Payment & donation processing

What does it cost to take a payment?

Put in an amount and every figure below recalculates — what each provider charges on a payment that size, and what actually reaches you.

Rates last checked September 8, 2026

What we build on

Stripe

  • It is what our WordPress and Astro integrations are built around, so it connects cleanly to a site we build and we can support it when something goes wrong.
  • The nonprofit rate is available on application, and bank transfer (ACH) is capped at $5.00 per payment, which matters once you start taking larger gifts.
  • No monthly fee and no contract, so it costs nothing to keep available alongside anything else you use.

Stripe is not the single cheapest line on this page, and we have not tried to make it look that way. But the nearest alternative undercuts it by one hundredth of a percentage point and a penny a transaction — around fifty cents a month on $2,500 of card volume, and never more than three cents in every hundred dollars. At that margin price is not the thing that should decide it. Whether the system fits your website, your records and the people who have to use it is.

And we are not paid to say it. Lowthian Design takes no commission, referral fee or revenue share from any provider on this page, Stripe included. We recommend it because it is what we can build on and support, and for no other reason.

These fees do not include one-time — and sometimes recurring — fees for the WordPress or Joomla plugins that connect a payment provider to your website. Rates are checked periodically, but confirm with the provider before making a final decision.

Total fees is the cost of one payment — the percentage plus the fixed fee. Any monthly charge is shown in its own column and is not added in, because whether it is worth paying depends entirely on how many payments you take.

Nonprofit rates have to be applied for and approved — none of them comes with a standard signup.

We are not fans of the donor tip prompt. Some platforms are free, or nearly free, to you because the donation form asks your donor for a tip on top of their gift — often with the platform's own name and branding in front of them while it does it. It can work, and for some organizations it works well. But it adds a second ask at the moment somebody is already giving you money, and it puts another company's advertising on your donation page. That is a trade worth making deliberately rather than by accident, which is why the rows that do it are marked.