Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover tips & donations and monetization & payments. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Buy Me a Coffee | Fundraise Up | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | 5% of what you earn | 4% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web |
| Covers | Tips & Donations, Digital Products & Storefronts, Memberships & Subscriptions, Monetization & Payments | Tips & Donations, Crowdfunding, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
One page for tips, memberships and sales
Buy Me a Coffee is the shortest path between a reader wanting to pay you and money arriving in your bank account. A page, a button, and no plan to choose. Memberships and a shop for one-off things sit on the same page, and the 5 percent it takes is cheap until you are earning enough that a percentage stops being cheap.
Our note
The right first step and rarely the last one. Once memberships pass a few hundred a month, run the 5 percent against what a fixed monthly plan elsewhere would cost, because that is when the simplicity starts having a price.
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A donation checkout tuned to raise more
Fundraise Up replaces a donation form with a checkout tuned to raise the amount given: suggested upgrades, a monthly nudge, wallets and a currency the donor recognises. It charges four percent of what comes in and sells no plans at all. The company's own figure is that most donors elect to cover that cost, which is the argument for a percentage over a subscription.
Our note
Four percent on top of processing is more than a plain Stripe form costs, and the case for it is that the checkout raises more than it takes. Ask for the figures on comparable organisations before assuming that holds for your audience.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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