Donorbox is a popular choice for charities that want an embeddable donation form without a monthly fee, and it is a reasonable product. The question for a UK charity is what its percentage costs over the years and what you give up by running your donations on a hosted form. This page compares Donorbox’s Standard plan with Tinwell on cost, Gift Aid, donor data and the donor’s experience, using Donorbox’s published UK prices checked on 12 October 2026.
The short version
| DonorboxStandard plan | Tinwell | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | None | £249 + VAT a year£298.80 a year |
| Platform fee per donation | 2.95% | None |
| Card processing | Stripe’s fee on top (1.5% + 20p) | Stripe’s fee (1.5% + 20p), paid to Stripe |
| Total per £30 gift | About £1.54 | About 65p |
| Where the donor pays | On an embedded Donorbox form or a Donorbox-hosted page | On your own WordPress form |
| UK Gift Aid | Declaration option available | Declarations with HMRC wording and a Charities Online CSV export |
| Direct Debit | Not through GoCardless | ✓Through GoCardless |
| CRM sync | Via third-party connectors | Beacon, Donorfy and Raisely built in |
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 Donorbox costs
Donorbox’s Standard plan has no subscription and charges a platform fee of 2.95% on each donation. Card processing is separate, through Stripe or PayPal, so a UK charity on Stripe pays 2.95% to Donorbox plus 1.5% + 20p to Stripe on every gift. Donorbox also offers paid plans with a lower platform fee and more features; the figures here use the Standard plan because it is the one most small charities start on, and because a paid plan changes the maths in a way you can check for your own numbers on the fee calculator.
Donorbox asks donors to add a tip to Donorbox when they give. That is paid by the donor, not the charity, but it is part of what your supporter sees on your donation form.
What Tinwell costs
A Tinwell licence is £249 + VAT a year for one website. There is no per-donation fee from Tinwell. Donations go into your own Stripe account and Stripe charges its standard UK rate, 1.5% + 20p at the time of writing. See the pricing page for everything that is included.
A worked example at £60,000 a year
A charity raising £60,000 a year online in 2,000 gifts averaging £30:
| Yearly cost | DonorboxStandard plan, with Stripe | Tinwellwith Stripe |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription or licence | £0.00 | £298.80£249 + VAT |
| Platform percentage on £60,000 | £1,770.002.95% of £60,000 | £0.00 |
| Stripe percentage on £60,000 | £900.001.5% of £60,000 | £900.001.5% of £60,000 |
| Stripe fixed fee on 2,000 gifts | £400.0020p × 2,000 gifts | £400.0020p × 2,000 gifts |
| Total | £3,070.00 | £1,598.80 |
| Extra kept for the cause with Tinwell | £1,471.20 |
That is £1,471.20 a year more for the cause with Tinwell, and the licence pays for itself in about 9 weeks. Because Donorbox’s fee is a straight percentage, the gap grows with income: £586.20 at £30,000 a year, £3,241.20 at £120,000 and £7,076.20 at £250,000. The only point at which Donorbox’s Standard plan costs less than Tinwell is below roughly £10,000 a year, where 2.95% of your income is under £298.80.
Donorbox’s Standard plan (2.95% platform fee) plus Stripe’s card fee. Tinwell is the licence including VAT plus Stripe’s standard UK card rate of 1.5% + 20p. Per-donation pence fees assume an average gift of £30. Not counted: donor tips, Donorbox’s paid plans, and surcharges on premium or non-UK cards. Logos and names belong to their owners.
The form on your page
Donorbox’s embedded form is the closest a hosted platform gets to Tinwell’s approach: the donor stays on your page, visually at least. Under the surface the form is an iframe served from Donorbox, which means it cannot inherit your theme’s fonts and spacing, your analytics cannot see inside it, and the donor’s session is with Donorbox’s servers. Tinwell’s form is part of your WordPress page. It uses your site’s fonts, it is a block you place like any other, your analytics see every step of the funnel, and the data is written to your own database.
Gift Aid for UK charities
Donorbox is an international product and Gift Aid is a UK rule, so Gift Aid is an option you switch on rather than the centre of the form. Tinwell is built around it: the declaration uses HMRC’s wording, captures the home address fields HMRC needs, is stored against the donor and each gift, and exports as a CSV laid out for HMRC Charities Online. If Gift Aid matters to your income, and for most UK charities it is worth 25p in the pound, that difference pays for the licence on its own. The guide to Gift Aid on a WordPress donation form has the detail.
Regular giving and Direct Debit
Donorbox supports recurring card donations. Tinwell supports those too, through Stripe, and adds Direct Debit through GoCardless, which costs less per collection, does not fail when a card expires and is how UK donors expect to give monthly. Donors manage their own regular gifts in Tinwell’s donor portal. See the Direct Debit page.
Your CRM
Getting Donorbox donations into a UK charity CRM usually means a connector service or a periodic export. Tinwell writes each donation, donor, schedule and consent into Beacon, Donorfy or Raisely through their official APIs within seconds, merging into existing records. For a small team that is the difference between a CRM that is current and one that is updated when someone remembers.
Reporting to trustees
A platform percentage is easy to lose in the accounts because it is deducted before the money arrives. A fixed licence is a line in the budget. If your board asks what the website costs to run, the honest answer with Donorbox is “about 3% of everything we raise online, plus card fees”; with Tinwell it is “£249 a year, plus card fees”. Tinwell’s trustee report puts the figures beside each other: conversion by source, recurring against one-off, average gift and Gift Aid status for the period, as one page or a PDF.
When Donorbox is the right choice
If your charity raises under about £10,000 a year online, Donorbox’s no-subscription model costs less in pure fees, and if you need a hosted form on a site you do not control (a Squarespace or Wix site, for example), Tinwell cannot help because it is a WordPress plugin. For a UK charity on WordPress raising more than that, the percentage is the most expensive way to pay for a donation form, and the data and Gift Aid arguments point the same way.
Moving from Donorbox
Keep Donorbox running while you set Tinwell up: install the plugin, connect the same Stripe account (your existing recurring Stripe donations are unaffected), place the form on a new page and run a £1 test. Then swap the embed for the Tinwell block on your donate page. Our team will do this for you with the free onboarding add-on at checkout, or follow the docs.
See pricing, compare with JustGiving, Enthuse, CAF Donate, GiveWP or Charitable, or take the product tour.