GiveWP vs Givebutter: Which Donation Plugin Is Right for Your Nonprofit?

Choose GiveWP if you want donations and donor records to live on your own WordPress site and you are willing to pay a yearly plan for features like recurring giving. Choose Givebutter if you run events, auctions or peer-to-peer campaigns and want those tools free, with costs covered by optional donor tips instead of a subscription. Both can take donations on a WordPress site, so GiveWP vs Givebutter comes down to fees, where your data lives and who maintains it.

What is the difference between GiveWP and Givebutter?

GiveWP is a WordPress plugin, while Givebutter is a hosted fundraising platform that you embed in your site. Most other differences follow from that.

GiveWP installs on your own website. Forms, campaign pages, donor profiles and reports sit in your WordPress database, and donations go through your own Stripe or PayPal account. Liquid Web has owned it since 2021 (it was renamed Give in 2026), and WordPress.org lists more than 100,000 active installations.

Givebutter runs on its own servers. You build forms, campaign pages, events and auctions in your Givebutter account, and Givebutter processes the payments, keeps donor records in its CRM (donor database) and pays the money out to your bank account.

How do GiveWP and Givebutter compare at a glance?

	GiveWP	Givebutter
Cost to start	Free core plugin	Free account
Platform fee	2% on Stripe donations with the free plugin; none with any paid license	None with donor tips on; 3% with tips off
Paid plans	Essentials $199, Pro $399, Elite $599 a year	Optional Givebutter Plus from $29 a month, billed yearly
Recurring donations	Pro plan and up	Included free
Peer-to-peer fundraising	Elite plan	Included free
Text-to-give	Essentials plan and up	Included free
Events and auctions	Event tickets on donation forms; no auctions in its plans	Ticketed events and auctions included free
Where donor data lives	Your WordPress database	Givebutter's CRM, with CSV export
Payment processing	Your own Stripe or PayPal account	Built in

Prices are at the time of writing (October 2026) and exclude payment processing fees.

How much does GiveWP cost?

The GiveWP plugin is free, and three yearly plans add features. At the time of writing (October 2026):

• Free plugin: donation forms, campaign pages, a donor dashboard, reports and emailed tax-deductible receipts, with Stripe, PayPal, Venmo and offline payments.
• Essentials, $199 a year: adds Square, PDF and annual receipts, and text-to-give.
• Pro, $399 a year: adds recurring donations, fee recovery (donors can cover the processing fee), email marketing connections, Zapier, Salesforce and more than 15 international payment gateways.
• Elite, $599 a year: adds peer-to-peer fundraising, funds and designations, tributes (gifts in honor or memory of someone), custom form fields and a currency switcher.

The catch with the free plugin is a 2% GiveWP platform fee on Stripe donations, on top of Stripe's own processing fee. PayPal donations carry no GiveWP fee. Any paid plan or add-on license removes the 2%, and if that license lapses, the fee returns after 30 days.

At 2%, the fee reaches $199, the price of Essentials, once you raise about $9,950 a year through Stripe. Above that, a paid plan costs less than the fee it removes.

What fees does Givebutter charge?

Givebutter charges no subscription for its core tools; it earns from optional tips that donors can add at checkout. What your organization pays depends on whether you leave those tips on.

• Tips on: no platform fee. Donors are asked to cover the processing fee, and when they don't, Givebutter covers it under what it calls the Givebutter Guarantee, so you keep the full gift. The guarantee has exceptions, including donor-advised fund gifts and card-reader payments.
• Tips off: a flat 3% platform fee on every donation, plus processing at 2.9% + 30¢ for cards and digital wallets, or 1.9% + 30¢ for ACH bank payments (verified nonprofits only). You can require donors to cover these fees, make covering them optional, or absorb them.
• Givebutter Plus (optional): from $29 a month billed yearly, priced by your number of contacts, for automated workflows, outgoing texts, QuickBooks Online sync and phone support. The free plan already includes the CRM with unlimited contacts.

These are Givebutter's Standard prices for accounts opened since September 9, 2025. Older accounts may be on Legacy pricing, where the tips-off fee varies by campaign type.

Which costs less, GiveWP or Givebutter?

It depends on your donors and how much you raise. Here is what happens to a $100 card donation on each, using Stripe's standard rate and assuming the donor covers nothing:

• GiveWP free plugin with Stripe: Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ ($3.20) plus GiveWP's 2% ($2.00), so you receive $94.80.
• GiveWP paid plan with Stripe: only Stripe's $3.20, so you receive $96.80, plus the yearly plan cost.
• Givebutter, tips on: you receive $100.
• Givebutter, tips off: the 3% platform fee ($3.00) plus $3.20 in processing, so you receive $93.80.

Stripe offers discounted processing to registered nonprofits when at least 80% of their Stripe volume is tax-deductible donations, which lowers GiveWP's cost if you qualify. On paper, Givebutter's tip model costs your organization the least, but your donors see a tip request from Givebutter. If you would rather avoid that, a GiveWP paid plan gives you a fixed yearly cost.

How does Givebutter work with WordPress?

Givebutter connects to WordPress through its Givebutter Widget plugin, which embeds widgets you build in your Givebutter dashboard: a donation form, a button, a goal bar or a signup form. Donors can give or buy tickets without leaving your page, and changes you make in Givebutter update the widget automatically.

Setup is short: install the plugin, enter your Givebutter account ID in its settings, then paste a widget's shortcode into a block. On WordPress.com, installing plugins requires a Business or eCommerce plan.

The plugin stores nothing in WordPress. Donations, donor records and receipts all live in Givebutter, so your website and your fundraising are managed in two places.

Where does your donor data live?

With GiveWP, donor data lives in your WordPress database; with Givebutter, it lives in Givebutter's CRM.

GiveWP's own pitch is that your donor history moves with you if you change hosts. The trade-off is responsibility: your site now stores donors' names, emails and giving history, so WordPress, GiveWP and its add-ons need regular updates, backups and security checks. An untested update can also break a donation form mid-campaign (see 7 common WordPress update failures).

Givebutter looks after its own platform's hosting and security. You can export contacts and transactions to CSV, but your records, recurring plans and payouts sit with Givebutter, so think about how you would move them before you commit.

Which is better for recurring donations and tax receipts?

Givebutter includes recurring giving for free, while GiveWP needs the Pro plan. Both send receipts automatically.

• Recurring donations: Givebutter offers monthly, quarterly and annual recurring gifts on every account. GiveWP's recurring donations start with Pro ($399 a year) and let donors give daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, manage their own subscriptions, and have failed payments retried automatically.
• Receipts: the free GiveWP plugin emails tax-deductible receipts, and paid plans add PDF and annual receipts. Givebutter emails a receipt after every donation and ticket purchase, including your EIN, and verified nonprofits can show the deductible amount when a gift includes goods or services.

Which is better for events, peer-to-peer and text-to-give?

Givebutter, if those are central to how you raise money. Its free plan includes ticketed events (in person, virtual or hybrid), silent auctions, peer-to-peer and team fundraising, and text-to-donate, where supporters text your keyword to 53-555 and get a link to your campaign. Its mobile app handles event check-in and in-person payments.

GiveWP covers this ground in pieces: text-to-give comes with Essentials, peer-to-peer with Elite, and the core plugin can sell event tickets through a donation form. Auctions are not in its plans. For a school fundraiser, a gala or a fun run, Givebutter usually means fewer extra tools.

Are there other donation plugins worth considering?

Two are worth a look if neither fits:

• Charitable is a WordPress plugin like GiveWP. Its free Lite version adds a 3% platform fee to each donation; paid plans, listed from $149 a year at the time of writing, remove it.
• Donorbox is a hosted platform like Givebutter, without donor tips. Its free Standard plan charges a 2.95% platform fee on donation forms (3.95% on event tickets) plus processing.

GiveWP vs Givebutter: which should you choose?

Choose GiveWP if:

• your website runs on WordPress and you want donor records on your own site
• you prefer a fixed yearly cost to asking donors for a tip
• your giving is mostly online donations and recurring gifts rather than events
• someone will keep the site updated, backed up and secure

Choose Givebutter if:

• you run events, auctions, peer-to-peer or text-to-give campaigns
• you want recurring giving and a donor CRM without a paid plan
• you are comfortable with donor data and payouts living on Givebutter's platform
• you want fundraising managed outside your website

A small charity that only needs a donate button can start with either: GiveWP's free plugin with PayPal avoids the 2% Stripe fee, and Givebutter avoids platform fees while tips stay on.

If you choose GiveWP, your donation forms are only as reliable as the WordPress site under them. WP Resolve's care plans start at $79 a month, with weekly plugin updates and visual checks, daily off-site backups and malware scanning. Not sure what shape your site is in? Request a free site health check covering updates, backups, security and speed, or text (916) 209-0917.

Frequently asked questions