Donation processing
Classy alternatives
If you are shopping to replace Classy, the shortlist below is ordered by the situation you are in rather than by which vendor pays most. Every price is real and dated, and where staying put is the right answer, we say so.
Checked Aug 3, 2026
Some links on this page are affiliate links. Disclosure
Why shops leave Classy
- You pay a subscription and a percentage. An annual platform contract sits on top of transaction fees. Below a certain volume that is two costs where competitors charge one, and the subscription doesn't shrink in a slow year.
- It's built for larger organizations. The peer-to-peer and campaign machinery assumes a marketing team running multi-channel campaigns. A shop with one appeal and a gala is licensing an engine it doesn't turn on.
- Contracts are annual and quoted. There is no public rate card, so what you pay depends on how the negotiation went. The renewal is the only moment you have leverage.
- It isn't a donor database. Campaign and supporter data live there, but relationship history, soft credits and household records don't. Most shops end up paying for Classy plus a CRM anyway.
What to move to
| Tool | Pricing | Move here if | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4aGoodCause |
| You raise real money online and want the fee to stop scaling | Visit → |
| 2 | Donorbox |
| You want strong recurring-gift tooling without a contract | Visit → |
| 3 | Givebutter |
| Campaigns, events and peer-to-peer on one platform | Visit → |
| 4 | Zeffy |
| You want to keep every dollar | Visit → |
1. 4aGoodCause — You raise real money online and want the fee to stop scaling
A flat subscription with no percentage taken from donations: $99/mo Grassroots ($1,188/yr), $249/mo Growth ($2,988/yr), $429/mo Scale ($5,148/yr), all published. This is the structural answer to Classy — you keep the predictable-subscription model you're used to, and lose the percentage on top. Built around monthly giving, with recurring pages, donor records and a campaign builder in one tool. First month free.
2. Donorbox — You want strong recurring-gift tooling without a contract
Free to start at roughly 2.95% platform fee, no subscription; the Pro plan at about $150/mo drops the rate to roughly 1.75% and pays for itself past around $150k a year in online giving. The recurring-gift management — donor portals, failed-card recovery, upgrade prompts — is the strongest in its price class, which is what most shops were actually paying Classy for. Attribution is link-only, so route through the link here if you use it.
3. Givebutter — Campaigns, events and peer-to-peer on one platform
0% platform fee with donor tips on; roughly 3% flat with tips off. Processing fees apply either way. It is the closest free equivalent to what Classy does — campaign pages, ticketing, auctions and peer-to-peer in one modern donor-facing experience. The catch is that the 0% headline depends on donors choosing to tip, so your effective rate moves with donor behaviour rather than with a contract.
4. Zeffy — You want to keep every dollar
Free at any volume — no platform fee and no processing fee to the nonprofit, funded by an optional tip donors are asked for at checkout. Covers donations, ticketing, raffles and memberships. A $100 gift deposits $100. If the reason you're leaving Classy is purely cost, this is the floor, and the tradeoff is the same tip dependence Givebutter has plus thinner recurring-gift tooling.
The question that decides this is not which platform has better features. It is which fee structure fits your volume, because online giving platforms are priced three different ways and the cheapest one flips as you grow.
Run your own break-even
Take your online giving total for last year. Then compare:
Percentage-only (Donorbox at roughly 2.95%, Givebutter at about 3% with tips off) costs you that rate on every dollar, forever, with no floor. At $25,000 online, that’s around $740 a year. Cheap. At $250,000, it’s roughly $7,400.
Flat subscription (4aGoodCause at $1,188 / $2,988 / $5,148 a year) costs the same whether you raise $40,000 or $400,000. It is worse than a percentage at low volume and better past roughly $40,000 in online giving, where the entry tier crosses a ~2.95% rate.
Free with donor tips (Zeffy, Givebutter with tips on) costs you nothing directly and shifts the cost to your donors as an optional checkout tip. Your effective rate depends on how many donors leave the tip on — which you cannot forecast and cannot control.
Subscription plus percentage — which is what you’re leaving — is the only structure that charges you both ways.
Note that processing fees (the card networks’ cut, typically around 2.2–3% plus a fixed amount per transaction) apply on every option including the free ones. Zeffy is the exception in that it absorbs them.
What you give up leaving Classy
Peer-to-peer depth is the real loss. Givebutter is the closest replacement and it is good; it is not equivalent for a large multi-team event with fundraising minimums and complex team hierarchies.
The second thing is any integration you’ve built. Check what’s writing into your CRM today before you cancel, and confirm the replacement can do it — or that you’re willing to reconcile manually.
The recurring-donor problem
This is the part that actually costs money, and it applies to any processor switch. Recurring gifts do not transfer. Cards on file live with the payment processor, and moving platforms means either a token migration your old provider has to agree to, or asking every monthly donor to re-enroll.
Expect to lose some of them. Ask your current provider in writing whether they will migrate tokens before you assume a clean handoff, and if the answer is no, run a real re-enrollment campaign — personal email, a phone call to anyone giving over $50 a month, and a deadline. Do it in a quiet month, not in December.
Compare every option in donation processing, or see what a shop your size should be running in the recommended stacks.