These days, online donations are a useful means to raise money for a cause, or to get extra financial support.
Fortunately, you can now easily and securely accept recurring and one-time donations from web visitors with the help of a donation plugin. So, whether you’re a non-profit, charity, or simply just a creator looking for support, a good WordPress donation plugin may be what you need to achieve your goals.
This article will walk you through our top picks!
Countless jobs produce art, joy, wealth, or world change without having the ability to sell goods and generate profits like a typical business could. That’s when they ask for donations to help them push forward.
A handy donation plugin can help you easily collect user donations on your WordPress site rather than using a third-party website.
There are a lot of developers, bloggers, nonprofit organizations, churches, and political campaigns that rely on them. Take GiveDirectly, for instance: it’s a charity that allows you to send money directly to impoverished families in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and more.
But while these plugins may appear straightforward, there are a few key features that every reliable donation plugin should have.
For instance, you might want a plugin that’s compatible with both desktop and mobile browsers and can be customized to fit your website’s design. You can also achieve a mobile-friendly website through the use of one of the best web hosting platforms to make sure your website will always run at its best, no matter what device your visitors will use.
With that said, let’s dive into our top picks for WordPress donation plugins, shall we?
Before we get right into it, make sure you’ve backed up your WordPress website just in case you make any changes you’re not happy with in the future.
Now, for the main reason why you’re here – have a look at some of our fave plugins:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/give/
With more than 100,000 downloads to date, GiveWP is one of the most effective and user-friendly WordPress donation plugins. You can accept recurring and one-time payments using a number of payment processors, such as PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Authorize.net.
Features like a donor management system and payment history are included in this WordPress donation plugin. Also, you can include statistics on your donation forms, and even who the top donators are. This makes it simpler for not just donors to manage and register their donations, but also for you to keep track of how well your donations are doing.
While the GiveWP donation plugin is free to download and use, you’ll have to upgrade to one of their yearly subscription plans to gain access to all of their amazing add-ons and features. Depending on the features and number of domains used, its annual price ranges from $149 to $599.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/
WPForms doesn’t focus on offering a stand-alone donation system, unlike the other WordPress donation plugins on this list. You can create a wide range of forms using this well-liked drag-and-drop WordPress form builder.
WPForms’ built-in templates allow you to quickly and easily create customized fundraising forms. Accepting donations that are sent directly to your account is made simpler thanks to the integrations of the payment gateways provided by PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
With this WordPress plugin, you can also build surveys, registration forms, and contact forms to help your donation websites. And, to ensure that only legit submissions are accepted, spam protection is built into every form.
As for its price, both a free and a paid version of WPForms is available. You can consider purchasing one of the premium plans costing between $39.50 and $299.50/year to get past the restrictions of the free version.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/charitable/
With over 367,000 downloads, Charitable is a great freemium WordPress donation plugin. With its GDPR-compliant donation forms, the Charitable plugin makes sure that users can donate quickly and securely to your cause.
What’s great is that the free version of this donation plugin already comes with a lot of helpful tools for designing effective fundraising campaigns. For instance, with designs that complement your website’s theme, you can make an infinite number of campaigns.
But, to access premium features like peer-to-peer fundraising, Zapier integration, video support, interactive maps, and payment from multiple gateways, you’ll need to upgrade your plan. For a single site, the premium Charitable plugin plan begins at $119. Nevertheless, you have a variety of pricing options to select from depending on your needs.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-crowdfunding/
WP Crowdfunding is an excellent WordPress fundraising plugin that is powered by WooCommerce. By using this simple plugin, an eCommerce website can be transformed into a complete crowdfunding platform.
One of its best features is the Native Wallet System. This is basically a program that records when donors have finished their orders. It automatically calculates the sums owed to the project owner and the website owner’s commission. This commission amount is typically charged as a fee by the crowdfunding site authority for using their platform, so having a plugin that calculates for you is great to avoid any confusion.
While the Basic edition includes the most basic crowdfunding system features, the Stripe Connect and the Native Wallet System are only available in the Pro edition. You can sign up for a paid plan costing between $149 and $299 per year.
Overall, it’s a great donation plugin but its best features are locked behind its premium version.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-paypal-donation/
Donations via PayPal is yet another free WordPress donation plugin for raising funds for charities and nonprofits. The PayPal donation button can be added to your website using either their shortcode or sidebar widget.
Similar to other PayPal plugins, it allows you to link WordPress to your PayPal account and accept visitor donations. There are also extra settings such as different button sizes, localization, and multiple currencies.
The best part? It’s completely free!
https://wordpress.org/plugins/formidable/
Just like WPForms, Formidable Forms is not just used for donations and is very versatile to use for other types of forms. But, that’s where the similarity ends. This plugin is on the more complex side, which means it might not be as user-friendly for beginners. Though, using it can still be pretty effective if you can master it.
There are also several different form templates available, one of which is already designed to take donations online. Not just that, but within the WordPress dashboard, you can also see graphs with donation statistics, which helps you visualize what works and what doesn’t.
The features don’t just stop there. The plugin enables you to export the form data outside of WordPress. You also have the choice to import your donation records from other providers. This is great especially if you’re future-proofing and decide to use other platforms in the future.
With that said, this plugin isn’t free, and the plans for this WordPress plugin range from $39.50 to $299.50 each year.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/donation-thermometer/
A great addition to WordPress’s other top donation plugins is the Donation Thermometer. While not being a fundraising tool, this plugin encourages donations by showing a progress bar in the shape of a thermometer. It only serves as a gauge for your online donation campaign’s fundraising efforts.
The Donation Thermometer has powerful CSS modification options and vector-based graphics to provide high-quality metrics on all screen sizes. You can see the thermometer value change automatically as your donation target is reached. To do this, simply connect the plugin to your active donations plugin.
What’s also amazing? There’s no cost associated with using this cool plugin!
https://wordpress.org/plugins/seamless-donations/
If you’re running a small website and don’t need a wide variety of features, then Seamless Donations gets the job done. This WordPress donation plugin makes your job easier by having a simple setup process and payment gateway integration, making it easy to collect donations from all around the world.
As for its other features, this plugin supports the Stripe and PayPal payment gateways and includes a thank you message option as well. Not only that, but it also offers a one-of-a-kind tribute option that allows you to collect funds in memory of a departed individual.
With that said, this plugin is completely free. But, for $19.95 per site, you could also purchase paid add-ons that include responsive donation forms and additional premium features.
Although these donation plugins make managing and collecting donations simple, a lot of them serve the same purpose, so it can be challenging to pick the best one. Then there’s also paid third-party plugins that cost a one-time fee, which also adds to the confusion.
To make sure your fundraising campaign is a success, choosing the best WordPress donation plugin is crucial. To help you out, here’s a checklist of all the essential features a WordPress donation plugin should include:
And now comes the big question:
You can raise money on your WordPress site using any of the plugins we’ve mentioned in this article. Your needs will determine which WordPress donation plugin is best for your online fundraising, though.
For instance, the WPForms non-profit plan, which is currently offering a 75% off discount, is the best option if you’re looking to create a straightforward donation form with one-time and recurring donation options as well as the capability for users to make payments via PayPal or credit card.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a WordPress donation plugin with high-end features such as campaign-level goals and incentives, tax-deductible donation receipts, full-featured reporting, and much more, then WP Charitable and GiveWP are both excellent choices.
With that said, choosing the best WordPress donation plugin varies for everyone and the right one for you will depend on what you need and what you want.
It can be pretty intimidating to launch any website, much less one that will be used by your group to raise money. You’re trying to win people over, and having a website that is unreliable or doesn’t prioritize user experience is the last thing you want.
Using a top-notch donation plugin and pairing it with a solid web host is a good formula for building a smooth donation experience that pleases visitors and attracts more donations. To simplify things even more, you can also consider a managed WordPress hosting platform, which will take more of the technicalities of your site (e.g. updates and security patches) off your plate.
Best of luck!
