Charitable is a popular donation plugin for WordPress and, like Tinwell, it runs on your own site with a yearly licence and takes nothing from your donations once you pay for a plan. The cost of the two comes out close, so the real question for a UK charity is what each one includes. This page compares Charitable’s Pro and Elite plans with Tinwell, our WordPress donation plugin for UK charities, feature by feature, using Charitable’s published prices and plan list checked on 15 October 2026.
The short version
| CharitablePro plan | CharitableElite plan | Tinwell | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yearly price | $199 for the first year (about £150), then $399 (about £301) | $299 for the first year (about £225), then $599 (about £452) | £249 + VAT (£298.80), every year |
| Websites | One | Five | One per licence |
| Platform fee per donation | None | None | None |
| Card processing | Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p, paid to Stripe | Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p, paid to Stripe | Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p, paid to Stripe |
| Where the donor pays | On your own WordPress site | On your own WordPress site | On your own WordPress site |
| UK Gift Aid | A Gift Aid extension with a CSV export | As Pro | HMRC wording on the form, a claims page and a Charities Online CSV export |
| Direct Debit | A GoCardless extension, including UK Bacs | As Pro | Through GoCardless, with pause and resume in the donor portal |
| CRM sync | Zapier, webhooks and Zoho Flow | As Pro | Beacon, Donorfy and Raisely built in |
| Peer-to-peer and events | ✓ | ✓ | – |
Rather see Tinwell than read about it? Open the live demo to try the donation form, the donor portal and the admin dashboard with sample data.
What Charitable costs
Charitable has four paid plans, priced in US dollars, each with an introductory first-year price and renewals at the full price: Basic $69 then $149, Plus $99 then $199, Pro $199 then $399, and Elite $299 then $599. Basic, Plus and Pro cover one website; Elite covers five. At the European Central Bank rate of $1.3267 to the pound on 14 October 2026, Pro is about £150 for the first year and about £300.75 a year after that, and Elite about £225.37 and then £451.50, before any VAT added at checkout. The pound figures move with the exchange rate. The licence renews automatically each year.
On any paid plan Charitable takes nothing from your donations, and you pay your payment processor’s fee, which for Stripe in the UK is 1.5% + 20p, the same as Tinwell. The free version, Charitable Lite, is different: it adds a 3% platform fee to Stripe and Square gifts until you buy a licence.
Gift Aid, recurring donations, fee relief and tributes come in at the Plus plan, so they are in both Pro and Elite. Pro adds peer-to-peer fundraising, crowdfunding, teams, events and tickets, multi-currency and automation tools. Elite has everything in Pro and adds five websites, WordPress multisite support, client management and premium support, so it is aimed at charities with several sites and the agencies that look after them.
What Tinwell costs
A Tinwell licence is £249 + VAT a year for one website, the same every year, with everything on the full list of donation plugin features included. Each further website needs its own licence at the same price. Tinwell takes nothing from your donations, and Stripe charges its standard UK rate, which is paid to Stripe. A free edition is on its way to the WordPress.org directory, also with no fee on donations; Free vs Pro sets out what each includes. See the pricing page for the licence.
A worked example at £60,000 a year
A charity raising £60,000 a year online on one website, in 2,000 gifts averaging £30:
| Yearly cost | Charitable Prowith Stripe | Charitable Elitewith Stripe | Tinwellwith Stripe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence, first year | £150.00$199 | £225.37$299 | £298.80 |
| Licence, from year 2 | £300.75$399 | £451.50$599 | £298.80 |
| Platform percentage on £60,000 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 |
| Stripe on £60,000 in 2,000 gifts | £1,300.00 | £1,300.00 | £1,300.00 |
| Total, first year | £1,450.00 | £1,525.37 | £1,598.80 |
| Total, from year 2 | £1,600.75 | £1,751.50 | £1,598.80 |
| Over three years | £4,651.50 | £5,028.37 | £4,796.40 |
Stripe’s share is 1.5% of £60,000 (£900.00) plus 20p on each of 2,000 gifts (£400.00), the same on all three. On Pro, Charitable costs £148.80 less than Tinwell in the first year and £1.95 more after that, so over three years it comes to £144.90 less in all. On Elite, Charitable costs £73.43 less in the first year and £152.70 more each year after it, so over three years Tinwell comes to £231.97 less. The gap is only ever the licence, so it stays the same whatever you raise.
Elite’s five websites change the sums for a charity with several sites. Five Tinwell licences are £1,494.00 a year, against Charitable Elite’s £225.37 for the first year and £451.50 a year after that, so if you need donations on two or more websites, Elite costs less (two Tinwell licences are £597.60).
Charitable’s Pro and Elite plans from wpcharitable.com/pricing, first-year and renewal prices, converted at the European Central Bank rate of $1.3267 to the pound on 14 October 2026, before any VAT added at checkout. Tinwell is the licence including VAT. All are shown with Stripe’s standard UK card rate of 1.5% + 20p, and per-donation pence fees assume an average gift of £30. Not counted: surcharges on premium or non-UK cards. Logos and names belong to their owners.
Feature by feature
Everything on Charitable’s published plan list, set against Tinwell. Pro includes everything in Charitable’s Basic and Plus plans, and Elite everything in Pro; “As Pro” means Elite is the same as Pro on that row. Where Charitable’s plan list does not mention a feature, the cell says so rather than guess.
| Feature | Charitable Pro | Charitable Elite | Tinwell |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taking donations | |||
| Donation forms | Customisable donation forms and a visual campaign builder | As Pro | Unlimited, built with a drag-and-drop form builder, in your own colours and your site’s fonts |
| One-off and monthly gifts | ✓Recurring donations | As Pro | ✓On one form |
| Apple Pay and Google Pay | Not on its plan list | Not on its plan list | ✓ |
| Payment providers | Stripe, Square, PayPal and Authorize.net, plus Braintree, Mollie, GoCardless, Payfast, Paystack, Payrexx and Razorpay | As Pro | Stripe and GoCardless |
| Direct Debit | ✓A GoCardless extension that covers UK Bacs | As Pro | ✓Through GoCardless, with payment routing (for example cards for one-off gifts, Direct Debit for monthly) |
| Donor covers the fees | ✓Fee Relief | As Pro | – |
| Gifts in memory | ✓Tributes | As Pro | ✓ |
| Anonymous gifts | ✓ | As Pro | – |
| Offline gifts (cash, cheque, bank transfer) | ✓Offline donations | As Pro | ✓ |
| Several currencies | ✓Multi-Currency | As Pro | –Built for UK charities in pounds |
| Address lookup on the form | Not on its plan list | Not on its plan list | ✓ |
| Abandoned donation recovery | ✓Donation Recovery | As Pro | – |
| Campaigns | |||
| Campaigns with goals | ✓Unlimited campaigns with donation goals | As Pro | ✓Goals, start and end dates, scheduling and live totals |
| Choosing where a gift goes | Not on its plan list | Not on its plan list | ✓Fund pots under a campaign, each with its own goal |
| Page components | Donor leaderboards and campaign updates | As Pro | Progress bar, totaliser, donate buttons, impact cards, supporter wall, countdown, impact map, sponsor logos |
| Milestone alerts | Not on its plan list | Not on its plan list | ✓At 50%, 75% and 100% of a goal, and for high-value gifts |
| Peer-to-peer fundraising | ✓Peer-to-peer, crowdfunding, ambassadors and teams | As Pro | – |
| Events and tickets | ✓ | As Pro | – |
| Donors, receipts and Gift Aid | |||
| Donor records | ✓Donation management | As Pro | ✓Lifetime giving, rhythm, consent and Gift Aid status, with contact details revealed on request and logged |
| Donor self-service | Donor dashboard | As Pro | Donor portal with passwordless sign-in: history, receipts, change a regular gift’s amount, update a card, pause and resume a Direct Debit |
| Receipts | PDF receipts, custom receipts and annual receipts | As Pro | Editable thank-you emails, resent from the donor’s record, and receipts in the donor portal |
| Emails | Customisable emails and donor updates | As Pro | Editable donor and team emails, including Direct Debit and milestone emails |
| Gift Aid declarations | ✓The Gift Aid extension | As Pro | ✓HMRC’s wording and address fields on the form, kept against every gift |
| Gift Aid claims | A CSV export of Gift Aid gifts (name, house number, postcode, date, amount); Charitable does not say it is in the Charities Online layout | As Pro | An unclaimed view, a CSV laid out for HMRC Charities Online, and gifts marked as claimed |
| Reporting and integrations | |||
| Reports | Donation reports, conversion tracking and Google Analytics | As Pro | Dashboard, analytics with period comparison and a PDF trustee report, donor retention, form conversion and donation maps |
| UK charity CRMs | Not on its plan list | Not on its plan list | Beacon, Donorfy and Raisely, through their official APIs, with a sync log and retry |
| Email marketing tools | Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Campaign Monitor, MailPoet and Mailster | As Pro | – |
| Automation | Zapier, webhooks, Zoho Flow and smart workflows | As Pro | API tokens and a headless mode for your own front end |
| Security, websites and the licence | |||
| Donor data protection | Privacy compliance tools | As Pro | Encrypted at rest with key rotation, roles and step-up authentication, tamper-evident audit logs, erasure wired into WordPress’s privacy tools |
| Go-live checks | Not on its plan list | Not on its plan list | A security onboarding checklist that seals a certificate for the site |
| Yearly price | $199 then $399, about £150 then £301 | $299 then $599, about £225 then £452 | £298.80 including VAT, every year |
| Websites per licence | One | Five | One (up to ten licences on one order) |
| WordPress multisite and client management | – | ✓ | – |
| Support | Priority support | Premium support | From the team who built it |
| Money-back guarantee | 14 days, on new purchases only | As Pro | 30 days |
| Free edition | ✓Charitable Lite, with a 3% fee on Stripe and Square gifts | The same free plugin | Coming to WordPress.org, with no fee on donations |
Gift Aid for UK charities
Charitable includes Gift Aid in both Pro and Elite, which puts it ahead of many international products. The difference is in what happens after the declaration. Tinwell’s declaration uses HMRC’s wording and captures the home address fields HMRC needs, and its claims page shows what is still unclaimed, exports a CSV laid out for HMRC Charities Online and marks those gifts as claimed, so you always know what has gone to HMRC. Charitable exports a CSV of Gift Aid gifts with the core fields, which you may need to rearrange before submitting. The guide to Gift Aid on a WordPress donation form has the detail.
Regular giving and your CRM
Both plugins take monthly gifts by card and by Direct Debit through GoCardless. Tinwell adds the parts that keep a regular donor giving: from the donor portal they can change the amount, update the card or pause a Direct Debit instead of cancelling it. Each donation, donor, schedule and consent then goes into Beacon, Donorfy or Raisely within seconds, merged into the existing record. On both plans Charitable connects to email tools such as Mailchimp, and to other systems through Zapier, webhooks or Zoho Flow. See the Direct Debit page.
When Charitable is the right choice
If you want peer-to-peer fundraising, crowdfunding, teams or event tickets on your own site, Charitable Pro has them and Tinwell does not. It also costs less in its first year, takes more payment providers, handles several currencies and lets donors cover the fees. If you need donations on two or more websites, or you are an agency looking after several charities, Elite’s five sites cost less than the same number of Tinwell licences. For a UK charity with one website whose online income is direct donations with Gift Aid and a CRM to keep up to date, Tinwell’s claims workflow, donor portal and Beacon, Donorfy and Raisely sync are the difference, at about the same price as Pro from the second year and less than Elite.
Moving from Charitable
Both are WordPress plugins, so you can install Tinwell beside Charitable, connect your Stripe account, place the Tinwell form on a new page and run a £1 test before changing anything. Then swap the form on your donate page. Regular gifts set up through Charitable are managed by Charitable, so keep it active until you have decided how to move them; our team can help with that, and with the whole set-up, through the free onboarding add-on at checkout. The docs cover it too.
See pricing, compare with GiveWP, JustGiving, Donorbox, Enthuse or CAF Donate, see six plugins side by side in the best WordPress donation plugins for UK charities, or take the product tour. Charitable’s own plans are at wpcharitable.com.