. Builders like Wix or WordPress let a non-technical volunteer launch a basic site in a weekend. For prayer times, donations, and multilingual pages without the plugin juggling, a dedicated mosque website platform like Masjidbox Pages is usually faster and more reliable long-term.

How long does it take to launch a mosque website?

A basic DIY site: one to three weeks, depending on volunteer availability. A dedicated mosque website platform like Masjidbox Pages: often live within days since the core features are pre-built.

Is a free website builder good enough for a mosque?

It can work for a very small congregation, but free plans usually mean ads on your site, no donation-specific tools, and manual work to add prayer times and translations. Growing mosques generally outgrow free plans within a year.

Sources

• Wahyuningsih et al. (2025) — A Review of The Opportunities and Challenges in Digital-Based Mosque Management 
• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
• IONOS: Registering a .org Domain
• Namecheap: .org Domain Registration