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These two tools both serve nonprofits, but they’re solving different problems. Donorbox is built around fundraising — collecting donations, running campaigns, managing donors. Aplos is built around fund accounting — tracking restricted funds and grants, staying compliant, and generating board-ready financial reports. If you’ve been comparing them side by side, the first thing worth knowing is that you may not actually be choosing between them so much as deciding which gap to fill first.
The Core Difference
Donorbox’s positioning centers on fundraising tools: donation forms, recurring donations, peer-to-peer campaigns, crowdfunding, event ticketing, and donor management. Its feature set is oriented toward the donor experience and the mechanics of getting money in the door.
Aplos positions itself explicitly as “true fund accounting software for nonprofits and churches.” Its captured features emphasize tracking restricted funds and grants, building custom nonprofit financial reports, sharing board-ready financial statements, bank reconciliation, and expert bookkeeping services. Where Donorbox is about raising money, Aplos is about managing and reporting on it once it’s there.
Pricing
| Donorbox | Aplos | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier | $0/month (Standard Plan) | $79/month (Lite); $39.50/month promo price |
| Mid tier | $150/month (Pro Plan) | $129/month (Core); $64.50/month promo price |
| Upper tier | — | $229/month (Advanced) |
| Top tier | Quote required (Premium Plan) | Quote required (Custom) |
| Transaction fee | 2.95% Donorbox fee + payment processor fee | — |
A few things to flag on pricing:
Donorbox starts at $0/month on its Standard Plan — its own description notes “No contracts. No monthly fees” at that tier, though a 2.95% Donorbox platform fee applies to transactions on top of whatever the payment processor charges. The Pro Plan is $150/month, and the Premium Plan requires contacting their sales team for a quote.
Aplos has no free tier. Its Lite plan is $79/month, with a promotional price of $39.50/month. The Core plan is $129/month, with a promotional price of $64.50/month. The Advanced plan is $229/month. A Custom plan requires contacting their sales team. Note that Aplos doesn’t appear to charge transaction-based fees in the same way — it’s subscription-only from the captured data — but Donorbox’s lower headline price comes with that percentage fee on every donation processed.
Features by Theme
Fundraising & Donation Collection
Donorbox’s captured features here are extensive: customizable donation forms you can embed on your site, donation pages with goal meters and donor walls, recurring donations, peer-to-peer fundraising, text-to-donate, a QuickDonate™ donor portal that lets donors save payment info, a Donorbox Live™ Kiosk, Tap to Donate, event ticketing, support for 52+ currencies and 15 languages, crypto and stock donation acceptance, and membership tiers with monthly and annual options. Donors can also be invited to fundraise on your behalf, and there’s support for digital wallet payments.
Aplos’s captured feature data does not include fundraising-specific tools of this kind. Its feature items captured are thin — primarily contact and support information — and its categories are oriented entirely toward accounting, compliance, and reporting.
Accounting, Compliance & Financial Reporting
Aplos’s positioning is built entirely around this. Its captured categories include tracking restricted funds and grants, custom nonprofit financial reports, board-ready financial statements, bank reconciliation, tracking every dollar across funds, and expert bookkeeping services. Its tagline explicitly contrasts itself with “generic accounting software,” positioning fund accounting as its core value.
Donorbox’s captured features include donor management and some reporting adjacent to campaigns, but nothing in its captured data covers fund accounting, restricted fund tracking, grant management, or financial statement generation of the kind Aplos describes.
Integrations
Donorbox captures specific integration mentions: Raiser’s Edge NXT, Salesforce, Stripe, and PayPal. Aplos’s captured data references “How the Velora suite works together” in its categories, suggesting it sits within a broader product suite, but the captured data does not detail specific integrations.
Friction Worth Noting
Some Donorbox users report friction around invoicing and payments, price and value, features and functionality, ease of use, and onboarding and setup — worth keeping in mind as you evaluate fit.
We don’t have third-party review data for Aplos, so we can’t point to user-reported friction themes there.
Choose Donorbox If…
- You need a dedicated fundraising and donation-collection platform with a wide range of giving methods (forms, recurring, peer-to-peer, text-to-give, crypto, event ticketing, memberships)
- A $0/month starting point matters, and you’re comfortable with per-transaction fees rather than a flat subscription
- You want to embed donation tools directly into your existing website
- You need support for 52+ currencies or 15 languages for international giving
Choose Aplos If…
- Your primary need is nonprofit fund accounting — tracking restricted funds and grants, staying compliant, and generating board-ready financial reports
- You’re looking for an accounting tool purpose-built for nonprofits and churches rather than adapted from generic software
- Bank reconciliation and expert bookkeeping services are priorities
- A flat monthly subscription without transaction fees fits your financial model better than a percentage-per-donation structure
Bottom line: these tools aren’t true head-to-head competitors in practice. Donorbox is a fundraising platform; Aplos is a fund accounting platform. Many nonprofits end up needing both functions covered — the real question is which gap is more urgent, and whether you’d use them alongside each other or need one tool to stretch into both territories.