Many of you may have been wondering what differences there are between the Donorbox and PayPal donation forms.

In fact, while PayPal’s donation function may seem similar to Donorbox in some ways, we want to show you how Donorbox better caters to your non-profit’s needs.

1. More Robust Recurring Donation

Donations on PayPal are limited to one-time and monthly. For various reasons, not everyone can contribute on a monthly basis and these limitations can often result in someone opting to donate to a cause just once. At Donorbox, we understand the need for more flexibility when it comes to recurring donations. That’s why non-profits who opt to use our fundraising platform can accept one-time, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual recurring donations.

With Donorbox, recurring donors get their own Donor Login to manage their own donation plan. Donors can easily pause, cancel or resume donations, edit their card information, change a donation amount and even change the charge date of a donation. With PayPal, donors cannot increase donation amounts or pause & resume recurring plans.

2. Best of Both Worlds: Pay by Card, ACH, or PayPal

If you already have a PayPal account, we understand that you may want to stick to PayPal for convenience. That’s no problem because Donorbox uses PayPal as one of its payment processors. So, you can link your PayPal account to a Donorbox form and still benefit from our awesome checkout process.

All donor data will be collected up front on the Donorbox form. Then, donors will be transferred to PayPal to complete the payment.

Our donation forms also accept fast check out options like Apple Pay, Google Pay and low-fee ACH bank payments.

With Donorbox, it’s now easier than ever for donors to contribute using their preferred payment method.

3. Ask Custom Questions

Donorbox aims to make the donation process as complete and straightforward as possible.

Our donation forms have a wide variety of settings to customize it to your preference. Gather as much or as little information as you want to. Ask custom questions and give donors simple ways to respond. In contrast, PayPal’s donation forms cannot be customized.

The following image shows some of the options you can choose to add to your Donorbox form:

4. Ask Donors to Cover the Processing Fee

Organizations who use Donorbox can ask their donor’s to cover the credit card processing fee. This covers the 2.9% + 30c credit card processing fee from Stripe or Paypal (this fee can be reduced for registered nonprofits), as well as the 1.5% Donorbox platform fee.

Here’s the step by step guide on how to ask your donors to cover the processing fee.

5. Suggested Donation Amounts

Donorbox’s checkout process is also very straightforward, designed to save your donors as much time as possible.

In fact, DonorBox (form pictured above) provides suggested donation amounts, guiding your donors along the donation process, while PayPal (form pictured below) requires donors to type in the amount they wish to donate.

6. Ease of Fund Transfer

Here’s another great reason to use Donorbox. When receiving donations through PayPal, the money first goes to your PayPal account and you then have to transfer it to your bank account. This adds extra processing time before the transfer is considered complete, delaying you access to the money you need.

Stripe is also another payment gateway that Donorbox uses. It deposits your donations directly into your bank account, giving you quicker access to your funds.

7. Customize your Email Receipts

While PayPal only provides a donation platform, Donorbox provides extended support, even after your donations have been made.

For example, both platforms offer automatic donation receipts, but only Donorbox allows you to customize them to be more personalized. You can add text, images, hyperlinks and change fonts, colors and sizes. It’s pretty handy if you’d like your receipt to contain special info like legal terms and conditions.

8. Send Year-end Tax Receipts

Along with the automatic one-time and recurring donation receipts, Donorbox also has a year-end tax receipt feature. Specify your fiscal year, customize your receipt and send your donor’s their annual tax receipts.

9. Integrations

Donorbox offers some useful added integrations to give even more functionality to your fundraising campaign:

MailChimp – MailChimp handles all your email marketing needs, from designing newsletters to tracking results.

– MailChimp handles all your email marketing needs, from designing newsletters to tracking results. Salesforce – Salesforce is the #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform, managing sales, marketing and customer support.

– Salesforce is the #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform, managing sales, marketing and customer support. Zapier – Zapier builds connections between frequently used apps to automate your work so you can be more productive.

– Zapier builds connections between frequently used apps to automate your work so you can be more productive. Company Matching – double your donations with corporate gift matching. We’ve teamed up with Double the Donation to provide you with a seamless integration that allows companies to match the donations of their employees.

10. Fundraising Thermometer

Donorbox has a host of added features that give you complete control over how your donation form works for you, including a fundraising thermometer to share your progress and encourage more support.

The Donorbox Form Builder is a powerful web-based application to create beautifully customized forms, complete with your own branding and styling choices.

Donorbox outperforms PayPal by incorporating more useful features. We hope this guide helps you see the benefits of choosing Donorbox rather than PayPal.