PayPal Payments Pro vs. Pushpay vs. Tithe.ly

Paypal is great for personal payments as well as business payments for ecommerce of for paying monthly memberships. It is a user friendly software that needs little expertise to get used to. For larger payments, the fees become high therefore it is more suitable for payments of upto few hundred dollars.

Pushpay has been fantastic for us in the implementation of events, especially in the processing of registration forms and collecting fees. Pushpay has also been great in helping us receive donations and contributions to the church. Additionally, I have also used Pushpay (specifically, the CRM database) to help in our process of Church Membership (receiving applications, registering attendance at our membership classes, etc).

[Tithe.ly is well suited as an] easy to learn online giving platform where your online giving and people management system can be connected.

Incentivized

• PayPal offers me the option of converting my currency deposited in my account to another currency, so I can complete all kinds of payments and send money to employees who are in another country for business reasons.
• The mobile phone application is too fast, I can make payments to my employees in a matter of seconds without having to wait for the web version to load.
• Scheduled payments are great. PayPal allows me to add a list of contacts to my PayPal Business account, and after adding the contacts, I can schedule payments for a specific day and time. It's easier to make automated payroll payments with PayPal.

Incentivized

• User Friendly
• Secure

Incentivized

• Text Giving
• Custom profiles

Incentivized

• Sometimes the UX flow would not deliver the customer back to our site, leaving orders in limbo "Pre-approved" status. The customer would call days later asking why we hadn't shipped it.
• The PayPal logo on the checkout page can be kind of large and obtrusive.
• They mention new features and programs on their login page, but it's hard to find any details on them deeper in the software.

Incentivized

• COST!
• Customer service
• Elimination of contracts

• The app could incorrectly identify your location and you could give to the wrong church. This was a problem in 2017-2018 but I haven't heard this issue recently.

Incentivized

Customer service representatives were unable to explain why customer in Australia were unable to make payments using our link. It turned out that customers in Australia must create an account. PayPal's user interface did not reveal this to our customers in Australia. There was plenty about this issue appearing in online forums and PayPal customer service couldn't explain this. This change in PayPal's usability happened between April and May of 2021 and was done without notice to vendors (like us).

Incentivized

The access to support is excellent; however, the turnover with assigned account managers has been high over the years, which makes it challenging to build a lasting rapport. There have been some technical and functionality issues communicated over the years which have been received by the account manager. At the time, with responses such as "yes, we know it's an issue, and we're working on that, but we don't have a timeframe." These problems are never resolved, nor are progress reports or follow up ever addressed, then the account manager changes and the cycle starts again.

Incentivized

I don't think there's really any competition here. There's Venmo (also owned by PayPal) who is now offering business accounts, but it still isn't quite the same. The closest thing in terms of ease of use would be Apple Pay or Google Pay (and there are a handful of others out there, but we offer Apple and Google Pay). As a business, I prefer Apple or Google Pay to PayPal Payments, but we offer either Google or Apple Pay, PayPal, and credit card options and PayPal is always right up there with credit cards. I don't foresee us ever getting rid of PayPal Payments as an option, but we do try to only offer it on request for higher ticket items or high dollar installment purchases.

Incentivized

We had previously used a program called eGiving to receive online payments and contributions, and we have previously used PowerChurch as our CRM, and Pushpay (including its Church Community Builder program) far excels both of these other programs. Pushpay is more user-friendly, and its financial program and its CRM program work much more effectively with one another.

I like Tithe.ly's online giving integration with our people management system.

Incentivized

• Our daily revenue has been increased when started PayPal Payments as the payment gateway.
• Refund rate and recurring revenue is stable and disputes are handled properly.
• Forex Fluctuations is controlled and solved the buying experience for few users.
• Solved problem for different currencies and retained our users.

Incentivized

• Pushpay served as a fine giving platform and allowed for our church to move digitally well.
• However, the inordinate fees and costs of their platform ate away at much too large of our donations. With the other platforms out there, it doesn't make sense for us to lock into contracts with excessively high fees.

• It makes donating simpler. Online giving makes up 98% of our total donations
• The customized reports help us connect newer people to our church

Incentivized