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1-844-PUSHPAY The best giving software for church plants in 2026
Church plants need giving software that scales past launch. Compare launch costs across five platforms and see what a 12-month no-cost grant covers.
A church plant picks giving software with a launch date, a core team of maybe 30 people, and a sending network watching the numbers. There’s no giving history yet to compare price and features against.
The cheapest tool for a pre-launch gathering of 40 is often the wrong tool at 400. What decides the right platform is the cost at launch and the cost in year two, whether a people database comes with it, and who sets it up before your first Sunday.
Get any of those wrong, and you end up switching platforms in your first year, in the exact season when you have the least margin to absorb it.
The short answer
If you’re pre-launch and affiliated with a church planting network, the strongest option in 2026 is the Pushpay® church plant grant. Qualified pre-launch plants get 12 months of the full platform at no cost: Giving with Everygift®, the church management system, and a mobile church app. It’s the same platform 84 of Outreach’s top 100 churches run, with nothing held back for a starter tier.
Standard payment processing rates still apply. The grant covers the software, not the fees on each gift.
Who qualifies, and who doesn’t
The grant is for pre-launch plants 6 to 18 months out from a public launch date, affiliated with a recognized planting network or organization.
Already launched? The window has closed. Planting outside a network is a separate case: the grant may not fit, though Pushpay does work with independent plants on stage-appropriate pricing, and one email to Pushpay settles which applies to you.
If either describes you, skip ahead to “Launching without the grant.”
Where giving data drifts
A standalone giving tool solves one problem, taking money online, and it’s the easiest of the problems you’re about to have.
The harder one is that giving data and people data drift apart from day one. A gift arrives with no record attached to it. Months later someone asks whether that person ever joined a group, and the answer lives in a different system, or a spreadsheet, or the memory of a volunteer who has since moved away. Repeat that for every new giver in a launch year, and the database stops answering questions you can rely on.
Plants that start with one profile per person skip the reconstruction project entirely.
Side by side
Launch cost, and what changes as you grow:
| Platform | How text giving works | Fits if |
|---|---|---|
| Tatango | Messaging platform; sends donors to a giving page you already run | Your checkout works and your list doesn’t |
| Donorbox | Hosted donation forms with a text keyword option | You need a form live this month |
| Givebutter | Free to start, cost shifted to optional donor tips | Events and campaigns drive most of your giving |
| GoFundMe Pro (formerly Classy) | Campaign and event pages for larger nonprofits | Your fundraising year is a calendar of campaigns |
| Pushpay Giving | Keyword and amount to a 10-digit toll-free number, gift completes on a branded page | Weekly recurring giving is your budget |
Data accurate as of September 2026. Please confirm with vendor before making purchasing decisions.
What the grant covers
Giving with Everygift takes gifts in the app, by text, and by QR code. Recurring gift protection and failed payment recovery run underneath it: expired card details get updated and failed gifts get retried without anyone on your team filing a ticket. Recurring donors lost to a dead card hurt more when you have a few dozen than when you have a few thousand.
ChurchStaq® gives you one profile per person from the first gift or the first Sunday, plus follow-up workflows and kids check-in. The app puts sermons, events, and giving in one place, and you don’t need a developer to build it.
Your core team learns the system before launch rather than during it. Onboarding runs through the pre-launch phase, so setup is tested and the people who’ll use it have already used it.
You’re also placed in a cohort with other plants at the same stage. That sounds like a nice extra until you need to ask someone how they handled first-time giver follow-up in the opening weeks.
Dylan Jones planted NEUMA Church in Los Angeles, and he frames the decision as a question about permanence rather than budget. “We didn’t want temporary tools for a permanent mission.”
Launching without the grant
If you’re past launch or outside a network, cost moves back to the top of the list, and the other four platforms split by what you need first.
Planning Center is offers a free starting point for a plant that wants its people database sorted from the beginning. People is free, Giving is free, but only up to 10 donations a month. Text giving with a toll-free number adds $5 a month. The Giving tier price climbs with donation count, so price it at the donation count you expect a year after launch.
Tithe.ly gets online giving live this week with no software line in the budget. Bundle prices are published, so you can budget without booking a call, and text giving is a separate $19 a month. A people database and ChMS tools aren’t part of the free tier. Those come in a paid bundle.
Givelify is the lowest-friction option for donors and the most limited for you. App-based giving, no ACH, no member database.
Subsplash: if media and the app are central to how you’re reaching your community, price this one out. Giving rates are published, but the app-and-platform bundle, including the people database, comes by quote.
Before you commit to anything
Ask every vendor on your list, including the free ones:
- What happens to your donor records if you leave: ask for the export format. A CSV of names and amounts is not the same as a transferable donor history with recurring gift schedules attached.
- Who sets this up, and when: if the answer is “we’re not sure, whenever we have the time” pick the platform that includes onboarding.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest giving software for a church plant?
Several platforms cost nothing to start. Tithe.ly, Givelify, and Subsplash all offer standalone giving at $0 a month, and Planning Center Giving is free up to 10 donations a month. For qualified pre-launch plants, the Pushpay church plant grant covers the full platform at no cost for 12 months. It’s the only option in this comparison that adds pre-launch onboarding to giving, a people database, and an app at no cost.
Is ACH cheaper than card giving for a plant?
Yes, and the gap matters more when most of your gifts are small. Published ACH rates in this category run from 0% to 1%, against card rates of 2.1% to 2.99%. Most card rates also add a flat per-transaction fee, and that fee is what stings on small gifts: 30 cents on a $10 gift is another 3% on top of the percentage.
Can a church plant use Stripe directly?
Yes. What Stripe doesn’t include is recurring gift management, giving statements formatted for IRS substantiation, or a support line that knows what Sunday morning is. Some plants run it for the first few months and add a giving platform later, which means moving every recurring giver they signed up on Stripe.
How hard is it to switch giving platforms later?
Moving transaction history is the easy part. Recurring givers are the problem, because in most cases donors have to re-enter their payment details themselves. Every donor who doesn’t is a recurring gift that stops. That’s the strongest argument for settling the platform decision before launch.
Does the church plant grant include payment processing?
No. The grant covers the platform subscription for 12 months. Standard processing rates apply to gifts from day one.
If your launch date is 6 to 18 months out, you’re inside the application window right now. Start the application before your own launch date closes it.
