Online fundraising for nonprofits, businesses & individuals
4.4/5 (118 reviews)Pros
Price and ability to embed on my site.
Cons
Limited donation tracking and donor outreach tools.
Hello donate.ly! We have been so much happier with your service now that our congregants can manage their own giving. This is huge! One thing that's been difficult is figuring out the best way to export data from donate.ly, say, to a spread sheet. We've not been able to do this successfully and it makes life more difficult.
Pros
The user interface for the giver is easy to use and clean, and looks good on our website. We love that there's an option to make a recurring gift and that we can fairly easily change the interface
Cons
It's been difficult to mine the information from donately (emails, data, etc) for use in our database. Also, donate.ly doesn't alert us if someone's recurring gift stops going through (credit card change, etc)
Hi Emily!
Thanks for your response. We're glad you're on Donately and we're happy to help solve any of the issues you're experiencing. You can export any donation or donor data from your Donately dashboard. See this article for more information (http://help.donately.com/all-things-donations/donation-data/exporting-data). Additionally, if you go to Settings -> Account Admins, you can sign up for emails when recurring donations fail.
I hope that helps!
This site allows us to easily collect donations for our non-profit organization. We are in the process of exclusively using this site to collect donations in conjunction with Stripe because it is so much better than any other site we have ever used.
One con is that donation form codes have to be completely updated on our website, rather than just updating them through Donately and having them automatically update on our site.
Pros
Extremely easy for our customers to use!
Great customer service!
Cons
Not the best at allowing us to view all donors and donations at once.
Sometimes the filtering is really slow.
Form codes cannot automatically update on our website and have to be completely replaced after making a change to the form.
You can only link one bank account to where the donations to go.
Over all great company they took us from a prehistoric out dated giving software to something social media friendly, ascetically pleasing and a platform our highly valued volunteers can actually use! Thanks Donately for changing our lives!
P.S. Send me a Amazon gift card or two ;-)
Pros
Easy. user friendly. continues to improve.
Cons
Some functionalities are not totally there that we would like. For example If I'm a long term giver to someones fundraiser Id like to print our my end of year giving report or a selected date range. On the Organizations side I can do this but on the givers side not so much.
Coming into using Donately, we didn't really have anything else to compare it to as this is our first go at an online donor database.
There are a lot of positives of Doantely (including the automatic receipts, it is so easy to use, our donors seem to like it so far!) and a few things our team has found challenging. (isn't really clear on how donors can log-in on their own and change information, can't easy merge contacts..etc.)
But anything we haven't liked, your team has been so willing to try and implement the changes as quick as possible. We LOVE that you all are so easy to get ahold of.
Pros
Easy to use and easy to communicate!
Cons
Not as clear on how donors can re-access their log-in. We have had donors accidentally create multiple accounts which then can't be merged into one.
We were loosing donations due to our clients problems with Paypal's support of immoral policies. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know that other options existed. Then I found Donately, not only did my clients appreciate us not supporting bad business practices, but I found Donately to be 10x better and more functional than Paypal. It's easier to use, cleaner and crisper. I wish I would have known about them in the first place. I for one can say with 100% certainty, Donately is just better!
Pros
Ease of use.
Cons
Could use the ability to be able to have a drop down box for people to select specific options for where their money is being used. Meaning the client and pick for their money to be used for a specific project within the numerous we have.
Donately has definitely helped us get the most out of our donations. Donately allowed us to set up an easy and nice looking web form on our site and effectively helps us manage donations.
Pros
Donately is a fantastic tool to use for small non-profits. It is affordable and helps better manage donations. The web forms are also attractive and I like the custom options for email automation and receipts. Donately easily integrated with Stripe and was set-up in no time.
Cons
I was there was more options for sending automated emails after donations and getting notifications to multiple email addresses.
It is really helpful service to NGOs and Start-ups. The features and support from staff, leads me to recommend this to worldwide users.
Pros
We can create forms to accept donations and can customize the form accordingly. It is able to share the campaign easily to reach more people. There is no monthly fee or other hidden fees, just only a processing fee charging per donation which is really helpful.
Cons
Need more support to Asian Countries. Not getting any notification when recurring donation stops. Need features to customize the donation page more.
Pros
In between upgrading our CRMs, a process we knew would take a couple years, we were looking for a nimble and affordable product to manage our online donations. Donately was ideal for this purpose! Customer service was always immediate and top notch, and the product was routinely improving, inspired by what I can only assume was customer feedback. From a UX perspective I vastly prefer Donately, but ultimately a product that speaks directly to our CRM is best for our organization's fundraising goals.
Cons
More developed self-help resources would have been useful when we first implemented Donately, but customer service was so expedient that this never really caused any issues.
Just wish there was a pre-prepared package that allowed for immediate integration with the top 10 crs programs such as Donor Perfect.
Pros
stats
Cons
not integrated with CRS data bases
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Pros
Coming from the nonprofit industry, I am no stranger to fundraising software. I've used Donately in a program assistant capacity. A cool thing is that you don't pay monthly. You pay per donation, which helps small nonprofits (this could also be a con for some). However, focusing on larger, fewer gifts rather than a bunch of little ones -- the per donation fee wasn't horrible for us. Having this tool made us more legit rather than relying on PayPal or a common third party app.
Cons
Customer service could be improved, but thankfully we didn't have too many issues.
We were drawn to Donate.ly because we are rebuilding our online donation and for the volume of expected donations it made a lot of sense. Our backend CRM is salesforce and so we needed to use Zapier to create opportunities and contact records. Bryan Shanaver was quite helpful in getting that set up for us.
I want to give features and functionality a 4 but no doubt it will get there with a more advanced recurrent donation logging and foreign currency, a 5 would be non-cash gifts. Make no mistake though it is great value for money, so as they grow I am sure it will be well made. I would recommend it for small to midsize non-profits at its current form.
Pros
Great value for money, awesome support.
Cons
Great if we can do multi-currency as we are a global org. Also if it can note down it is Xth recurrent donation somehow it can make our backend record keeping better.
Donately has been pretty good to us so far. I like the simplicity of it. I'd give it four stars in terms of simplicity of use because of the need to be a bit more technically savvy to be able to modify the donation pages and what not. We haven't gotten there yet and the improvements we need to make haven't been done because of the need to get high tech assistance. I think if that process were easier, then the lack of advanced controls would be more easily surmounted. I haven't had issues with customer support, but haven't needed much.
Pros
works well, looks nice, pretty easy to use
Cons
Hard to take to the next level without help.
The customer support has been fantastic, always offering a solution any setback I face. As an admin, the back end dashboard is easy to use and free of distraction.
Pros
UI and ease of back end admin
Cons
Entry pricing is steep.
Its been okay and it does serve its purpose. Customer support is slow especially when you're trying to have a conversation with someone to answer all your questions. Forms aren't able to be customized which is especially disappointing with campaigns and peer to peer fundraising. There should be more templates for options on both the campaign and fundraiser angle. More importantly I wish there was a way that our campaigns could stay on our site and not bounce to the donately url. This serves its purpose and isn't horrible and given that the other options out there are massively more expensive then this seems like the right option for smaller non profits.
Pros
Ease of use
Cons
lack of different templates and customization
Hi Claudia,
Thanks for filling out a review! Sorry that there was some aspects of Donately that you felt needed work. The good news is that we take your suggestions very seriously and we are always trying to make Donately better.
Per customizing the donation forms, by using the form embed you essentially have full control. If you are using our free hosted pages I'm happy to say that we'll have all the embed form features available there as well, in the next few months.
Per more campaign types, you're speaking our language there - that's a major push in 2017 for us. We will have various options to choose from.
Per bouncing to Donately from your site, I don't understand that one. One of the main features of Donately is the ability to embed the donation form on your site - and not send them to your free pages on Donately.
If you have any further questions on any of this, please contact me at [email protected]
Cheers!
Bryan
We have had a great experience with people at donately! We had a couple of issues early on in the process (our fault) that were attended quickly by a real human which was great! The software is missing some functionality that would make it so much better. PayPal integration would be amazing but even Deeper integration with swipe would ok. A mobile app for events would kill all birds with one stone for us. After my experience with other platforms, we recommend donately all the time and are loyal customers.
Pros
Pricing!!! Simple interface
Cons
Lack of integration with PayPal.
Donately is an extremely user friendly platform and we are impressed with the UX as well as the customer service provided when needed.
Pros
It's simple to use and has a clean, but versatile presentation that suits our needs. It meshes well with the rest of our site, making the user feel as though they are interfacing with a trusted and safe donation platform.
When choosing between the different donation portals services out there, Donately is our pick for the following:
1. The giving form you are able to embed on your website has a very clean and simply visual design while many other competitors look clunky.
2a. The percentage fees are the lowest and therefore best you can find on the market.
2b. There is no monthly fee, so you are only charged when you get an actual donation.
3. Donately has a catchy name! ;)
Pros
Simplicity
Visual Design
Cons
- There needs to be a way to designate to certain campaigns on the giving portal
- the donation receipts are really ugly and poorly throughout. They need actual customization.
- there needs to be a fundraising progress widget you can customize from donately and embedd in your website.
We tried many site to help us raise funds, but many were complicated and costly. This has been a seamless way to achieve the financial goals we have with minimal upkeep.
Pros
SImple, easy to use, able to create multiple campaigns for ongoing donor involvement, low fees, able to have reoccurring donations. Easy for DONOR to access and sign up! Best reason is our donor love it.
Cons
I do not to not have the option to turn off the donors ability to see how much funds are raised and the goal. Its great for special project, but if we are raising support on an ongoing basis, I would like to have a main account and the ability to have other small campaigns for special projects.
It is great for our fundraising to take a team to England for a rugby tour. We are taking 46 players, coaches and parents to England for a rugby tour in July 2017. Donate.ly gives us a great option to collect payment via credit card and payment plans.
Pros
Flexibility and payment plans
Cons
Fees for 501c
I think your services you offer is very good for businesses especially non profits, and profit businesses I really enjoy the simple ways to utilize your service
Pros
Easy to use
Cons
N/A
I've done a ton of research for our nonprofit, and I like donate.ly because they do not charge a monthly fee, they hook up to my existing stripe account, and although their fees stack up more than other alternatives, their interface is so incredibly simple and easy I have found that if just ONE more donor is gained BECAUSE of their easy interface It pays for the fees for an entire year!
Also it's incredibly easy to implement on a website. No HTTPS security certificate needed Though highly recommended of course!
Pros
Clean, simple interface. Extremely easy to implement on websites.
Cons
A bit more expensive in fees compared to it's competent
Donately is so simple and straightforward that I can't imagine anyone having too hard of a time using it. It is also simple and straightforward on the front-end, making donating a cinch. It integrates well with Stripe, though I would like to see PayPal integration.
Pros
It was easy to set up for our team, even for a rookie like myself. I had it easily set up and we started receiving donations almost immediately. The graphs and visuals really helped us to see how we were doing and to see where most of our money was coming from.
Cons
As convenient as this is, for us it still does not replace traditional fundraising, a lot of people in our community prefer good old cash donations so this program was not necessarily as useful to us as we had hoped.
We've been using Donate.ly for several years now. The 2 major things I like about it are:
1. You pay per donation processing fees, which are reasonable. There is no monthly fee. This makes it possible for small NGOs to accept online donations without it costing us an arm and a leg up front.
2. You can easily embed the donation form into your own website. This allows you to keep the brand of your organization and legitimizes your group because you don't send folks to PayPal or Network for Good or some other third party processor.
Other than that the service is ok. I think they are updating some of their online donation tracking tools, automating some email responses, and such, but it isn't the most advanced in those features if that's what you're looking for. For instance, there is no way to automate a message to donors if their donation doesn't go through and they need to update their credit card. The donation email confirmation options are also pretty limited but we've managed to make the confirmation email look ok and work for our purposes.
We use Zapier to help us track donations into Google Spreadsheets. We don't use the Fundraising pages really, but those are options and they do have peer to peer functionality.
Ultimately, the service is perfect for us. It accepts donations on our website and doesn't have a monthly fee. And the customer service is amazing. I've worked personally with them a few times and they are always so personable and helpful, available via chat right through their site. Definitely recommend.