Donorbox Review

Donorbox is a US donation and fundraising platform run by Rebel Idealist Inc., a Delaware corporation based in Alexandria, Virginia. Founder and CEO Charles Zhang started it in 2014 as a free WordPress donation plugin. It sells donation forms, fundraising and crowdfunding pages, peer-to-peer campaigns, event ticketing, memberships, a donor CRM, text-to-give and an in-person kiosk app. Donorbox does not process payments itself. Each organisation connects its own Stripe or PayPal account, donations land in that account, and Donorbox takes a platform fee on top of the processor's fee. As of October 2026 the free Standard plan charges a 2.95% platform fee on donation forms and pages and 3.95% on events, memberships and supporter peer-to-peer pages. Pro costs $150 a month and lowers those to 1.75% and 2%. Premium is quote-only, with platform fees of 1.6% to 2%. Processing is extra: Donorbox quotes 2.2% + 30 cents for US nonprofits on Stripe's discounted rate, and 2.9% + 30 cents for other organisations. Donors can choose to cover the fees. There is no contract or setup fee. Payouts follow the Stripe or PayPal schedule, every two business days by default for US Stripe accounts. In June 2026 Donorbox said more than 100,000 organisations had raised over $4 billion through it. Trustpilot shows a 4.3 TrustScore, but 26% of its 106 reviews are one-star.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Donorbox’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Donorbox is

Donorbox is online fundraising software for nonprofits and other causes. The company behind it is Rebel Idealist Inc., a Delaware corporation doing business as Donorbox, with its main office in Alexandria, Virginia. Charles Zhang, its founder and CEO, launched it in 2014 as a free WordPress plugin that put Stripe and PayPal behind a donation form. The company's About page says it has worked with nonprofits since 2014, and archived copies of donorbox.org go back to May 2014. The BBB's older profile for the business, at a former San Francisco address, gives a start date of September 2013, which we could not tie to a specific event; it may be the date an earlier entity was formed. We use 2014, the year the company gives and the earliest archived site. Donorbox has taken no outside funding: its June 2026 press release calls it a fully bootstrapped and profitable company, and we found no acquirer or controlling investor.

On scale, Donorbox's own figures do not all agree. Its June 2026 press release says more than 100,000 organisations use the platform, that they have raised more than $4 billion, and that donors made 10.6 million donations through it in 2025. Its About page, read in October 2026, says 200,000+ organisations, 300,000+ campaigns and 96+ countries, while a leadership bio on the same page still says $3 billion. We rely on the dated press release.

Why we list Donorbox as a platform

Donorbox does not hold a merchant agreement with the organisations that use it. Its Terms of Service say plainly that Donorbox is not a payment processor and does not act as a merchant of record, and that processing is provided by Stripe, PayPal or other processors under separate agreements the customer chooses. In practice an organisation opens and verifies its own Stripe account or PayPal Business account, connects it to Donorbox, and the donation is charged to the donor through that account. The help centre says funds are never held by Donorbox, not even temporarily. Donorbox is the software layer on top: forms, pages, donor records, receipts and reporting. It earns a platform fee per gift and subscription fees, separate from whatever Stripe or PayPal charges. That is why we class it as a platform rather than a payment facilitator, and why approval, payout timing, reserves and disputes are set by Stripe or PayPal rather than by Donorbox.

What it costs

Every gift carries a Donorbox platform fee and a processing fee, and the pricing page says only one of each is charged per transaction. As of October 2026 the platform fees are:

• Standard (free, no monthly fee): 2.95% on donation forms, fundraising pages, QuickDonate, organisation peer-to-peer pages and crowdfunding pages; 3.95% on event ticketing, memberships and supporter peer-to-peer pages.
• Pro ($150 a month, discount for yearly billing): 1.75% and 2% respectively.
• Premium (price on request): 1.6% and 2%.
• US ACH bank gifts: the platform fee is capped at $25 per gift, however large.
• Crypto and stock gifts (Pro and Premium only): 3.95% all-in, covering both the platform and processing fees, through The Giving Block.
• DAFpay donor-advised-fund gifts (Pro and Premium): 4.5% in total, made up of Donorbox's 1.6% and Chariot's 2.9%, billed monthly by Chariot.
• Donorbox Live Kiosk gifts: 1.75% platform fee on every plan.

The processing fee is whatever your Stripe or PayPal account is priced at. For US domestic transactions in USD, Donorbox's help centre lists Stripe at 2.2% + 30 cents for cards and wallets, 3.5% for American Express and 0.8% capped at $5 for ACH, for registered nonprofits that have applied for Stripe's discount. Organisations without the discount pay 2.9% + 30 cents on cards. Stripe does not publish its nonprofit rate: its support page says the discount is granted on application to registered nonprofits in eligible countries whose Stripe volume is at least 80% tax-deductible donations, and that membership fees and ticket sales do not count towards that threshold. Without it, Stripe's own US pricing page lists 2.9% + 30 cents. On PayPal, approved US charities pay 1.99% + 49 cents, which PayPal's own fee page confirms. Donorbox's help centre gives 2.89% + 49 cents for everyone else, but PayPal's page, last updated 1 October 2026, lists 3.49% + 49 cents for PayPal Checkout and Venmo and 2.99% + 49 cents for standard card payments. Stripe also charges $1.50 per instant bank verification for ACH, billed monthly, unless the donor connects through Plaid. International cards and currency conversion cost extra under the processors' own pricing: Stripe adds 1.5% for international cards and 1% for conversion, and PayPal adds 1.5% on international charity transactions.

To put that in numbers: a $100 card donation on Standard, through Stripe at the nonprofit rate, costs $2.95 in platform fee and $2.50 in processing, so the organisation receives $94.55. Without the nonprofit discount it receives $93.85. The same gift on Pro leaves $95.75. A $50 event ticket on Standard, at the same Stripe rate, costs $1.98 + $1.40, about 6.8% in total, and more if ticket volume pushes the account outside Stripe's nonprofit pricing. A $1,000 ACH gift costs $25 in platform fee (capped) and $5 in Stripe fees. Turning on the cover-fees option shifts much of this to donors who tick the box. Neither Donorbox's pricing page nor its help centre describes a separate donor tip to Donorbox, so what the organisation pays Donorbox is the platform fee plus any subscriptions.

Add-ons are billed monthly and renew automatically, according to the pricing FAQ. As of October 2026: text-to-give $19 a month (standard number) or $50 (custom keyword); Live Kiosk $80 a month or $820 a year for the first device on Standard and Pro, $50 a month on Premium, and $15 a month for each extra device, with card readers sold separately; Mailchimp $8; API and Zapier $17 (included in Pro); custom CSS $85; Salesforce NPSP, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Planning Center, Rock RMS and Little Green Light $50 each; Raiser's Edge NXT $65; and migration of existing recurring donors a $195 flat fee outside Premium. Plans include 5, 10 or 30 team logins on Standard, Pro and Premium respectively.

How it works day to day

After signing up, an organisation connects a Stripe or PayPal account, or both, from the Payment Processor page. Stripe will ask for verification documents before it accepts live payments. Donation forms can be embedded or used as a pop-up on the organisation's own site, with plugins for WordPress, Squarespace, Wix and others, or hosted as Donorbox pages. Donors can give once or on a recurring schedule, save their payment details through QuickDonate, and manage or cancel their own recurring plans from a donor portal. Receipts are sent automatically, and Pro removes the Donorbox branding from them. The CRM is included on every plan. Pro adds tracking pixels for Google and Meta, the API and Zapier, crypto and stock gifts, DAFpay and a recurring-donation upsell. Premium adds custom domains, guided onboarding and dedicated support.

Payouts, refunds and disputes

Because the money sits in the organisation's processor account, payout timing is Stripe's or PayPal's, not Donorbox's. Donorbox's help centre says Stripe pays out automatically every two business days in the US, Canada and Australia, with the first payout taking around seven days, and every seven business days in most other countries. PayPal gifts stay in PayPal until the organisation withdraws them, and arrive in two to three business days. ACH gifts take up to five business days for Stripe to confirm before they join a payout. Refunds are issued by the organisation; Donorbox says it cannot refund a donor because it does not hold funds. On a Stripe chargeback, Donorbox's help centre says Stripe takes back the gift plus a $15 dispute fee for US organisations and returns both if the dispute is won, but keeps the original processing fee. Stripe's current pricing page is less generous: a $15 fee per dispute received, plus a $15 countered fee for a manual response that is returned only on a win. Donorbox's terms make the organisation responsible for all refunds, chargebacks and related fees, and say Donorbox may pass processor dispute fees through. Donorbox's own platform fees are non-refundable.

Contract and terms

There is no contract and no minimum term. Donorbox's Terms of Service, last updated 24 April 2026, run from sign-up until either side ends them by notice, and the pricing FAQ says there are no setup or cancellation fees. Donorbox can suspend or close an account for violations, legal risk, fraud or suspected unlawful activity. The terms say it does not verify nonprofit or tax-exempt status, does not act as a fiduciary or escrow agent, and leaves charitable-solicitation compliance and tax-deductibility statements to the customer. Fees exclude sales tax, VAT and GST, which are added where Donorbox must collect them. Donorbox's liability is capped at the fees paid in the previous 12 months. Disputes go to the Delaware courts under Delaware law, with no arbitration clause. After termination an organisation has 30 days to export its data. Closing the account from the dashboard is permanent and cancels every recurring plan, so export donor records first, and remember that the Stripe or PayPal account must be closed separately if you want it closed.

Reputation and complaints

As of 19 October 2026, Donorbox has a Trustpilot TrustScore of 4.3 from 106 reviews, but the star distribution is split: 59% five-star and 26% one-star. Sixty-eight reviews were posted in the last 12 months. The profile is claimed and Trustpilot shows Donorbox has not replied to negative reviews. Most one-star reviews come from donors rather than organisations. The most recent, from September 2026, describes a one-off gift that kept charging monthly, and several others report recurring or repeated charges; a larger cluster, mostly from 2024, accuses the platform of hosting fraudulent fundraisers, especially fake animal rescues. The organisations that left one-star reviews complained about donors being unable to update their own details, fees, slow support and a Stripe account freeze. Organisations using Donorbox should check how the one-time and recurring choice appears on their forms. The BBB profile we found is at a former San Francisco address, rated A+, not accredited, with no complaints in the past three years and a single customer review. We could not read Donorbox's Capterra or G2 pages, which were behind bot checks, so we do not quote ratings from them. Our searches found no lawsuit or regulatory action naming Donorbox or Rebel Idealist.

Who Donorbox suits

Donorbox suits a small or mid-size nonprofit, school, faith group or community cause that wants professional donation forms, recurring giving, events and peer-to-peer fundraising working quickly, with no monthly bill and no contract. It suits organisations that want to keep their own Stripe or PayPal account and be able to walk away with it. Apply for Stripe's and PayPal's nonprofit rates before you launch, switch on the cover-fees option, and check how the one-time and recurring choice appears on every form. Once donation-form volume passes about $12,500 a month, or event and membership volume passes about $7,700, Pro is cheaper than Standard. Larger organisations raising well into six figures a month should compare the percentage platform fee with flat-fee donor software, because 1.6% to 1.75% of every gift still adds up. Groups that need someone to underwrite them when Stripe or PayPal will not, or one company to call for both software and payments, should look elsewhere.