The best WordPress plugin for churches
The best WordPress plugin for churches is Nonprofit Manager, if your church wants giving, membership, newsletters, and events in one free system with no percentage taken off the collection plate. Most church software instead charges either a giving fee, a per-module subscription, or both. Here’s what that actually costs, and where a dedicated church platform still earns its price.
How we priced this: every fee below comes from each vendor’s own pricing page, checked in July 2026. Giving-fee percentages are the number that matters most here. They scale with how much your congregation actually gives, rather than staying fixed like a subscription.
Quick answer
- Best free, no giving fee: Nonprofit Manager
- Best all-in-one church app and giving: Tithe.ly
- Best à la carte church management: Planning Center
- Best for larger churches, quote-only: Pushpay
What a percentage fee actually costs
Church giving platforms are usually priced as a percentage of what comes in, on top of standard card processing. Tithe.ly charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per card transaction, 1% plus 30 cents for bank transfers. Planning Center charges 2.15% plus 30 cents on cards, though its ACH bank transfers run a flat 30 cents with no percentage at all. Nonprofit Manager takes 0% of that. You pay only your payment processor’s standard rate, same as anyone would.
That percentage sounds small until you run it against a real budget. A congregation giving $250,000 a year through Tithe.ly’s card processing pays roughly $7,250 a year in platform fees alone. That’s on top of whatever card-network cost is already baked into that 2.9%. Over five years, that’s more than $36,000 that could have gone to ministry, missions, or building upkeep instead of a giving platform’s cut.
| Platform | Card giving fee | On $100,000 a year in giving |
|---|---|---|
| Tithe.ly | 2.9% + $0.30/transaction | roughly $2,900+ |
| Planning Center | 2.15% + $0.30/transaction | roughly $2,150+ |
| Pushpay | not published, contact sales | unknown |
| Nonprofit Manager | 0% (processor fee only) | processor fee only |
The options
Nonprofit Manager, best free with no giving fee
Free giving through PayPal, Venmo, and Stripe with no platform cut, plus membership tracking, a newsletter, and an events calendar in the same plugin. Pro adds recurring giving that actually runs on a schedule, weekly or monthly, instead of relying on a member to remember to give each time. It also adds custom fields for tracking things like small-group or ministry-team assignment. Best for a small to mid-size church that wants the basics covered without a monthly church-software bill. Here’s the full giving-fee comparison.
Tithe.ly, best all-in-one church app
A hosted platform bundling giving, church management, a branded mobile app, and a website builder, with an All-Access plan listed around $119 a month. Giving itself is free to set up but carries the 2.9% card fee either way, on top of the monthly subscription. The branded mobile app is the real differentiator here. It’s the piece a WordPress plugin genuinely can’t replicate without a separate app-building service. Want a branded app and fine with the giving fee? This fits. Nonprofit Manager compared to full church management platforms.
Planning Center, best à la carte
A suite of separate modules (People, Giving, Check-Ins, Services, Groups) each priced by its own usage, so you only pay for what you turn on. People is free and unlimited. Giving starts free under 10 gifts a month, then climbs a set price ladder based on transaction volume. Check-Ins and Services are priced per active person per month, so the total bill depends entirely on which modules a given church actually turns on. Good for a church that wants to build its own stack piece by piece rather than buying a bundle it won’t fully use.
Pushpay, best for larger churches
A polished giving and church-management platform aimed at bigger churches, with custom mobile apps and dedicated onboarding support as part of the pitch. Its pricing and fee percentage aren’t published anywhere, and you get a number only after a sales call. That typically means it’s scaled for churches with six-figure-plus giving budgets rather than a small congregation. Have the staff to negotiate a contract? Fine. Don’t? Harder to budget for.
Why recurring tithing matters more than one-time gifts
Most churches don’t run on one-time gifts. They run on weekly or monthly tithing from a base of regular givers, which is exactly the giving pattern that a percentage-based fee compounds against hardest. A member tithing $100 a week through Tithe.ly’s card rate loses roughly $150 a year to the platform fee alone. That’s money that never reaches the offering. Multiply that across fifty or a hundred regular givers and the fee stops being a rounding error.
Nonprofit Manager Pro’s recurring donations run on Stripe subscriptions, not a one-time charge repeated by hand. A weekly tither’s gift processes automatically, on schedule, without anyone re-entering a card number. If a card expires or a payment fails, the giver gets notified. The alternative is the church quietly losing that week’s tithe, with no one noticing until reviewing the books months later.
Switching from Tithe.ly or Planning Center
Both platforms let you export giving history and contact records, Tithe.ly from its reporting dashboard, Planning Center from the People module’s export tool. Bring over names, emails, and giving history for your records. Then set up new recurring gifts inside Nonprofit Manager Pro rather than trying to transfer live subscriptions directly, since the two platforms don’t share a payment processor connection.
Plan on a short overlap, typically one giving cycle, where both the old and new systems are technically live. Announce the change from the pulpit and in the bulletin. A tither who doesn’t know to set up a new recurring gift is a tither whose giving quietly lapses.
What a church actually needs versus what it’s often sold
Church software sales pitches lean hard on features a small congregation rarely uses day to day, like AI-driven sermon analytics or predictive giving models. Strip those out and what most churches actually need is simpler: a way to accept a gift without a form breaking on someone’s phone, a member list that’s easy enough to keep current, a newsletter that goes out reliably, and an events calendar the whole congregation can see. Nonprofit Manager covers exactly that list, nothing more and nothing less.
Where a dedicated ChMS earns its cost is the operational side a website plugin was never built for: staffed check-in stations on a Sunday morning, background-checked volunteer scheduling for kids’ ministry, or a mobile app your congregation downloads to give from their phone without touching a browser. If none of those describe your church’s actual bottleneck, you’re paying for capability you won’t use.
Our pick for the best WordPress plugin for churches
For a small to mid-size church, Nonprofit Manager is the best value. No percentage taken from giving, membership, newsletters, and events included free. Be honest about the trade-off: it isn’t a full church management system with check-in stations or volunteer scheduling. Need those? Look at Planning Center or Tithe.ly for that piece specifically.
Compare by category
See how Nonprofit Manager stacks up in other areas:
- Best WordPress plugin for donations
- Best membership plugin for nonprofits
- Best WordPress plugin for nonprofits
- Best newsletter plugin for nonprofits
- Best plugin for clubs and associations
Frequently asked questions
Does Nonprofit Manager take a cut of church donations?
No. It takes 0% of what you collect. You pay only your payment processor’s standard rate, the same rate you’d pay with any tool.
Can a church run online giving on WordPress instead of Tithe.ly or Pushpay?
Yes. Nonprofit Manager accepts one-time gifts through PayPal, Venmo, and Stripe for free. Recurring giving is available in Pro, all running on the church’s own WordPress site.
Does Nonprofit Manager replace full church management software?
Not entirely. It covers membership tracking, giving, newsletters, and events. It doesn’t do check-in stations, kids’ ministry security, or volunteer scheduling the way a dedicated ChMS like Planning Center does.
Can a church set up recurring weekly tithing?
Yes, in Nonprofit Manager Pro. A tither picks an amount and frequency once, and Stripe charges automatically going forward, with the church notified if a payment fails.
Can we move our giving history from Tithe.ly or Planning Center?
Yes, both let you export contacts and giving history. Recurring gifts themselves need to be re-created in the new system though, since the two platforms don’t share a payment processor connection.
Does a small church really need a percentage-based giving platform?
Usually not just for giving. The percentage fee mainly buys convenience features like a branded mobile app or built-in check-in stations. A church that doesn’t need those gets the same giving functionality for free elsewhere.
Fees and prices are from each vendor’s official pages as of July 2026 and can change. The $100,000 example is a round illustration, not a quote.