CharityEnginevs
Bloomerang
Bloomerang: A simpler donor CRM with published pricing if you do not need in-house processing or direct mail depth
CharityEngine
Nonprofit CRM with its own in-house payment processing rather than a third-party gateway
As of 31 August 2026, CharityEngine's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A donor CRM, email and direct mail platform for mid-sized US nonprofits that also acts as the merchant processor for every gift it takes. Softwr lists it under Nonprofits. CharityEngine is made by Online Portfolio, Inc., available on Web.
Overview
What CharityEngine does
CharityEngine is a fundraising CRM sold by Boston-based Online Portfolio. It covers donor records, online and offline gift entry, recurring giving, email and SMS, peer-to-peer and event pages, membership, advocacy and direct mail segmentation. Unusually for a CRM, it is also a PCI Level 1 payment processor in its own right, so donations do not route through Stripe or a separate merchant account. The processing arrangement is the commercial story. Because CharityEngine holds the merchant relationship, it earns on every donation as well as on the subscription, which lets it hold the software price lower than a licence-only competitor and makes the effective rate the number that actually decides the deal. Neither the subscription nor the card rate is published; reported entry points sit around 550 US dollars a month for a starter tier, but that figure comes from resellers and review sites, not from CharityEngine. A nonprofit processing several million a year should model the basis points first and the licence second, because a twenty basis point difference will dwarf the subscription. Buyers are typically nonprofits raising between two and fifty million dollars a year that have outgrown a small-donor tool but do not want a Blackbaud implementation. The trade-off is lock-in: moving off CharityEngine means changing your CRM and your merchant processor at the same time, in the same quarter, which is why organisations tend to stay long after they have complaints.
What people use it for
- A nonprofit processing high recurring gift volume that wants card updater and dunning built into the CRM rather than bought separately
- Replacing a stack of a CRM, an email tool and a separate donation gateway with one contract and one reconciliation
- A direct mail heavy organisation that needs offline gift entry and mail file segmentation as first-class features, not add-ons
- An organisation whose finance team wants a single settlement file that already reconciles to donor records
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about CharityEngine.
- Payment processing rates are negotiated and never published, so the total cost cannot be compared to a licence-only CRM without getting a quote and modelling your own volume in basis points.
- Because the vendor is both the software provider and the merchant processor, switching CRM also means re-papering merchant services and re-tokenising every recurring donor, which is a far larger project than a normal migration.
- Subscription pricing is quote-only and reported entry points come from third parties rather than the vendor, so small organisations often discover the floor is well above what they budgeted.
- The interface is dense and configuration-heavy, and organisations without a dedicated database administrator tend to use a fraction of what they pay for.
- Implementation and data migration are billed on top of the subscription and are commonly the largest first-year line item, which is easy to miss when comparing monthly figures.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of CharityEngine
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CharityEnginevsNeonCRM
NeonCRM: Similar mid-market positioning with clearer published tiers
- CharityEnginevsVirtuous
Virtuous: If personalised donor journeys and responsive fundraising matter more than merchant economics
Pricing
What CharityEngine costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
CharityEngine
On request
- Donor CRM and gift processing
- In-house payment processing at a negotiated rate
- Email, SMS and direct mail tools
- Online forms, events and peer-to-peer
- Onboarding and data migration quoted separately
Capabilities
Features
In-house payment processing
PCI Level 1 processing owned by the vendor rather than a bolt-on gateway
Recurring giving recovery
Automatic card updater and dunning to reduce sustainer attrition
Direct mail segmentation
Query builder that produces mail files and tracks response by package
Peer-to-peer and events
Participant fundraising pages, ticketing and auctions inside the same donor record
Advocacy and membership
Petition and action alert tools, and dues-based membership renewals
Marketing automation
Email and SMS journeys triggered off giving behaviour
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Does CharityEngine publish pricing?
No. Both the subscription and the payment processing rate are quoted. Third-party sites report a starter tier around 550 US dollars a month, but the vendor does not confirm this.
Is the payment processing optional?
In practice no. The processing is the product. Using an external gateway removes most of what distinguishes CharityEngine from cheaper CRMs.
Is there a nonprofit discount?
Every customer is a nonprofit, so there is no separate discount; pricing is tiered by contact count and gift volume instead.
How long is the contract?
Annual terms are standard, and multi-year commitments are used to buy down the rate.
Keep looking
Where to go from CharityEngine
- CharityEngine alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- CharityEngine pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- CharityEngine badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Nonprofits softwareThe full category
- Best Nonprofits softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Nonprofits software for
Compare CharityEngine with
- Sumac
- Bloomerang
- NeonCRM
- Virtuous
- Keela
- CiviCRM
- Blackbaud Raiser's Edge
- Bonterra
- Instrumentl
- Aplos
- Fundraise Up
- Donorbox
- Little Green Light
- OneCause
- Qgiv
- SmartSimple Cloud
- Instrumentl
- Aplos
Other Nonprofits software
Modular nonprofit CRM that pairs donor management with client case management
Pricing on request12 researched notesNonprofit CRM and fundraising platform with Canadian tax receipting built in
Pricing on request12 researched notesOpen source constituent relationship management for nonprofits, with no per contact or per donation fee
Open source12 researched notesThe rolled-up parent of EveryAction, Apricot, CyberGrants and Network for Good, sold as three product lines
Pricing on request13 researched notesGrant prospecting and pipeline tracking for nonprofits, priced per organisation with published tiers
From $299/mo12 researched notesFund accounting for nonprofits and churches, with donor management and online giving attached
12 researched notesDonation checkout layer that replaces the giving form on an existing nonprofit website
12 researched notesAffordable donor management for small nonprofits
Free, then $45/mo13 researched notesEvent management and auction fundraising platform, now part of Bonterra
Pricing on request8 researched notesConfigurable grants, research and case management platform for large funders
Pricing on request11 researched notesGrant prospecting and pipeline tracking for nonprofits, priced per organisation with published tiers
From $299/mo12 researched notesFund accounting for nonprofits and churches, with donor management and online giving attached
12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for CharityEngine, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on CharityEngine
CharityEngine alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
CharityEngine pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare CharityEngine
Put it head to head with anything we hold
CharityEngine badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Nonprofits software alternatives
Offline-first case management and mobile data collection for frontline health and development programmes
Per month by mobile user countThe rolled-up parent of EveryAction, Apricot, CyberGrants and Network for Good, sold as three product lines
quote
Grants management for foundations and corporate givers inside the Blackbaud ecosystem
quote
Open-source association management system for nonprofits
Open source, with paid hosting available
Funder and nonprofit data subscriptions from the organisation formed by Foundation Center and GuideStar
Per user per month by tier