Ways to accept donations on your WordPress site

Whether you run a nonprofit, a faith-based organization, or a cause-driven community group, accepting donations directly through your WordPress site is one of the best ways to keep donors engaged and on your terms. Sending someone away to a third-party page to complete a gift creates friction, dilutes your brand, and gives away traffic you worked hard to earn. The good news is that WordPress gives you several strong options for handling donations, from flexible form builders to purpose-built fundraising plugins to enterprise-level platforms that embed right into your pages.

Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is one of the most versatile form builders available for WordPress, and for organizations that want total control over the look and flow of their donation forms, it is an excellent starting point. Rather than relying on a dedicated donation plugin, Gravity Forms lets you build a fully custom form and then connect it to a payment gateway of your choice. You can set up fields for suggested donation amounts, allow donors to enter their own amount, collect tribute information, and configure recurring giving, all with drag-and-drop ease.

Gravity Forms does not charge any transaction fees based on usage. You pay one flat annual fee for your license, and the payment processor you choose handles its own fees separately. The plugin is available at three tiers, with the Pro license being the most common entry point for organizations that want to accept payments. The Elite license, priced at $259 per year, gives you access to all official payment add-ons including Stripe, PayPal, Square, Mollie, and more. Many of these payment gateways offer non-profit discounts, but you have to reach out to them to get set up with that.

When it comes to payment gateways, Gravity Forms offers five official add-ons, each suited to a slightly different situation.

Stripe is the most popular starting point and works exceptionally well for donation forms. With the Gravity Forms Stripe add-on, you can capture one-time payments or set up recurring subscriptions and donations. It supports all major credit cards, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, Link, and ACH debit payments.

PayPal Checkout is a strong alternative, particularly for organizations whose donors skew older or less tech-savvy, since PayPal is a name most people already trust. The PayPal Checkout add-on supports over 100 currencies and 200 countries, and it gives donors the option to pay through their PayPal accounts or via credit card and digital wallet without needing an account. It also supports Venmo payments and Buy Now Pay Later options for staggered installments.

Square works well if your organization also processes in-person donations at events, since the same account handles both your online forms and your point-of-sale terminal. Square integrates with Gravity Forms to let you accept credit cards, debit cards, contactless payments including Apple Pay and Google Pay, electronic checks, and gift cards.

Mollie is worth considering if you have a global or European donor base. Mollie is a payment processor based in Europe that accepts common European payment methods like iDEAL, Klarna, and Bancomat in addition to major credit cards and digital wallets. One important limitation to note is that the Gravity Forms Mollie add-on only supports one-time payments at this time, so it is not the right choice if recurring giving is a priority for your organization.

2Checkout rounds out the official add-on lineup and is geared more toward organizations with an international payment need. It is available on the Elite and Nonprofit licenses. For most North American nonprofits, Stripe or PayPal will be the more practical first choice.

It is also worth noting that Authorize.net is now considered a legacy add-on by Gravity Forms and will not be receiving further updates.

Overall, Gravity Forms is best suited to organizations that already use the plugin for other forms and want to consolidate tools, or those that need a highly customized donation experience that a dedicated donation plugin might not accommodate.

GiveWP

If you want a WordPress plugin built from the ground up specifically for accepting donations, GiveWP is the clear leader in the space. It powers more than 100,000 nonprofit websites worldwide, and its focus is entirely on fundraising, which means its features, reporting, and donor management tools are purpose-built rather than adapted from a general form builder.

The free version on WordPress.org already includes customizable donation forms, donor management, and both Stripe and PayPal gateways with no platform transaction fees. When using Stripe on the free plan, there is an additional 2% platform fee on top of the standard processor fees, which goes away once you upgrade to a paid plan.

The visual form builder is block-based and produces professional-looking donation forms without touching code. GiveWP supports features like recurring giving, campaign goals, progress tracking, and real-time reporting, all inside your WordPress site. Donors can also be given their own portal to view their giving history, which helps with retention.

GiveWP integrates with a wide variety of payment gateways including Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal, 2Checkout, Braintree, Mollie, PayFast, Square, and many more. Premium features like recurring donations, peer-to-peer fundraising, fee recovery, and tribute giving are all available as add-ons or bundled into paid plans.

Pricing starts at $149 per year for the Basic tier, $349 per year for Plus, and $499 per year for Pro. Individual add-ons can also be purchased separately if you only need one or two specific features, with prices ranging from $79 to $199 per year depending on the add-on.

GiveWP also integrates with Mailchimp, Salesforce, and other tools your organization may already be using, and it has a WooCommerce add-on that allows you to display a donation upsell at checkout if you run an online store. For most small to mid-size nonprofits that want everything managed within WordPress, GiveWP is the most capable and cost-effective option available.

Third-Party Platforms

Some organizations, especially those that have already invested in a donor CRM or enterprise fundraising platform, will want to embed donation forms from those systems directly into their WordPress site rather than running everything through a WordPress-native plugin. This approach keeps all your donor data in one place, avoids duplicating records across systems, and takes advantage of the advanced reporting and relationship management tools those platforms provide.

Bloomerang

Bloomerang is a donor management CRM designed specifically for nonprofits, with a reputation for being approachable for small to mid-size organizations. It provides embeddable donation forms that you can style to match your website, along with a JavaScript library for developers who want more control over form behavior, and a well-documented REST API for more advanced integrations.

To embed a Bloomerang donation form on your WordPress site, you grab the embed code snippet directly from your Bloomerang account and paste it into your WordPress page using an HTML block in the block editor. The form loads as an iframe, meaning it renders visually on your page while the transaction is processed securely through Bloomerang’s infrastructure. One thing to be aware of is that on WordPress.com hosted sites, iframe embeds require a Business plan or higher. On a self-hosted WordPress.org site, there are no such restrictions.

Bloomerang’s CRM pricing starts at $125 per month, with fundraising tools starting at $40 per month, all billed annually. Pricing scales based on the number of records in your database, so smaller organizations with fewer constituents will pay less. Bloomerang does not publish a full pricing breakdown publicly, so most organizations go through a demo and quote process.

CharityEngine

CharityEngine is a more robust, enterprise-level fundraising and donor management platform aimed at larger nonprofits running multi-channel campaigns. It handles everything from email marketing and direct mail to peer-to-peer fundraising, events, and advocacy, all inside one system.

To embed a CharityEngine donation form on your WordPress site, you first install your CharityEngine Public API key by adding a script tag to the header of your site, then use CharityEngine’s embeddable widget system to generate donation forms that can be placed on any page using HTML or JavaScript. Inside the platform, you build the widget by navigating to the Online App, selecting Embeddable Widgets, and configuring the form’s name, funds, email templates, and payment gateway before copying the embed code to paste onto your WordPress page.

CharityEngine does not publish pricing publicly and requires a custom quote, as it is priced for organizations with significant fundraising volume and complexity. It is generally not the right fit for small nonprofits, but for organizations running direct response campaigns, high-volume sustainer programs, or complex multi-channel fundraising operations, it is one of the more capable platforms available.

Choosing the Right Approach

The best solution depends on where you are as an organization. If you are just getting started and want something affordable and entirely within WordPress, GiveWP’s free tier gets you online quickly with no platform fees. If you already use Gravity Forms and want to add a donation form without introducing another plugin, connecting it to Stripe or PayPal is a natural next step. And if your organization has outgrown simple WordPress plugins and already uses a CRM like Bloomerang or a platform like CharityEngine, embedding those forms directly into your site keeps your donor data clean and your fundraising operations unified.