The best Tithe.ly alternatives in 2026
By Sankalp Jonna · Last reviewed May 2026
Most churches looking for Tithe.ly alternatives signed up for one reason: free giving with no monthly fee was the cheapest way to take a first online gift¹. That bet still works for a brand-new church plant, but once you're running ChMS, Sites, and an app under the same brand, the seams show fast. The acquired products — Breeze on the ChMS side², Elvanto for scheduling, the original Sites builder — feel like different apps stitched into one bill. Customer support has visibly slipped through 2024-2025, with peak-season ticket times stretching into days. And the transaction fees on the Giving free plan (2.9% + $0.30) are higher than Stripe-direct competitors like Planning Center Giving (2.15%)³ once your annual giving crosses six figures.
The second reason people leave is roadmap clarity. With four or five acquired products under one brand, it's hard to tell which one is actually getting investment. A 400-person church running Tithe.ly's All-Access bundle gets a website, a giving processor, a ChMS, and an app — but each piece feels like it belongs to a different generation of the parent company's strategy.
We tested the realistic alternatives — enterprise giving platforms, modular best-of-breed, denomination-friendly giving apps, and budget all-in-ones — and ranked them by who they actually fit. Here's what we found.
- Multiple acquired products under one brand creates a confusing UX; ChMS, Sites, Giving, and the app all feel like different apps that share a login.
- Customer support has slipped in 2024-2025 reviews, with ticket response times stretching to days during peak giving and tax seasons.
- Transaction fees on the free Giving plan (2.9% + $0.30) are higher than Planning Center Giving (2.15%) — the gap costs about $750/yr per $100k of giving.
- Reporting is functional but can't match Pushpay or Planning Center for cohort analysis, lapsed-giver alerts, or pledge tracking.
- Volunteer scheduling exists but most Tithe.ly churches still use Planning Center Services alongside it — meaning you're paying for one and using another.
- Roadmap priorities are unclear; it's hard to tell which acquired product is actually getting investment year over year.
Side-by-side comparison
Pricing and feature snapshot across 5 alternatives.
| Feature | Tithe.ly | Pushpay | Planning Center | Breeze ChMS | Givelify | Subsplash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $0 giving / $49 ChMS / $159 bundle | Quote-based, enterprise | Free per module / ~$199 typical bundle | $72/mo flat | $0 (transaction-only) | Quote-based, $200-900/mo |
| Free tier | Yes, free Giving | No | Yes, capped per module | No | Yes, no monthly fee | No |
| Volunteer scheduling | Functional, basic | Yes (via CCB) | Industry-leading (Services) | Functional, basic | None | Essentially absent |
| Check-in / child check-in | Yes | Strong | Strong with label printing | Strong | None | Yes |
| Online giving | Tithe.ly Giving | Pushpay Giving | Planning Center Giving | Breeze Giving (Tithe.ly) | Givelify (donor app) | Subsplash Giving |
| Transaction fees (cards) | 2.9% + $0.30 | ~2.5-3.0% + $0.30 | 2.15% + $0.30 | 2.5% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 all-in | ~2.6-2.9% + $0.30 |
| Fund accounting | No | No | No (pair with Aplos/QBO) | No | No | No |
| Mass email / SMS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Branded mobile app | App included in bundle | Mature custom app | Church Center (shared) | No native member app | Givelify-branded only | Best-in-class custom app |
| Best for | Small churches launching online giving cheap | 1,500+ person enterprise churches | Mid-size with active worship rotation | Sub-600 churches wanting flat-fee simplicity | Churches in AME/Baptist/Pentecostal contexts | Media-driven app-first churches |
Tithe.ly alternatives
Ranked by what we’d actually recommend after testing each.
Pushpay (with Church Community Builder)
Pushpay is the enterprise upgrade for churches that have outgrown Tithe.ly's free-giving model and need real donor reporting — cohort analysis, lapsed-giver alerts, pledge tracking. The CSM relationship and contract structure aren't for everyone, but at scale the donor experience and reporting depth are unmatched.
Pick this if: Pick this if you're 1,500+ weekend attendance and giving is your most strategic system.
Planning Center
Planning Center Giving is 2.15% + $0.30 — meaningfully cheaper than Tithe.ly's 2.9% — and the rest of the suite (Services, Check-Ins, People) feels like one product rather than acquired pieces. You'll pay more in subscription, save on processing, and get a coherent product.
Pick this if: Pick this if your giving volume is high enough that the processing-fee gap matters and you want the rest of the stack to actually feel integrated.
Breeze ChMS
Breeze is the same parent company with a much cleaner experience and a flat $72/month for unlimited everything. If you signed up for Tithe.ly's All-Access bundle and the ChMS half is the part you actually use, Breeze is what you wanted in the first place.
Pick this if: Pick this if you're under 600 people, the bundle isn't paying off, and you want one tool that works on Sunday.
Givelify
Givelify has the same all-in 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee but with no monthly fee at any scale and a pre-installed donor base — particularly in AME, Baptist, and Pentecostal contexts where members already have the app. Giving conversion can be higher purely on app familiarity.
Pick this if: Pick this if your members are already in Givelify-heavy denominational communities and you only need the giving rail.
Subsplash
Subsplash is the upgrade if Tithe.ly's app is the part of the bundle you care most about. The custom-branded app is a tier above Tithe.ly's app — fast launch times, real native feel — and Subsplash One bundles giving, web, and ChMS underneath it.
Pick this if: Pick this if your digital strategy is media-first and the branded app is the centerpiece — and you can stomach quote-based pricing with multi-year contracts.
What Tithe.ly does well
The free giving plan with no monthly fee was the right bet, and it's how Tithe.ly got footholds in tens of thousands of churches. For a brand-new church plant or a tiny congregation taking a first online gift, removing the financial barrier matters — there's no contract, no setup fee, no minimum. Most accounts go live the same day.
The All-Access bundle is the cheapest path to website plus app plus giving plus ChMS in a single bill. At $159/month, you get every digital piece a small church needs without negotiating with separate vendors. The Sites builder produces clean, mobile-first church websites without a developer, which alone replaces a $20-30/month Squarespace bill. And Tithe.ly's migration team is genuinely helpful — they'll actively help move recurring gifts from another processor, which is rare in this category.
The acquisition strategy (Breeze, Elvanto) means the platform footprint keeps expanding, and individual products underneath the umbrella are decent. The pieces just don't yet feel like one product.
Where Tithe.ly falls short
The patchwork is the main complaint. ChMS, Sites, Giving, and the app all feel like different applications that share a login. Navigation between them isn't seamless; data sync between Breeze and Tithe.ly Giving is functional but not invisible; the UI patterns shift module to module. For a 200-person church, this is annoying. For a 600-person church running real workflows across all four products, it's a daily friction tax.
Support has slipped according to multiple recent reviews. Through 2024 and into 2025, peak-season ticket response times stretched into days, particularly around year-end giving and contribution-statement season. Reporting is functional but shallow compared to Pushpay or Planning Center — there's no real cohort retention analysis or pledge tracking. Volunteer scheduling exists but is far enough behind Planning Center Services that most Tithe.ly customers we've talked to keep a separate Planning Center subscription just for that one module.
The quietest concern is roadmap. With Breeze, Elvanto, Sites, and the original Giving app all under the same parent, it's hard to tell which one is actually being prioritized. Customers signing up in 2026 are betting on a strategy that hasn't fully cohered yet.
How we tested the alternatives
We installed each tool, imported a 300-person sample membership list, and ran the same workflows: a recurring online gift with donor email confirmation, a Sunday morning child check-in with label printing, a 6-person volunteer rotation across three weeks, end-of-month contribution statements, and a giving-by-fund report for the year. We noted setup time, the steps that broke, support response when things didn't work, and the actual all-in cost at our test church size including processing fees.
We pair hands-on testing with AI-assisted writing — judgments, ranks, and pricing math are human, the prose is cleaned up from raw notes. The migration question matters here too: moving off Tithe.ly Giving means donors typically need to re-authorize recurring gifts on the new processor, which has measurable drop-off (we've seen 5-15% of recurring givers fail to re-authorize within 30 days). That cost shows up in the per-pick recommendation.
Pricing comparison
At a representative 300-attendance church with $250k annual giving: Tithe.ly Giving free is $0/month plus 2.9% + $0.30¹ — about $7,750 in annual processing. Planning Center Giving at 2.15% + $0.30 plus modular subscription³ comes to roughly $5,725 in processing plus $200-250/month in subscription, netting about the same total at this volume but with a cleaner product. Breeze at $72/month flat plus 2.5% + $0.30² lands at roughly $7,000 total annually. ChurchTrac with bundled accounting is the cheapest if you need GL, around $24/month plus ~2.5% processing.
Pushpay sits at a different tier — quote-based, typically a monthly platform fee plus negotiated processing rates that drop to 2.5% or below at high volume⁴. For a 300-person church it's almost certainly overpriced; for a 1,500-person church with $1.5M in annual giving, the lower processing rate and the CSM start to pay for themselves. Subsplash One is $500-900/month by quote⁵, mostly justified if the branded app is core to your digital strategy. Givelify is purely transaction-based at 2.9% + $0.30 with no monthly fee⁶ — same pricing logic as Tithe.ly's free plan but with a pre-installed donor base in specific denominational communities.
Who should stay with Tithe.ly
If you're a 50-200 person church running just the free Giving product, your members give cleanly through it, and you've never touched the ChMS or Sites pieces — stay. The free plan is genuinely free, the donor experience is solid, and there's no upside to switching. The complaints in this article are mostly about the bundle, not the standalone Giving rail.
The other 'stay' case is the church running the full All-Access bundle where the Sites builder is the centerpiece — your website is what your members actually use, the bundled app is fine, and the rough edges between modules don't show up in your day-to-day. Sites is genuinely good for the price, and replicating it elsewhere means adding a separate website vendor at $20-30/month plus losing the migration support Tithe.ly provided.
Verdict
For most churches that have outgrown Tithe.ly, Planning Center is the natural step up — meaningfully cheaper processing, a real worship-scheduling tool, and a coherent product instead of stitched-together acquisitions. The trade-off is monthly subscription cost and the loss of Tithe.ly's free-giving floor, which matters most for very small churches and least for anyone above $200k annual giving.
The runner-up depends on which Tithe.ly product is actually broken for you. If giving is fine but the ChMS half is the painful part, Breeze (same parent, cleaner experience) or ChurchTrac (cheaper, accounting included) are better picks. If the giving processor is the issue and you're in a denominational context where Givelify already has donor mindshare, the switch can actually lift conversion. If you're an enterprise church above 1,500 people, Pushpay is in a separate conversation entirely.
The push-back: don't switch off Tithe.ly Giving free if you're tiny and the only complaint is 'support could be faster.' The free plan has no contract, no minimum, and no risk. Save the migration energy for a real ceiling — when your processing fees cross a threshold that justifies a paid tier elsewhere, or when your bundle complaints become daily, not occasional.