How to accept donations on your own website

The three ways to take a donation online

Almost every donation setup is a version of one of three things. The first is a platform-hosted campaign: you create a page on someone else's site — a crowdfunding or giving platform — and send your supporters there. The second is an embedded widget: a small block of giving functionality that sits inside a page on your own website, so the giving happens without the visitor leaving your site. The third is a hosted donation page: a standalone page hosted by a tool but branded to you, that you link to from anywhere.

The difference that matters most is not the price. It's where the donation happens and what you walk away with. A platform-hosted campaign puts the giving on a page the platform owns, under the platform's brand, and the supporter relationship tends to stay there. An embedded widget keeps the giving on your own page. A hosted page sits in between: it's a page you don't have to build, but it isn't part of your own site either.

What you actually need to get started

Regardless of which route you choose, you need a way to move money from a supporter's card into your bank account. In practice that means a payment processor. Stripe is the most common one for this — it handles the card transaction, the fraud checks, and the payout to your bank. You'll connect a Stripe account once, and from then on every donation lands there.

You also need somewhere for the donation to happen. If you're going the embedded-widget route, you need a website that lets you paste in custom code — most site builders allow this on a paid plan but block it on their free tier. If you don't have a site that allows embeds, or you don't have a site at all, a hosted donation page covers you, because it lives on the tool's domain rather than yours.

• A payment processor — usually a Stripe account — to take card payments and pay out to your bank.
• Somewhere for the donation to happen: a page on your own site that allows custom code, or a hosted page if it doesn't.
• A decision about whether you want one-time gifts, recurring gifts, or both.

Option one: a platform-hosted campaign page

This is the most familiar route because it's how the big crowdfunding and giving sites work. You make a page on their platform, you share the link, and supporters give there. The upside is that there's nothing to install — the platform builds and hosts the page for you, and some platforms put your campaign in front of people already browsing their site.

The trade-off is twofold. Most of these platforms take a percentage of every donation on top of card-processing fees, so the more you raise, the more the platform keeps. And the giving lives on their page, not yours: a supporter who came from your site gets handed off to a checkout that doesn't look like you, and the relationship — the record of who gave — tends to stay on the platform.

Option two: an embedded widget on your own site

An embedded widget is a block you paste into one of your own pages. The visitor gives without leaving your site, and the money goes to your own payment processor account. This is the route that keeps everything on your side: your brand, your page, your supporter records.

The catch is technical. The widget is custom code, and not every site will run it. Builders like Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, and Ghost allow custom code on a paid builder plan but strip it out on their free tier; a few editors, like Substack and the new Google Sites, don't allow custom scripts at all. So before you commit to a widget, check whether your site and your current plan can run one. If they can't, that's not a dead end — it's a reason to use the third option.

Option three: a hosted donation page

A hosted page is a standalone giving page that a tool hosts for you, branded to you, that you reach by a link. You don't build it and you don't need a site that runs custom code — you just share the URL, and supporters give there. It's the fallback when your site can't embed a widget, and it's the simplest possible setup when you don't have a website at all.

The trade-off compared to an embedded widget is that the giving happens on a page that lives on the tool's domain rather than your own. For most people that distinction is small — the page is still branded to them and the money still lands in their own account. But if having the donation happen literally inside your own site matters to you, the widget is the closer fit, where your site supports it.

Where CrowdCreate fits

CrowdCreate is the embedded-widget-and-hosted-page route without a platform cut. You connect your own Stripe account, paste one snippet onto your own site for the widget, and supporters give there; the money goes straight to your Stripe account, and we never hold it or take a percentage. If your site can't run the snippet — a free tier, or an editor like Substack — every account also gets a hosted page at crowdcreate.app/c/your-name that works anywhere.

The pricing is a flat $20 a month, whether you raise a little or a lot. We add nothing on top of Stripe's own processing fee, which is its standard 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card payment and is paid to Stripe, not to us. That fee applies no matter which of the three routes above you pick, because it's the cost of moving money by card; what differs between routes is whether a platform also takes a percentage on top of it.

Common questions

How CrowdCreate works

1. 1

   Sign up free and connect Stripe

   Create your account and link your own Stripe account. It takes about ten minutes.

2. 2

   Paste the snippet on your site

   Drop one line of code onto your own page — or share your hosted CrowdCreate page if you don't have a site.

3. 3

   Funders pledge

   Money lands in your own Stripe account. We take no cut of what your funders give.

Your money goes straight to your own Stripe account — CrowdCreate never holds it, and takes no cut of donations.