Charitable

Item: Charitable
Rating: 4.6
Author: Fast WordPress

by WP Charitable

Fundraising plugin with campaign pages, goals and donor management, and no forced platform fee.

4.9217 WordPress.org reviewsDonationsFreemium

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What Charitable does

Fundraising plugin with campaign pages, goals and donor management, and no forced platform fee.

It sits in the donations part of a WordPress stack and is sold by WP Charitable on a freemium basis. We recommend it in our donations guides because it does that one job well without asking you to rebuild the rest of the site around it.

Every plugin adds work to a page request, so treat this as a decision with a cost. Record a speed test before you install it and run the same test afterwards, on the same page, so you know exactly what it charged you.

Real user ratings

Score

4.9/5

Reviews

217

Active installs

10,000+

Downloads

1.2M

Latest version

1.8.12.3

Last updated

2026-08-28

These figures come straight from the public WordPress.org plugin directory API for version 1.8.12.3, not from us. Check them yourself on the WordPress.org listing. Our own editorial score is 4.6/5.

Where Charitable ranks elsewhere

Publisher	List	Position
WPBeginner	Must Have WordPress Plugins for Every Website	#13 of 24

Positions are read from the published articles themselves, so they reflect that publisher's order rather than ours. Lists get re-ordered over time, so follow the link if you want the current version.

What changed in the latest version

v1.8.12.3Latest release

FIX: Improved support for Campaign builder text fields and non-Latin characters such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.
FIX: Updates involving campaign headline color in the builder and resolved builder preview memory issue, which was happening in some scenarios.
FIX: Improved Donate Button block's label in terms of readability in certain scenarios.

v1.8.12.2

FIX: Reports > Overview no longer times out on long date ranges. If a report does fail, the figures are cleared and an error shown.
FIX: The Refunds and Net columns in the Reports > Overview breakdown read zero for ranges outside the current year, and merged refunds across years.
FIX: The optional description beside each suggested donation amount now appears in the Donate Amount block.
FIX: Campaign template stylesheets now locate their shared helper reliably, so a campaign's colours no longer depend on the server's working directory.
FIX: Security: the sort setting on the donor list shortcode is now restricted to standard sort directions, so it cannot be used to read information from the database.
FIX: The setup wizard no longer says you have been logged out when its final step cannot reach your site. It now explains what happened and offers to retry or finish from the dashboard.
FIX: A campaign embedding a shortcode that points back at itself, or two campaigns referencing each other, no longer loops until memory runs out.
FIX: Removed PHP warnings and general cleanup.

v1.8.12.1

NEW: Added a charitable_campaign_description_limit filter so developers can change the word limit on the campaign description shown on the campaign page.
IMPROVED: More consistent brand colors in admin UI.
FIX: The 24-hour limit on re-running Site Analysis is no longer reset by clearing Charitable's cache from Settings > Advanced, or by changing a setting, a campaign, or an add-on.
FIX: Site Analysis now tells you that you have reached the analysis limit when the service is rate-limiting your site, instead of reporting that the service is unavailable and inviting a retry that keeps the limit in place.
FIX: Security: links on Site Analysis recommendations are now restricted to standard web addresses, so a spoofed or compromised response cannot place a script link on the screen.
FIX: Donation CSV export no longer shows inflated "Donation Total" and "Donation Subtotal" amounts (such as 10 178,00 instead of 101,78) on sites that use a comma as the decimal separator.
FIX: Campaign Hero background images now appear on the front end for every campaign template.
FIX: Campaigns created with a duplicate title now have the campaign ID appended, so the two can be told apart.

Release notes are the developer's own words, published on WordPress.org. Read the full changelog

Pros and cons

No platform fee on donations
A free tier you can trial before paying
Actively maintained and used on production sites we test

Some gateways are premium
The features most sites need sit in the paid tier

How to use it

1Connect a payment gateway and complete one real donation end to end.
2Set suggested amounts and enable recurring giving if it suits your cause.
3Customise the receipt email and check it arrives from your own domain.
4Add a progress goal so visitors can see momentum.
5Review donor records monthly and thank repeat supporters.

How it compares

Other donations plugins we recommend, with their rating and pricing model.

Plugin	Our rating	WordPress.org	Pricing	Best for
Charitable	4.6	4.9 (217)	Freemium	No platform fee on donations
Charitable Ambassadors	4.2	4.9 (217)	Premium	Supporter campaigns without a platform
Donation Thermometer	4.5	4.4 (12)	Free	Free, light and easy to embed
GiveWP	4.7	4.6 (707)	Freemium	Best donor management in WordPress
GiveWP Peer-to-Peer	4.3	4.6 (707)	Premium	Supporter-led fundraising at scale
PayPal Donations	4.0	4.7 (27)	Free	Simplest way to accept donations