The best WordPress plugin for donations
The best WordPress donation plugin comes down to one question. Do you want just a donation form, or donations tied to the rest of your organization? For most small nonprofits, Nonprofit Manager is the best pick. It takes donations with no added platform fee, and it keeps your donors, members, newsletters, and events in one place. Run large fundraising campaigns? A dedicated tool like GiveWP goes deeper. Here are the top options with their real costs.
How we priced this: every fee and dollar figure below comes from each vendor’s own pricing page, checked in July 2026. Where a plugin discounts the first year and raises the price at renewal, we use the renewal number, since that’s what you actually pay every year after the first. We checked again before publishing and will update this page if a vendor changes pricing.
Quick answer
- Best free all-in-one: Nonprofit Manager
- Best for big fundraising campaigns: GiveWP
- Best quick hosted widget: Donorbox
- Best free PayPal button: PayPal Donations
The one number that quietly costs you the most: platform fees
Before the list, here’s the thing that adds up. Many donation tools take a percentage of every gift as their own platform fee, on top of the normal payment-processing fee your bank charges. Over a year, that’s real money out of your programs.
| Tool | Platform fee it takes | On $50,000 a year in gifts |
|---|---|---|
| Fundraise Up | 4% | about $2,000 |
| Donorbox (free plan) | 2.95% | about $1,475 |
| GiveWP (free, through Stripe) | 2% | about $1,000 |
| Nonprofit Manager | 0% | $0 |
That fee sits separate from, and on top of, the standard processing fee. Stripe and PayPal each take roughly 2% plus a fixed amount per gift, and registered nonprofits can often apply for lower rates. Nonprofit Manager adds nothing of its own. You pay only your processor.
It’s easy to wave off 2% or 4% as small. Run the math over a few years and it stops being small. A nonprofit raising $50,000 a year through Donorbox’s free plan pays roughly $1,475 a year in platform fees alone. Over five years, that’s more than $7,000, enough to fund a part-time coordinator for a summer, print a year of mailers, or cover the cost of the software itself several times over. The fee doesn’t go away as you grow, either. It scales right along with your fundraising, so the tool that looked cheapest at $10,000 a year in donations can end up the most expensive one once you’re raising $100,000.
The best WordPress plugin for donations: your options
Nonprofit Manager, best free all-in-one
Free. One-time donations through PayPal, Venmo, and Stripe, with no platform fee. Recurring monthly gifts come with Pro at a flat yearly price. And it goes beyond donations, your donors sit in the same system as your members, newsletters, and events. A gift from a donor who’s also a member updates one record instead of living in two disconnected tools that never talk to each other. Best for small nonprofits and clubs that want one tool instead of five. Here’s how to set up donations.
GiveWP, best for dedicated fundraising
The deepest fundraising plugin, with peer-to-peer campaigns, fee recovery, and a big library of gateway add-ons. The free core takes one-time gifts only and adds a 2% fee on donations through Stripe, and recurring donations now require the Pro plan at $399 a year. GiveWP moved to Liquid Web in 2026, and its plans now stack: Essentials at $199 a year, Pro at $399, Elite at $599, each unlocking more of the fundraising toolkit. Best if fundraising is your main focus and you have the budget. Nonprofit Manager compared to GiveWP.
Charitable, solid WordPress-native donation plugin
A WordPress-native donation plugin with a free core and paid tiers from $149 a year, climbing to $199, $399, and $599 at the top. A good middle ground if you want donation-specific features and your data on your own site, and its intro-year pricing (as low as $69 the first year) can make it look cheaper than it renews at, so check the renewal price before you commit. Nonprofit Manager compared to Charitable.
Donorbox, best quick hosted widget
Free to start and fast to embed. But it’s a hosted widget, so your donor data lives on Donorbox rather than your site, and it takes a 2.95% platform fee (the $150 a month Pro plan cuts that to 1.75%, and a custom Premium tier goes to 1.6%). Payment processing is separate and additional on top of that, the same Stripe or PayPal rate anyone pays. Want a drop-in form and don’t mind the fee? This is your pick. Nonprofit Manager compared to Donorbox.
PayPal Donations, simplest free button
A free plugin that adds a PayPal donation button. One-time only, PayPal only. Fine for the simplest case, and it doesn’t add a platform fee of its own. Nonprofit Manager does the same for free and adds Venmo, Stripe, recurring giving, and the rest of your organization.
Fundraise Up, a fully hosted checkout
A polished hosted checkout widget with a flat 4% platform fee on every gift (5% on crypto donations), no subscription cost. Simple pricing and a clean donor experience, at the highest platform-fee rate of anything on this page. Worth a look if the hosted checkout experience matters more to you than the fee, less of a fit if you’d rather keep the difference.
Switching from a hosted donation tool
Moving off Donorbox, Fundraise Up, or a similar hosted widget is more straightforward than it looks. Install Nonprofit Manager free, turn on donations in the setup wizard, and connect PayPal, Venmo, or Stripe. Add a donation form to any page. Your existing payment processor account (Stripe or PayPal) stays exactly the same, since you’re not switching who processes the payment, only which plugin builds the form and stops taking a cut. Run both side by side for a week if you want a safety net: point new visitors at the Nonprofit Manager form, keep the old widget live as a fallback, and retire it once you’re confident. There’s no donor data to migrate out of a hosted platform, since new gifts start fresh in your own WordPress database going forward.
Our pick
Running a small nonprofit or club? Nonprofit Manager is the best value: donations with no platform fee, plus the members, newsletters, and events you’d otherwise pay four more tools for. A larger organization running complex campaigns? Look hard at GiveWP. Somewhere in the middle, raising real money but not yet ready to manage members and donors in the same system? Charitable is a fair second choice, donation-focused and WordPress-native like Nonprofit Manager, just narrower in scope and priced accordingly. See everything the free plugin does on the all-in-one plugin for small nonprofits.
Compare by category
See how Nonprofit Manager stacks up in other areas:
- Best membership plugin for nonprofits
- Best WordPress plugin for nonprofits
- Best newsletter plugin for nonprofits
- Best WordPress plugin for churches
- Best plugin for clubs and associations
Frequently asked questions
Does Nonprofit Manager take a fee on donations?
No. Nonprofit Manager takes 0% of what you raise. You pay only your payment processor’s standard rate, unlike Donorbox, Fundraise Up, or GiveWP’s free tier, which each add their own percentage on top.
Can I accept recurring monthly donations for free?
One-time donations are free. Recurring monthly giving is part of Nonprofit Manager Pro, at a flat yearly price with no platform fee added.
Do I need GiveWP if I already use Nonprofit Manager?
Only if you run large, complex fundraising campaigns with peer-to-peer pages and deep gateway options. For most small nonprofits, Nonprofit Manager’s donation tools cover the need without the added fee.
Is the free version actually free, or is there a catch?
It’s genuinely free with no time limit and no feature countdown. The honest catch, stated plainly: the free version handles one-time gifts only. Recurring monthly giving, automated donor emails, and custom fields are Pro features, priced flat per year rather than as a cut of what you raise.
Can I move from Donorbox or GiveWP without losing donor history?
Your payment processor (Stripe or PayPal) doesn’t change, so nothing about how you get paid is disrupted. What doesn’t carry over automatically is donor history stored inside the old hosted platform. New gifts start recording in Nonprofit Manager’s own database from the day you switch, and Pro can import an existing contact list from a CSV or spreadsheet export if you want your donor list in the new system too.
Does Nonprofit Manager support Venmo?
Yes, alongside PayPal and Stripe, in the free version. None of the other tools compared here support Venmo directly.
Fees and prices are from each provider’s official pages as of July 2026 and can change. The $50,000 examples are round illustrations, not a quote.