Fundraising is hard. Accepting payments shouldn’t be. I tested five popular donation plugins for WordPress to determine how well they can help you meet your online fundraising goals.
What to look for in a donation plugin
Your donation plugin should:
- Support popular payment methods and processors, including major credit cards, Stripe, and PayPal, to simplify receiving payments.
- Allow both one-time and recurring donations so visitors can choose whether they want to contribute to a specific fundraising campaign or provide ongoing support for your nonprofit’s full endeavors.
- Send donation receipts to your supporters so they can easily track of where their money’s going. Some plugins also create end-of-year tax receipts so your donors can claim their donations at tax time.
- Offer customization tools so you can create donation forms and buttons that match your site’s aesthetic.
Some plugins also offer advanced features like goal meters for individual fundraising campaigns and donor profiles for celebrating your supporters.
The best donation plugins
Before we dive into the rest of the list, I want to highlight a solution that comes from our own family of products:
WP Full Pay
How it works
WP Full Pay has a two-step form creation process. In the first step, you’ll enter basic information about your form:
- Display name – The name that will be listed in the WP Full Pay Forms area. This won’t be displayed to site visitors.
- Identifier – The name used to create the shortcode for this form.
- Form type – The type of payment visitors are setting up with this form. You can choose one-time payment, donation, monthly payment, or “Save card,” which allows customers to submit their credit card information to your customer database.
- Form layout – Allows you to display all fields (if a form is on a separate page) or partial fields (if the form needs to fit within a small area of a page).
From there, you’ll be directed to the main form editing area where you can select the currency you’ll accept payments in and the suggested donation amounts that will appear on your form. You can also determine several aspects of the form’s appearance, including choosing between three visual themes (Stripe, Night, and Flat). You can also customize the CSS to create a truly unique form.
You can then add your form to any page by entering the shortcode based on your Identifier.
Who it’s best for
WP Full Pay is a great choice if you want to accept multiple payment types, including one-time and recurring donations, without spending money on a fundraising campaign up front. WP Full Pay’s CSS customization options also make it a great choice for developers.
Pricing
The free version of WP Full Pay includes everything you need to accept one-time or recurring donations. Payments will be sent to you via Stripe. However, WP Full Pay charges 1.9% on all transactions made through the free plugin. You can buy the WP Full Pay Starter plan for $49 a year to get rid of the transaction fees (Stripe fees will still apply).
Charitable
How it works
Charitable connects to Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.net, so you can accept payments from a variety of countries and in different currencies. Once you’ve connected a payment gateway, you’ll be able to create your first campaign using one of Charitable’s templates:
Charitable then launches a specialized page builder, where you can move, edit, or add content. This builder uses blocks like the regular WordPress editor, so you won’t need to worry about learning complicated new systems.
The Settings area lets you create a goal and end date for your campaign, which you can display using the Progress Bar block. You can also set suggested donation amounts to help visitors decide how much they want to donate. If you’re using the paid version, you’ll be able to enable recurring donations and fee relief (allowing donors to cover payment processing fees so you get the full donations) here.
After creating a campaign, you’ll be able to add donation buttons, progress bars, and campaign information to any page using specialized blocks for the editor. All donation buttons must be connected to specific campaigns.
Who it’s best for
Charitable is the best plugin for nonprofits looking to create full fundraising campaigns without needing a lot of technical skill.
Pricing
The free version of the Charitable plugin connects to Stripe and lets you create unlimited campaigns using the Charitable campaign builder. However, you won’t be able to accept recurring donations or send automated donation receipts. To access these features, you’ll need to buy the Plus plan of Charitable at $99 for the first year (renews at $199 per year).
The premium version of Charitable also lets you accept fee relief, enable peer to pear fundraising, and connect Charitable to your email marketing software for a streamlined marketing experience. Moreover, the premium version of Charitable connects to a variety of payment gateways including PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.net.
GiveWP
How it works
GiveWP offers three pre-made layouts for donation forms: Classic (all fields displayed on one page, going from top to bottom), Multi-step (which displays one part of the donation process at a time), and Two Panel (with campaign information on one side and the donation form on the other):
You’ll be directed to the Design area after choosing your layout. This is where you’ll edit your header, campaign message, and donation goal. You can also add a featured image related to your campaign.
You can alter the fields of this form at any time by switching to the Build area of GiveWP. This lets you collect more detailed contact information, add terms and conditions, and let donors submit comments stating why they’re donating to your cause. You’ll get additional fields with the premium version of GiveWP, including the ability to create a checkbox so donors can opt into your newsletter.
The Settings area lets you customize all of the emails donors receive, including the original confirmation email and the donation receipt. You can use tags, like {name}, to personalize these messages. Note that the free version only lets you send donation receipts via email. You’ll need a paid plan to send PDF receipts.
You can add your completed forms to any page of your website using the GiveWP Donation Form box. There are also custom blocks for a donor wall (displaying all recent donors on your site) and a multi-form goal (counting donations made through all forms toward a singular fundraising goal).
Who it’s best for
GiveWP is a great choice for nonprofits looking to create full fundraising campaigns with ease.
Pricing
GiveWP offers a free version with everything you need to set up basic fundraising campaigns and accept one-time donations, including tools for creating customized email donation receipts. The free version of GiveWP lets you accept payments through both Stripe and PayPal.
You’ll need to spring for GiveWP Plus to accept recurring donations. This plan costs $349 per year and includes tools for fee relief and advanced form field management. You’ll also get a 30-minute consultation to help you optimize your site for more effective fundraising.
Donorbox
How it works
The big difference between Donorbox and other plugins on this list is that you’ll do most of the work on the Donorbox website. The Donorbox dashboard also offers tools for three fundraising methods: donation forms/campaigns, memberships/recurring donations, and fundraising events. You can also connect Donorbox to both PayPal and Stripe.
The donation form builder lets you customize every step of the donation process, including:
- The donation request people see when they first access the form
- Suggested donation amounts
- Interval options for recurring donations (annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly)
- Currencies you’ll accept payment in (including the option to enable cryptocurrency for Pro users)
- Fee relief
- Tribute options (allowing donors to make a donation on behalf of someone else, with the ability to send them a notification)
- Contact information collected from donors
- Donation thank-you messages
You’ll also get to customize the colors of your form and, if you’re on a paid plan, add a header image.
Once you’ve created your form (or other Donorbox campaign), you can open the plugin in your WordPress admin area (accessed through Settings) and copy + paste your campaign URL into the box provided. From there, you’ll be able to use the [donate] shortcode to add the form to any page of your website.
Pro tip: You can only connect one campaign to this plugin at a time, so make it count!
Who it’s best for
Donorbox is a great choice if you want the option to run multiple types of fundraising campaigns, such as events and membership drives. Donorbox is also great for cash-strapped nonprofits, as you can access almost all of its features on the free plan and ask your donors to cover payment processing fees with their donations.
Pricing
The free Donorbox plan provides access to many features that are restricted to paid plans on other plugins, like recurring payments and fee relief. However, this plan charges a 1.75% platform fee on all donations, plus 2.95% fees for memberships, events, and peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. These fees are in addition to payment processing fees, which are usually 3%. While you can ask donors to cover these fees, this can reduce donors’ interest in contributing to your campaign.
The Donorbox Pro plan costs $139 a month and provides access to more form customization, Zapier integration, advanced analytics, and cryptocurrency donation options. This plan also comes with reduced platform fees of 1.5% on regular donations and 2% on memberships and event tickets.
WPForms
How it works
Unlike other plugins on this list, WPForms isn’t entirely focused on donations. Instead, it provides templates for all kinds of forms: contact forms, event registration forms, newsletter signup forms, and of course, donation forms.
If you’re using the free version of the plugin, you’ll need to use the Variable Donation Form. This form lets users donate any amount via credit card, with payments processed through Stripe. You can customize the title, add a message telling donors how their money will be used, and add an opt-in box to add donors to your newsletter. You can modify the thank you message donors receive after making a contribution in the Settings area.
You can also use the WPForms builder to create a donation form from scratch. However, you’ll still be limited to accepting one-time credit card donations via Stripe. You’ll need to buy the premium version of WPForms accept donations via PayPal or let donors set up recurring donations.
This will give you access to the Donations form template, which connects directly to PayPal Checkout.
Once completed, this form can be added to any page using the WPForms block.
Who it’s best for
WPForms is a great choice if you’re looking for a plugin to help you build forms for every aspect of your nonprofit, not just your fundraising campaigns.
Pricing
The free version of WPForms lets you collect donations via credit cards and receive payments through Stripe. You can buy the paid version of WPForms at $199.50 for the first year ($399 per year after) to gain access to the advanced donation form template with the ability to process payments through PayPal or Square. The premium donation form also lets donors set up recurring donations.
Pro tip: WPForms offers nonprofits a 75% discount on WPForms Pro.
Final advice on the best donations plugins for WordPress
The best WordPress donations plugin for your organization depends on your needs:
- To manage multiple donation types (one-time and recurring) in the simplest way possible, choose WP Full Pay.
- To run multiple fully-featured campaigns at once, choose Charitable or GiveWP.
- To create every form you’ll ever need, including donation forms, with one plugin, choose WPForms.
- To gain access to multiple fundraising options, including events and memberships, choose Donorbox (but remember that you can only run one campaign at a time through the WordPress plugin).
Starting a nonprofit? Check out our guide to the best free web hosting options for nonprofits.
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