Resource Review20 min read

Zeffy

4.0Editor rating

The only platform in this category that charges a church nothing whatsoever - no monthly fee, no transaction fee, no card fee - and pays for itself by asking your donors for a tip instead, which makes this a pastoral decision rather than a financial one.

Starting price
Free - $0 platform fee and $0 transaction fees, funded by optional donor contributions
Free tier
Yes
Platforms
Web · iOS 15.1+ (Tap to Pay) · Android
Developer
Zeffy
Launched
2017
Updated
Jul 26, 2026
2.8 (45 ratings)App Store rating
3 February 2023iOS app released
3.0.23, 20 July 2026Latest iOS build
9355-0861 Quebec IncApp Store seller
BusinessApp Store category

The verdict

The fee schedule is not a discount, it is an absence: no platform fee, no transaction fee, and card costs covered by Zeffy itself. The price is paid at your donation page, where every giver is prompted twice to add a voluntary contribution to Zeffy alongside their offering. If your leadership is comfortable with a tip prompt next to the tithe, nothing else in this category comes close on cost; if it is not, no amount of saved money will fix it.

Try Zeffy

Opens zeffy.com

Almost every review of church giving software is an argument about basis points: two and a half per cent against two and nine-tenths, thirty cents a transaction against a dollar fifty. Zeffy sits outside that argument entirely. Its published position is that the organisation pays nothing at all: "100% free forever. No hidden fees," "Absolutely zero fees, transaction fees included," and "100% of all payments you receive through Zeffy go directly to your nonprofit." There is no fee schedule on the site because, on Zeffy's account, there are no fees to schedule - including the card processing cost, which it says it absorbs: "We cover credit card and transaction fees."

The obvious question is who pays, and Zeffy answers it plainly. "Zeffy relies entirely on optional tips from your donors." At checkout the donor is shown a suggested voluntary contribution to Zeffy, displayed separately from the gift to the church, which they can change with a dropdown "including setting it to a lower amount or to $0." Published outcomes are that "on average, 2 out of 3 donors leave us a tip" and, in a separate blog account, that "around 60% of donors give an additional voluntary contribution" with "an average contribution of 4%" - two figures that do not quite agree, best read as a range. The company also concedes the model's volatility: "some months, that's almost enough to cover our costs, other months it's more than enough."

What you get for nothing is not a stripped-down donation form. The published module list runs to donations, ticketing, raffles and lotteries, donor management, auctions, an online store, peer-to-peer campaigns and memberships, plus newsletters, emails, donor mail and in-person Tap to Pay - with the feature page stating that "Every feature is 100% free." Zeffy was founded in 2017 by two university students in Québec, François de Kerret and Thibaut Jaurou, is a Certified B Corporation, and reports more than $2 billion processed. Its scale claims conflict on its own site: the homepage says "Trusted by 100,000+ nonprofit organizations across North America" while a blog page says "10,000+."

One number needs handling before anything else, because it will be the first thing a cautious treasurer finds. Zeffy's iOS app carries a 2.8 average from 45 ratings - among the lowest app scores in the church software we have catalogued. Read carefully, that figure tells you very little about Zeffy. Forty-five ratings is close to no data: a dozen annoyed users can move a sample that size by a full star, and no confidence interval worth quoting attaches to it. More to the point, the thing being rated is not the thing a church buys. Zeffy is a web product - an administrator works in a browser, a donor gives on a payment page in a browser - and the mobile app is a peripheral companion built mainly around in-person contactless acceptance; the Android build is published under the package identifier com.zeffy.taptopay, which says fairly clearly what it is for. A 2.8 on that app is a signal about a tap-to-pay utility, not a verdict on Zeffy's fundraising platform. It is also not nothing: if contactless giving on an iPhone at the back of the room is central to your plan, that score is the only published user feedback on the exact component you would be leaning on, and you should weigh it there and only there.

✓ The good

  • The cost to the church is zero and the vendor states it plainly - "No transaction fees. No platform fees. No fees period," with card and processing costs described as covered by Zeffy rather than passed on
  • ACH and bank transfer are also $0 - no published or charged fee to the organisation, which removes the usual awkward calculation about steering large gifts onto a cheaper rail
  • Nothing is withheld behind a paywall, because there is no paywall - donations, ticketing, auctions, raffles, an online store, memberships, peer-to-peer campaigns and a donor CRM are all described as included at no cost
  • The donor contribution is transparent by design - shown separately from the gift throughout checkout and in the confirmation email, so a donor can always see what goes to the church and what goes to Zeffy
  • Donors can set the contribution to $0 with a dropdown and are never obliged to give it, and Zeffy states that if they do not, "the nonprofit still keeps 100% of the money raised"
  • The suggested contribution scales sensibly - Zeffy states the "suggested percentage fluctuates based on the transaction amount, the larger the donation, the lower the percentage," so a major gift is not asked for a proportionate tip
  • Payouts are predictable and free of thresholds - weekly every Monday by default or monthly on the first Monday, with no minimum payout amount published

✗ Watch out

  • Your donors are asked to tip a software company alongside their offering, twice per transaction - the prompt "appears twice during the donation process, once when donors start the form and again at payment confirmation," plus in confirmation emails and the donor dashboard
  • Whether a church can switch that prompt off or lower the default is unverified - Zeffy has a support article titled "Can I remove or customize the default suggested percentage of voluntary contribution, tip or donation to Zeffy?" but it was not retrievable, so the answer is not established
  • There is a published limit on card volume for churches whose donors do not tip - Zeffy discloses it may impose "a temporary credit card payment limit while still allowing larger gifts by ACH or bank transfer"
  • No named church management system integrations are published - a material gap if your rolls, giving records and pledges live in Planning Center, Rock RMS or similar and you expected them to reconcile automatically
  • Eligibility runs through Stripe, and Stripe can say no - organisations on "Stripe's restricted and prohibited business list" may have accounts rejected, which puts a third party between you and your giving page
  • The two published eligibility pages disagree on which countries qualify, and no crypto, stock or donor-advised-fund giving capability is published at all

Best for

  • Small and mid-sized churches with tight budgets
  • Church plants with no software line item
  • Congregations running events and fundraisers, not just tithes
  • Leaders comfortable explaining the tip model from the front

Avoid if

  • A tip prompt beside the offering is unacceptable
  • You need a church management system to reconcile
  • You want stock, crypto or donor-advised-fund giving
  • You are outside the US, Canada, the UK or Australia

What Zeffy is

Zeffy is an all-in-one fundraising platform for nonprofits and registered charities that charges the organisation nothing. The published modules cover donation forms with suggested and custom amounts, recurring giving, ticketing, peer-to-peer campaigns, auctions, raffles and lotteries, an online store, memberships, and a donor CRM with emailing and newsletters. Reporting and exports are included, donors get their own dashboard, and in-person giving runs through a Tap to Pay app. Payments are processed by Stripe.

The commercial model is what distinguishes it. Because the church is never charged, there is no "donor covers the fee" toggle of the kind every other vendor offers - instead Zeffy asks the donor for a voluntary contribution to itself, shown separately from the gift. Eligibility requires a bank account in the organisation's own name, in a short list of countries, and is gated on Stripe verification.

Why cash-strapped churches choose Zeffy

The arithmetic is not subtle. A church paying a competitor two and a half per cent plus thirty cents on card gifts, with a subscription on top, surrenders a five-figure sum over a few years on a modest giving base. Zeffy removes the line entirely, and the same free account handles ticketed events, a peer-to-peer mission trip appeal, an auction and a bookstall - replacing three or four paid tools for a church that could not afford one.

The second reason is that Zeffy's candour about the trade is unusually good for a company whose incentive runs the other way. It publishes the mechanism, the prompt frequency, the fact that donors can zero the contribution out, the lumpiness of its own revenue, and even the circumstance in which it would cap an organisation's card volume. It also supplies wording for churches to use with their people: "We use Zeffy, a free platform for nonprofits that ensures 100% of raised funds go towards our mission. Zeffy is funded solely by contributions from donors like you." Any church adopting this should plan to say something very like that, out loud, before it goes live.

The zero-fee model: how it actually works, and where the cost lands

Mechanically, Zeffy processes the gift through Stripe, absorbs the card and processing cost, and pays the church the full donation: "Zeffy even covers all transaction & credit card fees," and "100% of all payments you receive through Zeffy go directly to your nonprofit." The money to do that comes from a voluntary contribution requested from the donor. At the payment confirmation step "donors have the option (but are never obliged) to contribute to Zeffy," and the amount is "clearly displayed separately from your donation total throughout the payment process and in your confirmation email," so the donor can always see the split between what reaches the church and what supports the platform. The suggested figure is not fixed: Zeffy states the "suggested percentage fluctuates based on the transaction amount, the larger the donation, the lower the percentage," and the donor can change it with a dropdown, down to nothing. Published outcomes sit between "2 out of 3 donors leave us a tip" and "around 60% of donors give an additional voluntary contribution," with an average contribution of about 4%.

Where the cost lands, then, is on the donor's screen - a matter for a leadership team to decide rather than calculate. The prompt is not a single discreet checkbox: it "appears twice during the donation process, once when donors start the form and again at payment confirmation," and it recurs in confirmation emails and the donor dashboard. A member giving their weekly offering is asked, every time, to add something for a software company. Some churches will find that entirely reasonable - the alternative is that two or three per cent of the offering leaves quietly on an invoice nobody sees, and at least this way the cost is visible and voluntary. Others will consider a tip prompt beside the tithe categorically wrong, a commercial solicitation inserted into an act of worship, and no saving will change their mind. Both positions are defensible; the published material does not settle it. What it does establish is that some donors are caught out: Zeffy maintains support articles titled "What is the contribution made towards Zeffy? Why was I charged extra?" and "Voluntary contribution refunds on Zeffy," with a refund route for donors who "accidentally contributed to Zeffy." Expect a handful of those conversations.

Eligibility, Stripe and the volume limit nobody advertises

Getting onto Zeffy is not automatic. The published requirements are to "Be a non-profit or registered charity in the US, Canada, the UK, or Australia" and to "Have a bank account in your organization's name." Excluded are individuals, for-profit businesses unless fundraising for a verified nonprofit, organisations without a dedicated organisational bank account, and anyone outside the supported countries. US organisations do not need 501(c)(3) determination but an EIN is mandatory; Australian organisations need an ABN, must operate in eligible states or territories - NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT and ACT - and must hold fundraising licences. Two published eligibility pages then disagree: one lists four countries including Australia, while a second, older page lists only "Canada, the United States or in the United Kingdom" and names as unavailable "Africa, Europe (except the UK), Australia, Central and South America, Asia." A third source, Zeffy's own product description, adds Ireland. Anyone outside the US and Canada should get written confirmation first.

The deeper dependency is Stripe. Zeffy's help centre carries a whole category called "Stripe Account & Identity Verification," and eligibility is gated on Stripe's rules: "Organizations on Stripe's restricted list" are ineligible, and "If you fall under Stripe's restricted and prohibited business list, your account may be rejected by Stripe." A mainstream congregation will not trip that list, but it means the decision on whether your church can accept gifts is made by a processor you have no relationship with. Then there is the closest thing to a catch in the whole product. Zeffy's own support article - the one arguing there is no catch - discloses that where a nonprofit raises substantial sums by credit card while its donors contribute little, Zeffy would "personally reach out to explain the situation and work with you to find a solution, such as a temporary credit card payment limit while still allowing larger gifts by ACH or bank transfer." That is a published cap on card volume, conditional on donor behaviour your church does not control. It reads as rare and negotiated rather than automatic, but a church whose people reliably decline the tip should understand that unlimited free card processing is not an unconditional promise.

Payouts, reporting and the integration gap

Payouts are simple and slightly inflexible. "Funds can be deposited in your account either: Weekly: Every Monday (default schedule)" or "Monthly: On the first Monday of each month." A "Security review period" of "1-3 business days" applies for anti-fraud processing, and "weekly payouts are initiated on Fridays in order to arrive by Monday." The constraints are stated outright: "Payouts cannot be triggered manually, delayed until the end of a campaign, or sent more than once a week." No minimum payout threshold is published, which is welcome - a small church will not have money stranded waiting to clear a floor. But a treasurer who wants Friday money for Sunday's bills, or who wants to hold a capital campaign's receipts until the appeal closes, cannot have either.

The gap that matters most for churches is integrations. Zeffy's help centre has an "Integrations & API" category, and its own material lists a free API and a QuickBooks integration among 2026 additions, but no named church management system integrations are published on the pages reviewed - no Planning Center, no Rock RMS, no Church Community Builder, no Ministry Platform. For a church already running one of those, that is the difference between giving data landing on the same record as attendance, groups and pledges, and somebody exporting a spreadsheet every month to reconcile by hand. Every paid platform here treats ChMS integration as table stakes; the free one does not publish it. Nor is there any published crypto, stock or donor-advised-fund capability. Zeffy is strongest where the church has no existing software estate to connect to - which is, not coincidentally, exactly the church that most needs a free platform.

Pricing

Best value

Everything

$0/mo

Zeffy publishes no plan tiers at all. One product, described as "100% free forever": donations, ticketing, raffles and lotteries, donor management, auctions, online store, peer-to-peer campaigns, memberships, newsletters, emails, donor mail and in-person Tap to Pay. The feature page states "Every feature is 100% free."

Card and debit processing

$0

"No transaction fees. No platform fees. No fees period." Zeffy states it covers credit card and transaction costs itself, so there is no percentage and no per-transaction cent charge billed to the church. This is the whole thesis of the product rather than a promotional rate.

ACH / bank transfer

$0

No fee published or charged to the organisation. ACH and bank transfer also appear in Zeffy's own support material as the rail it would steer larger gifts onto if it ever applied a temporary credit card limit - so the cheap rail here is also the fallback rail.

Optional donor contribution

Suggested to the donor, adjustable to $0

The actual funding mechanism. Donors are shown a suggested contribution to Zeffy, separate from their gift, which they can lower or zero out via a dropdown. The suggested percentage falls as the transaction size rises. Published outcomes: roughly 60% to two-thirds of donors contribute, averaging about 4%.

There is nothing to compare. Zeffy publishes no tiers, no monthly fee and no rate card, because the published position is that a church pays nothing: "$0" with "Absolutely zero fees, transaction fees included." That covers credit and debit cards, ACH and bank transfer, and every module in the product. The cards above are not plans; they are the four lines a treasurer would otherwise be reading on an invoice, all of which are zero.

For scale, take a congregation processing $40,000 a month in card gifts. On a mainstream competitor at roughly two and a half per cent plus thirty cents, with a subscription on top, the annual cost of accepting that money runs comfortably into five figures. On Zeffy the invoice is nil. That is the entire commercial argument, and it is strong enough that a church declining Zeffy should be clear it is declining on grounds other than money.

The cost that does exist is borne by donors, voluntarily, and it is not trivial in aggregate. If roughly 60% of givers contribute and the average contribution is about 4%, a meaningful share of your congregation is paying a small surcharge on top of their giving. None of it is compulsory, all of it is visible, and the church receives the full gift either way - but the model shifts the cost to donors rather than eliminating it. Somebody in your pews is paying for the software.

No contract terms, setup fee, cancellation policy or minimum commitment are published, and Zeffy's terms and conditions page was not retrievable. For a product with no monthly fee that is less alarming than it would be elsewhere - there is no subscription to be trapped in - but confirm in writing anything that matters to your finance team.

Where Zeffy falls behind

The donor prompt is the whole objection, and it cannot be reviewed away. Every giver is asked twice per transaction to contribute to Zeffy, and again in the confirmation email and donor dashboard. In a nonprofit context that is a widely accepted trade; in a giving context - where the transaction is an act of worship rather than a purchase - it is genuinely contested. Whether a church can turn the prompt off or reduce the default is unverified: the support article that would answer it exists in search results but could not be retrieved. Until that is confirmed, assume the prompt is part of the deal.

No named church management system integrations. This is the largest functional gap against every paid competitor. A church running Planning Center or Rock RMS expects giving records to land against the right household automatically; Zeffy publishes no such connection. An API and a QuickBooks integration help a developer and a bookkeeper respectively, but neither replaces a supported ChMS sync. Budget for manual reconciliation, or budget for a different platform.

A published ceiling on card volume, conditional on your donors' generosity toward Zeffy. The company's own "no catch" article discloses that it may impose "a temporary credit card payment limit" on organisations raising substantial sums by card with minimal contributions, pushing larger gifts to ACH. It is not hidden and it is handled by conversation, but it is a limit, it depends on behaviour the church cannot control, and it belongs in any honest account of what "unlimited and free" means here.

Published facts that contradict each other. Two eligibility pages disagree on whether Australia qualifies, and a third source adds Ireland. Scale is "100,000+ nonprofit organizations" on the homepage and "10,000+" on a blog page. The terms and conditions page did not resolve. None is disqualifying, but collectively they mean a buyer outside North America, or one needing contractual certainty, cannot rely on the website alone.

No non-cash giving, and no payout control. Crypto, stock and donor-advised-fund giving are absent from the published material, so a church pursuing appreciated-asset gifts needs a second platform such as Overflow alongside this one. Payouts cannot be triggered manually, held to the end of a campaign, or sent more than once a week - fine for ordinary weekly cash flow, awkward for a building appeal with a deadline.

Zeffy vs. SecureGive vs. Anedot

Three different answers to who pays. Zeffy charges the church nothing and asks the donor for a voluntary tip. SecureGive charges a subscription - $149 a month for Basic, $299 for Premium, or a custom Enterprise quote - and then processing on top at 2.5% + 30c for online credit, 1.75% + 30c for online debit and $1.50 flat for ACH, claiming that "most churches see an effective rate of 2% or less." Anedot charges $0 a month with no contract and prices purely by transaction: 3.3% + 30c on cards and 0.3% + 30c on ACH for 501(c)(3) organisations, rising to 4.0% + 30c across the board without 501(c)(3) determination. SecureGive's shape improves as volume rises, Anedot's stays proportional, and Zeffy's simply never changes.

Three different levels of church-specific plumbing. SecureGive is built for churches and shows it: published integrations with Planning Center, Rock RMS, Church Community Builder, Ministry Platform, TouchPoint, Fellowship One and Salesforce, plus kiosks, check scanning, text keywords and a virtual terminal, and a hardware catalogue running from $1,199 to $5,799. Anedot is a general-purpose donation platform with unlimited pages, unlimited transactions and free text-to-give at $0 a month. Zeffy publishes the broadest module list of the three - auctions, raffles, memberships, an online store, peer-to-peer campaigns - and the thinnest church integration story, which is none. If your congregation is small and unencumbered by existing software, that favours Zeffy heavily; if you are multi-site with kiosks in three lobbies and a ChMS of record, it favours SecureGive just as heavily.

Three sets of store numbers that mostly should not decide anything. Zeffy's iOS app sits at 2.8 from 45 ratings and SecureGive's at 3.1 from 27, and both are companion apps to web platforms - samples that size are nearly no data, and neither figure measures the administrative product or the donor payment page that carry the work. Anedot shows better at 4.0. The honest use of these numbers is narrow: they say something about the mobile app's own quality, which matters if in-person tap-to-pay or app-based giving is central to your plan, and almost nothing about whether the platform behind it will process your Sunday offering competently. Judge these three on fee structure, integrations and eligibility, in that order, and treat the app scores as a footnote about one component.

The bottom line

Zeffy is the most remarkable pricing proposition in church giving software and it is not a trick: no platform fee, no transaction fee, no card fee, no ACH fee, every module included, funded by an optional contribution donors can set to zero. For a church plant or a congregation of a couple of hundred with no software budget it should be the default first look, and a church that says no should be clear it is saying no on principle rather than on price. That principle is the real question, because your donors will be prompted twice per gift to tip a software company alongside their offering, and some churches will rightly judge that unacceptable. Beyond it, weigh three things: no published church management system integrations, so expect manual reconciliation; eligibility gated on Stripe and on country lists that contradict each other; and a disclosed willingness to cap card volume where donors do not contribute. The iOS app's 2.8 from 45 ratings should barely weigh at all - a tap-to-pay companion with almost no data behind it, not the platform. Decide the tip question first; everything else follows.

Alternatives to Zeffy

Frequently asked questions

Is Zeffy really free for churches?

On the published material, yes - to the church. Zeffy states "No transaction fees. No platform fees. No fees period," says it covers credit card and transaction costs itself, and that "100% of all payments you receive through Zeffy go directly to your nonprofit." There is no monthly fee, no card percentage, no per-transaction cent charge and no ACH fee billed to the organisation, and every module is described as included. The cost exists, but it is asked of your donors as an optional contribution rather than invoiced to you.

How does Zeffy make money, and will my congregation notice?

It relies on voluntary donor contributions: "Zeffy relies entirely on optional tips from your donors." Your congregation will notice, because the prompt "appears twice during the donation process, once when donors start the form and again at payment confirmation," and again in confirmation emails and the donor dashboard. The amount is shown separately from the gift and can be lowered or set to $0 with a dropdown. Zeffy reports that roughly 60% to two-thirds of donors contribute, averaging about 4%. Plan to explain the model to your church before you go live - Zeffy supplies suggested wording for exactly that.

Can we turn the tip prompt off or lower the suggested amount?

Not established. Zeffy has a support article titled "Can I remove or customize the default suggested percentage of voluntary contribution, tip or donation to Zeffy?" which appears in search results but was not retrievable, so the answer is unverified. Treat the prompt as part of the arrangement unless Zeffy confirms otherwise in writing, and ask the question directly during onboarding if it is decisive for your leadership.

What is the 2.8 App Store rating about?

It is the iOS companion app, rated 2.8 from 45 ratings. Two things about that. First, 45 ratings is nearly no data - a handful of unhappy users moves a sample that small by a full star, so the number carries very little statistical weight. Second, it is not rating the product a church buys: Zeffy is a web platform used by an administrator in a browser and a donor on a payment page, while the mobile app is a peripheral piece built mainly around in-person contactless acceptance - the Android build is published as com.zeffy.taptopay. If tap-to-pay on an iPhone is central to your plan, take the score seriously for that component. Otherwise it should barely register in the decision.

Which churches are eligible, and who processes the payments?

You must "Be a non-profit or registered charity in the US, Canada, the UK, or Australia" and "Have a bank account in your organization's name." US organisations do not need 501(c)(3) determination but an EIN is mandatory. Two published eligibility pages disagree on Australia and a third source mentions Ireland, so confirm before building anything if you are outside the US and Canada. Payments run on Stripe, and eligibility is gated on Stripe verification - organisations on "Stripe's restricted and prohibited business list" may be rejected.

Is there any limit on how much we can raise for free?

There is a disclosed conditional one. Zeffy's own "no catch" support article states that where a nonprofit raises substantial amounts by credit card with minimal donor contributions, Zeffy would "personally reach out to explain the situation and work with you to find a solution, such as a temporary credit card payment limit while still allowing larger gifts by ACH or bank transfer." So card volume can be capped temporarily, depending on whether your donors tip, with bank transfer remaining open for large gifts. It reads as uncommon and negotiated rather than automatic, but it is a real limit and worth knowing before you migrate a large giving base.

Does Zeffy integrate with Planning Center or Rock RMS?

No named church management system integrations are published on the pages reviewed. Zeffy's help centre has an "Integrations & API" category and its own material lists a free API and a QuickBooks integration, but nothing named for Planning Center, Rock RMS, Church Community Builder or Ministry Platform. If giving needs to reconcile automatically against your membership records, assume manual export and import, or look at a platform that publishes the integration - SecureGive lists seven.

Sources & further reading

More Church Giving & Donation Platforms

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