How do they stack up?

PayPal for Nonprofits vs. CanadaHelps

PayPal is a popular choice for growing charities as a globally recognized brand and trusted form of payment. However, it's lack of customizability and features for charities mean it's not always the best choice.

Learn how PayPal for Nonprofits works and how CanadaHelps stacks up in comparison with features such as customizability, automatic tax receipts for your donors all for a low transparent low cost.

What are the fees?

We know the bottom line is incredibly important for your charity, so we make our fees simple and easy to understand, without any additional charges for features that protect you and your charity. At a glance PayPal has a lower rate, but there are also additional flat fees for every transaction and charges for basic features.

PayPal charges 1.6%+ $0.30 for Canadian credit cards, 2.6% + flat fee based on currency received for international donations and 3.5% for AMEX.
There are also additional charges for fraud protection, chargebacks, account updates, offline payments and failed transactions.

CanadaHelps charges 3.75% for one-time donations and 3.5% for monthly donations with no additional costs. Donors can also opt to cover the fees.

What are the features?

PayPal is well known but its solutions are geared towards businesses, which mean they lack many of the features that charities need and would save you time and make administrative work easier.

PayPal is a simple way to accept donations but they have few other features. The "Donate" button leads donors away from your website against best practice and there is limited donor information provided.

CanadaHelps has the most customizable form that allows you to take control of the donor experience from brand colours, to logo, imagery and fonts.

Embed your donation form directly on your site. Choose from multi-step, one-page or pop up options.

Best practices are incorporated into every step of the CanadaHelps donation form such as mobile optimization, fewer steps and a streamlined look.

All the gift types you need to raise more: supports one-time, monthly, tribute and security gifts - instant tax receipts and branded thank yous included.

What are other differences?

CanadaHelps provides top-notch bilingual support if you run into any trouble. You can reach our support through phone or email.

We provide free education and resources so charities can continue learning about best practices in fundraising and expanding their digital capacity.

Our full-fundraising solution makes it easy to create an event, P2P fundraiser or manage your donors when your charity fundraising needs grow.

LEARN MORE ABOUT CANADAHELPS CUSTOMIZED DONATON FORMS

Ready to Talk About Fundraising?

Our Charity Engagement team provides free consultations to explore whether CanadaHelps Customizable Donation Forms are the right solution for your charity. Learn what our solution could do for your specific charity and book your free consultation today.

We're looking forward to chatting soon!

Feature Comparison

Compare the features, support and pricing of CanadaHelps and PayPal at a glance in this handy table. Hover over each feature to learn more about the options and limitations.

CanadaHelps
PayPal

Gift Types

One-time, monthly

Form Types

Standalone, embedded, pop-up, full form, multi-step
Standalone, embedded, multi-step

Options to customize

Branding, custom asks, impact statements, thermometer & more

eCards

Add custom e-cards, or our automatic e-cards for tribute giving

Payment Types

Credit Card, PayPal, Google Pay & Apple Pay
Credit Card, PayPal

Full Fundraising Solutions

Donation Forms, Events, P2P, Donor Management System

Support

Chat/ Phone/ Email
Phone only

Pricing

3.75% one-time donations,
3.5% monthly donations
1.6%+ $0.30 Canadian cc,
2.6% + flat fee for other CC & 3.5% for AMEX , additional charges may apply

Client
Testimonials

Jennifer Yetman

Kids Eat Smart Foundation

Our Foundation uses the custom online donation forms to assist us in our fundraising efforts. They are easy to set up and are user friendly for our donors. It is a wonderful tool to use.

Courtney McLaughlin

Calgary Public Library Foundation

Prior to joining CanadaHelps, our organization faced the problem many nonprofits do - how do we collect donations easily, quickly issue tax receipts and make it all look attractive, with our limited resources and small team? Canada Helps solved all these problems! CanadaHelps provides a holistic solution to donation management.

Brandon Dean

Critter Care Wildlife Society

It's easy to set up campaigns and funds. Being able to customize the forms to match our brand was a huge bonus for us.

Jeff Adams

Lifewater Canada

We wanted to offer our donors a seamless shift from the pages on our site to the donation page on the Canada Helps site, plus donation options that were appropriate for our project needs and donors' preferences. We chose Canada Helps because it offered us the opportunity to develop a donation form that would be clearly identifiable as Lifewater Canada's form.