Are you running a Non-Profit organization? If yes, then firstly I would like to give a big thanks to you. You are doing a great job.
Do you want to collect donations from your WordPress website? If yes, then please continue reading this article.
Today I am going to disclose the revised list of the “Best 7 WordPress Donation Plugins“. These 7 plugins come in both free and paid versions.
Note: The buying guide is also included in this article. It is 100% recommended to go through the buying guide before finalizing the decision.
Hint: Bookmark this post because this guide might be a little long. But I promised you that you won’t have to open another guide if you invest a few minutes in this revised guide of donation plugins.
What is WordPress Donation Plugin?
A WordPress donation plugin is a tool that enables donations on the WordPress website. Such plugins are used by Non-Profit organizations, NGOs, or individuals who are looking to raise donations online for a good cause.
Basically, Donation plugins allow the admin to embed donation form/button on WordPress posts and pages either using shortcode or WordPress blocks. These forms are not ordinary forms, the Payment gateway integration makes them unique.
Compared to normal form builder plugins, A dedicated donation management plugin has a lot of additional features specifically designed for donation collecting purposes.
How do I accept donation on WordPress?
To accept donations on WordPress, the best and simple way is to opt for a donor management plugin like GiveWP. All donation management works similarly. However, the features vary. In a nutshell, first, you have to search and install a free donation plugin from the WordPress plugin repository, configure it, design/add a donation form, connect the Payment Gateway and finally embed it on WordPress posts and pages using the shortcodes.
What are the Best WordPress Donations Plugins
After extensive research on WordPress donations plugins, we have finalized the list of 7 donations plugins that are unique in their own way. All plugins are listed in this list are available as both free and paid versions.
- GiveWP – The Highest Rated (4.7) WordPress Donation Plugin
- Charitable – The New & Trending WordPress Donation Plugin
- WPForms – An Alternative Form-Based WordPress plugin
- PayPal Donations – A Simple Donation Plugin
- WP Simple Pay – For Stripe Focused Donations
- DonorBox – A Different Pricing Plan based Donation plugin
- Cryptocurrency Donation Box Plugin
Hint: I recommend going through the “Bottom Line” section under each plugin. This block included a plugin summary that helps you to make a quick decision.
Video Tutorial:
For the reader’s convenience, we always create a video tutorial. Either you can watch and learn or simply skip the video and continue with the steps mentioned afterward.
Before disclosing the final list let’s have a look at the buying guide of WordPress donation plugins.
Buying Guide – Important things to keep in mind while finalizing the WordPress Donation Plugin
While reviewing any donation plugin, check these 14 things. These are 14 factors you should look at in a WordPress donation plugin before finalizing your decision.
1.) Export/Import: Check whether your plugin offers an option to export/import donor data details into the CSV format. These data are very crucial and you may require them for creating reports and performing analysis.
2.) Recurring Donation: This is a mandatory feature in a donation tool. Skip that plugin if it doesn’t support recurring donations. A recurring donation is a great strategy for every Non-Profit organization for scaling donation flow in near future.
3.) Check Integrations / Add-ons: Almost every paid donation plugin offers add-ons to enhance the capabilities. In this section, you have to check the pricing as well as the number of add-ons provided by the plugin. Some of the must-have extensions you should look for are Email Marketing add-ons, text-to-give, PDF Receipts, peer-to-peer fundraising, Fee recovery, etc.
4.) Affordable & Free Plugin: At the start of the journey, none of the Non-Profit organizations would like to invest huge bucks in a donation plugin. So instead you should look for a donation tool that offers both free and paid versions. The demo for the paid version is a plus.
5.) Check the Mobile Friendliness: The population of mobile-based users is huge than desktop and tablet-based users, so mobile-friendliness would make a huge impact on the success of your donation campaigns. Check if your donation plugin is mobile optimized or not before finalizing it.
6.) The Preferred Payment Gateway: I don’t know what is your preferred payment gateway. This depends on the demographics of your audience. So make sure that the donation plugin you are going to choose provided you with that Payment gateway. Otherwise, the complete donation processing system makes no sense.
7.) Check Customers Reviews: Investing in a well-trusted donation plugin is a must. Because this is a one-time investment and you don’t want to upgrade and mess with technical problems. So go through what the existing customers are saying and decide.
Hint: All donation plugins we have listed in this post have great reviews. We saved your time.
8.) SMS Donations Functionality: The SMS donation or text-to-give donation feature is very rare, not all donation plugins offer this feature. So in case, you want to receive donations through an SMS then this feature might affect your final decision.
9.) Currency Switching Facility: This is a mandatory feature a donation plugin should offer when Non-profit-organizations are looking for expanding their reach and expect a donation from different parts of the world. Trust me you will lose tons of donations if donors do not find the option of their default currency under the donation form.
10.) Check whether there is an option/feature of fee recovery.
11.) WooCommerce Cart Donations: If you are looking to embed/add a donation button on the WooCommerce products then WooCommerce integration should be the primary feature you should look for in the donation plugin.
12.) Check for PCI compliant & Other Security Benefits: Flow of donation means money involvement and where there is money the risk of frauds and spam is always there. Gladly some plugins like GiveWP offers spam protection. Apart from that, you should check if the donation plugin is PCI-certified or not. This basically proves that a plugin is reliable in terms of security and payment processing.
13.) Check for Priority Support: Or for detailed documentation and tutorials if you are planning to opt-in for a free donation plugin.
14.) Check for these essential features:
- Peer-to-Peer or crowdfunding donation campaigns
- Allows donors to download PDF receipts
- Have good customizing functionalities
- The procedure of embedding donation forms/buttons on different areas of the websites should be straightforward.
- At least basic reports should be accessible. Google analytics integration is a plus.
- Allows donors to donate in a custom amount
- A donation test is a plus. However, it’s not always be required.
These are the factors that make your donation management experience seamless for the long run. It is important to review each factor carefully
Hint: GiveWP meets all factors listed in the buying guide. However, the pricing is a little high. The good alternative for GiveWP is Charitable. Charitable is affordable, however, it lacks a few essential features.
#1 GiveWP – The Highest Rated (4.7) WordPress Donation Plugin
GiveWP or Give is surely the first WordPress donation plugin that appears when you type the “donation” word in the WordPress plugin repository.
Isn’t it so?
This plugin is commonly known as the top donation and fundraising plugin for WordPress. The 4.7+ rating on WordPress and 4.9 user ratings on a review website like G2, 100,000+ active installations, featured in Product Hunt & GoDaddy websites, History of success (Raised $100 Million) can justify this fact.
Whatever the reason for which you want to raise funds online, this plugin is all you need. Its free version has enough features for setting up the fundraising environment on a WordPress website. 9 out of 10 times users are completely satisfied with the free version and don’t feel the need to upgrade.
In the GiveWP free version, You just have to configure a few steps, choose a donation form template, define a payment gateway (PayPal or Stripe) and you will be ready to accept donations. With the predefined blocks compatible with WordPress editor you can able to place donation forms on posts & pages easily.
Hint: Apart from PayPal and Stripe, several payment gateways can be added in paid plans or by installing paid add-ons. The complete list of “Payment Gateways” is mentioned in the next section.
The great thing about this plugin is the way they categorized features among the free and paid versions. I have checked and found that all core features of the plugin are included in the free version.
However, the GiveWP plugin paid version beats all its competitors.
This plugin has several powerful features that are designed specifically to help your donations grow.
Some of the notable features of this fundraising plugin are Multiple display style options, credit card donations, 18+payment gateways, recurring donations, SMS donations, customizable donation forms, visual reporting, currency switching, donor management, Peer-to-Peer fundraising campaigns, donor wall, donation test mode, WooCommerce store integration, Multi-step donation forms, Goal bar, Offline donations, currency switching, Google Analytics integration, manual donations, email marketing integrations, fee-recovery, etc.
GiveWP Free Version Downside: The only “DOWNSIDE” I felt about the GiveWP free version is that it lacks 2 major essential features: WooCommerce cart integration and recurring donation support. However, these issues can be easily resolved by the add-ons.
Who uses GiveWP?
Over 100,000 donation-based websites are currently using a GiveWP plugin. Lots of success stories of a non-profit organization can be seen on the GiveWP official website.
They all raised money with the help of this awesome donation plugin for various causes including educational, medical, tuition, pet care, sports, and whatnot.
These are some of the best success stories of Non-profit organizations I have recently gone through. You should also read about them and learn how GiveWP helps these organizations in raising donations:
- The City Mission raised $45k in 16 hours with the GiveWP WordPress donation plugin.
- Neighbourhood Watch Brampton raised $40k in 5 days.
- Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital raised $38k
- .
- .
- More…
The Benefits for which GiveWP WordPress Donation Plugin Should be Considered
The Free Version Packed Full of Core Features
Well, during my research I have observed that most of the WordPress donation plugins poorly divided their features into free versions and due to this customers are forced to upgrade.
But gladly, here this is not the same case. GiveWP offers all the core features in its free version which you could easily find over the WordPress plugin repository.
Hint: You can see the entire list of free version features under the features section.
Compatibility
Don’t worry you do not have to change or modify any existing code of your site for adding donation forms on your site.
Further, we have checked GiveWP Reviews on WordPress as well as other reviews sites and found that there is hardly any single bad review about compatibility with WordPress themes.
I think this is one of the reasons for which GiveWP has been rated 4.7+ stars at the WordPress plugin repository.
If you are using modern WordPress themes like GeneratePress then you won’t be facing any compatibility-related issues.
Furious Customer Support
Another primary reason for GiveWP highest rating is their top-notch rocket fast customer support. They scored 2.5 hours average response time according to their paid customers which is pretty good.
You would not find such a quick response with other WordPress donation plugins.
For free version users the entire documentation, video tutorials, FAQ, WordPress GiveWP forum page, etc are available. 99% of the time you would get your solution from GiveWP’s official website only.
The Demonstration Benefit
Before investing any dollar into new products we all have a craving for a test drive.
GiveWP has included a separate page for a demo on their site. From here lots of live demos (donation form grid block demo) could be accessed. Also if you want to have a look at the admin area then it would be easily possible.
So why don’t you try the GiveWP plugin demo right now?
The Benefit of Multiple WordPress Donation Form Templates
With GiveWP you can experiment with donation form templates. For example, you can prefer a “multi-step with goals” based donation form or you might be interested in a single step donation form template. From color coding to stylizing custom entries, everything could be achieved in terms of design.
Hint: You can add GiveWP donation forms to your website pages using the shortcode as well as the GiveWP widget. Also, the donation forms can be a standalone separate page.
The Benefit of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaigns
The Peer-to-Peer fundraising campaign is the unique concept introduced by GiveWP to enhance the reach of your donation cause. In other words, with this technique, your volunteers or any other person could create a donation form on your website and raise donation money for you. This will multiply the impact of your donation campaign
This is a kind of promotion technique but since it is for a good cause the good results will be shown in a very short time.
Learn more about Peer-to-Peer fundraising campaigns from here.
Hint: The Peer-to-Peer feature comes by installing a paid-addon “Peer-to-Peer Fundraising”.
The Free Marketing Benefit with Donor Wall Block
Well, this feature of GiveWP might seem small but trust me, it is a free marketing technique that converts potential donors into real donors.
When you install the GiveWP WordPress donation plugin on your site then “the donor wall” block would be added into the WordPress editor blocks.
With this block, you can show the list of all donors publicly on your WordPress post and pages.
When someone sees the success of your donation campaign through this donation wall block, the trust would be automatically built up in their minds and all the hesitation would be eliminated.
Basically, this is the simple technique that proves that you are a trustworthy non-profit organization that is asking for a donation for a good cause.
Hint: The donor wall block module can be seen in both GiveWP free and paid versions. So what are you waiting for? List your donors and build trust among new donors…
The Test Mode Benefit
You would never want that your visitor’s donation stucks somewhere in the technical process, isn’t it?
To ensure 100% donation deliverability, GiveWP is offering a test mode that you can use before accepting live donations. The test mode can be activated with a single click. Once you activate it, it will be highlighted in yellow color.
The Benefit of All Major Payment Gateways + Offline Donations and More:
Needless to say but the payment gateways are the primary factor that ensures the growth of donations coming to your site.
Well, GiveWP has integrated with major payment gateways providers across the world.
In its free version, these Payment Gateways are available:
- PayPal Donations
- Offline Donations
- Stripe (credit card donations, SEPA direct debit donations, BECS direct debit donations, Stripe checkout)
- PayPal Standard
Well, oftentimes things will work out with free version payment gateways. However, there are plenty of additional Payment gateways you get with GiveWP Payment Gateways Add-ons:
- Stripe Gateway (No commission fees)
- Authorize.net gateway
- BitPay donations
- 2Checkout Gateway
- PayPal Pro Gateway
- Paytm Gateway
- Payfast
- Mobile Payment Gateway
- Razorpay
- Braintree
- CCAVENUE
- More…
To check how many payment gateways are available in your country please refer to this GiveWP Payment Gateways article.
Hint: Almost all major payment gateways are compatible with the GiveWP recurring and multiple currency systems.
Advanced Security with Akismet Spam Protection
I am damn sure you have heard about the Akismet spam protection plugin. Gladly this plugin can be integrated with both GiveWP free and premium versions.
By integrating your donation plugin with Akismet, all spammy donations would be eliminated. Or in other words, all donations that are submitted to your site would first go to Akismet API, then it will be checked and only approved if it passes the Akismet spam protection filters.
WooCommerce Cart Benefit
Do you want to add a donation button to your WooCommerce store? Well, let GiveWP help you.
With GiveWP you can enable WooCommerce donation in a single click without any coding. The donation button is either placed over a cart page or the checkout page.
Note: The WooCommerce donation feature is not included in the free version.
- Related: 15 Best WooCommerce themes
The Extra Power Comes with Addons
Oftentimes users get scared with Add-ons because of the extra charges. Well, I totally understand your feelings. But GiveWP has both paid as well as free add-ons in their add-ons pack.
The add-ons tagged as free are not useless. They provide as much value as the premium ones.
The GiveWP Free Add-ons List Includes:
- Donation Widgets for Elementor: To embed GiveWP donation form shortcodes into Elementor supported pages.
- Double the donation: For Connecting GiveWP with double the donation platform
- Divi Builder Add-on: To embed GiveWP donation forms on Divi-powered pages.
- Form countdown: To display the countdown on donation forms.
- Receipt Attachments For GiveWP: This allows you to attach a digital file as a gift to donors along with receipts
- Simple Social Shout: This allows you to add social sharing buttons on a donation confirmation page.
- Per Form Confirmation Pages: This allows you to design a unique confirmation page for the individual form.
Apart from the free add-ons lots of valuable premium add-ons are available.
Hint: You can either buy a single premium add-on or go for a complete add-ons pack. The GiveWP plus plan includes all add-ons. So rather than paying $149 for a single add-on, you can invest $349 in the “GiveWP plus plan“ and get all premium add-ons.
The premium add-ons list is divided into 5 categories: Must Have, Payment Gateways, Marketing, Tools, and Accounting.
You can explore the complete list on the GiveWP Add-ons page.
However, I would like to mention the “must-have” paid add-ons here.
- Recurring Donations: To create recurring based donation forms
- Peer-to-peer Fundraising: This allows you to run Peer-to-peer donation campaigns.
- Form Field Manager: This allows you to add custom form fields including checkboxes, dropdowns, files, radio, email, date, etc with a drag and drop approach.
- Fee Recovery: This allows you to ask donors to pay extra fees which would cover the payment processing fees.
- Funds and Designations: This allows you to organize fundraising effectively. You can create as many funds as needed within a single donation form… and so on.
- PDF Receipts: Allows donors to print tax-deductible reports
- Tributes: This allows you to add the tributes field in your donation form.
- Text-to-Give: Allows donors to donate through SMS.
Display Everywhere Benefit:
Sometimes we want to hook our donation form inside a WordPress post. Sometimes we are happy with publishing donation forms as a standalone page.
Well with GiveWP you can display donation forms on your WordPress site in many ways:
- Display as standalone pages
- Display in a button form
- Display as modal popups
- Embed into pages/posts using WordPress blocks
- Display in a sidebar using GiveWP widgets
- Display anywhere with the help of available shortcodes
- Display multiple donation forms in a grid format within WordPress posts and pages using “GiveWP Form Grid Block”.
- Display goals using “GiveWP Multi-Form Goal Block”
The Google Analytics Tracking Benefit:
Do you wanna analyze the performance of the donation form hooked into your fundraising website? Or do you wanna analyze the traffic source of your donors?
Well, you can get a lot of insights by enabling eCommerce tracking with Google Analytics and GiveWP integration (add-on)
This is one of the advanced GiveWP donation plugin features that you might not find in other donation plugins.
GiveWP Features Overview Table
A lot of GiveWP features are yet to be discovered. Just have a look at the below table to learn what’s inside in GiveWP WordPress donation plugin.
| Features | GiveWP Free | GiveWP Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited Donation Forms | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Donation Amount | ✓ | ✓ |
| Recurring Donations | ❌ | ✓ |
| Stripe & PayPal Payment Options | ✓ | ✓ |
| Campaign Goals | ✓ | ✓ |
| Goal Bar | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donor Management | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google Analytics Donation Tracking | ❌ | ✓ |
| Insightful Reporting (Top Donors, Recent Donors, Best Performing Form, etc) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Form Fields | ❌ | ✓ |
| Donor Dashboard (Access Donation History, Download Receipts & More) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-form payment gateways | ❌ | ✓ |
| Customizable Email Receipts and Notifications | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-step Donation Form | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-page Donation Form | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fee Recovery | ❌ | ✓ |
| Multiple funds in a single donation form | ❌ | ✓ |
| Multiple Donation Form Templates | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customizable Donation Form Templates | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donor Wall | ✓ | ✓ |
| Manual Donations | ❌ | ✓ |
| Form Grid | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tributes | ❌ | ✓ |
| On-site Credit Card Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Offline Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email Marketing Tools Integrations | ❌ | ✓ |
| Test Payment Gateway | ✓ | ✓ |
| Currency Switcher | ❌ | ✓ |
| GiveWP API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free Add-ons! | ✓ | ✓ |
| PCI Compliant | ✓ | ✓ |
| Terms & Conditions Page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multiple Display Style Options | ✓ | ✓ |
| Peer-to-Peer Fundraising | ❌ | ✓ |
| Donation through text | ❌ | ✓ |
| Elementor Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Form Countdown Feature | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donors Gift | ✓ | ✓ |
| Social Buttons | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customizable confirmation page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reports through email | ❌ | ✓ |
| Donation upsells for WooCommerce | ❌ | ✓ |
| Test Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Import Export Data | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Payment Gateway Building Option | ❌ | ✓ |
| Zapier Integration | ❌ | ✓ |
| GDPR Friendly Donation Forms | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cryptocurrency Donation | ❌ | ❌ |
The Donation Form Creation Procedure with GiveWP WordPress Donation Plugin
Yes, you can indeed set up and make your first donation form live with the GiveWP WordPress donation plugin in a few minutes. Readymade donation form templates and setup wizard make this possible.
We are not going to explain the complete process in detail. For that, we will be creating another separate article.
Here, I am only discussing the basic plugin configuration steps.
The first step begins by downloading and installing the GiveWP plugin from either the WordPress plugin repository or from GiveWP official website.
As soon as you install and activate the plugin you will be redirected to this GiveWP installation wizard or say, onboarding wizard.
This wizard will forward you step by step towards the configuration process and donation form process. Just follow the instructions and you’re good to go.
Under this setup wizard, only 5 steps you have to configure:
- Define a cause
- Define the location from where you are fundraising
- Define your first fundraising donation form
- Preview
- Configure premium add-ons (optional)
GiveWP Pricing & Plans
Why should you upgrade?
First of all, you may be wondering why should I upgrade, isn’t it?
Well, the GiveWP free version is powerful and contains all the core features. This is why 9 out of 10 times users don’t feel the need for the upgrade.
However, to enhance the capabilities of this WordPress donation plugin you must upgrade. The extra features are available as add-ons. So for add-ons, you have to upgrade the GiveWP free donation WordPress plugin.
The great thing is you can purchase any single add-on according to your need rather than subscribe for GiveWP paid plans.
GiveWP Single Add-on Pricing
- Basic Add-ons: $79/year
- Premium Add-ons: $149/year
- Peer-to-Peer Fundraising single Add-on: $199/year
In case you need all add-ons, then you can opt for any of the GiveWP available plans:
- Basic: starts from $149/year
- Plus: starts from $349/year
- Pro: starts from $499/year
- Agency: starts from $599/year
Let me breakdown these plans so you have a better understanding:
- All 4 plans have all core features. However, the basic & plus plans don’t offer a “VIP support” feature.
- Only Agency plan includes a license for 5 websites
- Peer-to-Peer fundraising technique is only available under Agency and Pro plans.
- The basic plan lacks premium add-ons. Only basic addons are available in this plan.
GiveWP Fundraising Plugin Pros & Cons
Pros
- The donation test mode is included in the free version.
- Offline donation is there.
- Guests don’t need to log in/register before donation submissions.
- Peer-to-Peer donations campaigns supported. This is a very important element to grow your donations in a quick time.
- SMS donations (text-to-give) can be enabled.
- Donation forms can be plugged anywhere into the WordPress website.
- No prior coding knowledge is required for generating fundraising forms.
- PayPal and Stripe payment gateways are accepted in the free version. No extra fees are charged with PayPal.
- Supports both one-time and recurring based donations. In recurring donations, The donors can have the choice to subscribe for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual-based donation subscriptions.
- Advance insights and reports can be possible because of Google Analytics integration.
- Credit cards can be accepted.
- All paid add-ons can be purchased individually.
Cons
- A little bit expensive.
- Anonymous donations aren’t supported because GiveWP mainly focuses on Nonprofit organizations.
- Recurring donations functionality is not available in the free version
- In a free plugin, no direct way is available to add custom form entries in a form. You have to make a change in a plugin code for adding custom entries. However, the “Form Field Manager” premium add-on resolve this problem in seconds.
- Donors do not have an option to switch currency in the free version.
- The cryptocurrency-based donation cannot be accepted.
- WooCommerce cart integration is not available in the free plugin.
- Monthly plans are absent.
GiveWP Bottom Line:
Go for GiveWP when you are serious about fundraising and you are looking for the most favorable & trustworthy donation plugin of all time.
Go for this plugin when features, security, and priority customer support are the main factor for you. Nobody beats GiveWP in terms of features. Yes, it is a bit expensive but I think bearable.
#2 Charitable – The New & Trending WordPress Donation Plugin
Charitable is the 2nd fundraising plugin on today’s list. This plugin has rated 5 stars on WordPress and has been given tough competition to GiveWP.
Well, this plugin is not that much powerful as GiveWP, but it has everything that you require at the beginning of your donation journey. Setting up a donation campaign with a donation goal and progress bar hardly takes 5 minutes.
The “Portfolio” of this plugin has been growing at a rapidly fast rate. At the time of writing this blog post, over 10,000 non-profit organizations have been using this plugin for their donation campaigns.
Similar to GiveWP, Charitable follows the same structure for distributing its features into the free and paid versions. To enhance the plugin capabilities few “Add-ons (extensions)” are available which can either be purchased individually or with plans.
Charitable is also known for its “Cheap pricing”. Yes, its paid plans are affordable & pocket-friendly compared to other donation plugins including GiveWP. Further, there is no disadvantage of “Transaction cost” here.
Charitable Features
Features-wise Charitable is rich. I have listed the “Complete Features Table” below. Please go through it before making any decision.
As I mentioned, this plugin is perfect for initiating your fundraising journey but in the future, you might feel problems because of these “Downsides”:
- First of all, only 1 single payment gateway (PayPal) is available in the free version.
- WooCommerce store cart integration is missing.
- Charitable doesn’t offer donation form templates. You have to rely on a WordPress customizer with a few basic options to customize the design of the donation forms.
- Donor management is basic here. You won’t find donor history, donor profiles, donor dashboard, etc in this plugin.
- Reporting is basic too. GA tracking cannot be possible.
- Unlike GiveWP there is no spam protection benefit the Charitable plugin offers.
- SMS donations (text-to-give) is not supported.
- The priority VIP customer support is not available.
- Feature of social sharing buttons, PDF receipts, multi-step forms is missing.
- Limited Payment Gateways (Only 8) found in paid plans. GiveWP has 18+ payment gateways.
- These essential add-ons (features) should be included but unfortunately not found :
- Form Field Manager: To add custom fields in the donation form
- Currency Switcher
- WooCommerce
- Annual Tax Receipts
- Google Analytics donation tracking
- Manual Donations
- Per Form Payment Gateways
- Annual Receipts
Hint: All the downsides of the Charitable plugin would not be found inside the GiveWP plugin.
Despite downsides, Charitable has some amazing “Notable Advantages” which you should keep in mind:
- The support of Peer-to-Peer fundraising campaigns
- A recurring donation is possible with paid add-ons
- Easy donation form creation process
- Major Payment Gateways (add-ons) are supported including Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.net, PayFast, PayStack, Payrexx, WindCave, and Stripe connect.
- Instead of WooCommerce, you will find “Easy Digital Downloads” Integration here.
- Anonymous donation benefits can be seen here. I have seen a lot of people talking about this problem in the case of GiveWP. But Charitable team overcome this problem by providing this feature through their paid add-on called “Chartable Annonymous Donations”.
- The Geolocation feature allows you to display the location of all your donations campaigns through Google Map.
- Charitable videos is another highlighted add-on that allows the admin to add a video in fundraising campaigns.
- Gladly Fee Relief add-on, Gift-Aid add-on, Donor Comments add-on, Email Marketing add-ons are also available here.
Charitable Features Table:
| Features | Charitable (Free) | Charitable (Paid) |
|---|---|---|
| Campaigns Timer (Countdown) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donation Amount Flexibility | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shortcode Friendly | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donation Status Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donation Form Templates | ❌ | ❌ |
| Campaign Goals | ✓ | ✓ |
| Recurring Donation | ❌ | ✓ |
| One time donation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Peer-to-Peer Fundraising | ❌ | ✓ |
| Email Marketing Integrations (MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Mailster, etc) | ❌ | ✓ |
| Gateway Fee Recovery | ❌ | ✓ |
| Unlimited Fundraising Campaigns | ✓ | ✓ |
| Offline Donation (Cheque, Bank Transfer, etc) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Privacy Notice & Terms of Condition Attachment to Donation Form | ✓ | ✓ |
| Export/Import Data | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR Compliant | ✓ | ✓ |
| Resend Donation Emails | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donor receipts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Admin Notifications | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stripe Payment Gateway | ❌ | ✓ |
| Braintree Payment Gateway | ❌ | ✓ |
| Authorize.net | ❌ | ✓ |
| Donor Comments | ❌ | ✓ |
| Anonymous Donations | ❌ | ✓ |
| Form Grid | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donor Management | ❌ | ❌ |
| Currency Switching | ❌ | ❌ |
| Basic Reporting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tributes | ❌ | ✓ |
| Zapier Integration | ❌ | ✓ |
| Geolocation Campaigns | ❌ | ✓ |
| Video | ❌ | ✓ |
| Cryptocurrency Donation | ❌ | ❌ |
Charitable Pricing & Plans
Charitable Donation Form Creation Process
Similar to GiveWP, the configuration and donation form creation process is simple and smooth. The Charitable official website has various tutorials which you can go through any time. Start here with a Charitable WordPress donation form plugin.
Charitable Bottom Line
After an in-depth analysis of the Charitable WordPress donation plugin, these are our final words:
- Charitable could be the perfect option when you just want a free donation plugin. Period. It has everything that you need in the initial phases of your donation journey.
- For Non-Profit-Organizations who are looking to invest in paid donation plugin, then a Charitable paid version is only recommended when these things would not bother you:
- Lack of WooCommerce Integration
- Lack of spam protection layer
- Lack of donor management
- Lack of SMS donations
- Lack of VIP customer support
- Lack of currency switcher module
- Lack of Google Analytics
- More…
#3 WPForms – An Alternative Form Builder Based Approach For Pricey Donor Management WordPress Plugins
WPForms – I think there is no need for the introduction of this plugin. It is a 5 stars rated form builder plugin.
There is a 100% chance that either you are using this plugin on your website or you’re at least aware of this.
WPForms is the most user-friendly and highly recommended for beginners. For Non-Profit organizations who don’t want a high-powered complex donation plugin, then WPForms should be the first recommendation for them. Just pick up the donation form template, configure donation type (recurring/one time) and publish. This is all you have to focus on.
Well, WPForms is not a dedicated donor management plugin. Instead, it is a form builder plugin used for building different types of forms (including donation forms) without any coding knowledge.
It is available in both free and paid versions. For donation forms, the WPForms Pro version is all you need.
Since it is not a dedicated donor management tool, the “pricing” is comparatively less here. Further WPForms is offering 75% “discounts”, especially for Non-Profit Organizations:
- WPForms Pro Plan – $99/year (75% off than normal pricing)
- WPForms Elite Plan – $199/year (66% off than normal pricing)
To claim a Non-Profit discount, one should require to provide necessary documents. Just navigate to the WPForms official website, complete the WPForms NonProfit application and wait for approval.
When we talk about features, WPForms offers limited “features” because as I said this is not a standalone fundraising plugin but still I think the features currently WPForms is offering are enough for running a small fundraising website:
- Recurring donations
- Support popular payment gateways: Stripe (credit card), PayPal Standard, Square, and Authorize.net. Note: With PayPal & Stripe, the transaction cost is there. (2.2% + $0.30 per transaction)
- Export/Import donor details.
- Conditional logic applied to donation form fields – Highlighted Feature.
- Donation forms can be designed using the drag and drop form builder.
- 300+ Customizable WordPress forms templates are available.
- Email Marketing Integrations
- Anonymous donations
Hint: Just check the GiveWP WordPress donation plugin features table, you will realize how WPForms will going to make trouble in the long run.
The donation form creation procedure with WPForms is almost similar to any form you created through this plugin. You just have to add or customize the Non-profit donation form fields.
Learn more about WPForms donation forms procedure from this guide created by WPForms.
WPForms Bottom Line
We only recommend WPForms for fundraising when you’re already using its free version. By upgrading to the Pro version you can eliminate the need for a separate donation plugin. This way you can also save the learning time you have to invest with other WordPress plugins.
The Non-profit organizations which are already established in the market or have a good budget should not consider WPForms. Because in a long run you might need extra features which could be found only in dedicated WordPress donation plugins like GiveWP and Charitable.
#4 PayPal Donations – A Simple Donation Plugin
PayPal Donations – This plugin is 100% free and straightforward. Just add PayPal donate button with the help of a shortcode and you’re good to go.
The great thing is that a benefit of recurring donation is exist here.
This plugin is so tiny that you won’t find any feature other than these:
- The PayPal donation button can be added to the WordPress sidebar, footer, or posts.
- The button size can be customized
- The currency can be customized
- No prior PayPal registration is required before making any donation
- The default donation amount can be customized and vary for different donation buttons.
- API setup is not required to establish a connection between the WordPress website & PayPal. Just enter your email address and you are done.
PayPal Donations: Bottom Line
PayPal Donations: Bottom Line
Go for this free donation tool when you just want to add a PayPal donation button on your site. Nothing else is here.
Learn about PayPal Donations Setup Proces from this Video.
#5 WP Simple Pay – For Stripe Focused Donations
WP Simple Pay – The Stripe payment gateway-oriented plugin is mainly used for establishing a connection between Stripe and WordPress.
However, Non-Profit Organizations can also utilize this plugin for collecting donations. Because it offers features like recurring donations and whatnot.
Note: Ignore this plugin if your preferred gateway to collect donations is PayPal.
Because of this plugin powered by Stripe, you can 100% trust this tool in terms of security and reliability.
One more highlighted feature of this WordPress donation plugin is that it is mobile optimized. In other words, the payment (donation) forms are mobile-friendly and donors can donate through different payment options including Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH debit payments, credit cards, and whatnot.
Hint: The Google Pay & Apple Pay donation gateway is only available in WP Simple Pay.
Hint: Compared to other donation plugins, all major payment gateways including Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, Credit cards, etc are inbuilt. No need to install any add-ons.
The donation collection procedure is almost similar to what we have seen in other plugins. Just set up a payment form on WordPress and start collecting donations through stripe checkout.
WP Simple Pay comes in both free and paid version and hence features varies. Just have a look at the below features table to see what WP Simple pay plugin is offering:
| Features | WP Simple Pay (Free) | WP Simple Pay (Paid) |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited Donation Forms | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-time Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Donation (Payment) Receipt | ❌ | ✓ |
| Notification emails | ❌ | ✓ |
| Tax management | ❌ | ✓ |
| Recurring Donations | ❌ | ✓ |
| Apple Pay Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google Pay Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Credit Card Donations | ✓ | ✓ |
| ACH Debit Payments | ❌ | ✓ |
| Drag and Drop Donation Form Builder | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Donation Amounts | ❌ | ✓ |
| Processing Fee | ❌ | ❌ |
| Multi-Currency | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-Language Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| reCaptcha Verification | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Payment Success Pages | ✓ | ✓ |
| Test Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom form fields | ❌ | ✓ |
| Priority Customer Support | ❌ | ✓ |
WP Simple Pay: Bottom Line
WP Simple Pay is primarily used for accepting stripe payments on a WordPress website. So go for this payment processing plugin only when you want to enable stripe donations, Google Pay donations, Apple Pay donations, and whatnot.
Because of not being a dedicated donation management plugin, this plugin has tons of downsides. Just check out GiveWP and Charitable features once, you will know the reality.
#6 DonorBox – A Different Pricing Plan based Donation Plugin
DonorBox is another new but 5-star rated WordPress plugin available as both free and paid versions. This plugin is comparatively new than other 5 Stars rated plugins like GiveWP, so the number of reviews is less here.
Whether you want to place a donation form or an attractive donation button on your website, with DonorBox you can do it easily within 5 minutes.
Compared to other plugins, DonorBox deducts the platform fee (1.5%) directly from the donations. The great thing here is that you do not have to pay any platform fee up to the $500 markup. As soon as you cross this markup, the platform fee will be applied. Apart from the platform fees, you also have to pay the processing fees charged by Stripe, PayPal, etc.
DonorBox Bottom Line:
So in case, you are starting out and you want to take a feel of the “dedicated donor management” plugin without paying any money then DonorBox will be the perfect choice for you. But keep this point in your mind that in a long run DonorBox fees will be doubled or more because of the percentage fees-based system.
Being a dedicated donation management plugin you can expect a good amount of features. The complete list of features are mentioned below:
- Fee Recovery ❌
- Countdown Timers ❌
- Fee Recovery ❌
- Customizable Donation Forms ✓
- Custom form fields ✓
- Custom donation amounts ✓
- Payment Gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH Bank Payments) ✓
- One time donations ✓
- Recurring donations (monthly, annual, weekly) ✓
- Goal Meter ✓
- Donation Popup Forms ✓
- Multi-currency support ✓
- Multiple languages supported ✓
- Donor Management ✓
- Donor wall ✓
- Donor Profile ✓
- Email Marketing and CRM integrations ✓
- User-friendly interface ✓
- Bank Transfer Donations ✓
- Annual Tax Receipts ✓
- Donate Button ✓
- Mobile Optimized Donation Forms ✓
- Export/Import ✓
- Manual Donations ✓
- PCI Compliant ✓
- Shortcodes for embedding forms ✓
Watch this video to learn how to add a donation form using DonorBox WordPress plugin.
#7 Cryptocurrency Donation Box – The Cryptocurrency Based WordPress Plugin
[crypto-donation-box] – use this shortcode provided by the Cryptocurrency donation box free WordPress plugin to enable crypto-based donations on your site.
Before accepting donations in cryptocurrency you must have linked this plugin with your wallet. The procedure is very simple. Don’t worry.
With the shortcode, embed donation form anywhere you want.
Over 30+ cryptocurrencies are supported including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin, LiteCoin, and much more.
Cryptocurrency Donation Box: Bottom Line
Go for this free plugin only when you want to hook Cryptocurrency donations on your WordPress site.
Watch this video to learn how to set up a Cryptocurrency Donation Box plugin on a WordPress site.
#Bonus: YITH Donation for WooCommerce – A WooCommerce Dedicated WooCommerce Plugin
YITH Donation for WooCommerce – A bonus plugin of today’s list.
Well, there is no need for the introduction, you have already got it by its name. For people who want to enable donations on their WooCommerce products cart then this should be their preferred choice.
YITH is dedicated to WooCommerce. I mean a lot of free plugins dedicated to WooCommerce have been developed by this company. YITH is established and known for its WooCommerce plugins.
YITH Donation is not a free plugin. However, it is very affordable compared to others. Only costs you $79.99/year.
Some of the highlighted features of this plugin are:
- Donation Prompts (during the time of purchase)
- Donation Receipts
- Option to add a donation form to the WooCommerce products cart page
- Custom donation amounts
- Styling customization
- Shortcode friendly
YITH Donation for WordPress: Bottom Line:
Consider this plugin especially when you want to in a donation box to your WooCommerce product pages. Period.
Conclusion: Best WordPress Donation Plugins
So this is it. I hope I helped you in deciding on WordPress donation plugins.
I know some of you are still confused. But don’t worry. You are collecting a donation for good cause, isn’t it? There is no chance of something bad would happen to you.
Read a “bottom line” block again to clear things out.
If you want to go with our recommendation, then we recommend GiveWP as first place and then Charitable (for people who have less budget). Remember both plugins have free versions. So why don’t you try GiveWP first? I am damn sure your experience would be great.
Don’t forget to clear any query through the comment section…
- Next Read: How to Add Donate Button on WordPress Website Free using GiveWP plugin
- 6 Best Payment Gateways For International Transactions
- 7 Best WordPress Survey Plugins Compared
I hope you like our list of Best WordPress Donation Plugins. When you find any WordPress donation plugin, let us know through the comment section. Want more blogging tips, follow BlogVwant on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
FAQ: WordPress Donation Plugin
Which donation plugin allows you to add a donation button?
All plugins listed in this blog post have this functionality.
Which donation plugin offers spam protection?
GiveWP
Do I need to hire a web developer to configure the donation plugin on my website?
Not at all.
Should I create donation forms for the form builder plugin that is already existed on my website?
Yes, you can create a donation form with your existing form builder plugin. However, you will be missed essential features that you would get with a dedicated donor management tool. Check out WPForms and GiveWP sections of this article and compare them, you will understand clearly.
Which is the most popular and trusted WordPress donation plugin?
GiveWP and Charitable.
Which is the better approach? Donation theme or Donation plugin?
Installing and setting up a donation campaign with a donation plugin would always be the recommended and feasible option.
Which is the best WooCommerce donation plugin?
GiveWP and YITH Donation for WooCommerce.