Category guide
Donor CRM software
The donor CRM is your database of record: every donor, gift, and relationship in one place. Credible options start at $39-$45 a month and most price by the size of your database, not your team. Plenty of small shops start on their donation platform's built-in records first, and that is a legitimate starting point.
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Compare at a glance
| Tool | Pricing | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DonorDock★ Editor's choice |
| Everything in one easy to use software package including donation processing, CRM, email and text, grants, plentiful integrations (like Quickbooks), and moves management. Great value for all the features included. | Visit →Our reader deal10% off first payment |
| 4aGoodCause |
| A simpler CRM bundled with the giving platform: donor profiles, giving history, notes, tagging, custom fields and acknowledgement letters, verified on their own feature page. No built-in email marketing (it leans on the Mailchimp integration) so it fits shops that want records and fundraising on one bill rather than a deep standalone database. | Visit →Our reader deal$25 in account credit with code 4AGC25 |
| Eleo |
| Intuitive, straightforward platform to keep better track of donors. Small and mid-size shops love this as their first CRM. | Visit → |
| Jotform |
| Not a CRM, a form-first way to collect donor, volunteer and gift data cleanly before you buy a real database. The tidy version of the spreadsheet stage. | Visit →Nonprofit discount50% off, permanently |
Compare Jotform:vs monday.com | |||
| Bloomerang |
| Trusted name in the space with retention-focused features. Loved by all shop sizes, but works especially well for mid to large organizations. | Visit → |
| Little Green Light |
| Aging interface that takes some time to learn. Most of the features you need to keep track of donors with none of the frills. | Visit → |
Feature comparison: what each tool actually covers
Five features, each one a subscription many shops pay for separately: email marketing, donation forms, payment processing, events, and peer-to-peer. Yes means the built-in version is good enough to cancel the separate tool, and the note under a verdict tells you what to check before you do. Verdicts come from the vendors' own pages and our own product research.
| Feature | DonorDock | 4aGoodCause | Eleo | Jotform | Bloomerang | Little Green Light |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email marketing | Yes: Included in the core product | No: Not availableIntegrations for Mailchimp and Constant Contact | No: Not available | No: Not available | Yes: Included in the core product | No: Not available |
| Donation forms | Yes: Included in the core productembeddable in-page forms | Yes: Included in the core productall plans, no platform percentage | Yes: Included in the core productunlimited forms, every plan | Yes: Included in the core product | Yes: Included in the core productin Fundraising, $40/mo, must be bundled with the $125/mo CRM | Yes: Included in the core product |
| Payment processing | Yes: Included in the core product2% platform fee + Stripe/PayPal fees | Yes: Included in the core productbring Stripe/Authorize.net or use theirs; no added % | Yes: Included in the core productEleoPay, powered by Stripe | No: Not availablepassthrough to your own Stripe/PayPal; Jotform never holds the money | Yes: Included in the core product | Yes: Included in the core productfrom 2.2% + $0.30 to the processor; no fee to LGL |
| Events & ticketing | Yes: Included in the core productticket purchases, no event suite | Yes: Included in the core productregistration and ticketing on all plans | Yes: Included in the core productregistration forms confirmed; paid-ticket collection via EleoPay | No: Not availableregistration forms only | Yes: Included in the core product | Yes: Included in the core productticket sales, no event suite |
| Peer-to-peer | No: Not available | Yes: Included in the core productGrowing plan and up | No: Not available | No: Not available | No: Not availableevent page forms as an option | No: Not available |
| Subscriptions it can replace | 4 of 5 | 4 of 5 | 3 of 5 | 1 of 5 | 4 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
How to choose
Pick by who will run it, then price it over three years rather than one. For a first real database, start with Eleo ($39/mo) or Little Green Light ($45/mo): both publish their full price ladders, both bill by record count, and both are month-to-month, so a real trial costs almost nothing. Where retention reporting is the thing your team asks for most, or several people share gift entry, Bloomerang (from $125/mo, unlimited users) earns the higher bill. DonorDock is our editor's choice in this category: one plan at $500/mo billed annually ($6,000 a year, plus $3,800 one-time onboarding and 2% on gifts through its giving pages) with every feature included, unlimited contacts, email and text built in, and the ActionBoard turning the database into a daily follow-up list. It is priced as a consolidation instead of a standalone database, so price it against your whole stack; if you only need a database, the record-count CRMs above are the cheaper comparison. Membership and event-heavy organizations should demo Neon CRM before buying separate tools.
Two habits save the most grief. Clean your list before you migrate, since most CRMs bill by record count. And run a test import during any trial to confirm gift history and soft credits arrive intact; a demo with your own data beats a demo with sample data.