Why this matters
Most churches we talk to are running the giving platform they picked four or five years ago, when the staff member who set it up was a different person, and the church was a different size. That is not a problem on its own. But every year or two, it is worth sitting down for an hour and asking whether the platform still fits.
This post is the comparison we wish more churches had before they signed up. Five platforms. Honest read on each. No affiliate links, no preferred partner. We work with whatever you choose, and we connect the giving experience into your website either way.
A note on pricing. Every platform on this list adjusts fees over time. The numbers below were pulled from each vendor's published pricing pages on 2026-05-12, and we cite the source on each one. Confirm directly with the vendor before you make the call, since rates do move.
Quick verdict by church size
These are starting points, not rules. The right answer always depends on what your team already uses and how comfortable they are with software.
- Under 100 attendance: Tithe.ly or Givelify. The setup is fast, the cost stays low, and you do not need the analytics tools the bigger platforms bundle in.
- 100 to 300: Tithe.ly is still the default. Planning Center Giving makes sense if you are already running Planning Center for services or check-in.
- 300 to 800: Pushpay or Subsplash Giving start to make sense, especially if you want a real donor-management layer. Tithe.ly still works fine; the question is whether you need more.
- 800 and up: Pushpay or Subsplash, almost always. The economics of a flat-fee or hybrid plan beat per-transaction at scale, and you start needing the CRM and reporting tools.
Online giving fees: how each platform actually charges
This is where churches get burned. Read the contract, not the marketing page.
There are three pricing patterns to watch for:
- Pure transaction-fee: You pay nothing monthly. The platform takes a percentage plus a flat fee per donation. Tithe.ly and Givelify lean this direction.
- Subscription plus transaction fee: You pay a monthly platform fee, and a smaller per-donation cut comes off the top. Pushpay and Subsplash operate this way for most plans.
- Bundled: You pay a single monthly fee for a suite (giving, app, website, messaging). Per-transaction fees are reduced or absorbed. Subsplash sells this hardest.
The right model depends on giving volume. A church doing $200,000 a year in online giving might save money on a flat-subscription plan. A church doing $40,000 will almost always do better on per-transaction.
Tithe.ly
The small-church default, and for good reason. Tithe.ly is fast to set up, has a clean donor-facing form, and the cost stays predictable. Their published rates as of 2026-05-12 (per get.tithe.ly/pricing) are 2.9% + $0.30 for credit and debit cards, 3.5% + $0.30 for American Express, and 1% + $0.30 for ACH bank transfers. The base Giving plan itself is free; the All-Access bundle that adds church management, an app, a website, and worship planning is listed at $119/mo. Confirm the current rate when you sign up.
Who it fits: churches under 300 attendance, churches that want to switch on giving today and stop thinking about it, churches whose staff are not full-time tech people.
Real strengths:
- The donor form embeds cleanly on a church website.
- Recurring giving works without donor friction.
- Mobile donation is genuinely good.
- Their support team responds to actual humans within a reasonable window.
Real limitations:
- Reporting is functional but not deep. If you want donor cohorts or retention trends, you are exporting CSVs.
- The integration with church management software is fine but not seamless. You usually end up doing a weekly sync rather than a real-time hand-off.
- At higher giving volumes, the per-transaction model gets expensive compared to flat-fee competitors.
Pushpay
Pushpay is what churches grow into when Tithe.ly starts to feel small. It is a fuller platform — giving, donor management, communication tools, and (through their parent company's broader suite) integration with church management products.
Who it fits: churches in the 500 to 5,000 attendance range, churches that want analytics and donor-management muscle bundled with giving, churches where giving is more than one staff member's part-time job.
Real strengths:
- Donor recognition and retention reporting that small platforms do not match.
- Strong text-to-give and app-based giving.
- Good integration story with Church Community Builder and similar tools.
- Their account management for larger churches is genuinely hands-on.
Real tradeoffs:
- Pricing is still not listed publicly the way Tithe.ly's is. As of 2026-05-12, pushpay.com/product/pricing confirms the model is quote-based — you get a number based on church size and feature set, and they publish that contracts run on 1, 2, or 3-year terms. Get the quote in writing before you commit.
- The platform is overpowered for a 150-person church and the cost reflects that.
- The donor experience is a touch heavier than Tithe.ly's — more clicks, more screens.
Subsplash Giving
Subsplash is interesting because it is rarely the answer on its own. It is the answer when you are already inside the Subsplash ecosystem — using their app, their messaging tools, and possibly their website builder. In that context, Subsplash Giving slots in cleanly and the bundled pricing usually beats stacking three vendors.
Who it fits: churches that already run a Subsplash app, churches that want one vendor for web, app, giving, and communication, churches that value a single dashboard over best-in-class individual tools.
Bundled-vs-standalone math: if you are paying Subsplash for an app and a website, adding giving inside the same plan is often the cheapest move. Subsplash Giving's standalone rate as of 2026-05-12 (per subsplash.com/pricing) is 2.3% + $0.30 for cards and 1% for ACH, with a $0/mo platform fee on the giving-only product — competitive on the card rate specifically. The full bundle pricing (giving plus app plus website plus media) is not published; Subsplash One is described as "pricing based on church size and usage" and routed through sales. Run the math before you decide.
Watch-outs:
- The lock-in is real. Moving off Subsplash means rebuilding the app, the giving setup, and often the website.
- The website builder is fine but constrained. Churches that want a distinct visual identity tend to hit ceilings.
Givelify
Givelify is the donor-app player. They built their platform around the experience of the person giving — find the church, tap, give — and the donor app is the strongest in this category.
Who it fits: churches whose people respond well to a branded donor app, churches that want low friction at the moment of decision, churches under 500 attendance where simplicity matters more than reporting depth.
Real cost framing: Givelify charges a percentage of each gift with no monthly fee in their standard plan. The published rate as of 2026-05-12 (per givelify.com/pricing) is 2.9% + $0.30 per donation on most cards, and 3.5% + $0.30 on American Express. There is no setup fee, signup fee, or monthly maintenance fee. For most small and mid-size churches, this lands in roughly the same place as Tithe.ly's credit-card rate net of fees — the gap shows up on ACH, where Tithe.ly's 1% is meaningfully cheaper.
Real limitations:
- The reporting and admin side is less developed than Tithe.ly's. You can pull reports, but the analytics live in the donor experience, not the admin one.
- Integration with church management software is thinner than Tithe.ly or Pushpay.
Planning Center Giving
If your church is already running Planning Center for services, check-in, registrations, or groups, Planning Center Giving is worth a hard look. The data flows into the same household and person records you already maintain, which removes a whole category of weekly sync work.
Who it fits: churches already inside Planning Center for two or more modules, churches whose staff find Planning Center comfortable, churches that value clean data over the flashiest donor app.
Integration upside: giving shows up alongside attendance, group involvement, and registrations in the same person record. For pastoral care and engagement tracking, that is a real lift. For pure transaction processing, the other platforms have feature-parity.
Pricing detail: Planning Center Giving's published rates as of 2026-05-12 (per planningcenter.com/giving) are 2.15% + $0.30 for credit and debit cards and 0% + $0.30 for ACH — both meaningfully lower than Tithe.ly's and Givelify's card rates. The subscription itself is tiered by monthly donation volume: free up to 10 donations, $15/mo for 75, $32/mo for 200, $69/mo for 500, $115/mo for 1,000, $179/mo for 1,500, and $239/mo for unlimited. No setup fees, no cancellation fees, 30-day free trial. For churches running real giving volume, the lower card percentage often pays for the subscription line item several times over.
Watch-outs:
- If you are not already using Planning Center for anything else, the value drops.
- The donor-facing form is functional but not as polished as Tithe.ly's or Givelify's.
Tithe.ly vs Pushpay vs Subsplash: which one wins your church
The three platforms churches most often compare head-to-head are Tithe.ly, Pushpay, and Subsplash Giving. Here is how that comparison usually lands.
Tithe.ly vs Pushpay is mostly a size question. Under about 500 attendance, Tithe.ly's transaction-fee-only model is cheaper than Pushpay's monthly platform fee even after you add the per-transaction percentage. Above 500 and especially above 1,000, Pushpay's donor management and reporting depth start to earn the higher cost. The donor-facing experience is comparable on both; the back-office tooling is where Pushpay pulls ahead.
Pushpay vs Subsplash is a different question. Both are higher-cost platforms with serious feature sets. Pushpay is a focused giving and donor-management platform — Subsplash is a bundle (app, giving, website, media, messaging) that includes giving. If the church wants the full Subsplash app and media stack, the bundle math usually beats stacking Pushpay plus a separate app vendor. If the church only wants giving, Pushpay is more focused and the website and app stay independently sourced.
Tithe.ly vs Subsplash is the cheapest-vs-bundle decision. Tithe.ly Giving is the lower-cost, simpler option. Subsplash makes sense only if the giving is part of a wider Subsplash bundle the church actually uses.
Switching considerations
Most churches that switch giving platforms underestimate two things.
First, donor friction. Recurring givers have to update their saved account on the new platform. Some percentage will not. Plan for a small dip in recurring giving for the first two months, and run a clear communication plan: email the recurring-giving list directly, two weeks before launch and one week after, with a one-tap link to set up the new recurring gift.
Second, your team's time. The data migration itself is usually clean. What takes longer is rebuilding the campaigns, funds, and reporting categories you had configured in the old platform. Block a half day of one staff person's time, not a quick afternoon.
If you are switching for a feature you do not actually use today, slow down. The honest test: write down the three specific things you cannot do on your current platform that are costing you real money or time. If the list is shorter than three, the upside on switching is smaller than it feels.
How giving integrates with your website
This is the part we care about most, because it is the part that most churches handle inconsistently.
Your giving link belongs in three places on the website:
- The main navigation, with a label that says "Give" — not "Online giving" or "Tithe."
- The footer, every page, every time.
- The homepage, on a section that does not require the visitor to hunt.
Beyond that, the give page itself should not be a single button that hands the visitor to a third-party tab and leaves. The give page is one of the highest-intent pages on a church website. It should answer the obvious questions: what gifts are tax-deductible, are there options other than online (text-to-give, mail-in check, in-person box), and where do questions go if the donor needs help. A give page that is just an embedded form misses the point.
A few specifics on the embed itself:
- Use the platform's iframe or hosted form, not a direct redirect, when you can. Visitors stay on your domain, which keeps trust signals consistent.
- Test the mobile flow yourself, on your own phone, every quarter. Most churches discover broken giving flows months after they break, because no one on staff actually uses the form.
- Track the giving page as a conversion in Google Analytics. You want to know whether traffic to the page converts to a started transaction, even if you cannot see the completed transaction inside GA.
A short, honest summary
For most churches under 300, Tithe.ly is the right answer. For churches already inside Subsplash or Planning Center, the integrated giving from those platforms is worth picking on integration alone. For churches above 500 with a serious donor base, Pushpay is worth pricing out against Tithe.ly's higher tiers. Givelify is the right answer if the donor app experience is what you care about most.
There is no "best" platform. There is the platform that fits your size, your tools, and your team's capacity to manage software.
For a broader plain-language overview of how online giving works for churches — what it is, what it costs, and how it should connect to your website — read our online giving for churches pillar page.
Next step
If you want a second pair of eyes on how your current giving setup connects to your website — the link in the nav, the give page itself, the mobile flow — we look at this on every free review we record. Send us your URL at /church/review. You get a five-minute Loom back with notes. No call, no pitch.