Is Fundraise Up a good product?

Yes. Fundraise Up is one of the strongest donation checkout platforms in the market — high conversion, modern UX, Apple Pay/Google Pay, recurring optimization, DAF and crypto, native CRM integrations, and a clean API. The comparison here is honest. If you have a CRM you love and just need a better checkout, Fundraise Up is genuinely a great choice. If you're paying for a CRM, an email tool, a sponsorship workaround, and a checkout — that's the moment to evaluate one platform that does it all.

What is Fundraise Up's pricing?

Fundraise Up does not publish a flat price; pricing is typically a percentage-of-revenue platform fee (commonly cited around 4%) on top of payment processing, with reduced rates available at higher volumes. Donor-covered fees (donor pays the platform + processing fee at checkout) are presented as the default to absorb the cost. Always run the math on your actual giving volume, not a list-price quote.

Is HelpYouSponsor a full replacement for Fundraise Up?

For most use cases, yes. HYS has native donation forms with Apple Pay, Google Pay, smart amounts, recurring upsell, brand matching, and embed widgets — the same checkout job Fundraise Up does. Where Fundraise Up wins genuinely: native crypto/DAF checkout, social login, advanced dynamic ask sequencing, and the absolute leading conversion benchmarks for new-donor acquisition campaigns. If those are load-bearing, you can run Fundraise Up alongside HYS via API.

Can I migrate from Fundraise Up to HelpYouSponsor?

Yes. Free migration support. Donor records and giving history transfer cleanly. Recurring schedules can be transitioned with donor notification. Most organizations are live on HYS within 1–2 weeks. Because Fundraise Up sits next to a CRM, most teams move both Fundraise Up and their existing CRM to HYS simultaneously, and retire two platforms in one cutover.

Does Fundraise Up support sponsorship programs?

No. Fundraise Up is a donation checkout, not a system of record. Sponsorship programs require sponsor-to-recipient matching, recipient lifecycle tracking, sponsor-to-recipient messaging, photo privacy controls, multi-program support, and renewal automation — all categories HYS Sponsorships ships purpose-built. Most sponsorship programs that use Fundraise Up route the checkout through it and manage everything else manually.

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HelpYouSponsor vs Fundraise Up

Fundraise Up converts the checkout. HelpYouSponsor runs everything before and after the gift.

Fundraise Up is an excellent donation checkout platform — high-converting forms with Apple Pay, Google Pay, smart amounts, recurring optimization, and crypto/DAF support. It sits next to a CRM, not in place of one. HelpYouSponsor is a full donor CRM with native donation forms, recurring giving, sponsorships, mission trips, AI-translated sponsor-recipient messaging, AI wealth intelligence, peer-to-peer, mailings, and journeys automation — on every plan, with 2.2% Stripe processing instead of Fundraise Up's percentage-of-revenue platform fee. If you only need a checkout, Fundraise Up is the better fit. If you need a system of record that includes the checkout, HYS replaces Fundraise Up plus your CRM with one platform on one donor record.

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Feature comparison

Feature	HelpYouSponsor	Fundraise Up
Pricing model	Subscription. Free up to 10 commitments/mo. Pro $50/mo. Pay per commitment above that.	Percentage-of-revenue platform fee (commonly cited at ~4% on top of payment processing). Reduced rates negotiable at higher volumes. Donor-covered fees pitched as the default.
Effective cost on $1M raised	Subscription tier + 2.2% Stripe = typically $5k-15k/yr in subscription, $22k in processing — most cost is processing.	Platform fee + processing. At ~4% platform + standard processing on $1M, the platform fee alone is ~$40k/yr before processing. Donor-covered fees shift cost to the donor but raise per-gift friction.
Stripe processing rate for nonprofits	2.2% on cards (lowest Stripe nonprofit rate, negotiated on your behalf).	Stripe and PayPal pass-through; standard nonprofit rates apply. Platform fee is in addition to processing.
Donation forms (modern checkout, Apple/Google Pay, smart amounts)	Native donation forms on every plan. Apple Pay, Google Pay, recurring opt-in, smart amounts, brand matching.	Industry-leading donation forms. Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, wallet integrations, smart amounts, recurring upsell, social login, dynamic asks.
DAF and crypto support	DAF and crypto on the roadmap.	Native DAF and crypto checkout (BTC, ETH, USDC and more) included.
Donor CRM (records, households, giving history)	Full donor CRM. Households, giving history, recurring lifecycle, custom fields, segmentation, retention reporting, activity log.	Not a CRM. Donor records sync to your CRM (Salesforce NPSP, Bloomerang, HubSpot, etc.). You still pay for the CRM separately.
Sponsorship programs (1:1, community, pooled, hybrid)	Purpose-built. Matching, transfers, lifecycle, multi-program, hybrid models.	Not available. Fundraise Up does not handle sponsorship lifecycles, sponsor-recipient relationships, or recipient tracking.
Sponsor-recipient messaging with AI translation	Moderated 1:1 messaging with automatic translation in 50+ languages.	Not available.
Mission trip management	HYS Trips. Registration, individual fundraising, Checkr background checks, e-signatures.	Not available. Trip-based individual fundraising not supported beyond standalone campaign pages.
AI donor intelligence (wealth capacity, ask calculator)	HYS Insights. AI wealth capacity scoring, optimal-ask calculators, major-gift prospecting. Built into the donor record.	Not available. Fundraise Up focuses on the checkout, not donor research or cultivation.
Recurring giving lifecycle (retention, payment recovery, upgrades)	Full recurring lifecycle: retention reporting, smart retry, abandoned-checkout recovery, automatic card updates via Stripe Account Updater, upgrade prompts.	Strong recurring conversion at the checkout (recurring upsell, recurring nudges, conversion optimization). Lifecycle management beyond the gift typically lives in your CRM.
Email, newsletters, and print mailings	Appeals, newsletters, auto emails, and print mailings (tax summaries, year-end letters, labels) from one composer.	Not available. Email lives in your CRM or marketing platform.
Journeys (automation & workflow builder)	Journeys. Multi-step automations across email, SMS, tasks, and portal events.	Receipt and donation-confirmation flows. Broader donor-journey automation typically requires your CRM or a marketing automation platform.
Peer-to-peer fundraising	First-class program type. Sponsors, participants, and ambassadors each get a branded fundraising page tied to the donor record.	Peer-to-peer campaigns supported within Fundraise Up campaigns.
Text-to-Give	Available on every plan via the Sendblue integration.	Not native to Fundraise Up. Typically handled by a separate text-to-give vendor.
Native mobile app for donors	Included mobile app for donors and sponsors on every plan.	Mobile-optimized donation forms; no native donor app.
Embeddable donor experiences	Smart Embed. Six embed types with auto-resizing, brand matching, and three lines of code.	Embeddable donation modal, donation page, campaign pages. The category Fundraise Up is best in class at.
Donor-covered fees	Optional add-on at checkout to cover Stripe processing.	Default opt-in. Donor-covered platform + processing fees pitched as standard. Raises effective average gift but adds checkout friction.
API, webhooks, MCP server for AI agents	Full REST API, webhooks, Zapier, and MCP server. Every plan.	API and webhooks. Zapier and direct integrations to Salesforce, Bloomerang, HubSpot, and more.
Native integrations with major CRMs	Replaces the CRM. Migrations supported from Salesforce NPSP, Bloomerang, Neon, Raiser's Edge, DonorPerfect.	Native two-way sync to Salesforce NPSP, Bloomerang, HubSpot, Raiser's Edge, Virtuous, and more. Designed to plug into an existing CRM.
Live in	Self-service setup. Most organizations live in 1–2 weeks. Free migration support.	Live in days for the checkout itself; CRM integration timeline depends on which CRM and how clean the data is.

Why switch to HelpYouSponsor

One platform, one donor record, one bill

Fundraise Up is a checkout. To run a fundraising program you also need a CRM (Salesforce NPSP, Bloomerang, etc.), an email tool, sometimes a peer-to-peer platform, and probably a separate text-to-give vendor. HYS is the donor CRM, the donation checkout, the recurring lifecycle, the email composer, the peer-to-peer pages, the mailings printer, and the AI donor intelligence on one record. One bill, one source of truth, one team to train.

2.2% Stripe instead of percentage-of-revenue platform fees

Fundraise Up's commonly-cited ~4% platform fee on top of standard processing means a $1M-raising nonprofit pays roughly $40k a year in platform fees alone, before processing. HYS is subscription-priced with 2.2% Stripe nonprofit processing — the lowest published rate. Donor-covered fees can soften the math but raise checkout friction. Run the numbers on your actual fundraising volume; for most $500K–$5M nonprofits the difference is 30–60% lower total cost on HYS.

Sponsorship, mission trips, and AI wealth — categories Fundraise Up does not cover

Fundraise Up is best in class at the checkout and recurring conversion. It is not built for sponsorship programs, sponsor-recipient messaging, mission trip individual fundraising, or AI donor intelligence. If your organization runs any of these motions, you'd pair Fundraise Up with multiple other tools — or run them all on HYS where they share a donor record.

Best of both: keep Fundraise Up for the checkout if it's load-bearing

If Fundraise Up's specific checkout features (DAF, crypto, dynamic asks tuned for new-donor acquisition) are non-negotiable today, you can keep them and connect to HYS via API/webhooks. Most teams find that HYS's native donation forms — Apple Pay, Google Pay, smart amounts, recurring upsell, brand matching — close the gap, and the donor record stays in one place. We'll run the comparison on your actual numbers.

Frequently asked questions

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