Searching for the best WordPress donation plugins so that you can raise funds for your website or cause?
Whether you just want a simple PayPal donation button or you’re looking for a more advanced fundraising solution that can help you run full campaigns and manage donors, you can find some excellent WordPress plugins to help you get going.
In this post, we’ve collected our picks for the eight best WordPress donation plugins:
- Three of these plugins are full-service fundraising tools that work great for charities. They can help you create multiple campaigns, raise money towards goals, and more.
- The other five plugins are more limited in scope, such as adding simple donate buttons/forms or letting you accept donations via your WooCommerce store.
Ready to get started? Let’s dig in!
Eight Best WordPress Donation Plugins Compared
1. GiveWP
Active on over 100,000 sites, GiveWP is the most popular donation plugin at WordPress.org.
It offers a full fundraising solution. Collectively, organizations use GiveWP to raise more than $100 million USD per year.
It helps you create stylish donation forms and campaigns. If you create a campaign, you can create a dedicated fundraising page for that campaign that showcases your progress towards your goal(s).
You’ll also get a complete donor management and reporting system on the backend. You can keep track of all your donation activity and you’ll be able to view a complete history of each donor, along with the ability to generate tax-deductible receipts.
Beyond those core features, you get plenty of other options including the following:
- Support for 18+ payment gateways – PayPal is free, while the rest cost money.
- One-time or recurring donations – visitors can choose to make their pledge ongoing.
- Custom donation amounts – enter preset amounts and/or let people donate a custom amount.
- Fee relief – ask people to cover the payment processing fees.
- Integrations – integrate with your favorite email marketing services and CRMs. There’s also a catch-all Zapier integration.
💵 Price: Free core plugin. Premium add-on bundles from $249.
👍 Pros:
- Well-designed interfaces on frontend and backend.
- Best-in-class donor management.
- Advanced features and integrations.
- Comes from an established team.
- History of success – GiveWP users collectively raised over $100 million in 2019.
👎 Cons:
- The free version is limited – only one-time payments via PayPal.
- Expensive compared to other plugins.
2. Charitable
Like GiveWP, Charitable is another full-featured WordPress fundraising plugin that makes a great option for non-profits or anyone else who needs a true fundraising solution.
You can create great-looking donation forms, as well as full fundraising campaigns that display the number of donations and progress towards your fundraising goal.
Charitable also supports peer-to-peer fundraising – you can let other people register on your site and create their own fundraising campaigns. For example, if you have a charity 5k event, participants could register on your site to create their own fundraising pages. Or, they can register as a team and raise money together.
Here are some other notable features in Charitable:
- Donation management.
- Flexible donations – preset or custom donations, along with one-time or recurring donations.
- Support for 5+ payment gateways – PayPal is free, while Stripe, Authorize.net, and others require paid add-ons.
- Fee relief.
- Email marketing integrations – connect to Mailchimp and other popular tools.
💵 Price: Free core plugin. Premium add-on bundles from $129.
👍 Pros:
- Affordable for its features – it’s cheaper than GiveWP.
- Peer-to-peer fundraising.
- Easily modifiable via code snippets.
👎 Cons:
- The free version is limited – only one-time payments via PayPal (same as GiveWP).
- No donor management/history – you can only see a list of individual donations, not full donor profiles.
- Limited integrations as compared to GiveWP.
3. PayPal Donations
PayPal Donations is a 100% free plugin that makes it easy to add a simple PayPal donate button to your WordPress site. You can see a real example in the image above.
When you set up the plugin, only have a few options:
- Pick the currency.
- Choose the default amount (you can customize this for different buttons).
- Choose different button styles or use your own custom button image.
To connect to PayPal, all you need to do is enter your PayPal email address – there’s no need to mess around with the API or anything:
To place your button(s), you can use a shortcode. That’s it!
💵 Price: 100% free.
👍 Pros:
- 100% free.
- Very simple setup.
- No need to use APIs – just enter your PayPal email.
👎 Cons:
- It literally just lets you add a donate button – nothing more.
4. Stripe Donations
Stripe Donations gives you an easy way to accept donations via the Stripe Payment gateway. However, unlike the PayPal Donations plugin above, it goes beyond just adding a simple button (though it’s still nowhere near plugins like Give and Charitable).
If you’re a non-profit, Stripe is a very attractive payment gateway. The “normal” processing fee is 2.9% + $0.30/transaction, but registered non-profits can get a preferable 2.2% + $0.30/transaction rate.
To collect donations, you can create a customizable form that includes the payment fields, as well as the option to add a custom title, description, and image.
You can also send a customizable email to donors and create a custom thank you page. What’s more, the plugin will store a list of your donors.
💵 Price: Free. There’s also a $19.99 premium version that adds more features.
👍 Pros:
- Free version should work for most people.
- Easy setup.
- Default form design looks good.
👎 Cons:
- While you get basic donor management, it’s limited as compared to GiveWP and Charitable.
5. Donorbox
Donorbox is technically a SaaS donation platform, rather than a native WordPress donation plugin. However, it’s very easy to integrate into your WordPress site thanks to its dedicated integration plugin at WordPress.org.
If you’re ok with that SaaS approach, you can get a lot of advanced features
- Customizable payment options – add multiple present amounts, let people choose between one time or recurring, let them enter custom amounts, etc.
- Multiple payment gateways – make it really easy for people to choose between payment gateways, including bank transfers via Plaid.
- Multiple currency support – accept donations in multiple currencies if needed.
- Customizable donor messages – people can leave a public message alongside their donation (kind of like GoFundMe).
- Advanced donor management – create donor segments based on amounts, frequency, etc.
Overall, the frontend experience for donors is really well done – you can check out a live example here.
💵 Price: Donorbox doesn’t charge a flat fee. Instead, it takes a percentage of the funds that you raise. You’ll pay 1.5% to Donorbox on top of payment processing fees.
👍 Pros:
- Very user-friendly frontend donor experience.
- Dedicated WordPress integration plugin.
- No need to worry about security.
- Supports bank transfer donations.
- Excellent donor management.
👎 Cons:
- It’s a SaaS, not a native WordPress plugin.
- It takes a commission rather than charging a flat fee. This can add up over time.
6. Potent Donations for WooCommerce
Potent Donations for WooCommerce helps you accept donations using WooCommerce, which lets you process donations via any one of the payment gateways that WooCommerce supports.
The plugin is quite simple. It works by adding a new Donation product type that you can select in the Product data box of the regular WooCommerce product editor.
When you choose this product type, your site’s visitors will be able to enter their own custom donation amount, rather than choosing from a preset price.
To control the options that people have, you can set a default donation as well as the amount increment. For example, if you set the increment to $10, people will only be able to donate in multiples of $10.
That’s it – for everything else, you’ll rely on core WooCommerce features.
💵 Price: 100% free.
👍 Pros:
- WooCommerce is an established and reliable solution for accepting payments.
- You get access to hundreds of payment gateways via WooCommerce.
- You also get access to other WooCommerce plugins.
- Supports custom donations.
- It’s free.
👎 Cons:
- It’s not standalone – you must use WooCommerce.
- No option to set preset levels – just custom amounts.
Get Potent Donations for WooCommerce
7. Cryptocurrency Donation Box
As the name suggests, Cryptocurrency Donation Box focuses on helping you accept donations via various cryptocurrencies, with support for 50+ different cryptocurrencies.
You can use the plugin’s settings to add the wallet address(es) where you want to accept payment. Then, you can easily display them anywhere on your site using a shortcode.
If you want to accept donations via multiple currencies, your visitors can use the tabbed interface to see the wallet for their preferred currency. The plugin also displays a QR code so that people can donate more easily.
Overall, it’s quite simple, but it gives you exactly what you need to accept cryptocurrency donations on WordPress.
💵 Price: Free.
👍 Pros:
- Supports 50+ currencies.
- The QR code makes it easy for people to donate.
- Very simple.
👎 Cons:
- No special donation features – it just displays wallets.
Get Cryptocurrency Donation Box
8. Your Favorite Form Plugin
Ok, this one isn’t a single plugin. But I think it’s worth pointing out that most quality WordPress form plugins can also make a great solution for donations if you just need an easy way to create a donation form.
They’ll let you create a custom donation form using their drag-and-drop form builders. Then, you can hook that form up to your preferred payment gateway to process the payments. For example, check out this tutorial from the Gravity Forms team.
Here are some popular form plugins that can make a good option for donations:
Basically, as long as your chosen form plugin supports payment forms, you can use it as a WordPress donation form plugin.
Price: Most form plugins only offer payment integrations in their premium versions, so expect to pay $49+.
👍 Pros:
- Use your existing form plugin – no need to add a new plugin.
- This approach is very flexible.
- Most form plugins make it easy to connect to Zapier or third-party tools.
👎 Cons:
- Most form plugins charge for payment integrations.
- Not 100% focused on donations.
Which Is the Best WordPress Donation Plugin?
The best WordPress donation plugin for you really depends on what you’re looking for:
- Are you a non-profit looking for a tool to help you run your fundraising efforts? Or do you otherwise need a tool that can help you manage full-service fundraising campaigns?
- Are you just looking for a way to add a simple donation button or form for your website?
Best WordPress Fundraising Plugin for Nonprofits
If you need a full-service WordPress fundraising plugin, GiveWP is the overall best option because of its user-friendly interfaces and advanced features, while Charitable can be good if you want to save money and/or need peer-to-peer fundraising.
Donorbox could also be an option here if you like the SaaS approach, but remember that you’ll have to give up 1.5% of your donations on top of payment processing fees.
Best WordPress Donation Plugin for Individuals
If you just want a simple solution to create a donation button or form, I think you have plenty of solid options.
For a basic PayPal donation button, consider PayPal Donations. However, if you want an actual donation form, I’d recommend considering Stripe Donations or just using a form plugin such as Gravity Forms or WPForms.
Finally, I also shared a few more niche options, such as the WooCommerce donation plugin or the cryptocurrency donation plugin.
Do you still have any questions about choosing the best donation plugin for WordPress? Let us know in the comments!
We’re offering a way to raise money for good causes with your website without the need for cash donations, worthy a look: adtruism.com WordPress plugin on the way but in the meantime you can add the embed code in a text widget 😉
Great donation plugins. surely use one of them on my site. my developer didn’t tell me about this plugins. I gave order to him. thanks to Wpk i got what i was looking for ….
Glad I could able to help you, Syed.
Been looking for a good/simple Authorize.net donation plugin and have come to the conclusion that none exists. Been dealing with WooCommerce (after purchasing their plugins) for over a month, but nothing works and their customer service sucks. Found a couple more that seemed good, although one doesn’t work at all and the other has such a poor record of support that I’m not feeling lucky enough to give it a go. Anyone know of anything out there?
Have you tried Donation Manager Pro plugin? It accept payments through Authorize.net.
Thanks for the response, Devesh.
I actually ponied up the $15 to try this one out, despite my misgivings about lack of support/updates as evidenced by the replies in the forum. However, I found that it requires a value for MD5 Hash – which my other (working) Authorize.net plugin will not support – so it’s back to square one.
I also tried WP Donate which just came out – however it’s not working at all (won’t store the Login/Transaction Key) and I have yet to hear back from the developer
Hi Dev,
Awesome plug ins! I need a new donate widget; looks like a I found it.
Thanks!
Hi Devesh,
you have gone through great length in giving an overview of these plugins, and I appreciate the effort you put into this.
Great to have a these different options all in one place.
I bookmarked this post to come back to when I want to add a donation button to my site.
Thank you so much for this valuable post!
Cheers,
Yorinda
i want to collect payment through cc-avenue payment gateway how can i do it?
my ngo website is in wordpress and now i am using smart donation.
Thank you so much! I just need one of those!
Easy WordPress Donations seems the best.
Hi, i’m looking a donation plugins with the possibility to donate for example 5euros all month during 5 years… Is it possible ?
Has anybody tried the WordPress plugin – ‘Smart Donations?’
Looks nice. Thanks for sharing, Rex.
Nice work Devesh, here I would like to suggest another free plugin for donation “WP-Donate” using Authorize.net. This plugin provides a form to receive donation as well as donor management at admin area from where admin can see list of donors and information related to each donation.
I want a danation button which does not donate to me, but directly to a charity project.
Is there a plugin for wordpress for that?
REason: I offer some things for free download, but would suggest to donate then a small amount to a specific charity organization, eg. UNICEf.
PayPal Donations Plugin is the best out of list and others are also useful. I would like to suggest another free WordPress plugin which provides rich features including donation form, authorize.net payment gateway, donation list at admin area, donation information, email notification to admin are donor, email content and thank you page management, etc… http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-church-donation. Hope it will help to someone else as well. Thank you for sharing such great list with us.
Thanks for your suggestion, Hardik — I will check it out.
I’ve tried them all. My favorite is Total Donations which isn’t on your list. Seemless is pretty good as well but lacks a progress bar. Easy Donations is not bad but confusing and didn’t do everything we wanted.
Just wanted to add another to your list (shameless self-promo). Check out Give http://wordpress.org/plugins/give It was released about a month ago and we believe it takes the cake. Would love your informed feedback. And thanks for serving the WP Community with this blog.
Hi Matt,
Ah no problem. I have been thinking about including the plugin ever since I saw the post on WPTavern.
Finally added the plugin, thanks for the kick :).
Cheers,
Dev
Wow. That’s excellent, thanks so much for the update and the high praise!
Also just a heads up that Anonymous donations and donor listings, as well as per form goals are all coming to Give soon and each will be part of the Core free plugin. Lots of great things in store for Give.
As to the comment you linked to at the Tavern, I think (as many others commented as well) that he was really mis-informed about the features Give offers out of the box. We find the freemium model (a robust free plugin, with premium Add-ons) to be one of the best ways to ensure that a plugin has a future, is well supported and developed. Lots more can be said about that. Thanks again!
Hello Matt,
Please I am from Nigeria, and I have one site on WordPress.com site, but I am thinking I f Nigerian are allowed to use this plugin on their site? If I self-host my site, can I use this plugin as a Nigerian because PayPal had some restrictions to some countries, in which Nigeria is included. Or is there any payment gateway I can use this plugin with, besides paypal.
Thanks
Have you looked at Total Donations? It’s one of the nicer ones out there. I think it’s one of the best in its price range if not the best overall, but I *could* be a little bias, I’m one of the authors. 🙂
Looks like a great solution, will check it out. Thanks for stopping by, Astried.
Hi Devesh,
Another one to consider adding to your list is Charitable (http://wordpress.org/plugins/charitable/). I’m one of the creators.
We released it in August, but we already have a number of premium extensions available from wpcharitable that add features like anonymous donations, Stripe credit card donations and custom user profile images (instead of using Gravatar). One extension we’re particularly excited about is called Charitable Ambassadors, which allows you to set up peer-to-peer fundraising on your website. Super powerful for organisations that want to leverage their supporters’ network of family and friends.
Cheers,
Eric
Thanks for the suggestion, Eric — I’ll check it out.
Thanks for checking it Devesh! One thing that makes it unique among donation plugins is the way we sell our extension packages. Those can be purchased on a Pay What You Want pricing model, which is something we started doing to support non-profits with tighter budgets.
Hi Devesh,
I only have one question in relation to all of these plugins , especially to Give. If I don´t use the option paypall , how I make the retirement money donation? Since Give and other plugins give the option to Pay pall , and off line would be with checks by post card, but has not be with any of these two ways.
Thank you!
Juan,
If you don’t want to accept PayPal, you can use Authorize, Stripe, or 2Checkout. Here’s a complete list of their payment gateways — https://givewp.com/addons/
Thanks for stopping by.
WPdonations seems to be offline by now
Yup, looks like the plugin has been discontinued. I’ll update the post to reflect that. Thanks for letting me know.
Great. Thanks, I need your help in guiding me which plugin to use peer to peer find raising. I mean individual volunteer raising funds for the organisation. Your suggestion would help us to choose better option.
Thank you.
I’d recommend going with GiveWP or Charitable — both are good solutions with great support.
Appreciate the mention Devesh! Ashok, we created a Charitable extension called Ambassadors specifically to help organisations do peer to peer fundraising campaigns with WordPress: https://www.wpcharitable.com/extensions/charitable-ambassadors/
If you’d like to try a demo, I’m more than happy to arrange that for you.
Just send us a message via https://www.wpcharitable.com/support/
Is it easy to export the donations in Charitable? And is it easy to export also the Ambassadors donations as well?
Hi Vincent,
Yep! There is a donations export tool built into Charitable that works for any donation made through Charitable, including ones to Ambassador campaigns.
Hello guys,
Is there any WordPress plugin to allow creating a Pop UP Donation form whenever you access that webpage?
Similar like accept cookies plugin?
Thank you,
Nicos
As I was looking over the “reviews” of the WP Charitable plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/charitable/), I noticed that nearly all of them (76 of them) are from the same “reviewer”, Eric Daams–the owner. I don’t know if Mr. Daams is responsible for this, but it puts the product in a very bad light.
Hi Richard,
That would be me. 🙂
None of the reviews are written by me, though the redesign on WordPress may make it look that way. Check the “Started by:” bit on the left; that’s who left the review. My name is on the right as the “Last Post” for most reviews because I generally like to reply and say thanks for leaving a review.
Cheers,
Eric
Yes, you are correct Eric. My mistake as I was looking at “last post”. From what I just read on your reviews, you seem to have the strongest supporters out there I’ve ever seen.
Best wishes.