Donation Platform or Your Own Donation Page?
The answer depends almost entirely on how much you raise in a year.
A plain comparison of fundraising platforms and your own donation page, with the fee maths at four donation levels and when a platform still wins.
Last reviewed .
Short answer
Use a donation platform while you are small, and move to your own donation page once fees start costing more than the page would. A platform typically takes around 6% of every donation once its own fee and card processing are combined, where a donation page on your own website using Stripe costs roughly 3%. Below about $25,000 of donations a year, the difference is smaller than the cost of building the page and a platform is the sensible choice. Above it, the saving repays a build quickly and keeps paying every year after. LGTCS builds donation pages into websites from the Impact package upward, and will tell you honestly if your numbers say you should stay where you are.
- Typical all-in cost per donation
- ~6% vs ~3%Typical all-in cost per donation
- Yearly donations where a build starts paying for itself
- ~$25,000Yearly donations where a build starts paying for itself
- Funds settle to you directly, not to a platform
- Your accountFunds settle to you directly, not to a platform
Which one suits you
This is not a close call in either direction. It swings almost entirely on annual donation volume, and on whether you need a platform's audience to find donors in the first place.
Use a donation platform
- You raise under roughly $25,000 a year
- You have no website, or no budget to change the one you have
- You rely on peer-to-peer fundraising, where supporters raise on your behalf
- You need to be live this week
- You want donors discovering you through the platform's own audience
- Nobody on your team can manage a payment account
Build your own donation page
- You raise more than roughly $25,000 a year
- Most donors already arrive through your own website or your own campaigns
- You want donor details in your own records, not the platform's
- You need the donation flow to match your brand and language
- You report to funders and need clean figures by campaign
- You are planning recurring giving rather than one-off appeals
What LGTCS recommends
LGTCS builds the donation page, and we will say plainly when you should not have one yet. If you raise under about $25,000 a year, the fee saving will not cover the build and a platform is genuinely the better use of your money. Send LGTCS last year's donation total and we will do this calculation with your numbers before quoting anything.
What you are really choosing between
A fundraising platform is a website that collects donations on your behalf. Your supporters give on the platform's page, the platform takes a cut, and the balance is passed to you, usually on a payout schedule. The appeal is obvious: nothing to build, nothing to maintain, and you can be collecting money within an hour of signing up.
A donation page on your own website does the same job from your own domain. The donor stays on your site, the payment is handled by a payment processor such as Stripe, and the money settles into your organisation's own bank account. There is no middle party holding it, and no second brand on the page at the moment somebody decides to give.
The trade is straightforward. A platform charges you a percentage forever in exchange for doing the work. Your own page charges you once to build and then costs only card processing. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how much passes through it, which is why any article answering this question without arithmetic is not really answering it.
What actually differs
Both take donations successfully. The differences are in what each one costs you, what you learn about your donors, and who holds the relationship.
| Aspect | Donation platform | Your own donation page |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per donation | Platform fee plus card processing, commonly around 6% all in | Card processing only, commonly around 3% |
| Cost to start | Usually nothing | Part of a website build |
| Where the money lands | Platform account first, then paid out to you on a schedule | Your own bank account, on the processor's normal settlement cycle |
| Donor details | Held by the platform, shared with you under their terms | Yours, in your own records from the start |
| Branding at the moment of giving | Platform branding alongside yours | Entirely yours |
| Finding new donors | The platform's audience can discover you | Only people you bring yourself |
| Peer-to-peer fundraising | Built in, and genuinely good | Needs building, and rarely worth it |
| Reporting to funders | Platform reports, in the platform's format | Your own analytics, by campaign and source |
| If you stop paying or leave | The donation page goes with them | Nothing changes, it is your site |
Two rows deserve more weight than the fee comparison. Platform discovery is real: some organisations genuinely receive donations from people who found them while browsing. And peer-to-peer fundraising, where a supporter runs a marathon and collects on your behalf, is something platforms do well and a custom page does badly. If either of those is where your money comes from, the fee argument does not decide this.
The fee maths, at four donation levels
This is the part that decides it. The figures below are what disappears in fees before the money reaches your work.
| Donations received in a year | Lost to fees on a platform (~6%) | Lost to fees on your own page (~3%) |
|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | about $600 | about $300 |
| $50,000 | about $3,000 | about $1,500 |
| $200,000 | about $12,000 | about $6,000 |
| $500,000 | about $30,000 | about $15,000 |
Assumes a platform costing roughly 6% once its own fee and card processing are combined, against a direct Stripe checkout at roughly 3%. Both vary by country, card type and whether the donor is local or international, so check the current published rates rather than treating these as quotes. The pattern holds regardless of the exact numbers: the saving is about half your fee bill. An LGTCS Impact build at $700 includes a Stripe donation page, so at $50,000 a year the saving covers it in under a year, and at $200,000 it covers it in about six weeks. At $10,000 it does not, which is why we will tell you to stay on a platform.
Want this worked out with your own numbers?
Send us what you raise, what you currently pay, and what the website has to do. We will tell you which option we would choose in your position and what it would cost.
What you hold at the end of it
Cost is the easy part of this decision. What you own afterwards is the part that is hard to reverse.
The donor relationship is the real asset
A platform holds the donor record and decides what it shares with you and when. On your own page, a donor's name, email and giving history are in your records from the first donation, which is what makes a second donation possible. Most charities discover this matters at the exact moment they try to run a second campaign.
Funds settle to you, not through someone else
With Stripe on your own page, money moves from the donor to your organisation's bank account on the processor's normal cycle. Nobody holds a balance on your behalf, sets a payout threshold, or freezes an account you cannot log into.
The page cannot be taken away
A platform can change its fees, change its terms, or close your account. Your donation page is part of a website in a repository you own, hosted on an account in your name. The only way to lose it is to take it down yourself.
Reporting matches how you actually work
Funders ask for income by campaign, by source and by period. Platform exports are built around the platform's model, not your grant reports. On your own page, LGTCS configures analytics so a completed donation carries its amount and its source, which is the figure a board or a funder is actually asking for.
If you are fundraising in the UAE or the wider GCC
Most comparison articles on this subject are written for the UK or the US, where the platform market is mature and the regulation is well documented. The picture in the UAE and across the GCC is different in ways that matter.
Many international platforms do not serve the region well
Several well-known fundraising platforms either do not operate for UAE-registered organisations or support them poorly, with payouts in the wrong currency or to foreign accounts only. That narrows the platform option considerably before fees are even discussed, and is often the deciding factor here rather than the maths.
Currency and settlement
Receiving in AED and settling to a local account avoids conversion losses on every gift. If a platform pays you in another currency, add the conversion cost to its fee before comparing, because it is a real cost that rarely appears in the platform's own pricing page.
Donor payment habits differ
Card use is high across the UAE, and Apple Pay and Google Pay adoption is strong. A donation page that supports those properly converts noticeably better than a plain card form, and both are standard in a Stripe checkout.
Arabic matters more than people assume
A donation flow that switches to Arabic, with correct right-to-left layout, removes friction for a large part of the donor base. Platforms rarely do this well. LGTCS builds Arabic and bilingual donation flows as part of the project.
Public fundraising in the UAE is regulated, and the requirements differ by emirate and by the kind of organisation you are. LGTCS is not a legal adviser and will not tell you what you are permitted to collect or from whom. Confirm your position with the relevant authority before launching any public appeal. What LGTCS handles is the technical side once you know where you stand.
What people ask us about this
The questions that come up in real conversations, answered without the sales layer.
Is it cheaper to take donations on my own website?
Per donation, yes, and usually by about half. A fundraising platform commonly costs around 6% once its own fee and card processing are combined, while a Stripe checkout on your own page costs roughly 3%. Whether that saving is worth having depends on volume. Below about $25,000 of donations a year the saving will not cover a build, and LGTCS will tell you to stay on a platform. Above it, the build pays for itself and keeps saving every year afterwards.
How much does it cost to add a donation page to my website?
With LGTCS it is included from the Impact package at $700, which covers the website, the Stripe donation integration and the analytics to track it. There is no separate charge for the donation functionality and no ongoing fee to LGTCS. You pay Stripe's transaction fees directly, on your own account, and we do not mark them up or take a share.
Do I keep the donor details if I use a platform?
Partly, and on the platform's terms rather than yours. Most platforms pass on some donor information and withhold or delay the rest, and some let the donor opt out of being identified to you at all. On your own donation page, the donor's details are in your records from the first gift. If building a repeat donor base matters to you, this is usually a bigger argument than the fees.
Can I use a platform and my own page at the same time?
Yes, and plenty of organisations should. A common and sensible split is to keep a platform for peer-to-peer campaigns, where supporters fundraise on your behalf, and take direct and recurring giving on your own page, where the volume and the fee saving are. Tell LGTCS how your donations actually arrive today and we will help you work out which portion is worth moving.
What happens to recurring donations if I switch?
They usually cannot be transferred, and this is the single most underestimated part of switching. Card details sit with the platform's processor and generally cannot be moved to yours, so existing recurring donors have to be asked to set up again on your new page. Expect to lose some. LGTCS plans this as a staged migration, leaving the platform running while the new page takes over new sign-ups, rather than switching everything in one weekend.
Is a donation page on my own site secure?
Yes, when it is built correctly, and card details never touch your website. LGTCS uses Stripe's hosted checkout, which means the payment happens on Stripe's own infrastructure and your site never sees or stores a card number. That keeps the security burden with the payment processor, where it belongs, and keeps your compliance position simple.
How do I know which option is right for my charity?
Take last year's total donation income and multiply it by three percent. If that number is comfortably larger than the cost of a website build, your own page is the better answer. If it is not, stay where you are. Send LGTCS your figure and we will run it with you, including the recurring-donor risk, before you spend anything.
Other decisions worth getting right
These questions tend to arrive together, so the guides are written to be read together.
How LGTCS builds this
If you decide to build, these are the parts of the stack this decision touches.
Tell us where you have landed.
Whichever way this decision goes, we will tell you what it costs to do it properly and what it would take to change course later.