Small church online giving should be approached with wisdom. Intimate congregations may feel a bit intimidated by the options for online giving. What pastors and leaders in these types of churches may not realize is that you don’t need internal IT teams or even a church website to activate online giving.
There are more options than ever for churches of any size to provide online giving. If you’ve tried to find online giving platforms for a small church, or simply want to ensure that you are using the best giving platform for your church, read on.
How to Compare Small Church Online Giving Platforms
The team at Kindrid has put together this handy list of church online giving options that can specifically be used by smaller churches, even those with fifty people or fewer. You may be surprised to learn how easy and affordable it is, and how it really does meet a felt need for both your people and church budget.
When you assess your options for online tithing or online giving, you need to look at it with a few criteria in mind:
- How many people are in your congregation and will be regularly using the platform?
- What is the fee structure like, both for subscriptions and per transaction?
- How easy (or difficult) will it be to set up and manage online giving?
- How does the platform facilitate recurring givers and regular tithers?
- What kind of training or customer service will be provided?
If you already have online giving set up, you also need to consider:
- Will it be difficult or relatively easy to transition online giving to a new platform?
To give you an easy to interpret comparison of online giving platforms, here’s a handy table that compares pricing and features for all of the top giving apps, sites, text-based systems and more. You’ll quickly see that some of these cater to smaller churches, or allow you to scale pricing based on user count.
Small Church Online Giving: Platform Comparison
|
Features |
Realm™ |
Planning Center |
Kindrid |
||
|
Price structure |
$19-$99/month |
$29-$179/month |
$14-$199/month |
$19-$49/month |
$199+ |
|
Setup fee |
$149 setup cost |
$79-$350 setup cost |
None |
None |
$199 setup cost |
|
Transaction fees |
2.9% + $0.30 per transaction 1% + $0.30 for ACH/Bank 3.5% + $0.30 for AMEX |
Undisclosed online |
2.15% + $0.30 for debit/credit 0% + $0.25 for ACH Note: fees vary based on USD/CAD and all payments are processed by Stripe |
3% + $0.35 for debit/credit 1% + $0.35 for ACH/eCheck Note: these vary depending on the plan |
3.5%-3.8% for debit/credit 2.9% + $0.30 for ACH |
|
Mobile |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Online |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Kiosk |
✔ |
✔ |
X |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Text |
Add $19/month |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Customer service |
Email & phone |
Email & phone |
Online support and training |
Email, phone, text, coaching |
Online support and phone line |
|
ACH bank transfers |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Debit/credit cards |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Manual entry |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Recurring gifts and payments |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
“Cover the fee” option for givers |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
X |
|
Data import/export |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Training |
Help with setup Open customer service lines |
Help with launch Videos |
Online materials and Slack |
Help with setup and launch Videos Training articles Coaching |
Online materials |
|
Headquarters in |
Tennessee |
South Carolina |
California |
Tennessee |
New Zealand |
Tithe.ly
Tithe.ly is a popular giving platform, used by many medium and large churches. The subscription costs are, on average, higher than similar platforms. In addition to the features listed above, Tithe.ly also integrates with Quickbooks, offers a daily bank deposit and has an iOS + Android mobile giving app. If you are looking at Tithe.ly for a small church, pay close attention to the additional fees for added features. For instance, messaging fees which increase once you get over 200, or setup fees for any of the church apps.
Realm™
Realm is an online giving platform powered by ACS Technologies. It has a comprehensive set of features, covering most of what a church could need: online giving, mobile giving, check scanning and batch entries, SMS text giving and manual entry for cash gifts. There is a specific feature that facilitates pledge drives, providing givers with the chance to give toward targeted amounts. Individual donors can also give by creating and budgeting their own pledges, which helps them time out their giving and pledge to numerous multiple campaigns and funds with start dates and end dates. Giving receipts and automatic system emails make it easy to thank givers and confirm that the funds went through.
Planning Center
Planning Center has a set of software tools, including online giving software. The Planning Center Giving platform accommodates text-to-give, online interface or cash/check physical donations. There is also a mobile app. Simple data management and reporting make it easy to see all the stats on a handy dashboard, and filter both by donor and donation. Donor profiles are connected and easily linked both to statements and donor pledges to track campaigns or recurring giving. Note that Planning Center has a whole set of tools, so if you are plugged into the rest of their platform, you may be able to use Giving for free as part of your contract.
Pushpay
Pushpay is based in New Zealand and provides a fully customizable mobile church app and digital giving platform. It is on the higher-end, cost-wise. There are numerous additional features, including the Church Community Builder, which provides growth and engagement tools for churches. It has the standard offerings for a giving platform and also has support materials for users (churchgoers) in addition to customer support for church leaders. Pushpay is an industry leader and very large organization, with investors and a big footprint worldwide. This may make it more difficult to adapt to a small church setting or make it harder to find individualized support for setup or ongoing use.
Kindrid
Kindrid provides a full 30-day free trial, which is plenty of time to explore all of our features and learn if this is a good giving platform for your small church. Our goal is to help you unleash generosity and growth. Like most other platforms, we do require a $10 monthly minimum in processing fees, which means that you need to process about $300 a month in gifts. That is the only fee you’ll pay during your 30-day trial.
Compare Kindrid to other platforms, including PayPal
Additionally, we have (we think) the best support team in the world. Call us, text us, email us: we are standing by to make this giving service work for your church. We work with small churches all of the time. Our team works with you to ensure you understand how the system operates, that it can integrate it into what you do, and you don’t lose a single recurring giver in the process. We know that small churches count on every tithe and gift. Our shared goal is to let you be on mission, while we take care of this part of church operations. Through this partnership, we are all working on kingdom things.
Is There a Free Online Giving Platform?
We wanted to make a quick note about this: online giving will never be fully free forever. Almost all of these platforms offer a free trial of their services, which is what you will see advertised on their site. For them to function, they have to cover transactional fees and more, which require you to pay to use the product. As you can see above, what you pay will vary based on user count, transactions, and other factors.
Kindrid Online Giving for Small Churches
To create this useful list, we’ve paid close attention to the fine print for all of these giving platforms. While many of them provide quality services, not all of them are attuned to the nuanced needs of a smaller congregation. If you want to explore Kindrid giving services for your small church, reach out. Ours is a consultative approach, and we offer unlimited access to our team. It’s our goal to take giving off your plate, and the offering plate in general, and enable your congregation to give digitally with ease. Contact us to learn more.
