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Booster clubs run lean. You’re likely working with a small volunteer team, a modest donor base made up of parents and local supporters, and a recurring calendar of fundraisers — spirit nights, silent auctions, membership drives, and peer-to-peer campaigns. The software you pick needs to handle online donations without a steep learning curve, keep costs from eating into your proceeds, and ideally scale if your club grows.
The four tools below cover that ground from different angles. Here’s what the captured data tells us about each one — prices, features, and honest limitations included.
Pricing at a Glance
| Tool | Entry Price | Next Tier | Top Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donorbox | $0/month (Standard) | $150/month (Pro) | Quote only (Premium) |
| Givebutter | $29/year (Plus, 250 contacts) | $79/year (Plus, 1,000 contacts) | $129/year (Plus, 2,500 contacts) |
| DonorDock | $500/year (ONE) | — | — |
| Aplos | $79/month (Lite) | $129/month (Core) | $229/month (Advanced) + Quote (Custom) |
Billing notes: Donorbox’s Standard plan carries no monthly fee but applies a 2.95% Donorbox fee plus the fee charged by the payment processor on each transaction. Givebutter’s Plus tiers are billed annually. DonorDock’s ONE plan is billed annually. Aplos plans are billed monthly (promotional pricing of $39.50/month for Lite and $64.50/month for Core is also captured).
The Tools, One by One
Donorbox
Donorbox is built around donation forms and fundraising campaigns, with a feature set that covers donation forms, donation pages, recurring donations, donor management, peer-to-peer campaigns, membership tiers, event ticketing, text-to-donate, and a live kiosk mode called Donorbox Live™ Kiosk. It also offers a Tap to Donate option and a QuickDonate™ Donor Portal that lets donors save payment info for faster repeat giving. Payment support spans 52+ currencies and 15 languages, and donors can opt to cover transaction fees so the organization receives 100% of the donation amount.
The Standard plan carries no monthly flat fee — you pay the 2.95% Donorbox fee plus the payment processor’s fee per transaction. The Pro plan is $150/month, billed monthly. A Premium plan exists but requires a sales conversation for pricing. A text-to-donate add-on has its own pricing tiers (Basic plan and Short Code plan), each subject to the same 2.95% Donorbox fee plus processor fees; see the vendor’s site for current rates.
Some users report friction with invoicing and payments, price and value, features and functionality, ease of use, and onboarding and setup — worth keeping in mind as you evaluate it for a volunteer-run club.
Givebutter
Givebutter’s positioning is fundraising built around auctions, donation forms, fundraising pages, fundraising events, donor management and CRM, marketing and engagement, payment processing, and widgets. The platform describes itself as having more than 160 features. A mobile app is also listed among its offerings.
The free access tier isn’t priced as a named plan in the captured data — Givebutter’s paid tier is called Plus, billed annually, and scales by contact count: $29/year for up to 250 contacts, $79/year for up to 1,000 contacts, and $129/year for up to 2,500 contacts. That’s a notably low annual commitment for a booster club with a modest supporter list.
In the reviews we scanned, no recurring complaint pattern stood out — which doesn’t mean everything is perfect, just that nothing rose to a repeated gripe in the sample.
DonorDock
DonorDock positions itself as an all-in-one platform covering online giving (donation forms, giving pages, ticket sales), a donor management CRM (donor tracking, gift tracking, activity tracking, volunteer tracking), and donor outreach (email marketing, text-to-donate, scan-to-give). That’s a fairly complete set of capabilities for a booster club that wants fundraising, donor records, and communications in one place.
Pricing is a single plan — ONE — at $500/year, billed annually. There are no other tiers captured. We don’t have third-party review data for DonorDock, so we can’t point to user-reported friction themes.
Aplos
Aplos leads with fund accounting for nonprofits and churches. Its captured features center on tracking restricted funds and grants, building custom nonprofit financial reports, sharing board-ready financial statements, bank reconciliation, and expert bookkeeping services. The positioning language is explicitly about staying audit-ready and compliant — not primarily about running fundraising campaigns.
Plans run $79/month (Lite), $129/month (Core), and $229/month (Advanced), all billed monthly, with a Custom tier that requires a sales quote. Promotional pricing of $39.50/month for Lite and $64.50/month for Core is also captured. We don’t have third-party review data for Aplos.
For a booster club whose primary pain is running campaigns and collecting donations, Aplos’s focus on fund accounting compliance may be more infrastructure than most clubs need — though if your club manages restricted grants or needs audit-ready financials, that’s precisely its strength.
Best-For Picks
Best for keeping platform costs near zero: Donorbox (Standard)
If your club runs occasional campaigns and can absorb per-transaction fees rather than a flat monthly charge, Donorbox’s Standard plan starts at $0/month — you pay the 2.95% Donorbox fee plus processor fees only when donations come in. The peer-to-peer feature, membership tiers, event ticketing, and text-to-donate (as an add-on) mean you’re not stuck with a bare-bones tool. Just go in knowing some users report friction with setup and ease of use, so budget volunteer time for onboarding.
Best for a small contact list on a tight annual budget: Givebutter (Plus)
At $29/year for up to 250 contacts (billed annually), Givebutter’s Plus tier is about as low a committed annual cost as you’ll find here. Its captured feature categories include auctions, fundraising events, peer-to-peer-style fundraising pages, donor management and CRM, and marketing and engagement — a range that maps well to the typical booster club fundraising calendar. No recurring complaint themes surfaced in the reviews we scanned.
Best for clubs that want fundraising, CRM, and outreach in one flat annual fee: DonorDock
DonorDock’s ONE plan at $500/year, billed annually, bundles online giving, donor and volunteer tracking, email marketing, text-to-donate, and scan-to-give under a single price. For a club tired of stitching together separate tools, that’s a straightforward value proposition. The trade-off: there’s no third-party review data to validate the day-to-day experience, so a demo call with pointed questions is worth the time.
Best for clubs with serious financial-compliance needs: Aplos
If your booster club manages restricted funds, grant money, or needs board-ready financial statements and bank reconciliation, Aplos’s fund accounting focus is purpose-built for exactly that. It’s the priciest option here — starting at $79/month (or $39.50/month at the captured promotional rate) — and its feature set skews toward accounting and compliance rather than fundraising campaigns. But for clubs where financial transparency to a board or grant-maker is a real requirement, that’s a genuine differentiator, not overhead.
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
- Transaction fees matter at small volumes. Donorbox’s Standard plan has no monthly fee but applies a percentage fee per donation. At low campaign volumes, that can be fine; at higher volumes, a flat monthly or annual fee may pencil out better.
- Contact count caps affect Givebutter’s price. The Plus tier is priced by contact count, so a club with a large parent/supporter database should check which tier they’d actually land in.
- Aplos is primarily an accounting platform. Its captured features are oriented around fund accounting and compliance — if campaign-building and donor engagement tools are the priority, the other tools here map more directly to that need.
- DonorDock’s feature page had limited detail in our capture (the site likely renders additional detail via JavaScript). The positioning summary above reflects what we were able to capture; a direct product demo would fill in the gaps.