Beacon or Donorfy for a Small UK Charity's Fundraising CRM

For a UK charity with under 2,000 supporters, Beacon's Starter plan, from £33.50 a month billed annually, covers the full range up to 2,000 contacts on one flat price. Donorfy prices by constituent band instead: £40 a month plus VAT up to 500, £95 up to 1,000, then £186 a month plus VAT for 1,001 to 2,500. Both submit Gift Aid claims direct to HMRC, so contact count decides the better value.

Key pointers

• Count your supporters first. Beacon Starter covers 500 to 2,000 contacts for one flat price; Donorfy Starter is banded even within its own tier, £40 a month plus VAT up to 500 constituents, then £95 a month plus VAT up to 1,000.
• If you hold more than 1,000 and up to 2,500 supporters, Beacon is still far cheaper than Donorfy Professional's £186 a month plus VAT band for that range: £37 a month (or £33.50 annual) on Beacon Starter up to 2,000 contacts, then £127 a month (or £114 annual) on Beacon Standard up to 2,500.
• Under 250 constituents and not ready to pay, try Donorfy Essentials free before committing to either paid plan.
• Both platforms are on HMRC's own list of recognised Charities Online software suppliers, so claims go straight to HMRC from inside the CRM.
• Ask each supplier whether its quoted price includes VAT: Donorfy states its prices plus VAT; Beacon's pricing page does not say either way.
• Beacon charges no extra fee to process payments or Gift Aid through its own forms; Donorfy states 0% transaction fees on its paid plans too. Your payment processor (Stripe, GoCardless or similar) still charges its own fee.
• Neither headline price includes setting the system up. Beacon's implementation is done through a certified partner you contact separately; ask Donorfy for an implementation quote before you sign.
• If your charity also does casework, Beacon includes built-in case management and grant-making tools; Donorfy does not, so a service-delivery charity may need a second system alongside Donorfy.

What Beacon and Donorfy Actually Do

Both platforms are cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) systems built specifically for UK fundraising charities, not general-purpose sales CRMs adapted for the sector. They hold supporter records, log donations and payments, run donation forms, track campaigns and, centrally for this decision, manage Gift Aid: the scheme that lets a UK charity reclaim 25p from HMRC for every £1 a UK taxpayer donates, once the donor has made a valid Gift Aid declaration.

For a charity moving off spreadsheets, the practical question is not which system has more features. It is which one fits your current supporter count without forcing an unplanned price jump in year two, and which one your fundraising manager or trustee can actually run without specialist IT support.

Beacon is an independent, UK-built platform aimed specifically at charities, covering donor management, online giving, campaigns, events, and, unusually for a fundraising CRM, built-in case management and grant-making tools for tracking casework and beneficiaries. Donorfy, also UK-built, was acquired by a larger UK business software group in November 2024 and now sits inside a wider charity software suite alongside volunteer and events tools. Donorfy's own focus stays on fundraising and donor management rather than casework, with unlimited users and 0% transaction fees on every paid plan.

What It Actually Costs Under Two Thousand Supporters

This is where the two platforms price very differently, because they use different bands.

Beacon's Starter plan is £37 a month on rolling monthly billing, or £33.50 a month if you commit to annual billing (a 10% discount, invoiced yearly). That single price covers 500 to 2,000 contacts, 3 full users and 10 free read-only users, with no fee for Gift Aid or payment processing on Beacon's own forms (your payment processor still takes its own cut).

Donorfy prices in bands, and the "from £40" headline figure only covers the bottom of the range. Donorfy Starter is £40 a month plus VAT for up to 500 constituents, then £95 a month plus VAT for 501 to 1,000 constituents, its ceiling. At the UK's standard 20% VAT rate, the lower band is £40 + £8 VAT = £48 a month, and the upper band is £95 + £19 VAT = £114 a month, or £1,368 a year on monthly billing. So a charity with, say, 700 supporters on Donorfy Starter pays £114 a month, three times Beacon Starter's £37 a month for the same supporter count.

Once a charity passes 1,000 constituents, it needs Donorfy Professional, which is banded by constituent count in the same way: £71 a month plus VAT for up to 500 constituents, £141 a month plus VAT for up to 1,000, and £186 a month plus VAT for up to 2,500. A charity with, say, 1,500 supporters sits in the up-to-2,500 band, so it pays £186 + £37.20 VAT = £223.20 a month, or £2,678.40 a year. That is considerably more than Beacon Starter's £37 a month for the same supporter count.

Charities under 250 constituents can use Donorfy Essentials for free, with no payment details needed to register, though its feature set is more limited than the paid tiers.

Note the gap in Beacon's own bands: Starter stops at 2,000 contacts and Standard starts at 2,500. If your supporter list sits between those two numbers, ask Beacon directly which plan applies before you sign.

Prices from Donorfy's official pricing page and Beacon's pricing page, both checked in September 2026. Neither figure includes implementation, data migration or training.

Assumptions used above

• VAT is applied at the UK's standard rate of 20% to Donorfy's published ex-VAT prices, since Donorfy states its figures explicitly as "+VAT" and there is no general VAT exemption for charities buying standard software subscriptions.
• Donorfy's Starter and Professional prices are both banded by constituent count rather than flat per tier; every Donorfy figure in this article states the exact band it applies to, taken from Donorfy's own published pricing tables.
• Beacon's pricing page does not state whether its published figures include or exclude VAT, so no VAT has been added to Beacon's numbers here. Confirm this directly with Beacon before budgeting.
• Annual totals use 12 months of the monthly price shown; they do not include any one-off implementation, migration or training cost, which both suppliers quote separately.

Gift Aid and HMRC Submission

Gift Aid is usually the reason a small UK charity buys a dedicated CRM instead of running donations through a spreadsheet. Under the scheme, a charity can claim back 25p for every £1 a UK taxpayer donates, as long as the donor has paid at least as much Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax that year as the charity wants to reclaim, and has made a valid Gift Aid declaration.

Both Beacon and Donorfy are listed by name on HMRC's official register of commercial software suppliers for its Charities Online service, alongside other charity CRM and Gift Aid products such as Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge and Care Data Systems' donorflex.

In Beacon, eligible payments are added automatically to an open Gift Aid claim as they come in. At the end of the month the claim closes and is marked ready to submit; you can preview the exact data going to HMRC as a CSV before submitting the claim directly from inside Beacon, with no separate login to HMRC's Charities Online portal required.

Donorfy works the same way in outline: donations are checked for eligibility and added to an active claim that builds through the month, then moves to a Ready to Claim tab once the month closes. Donorfy checks HMRC daily for the status of a submitted claim, and a successful claim should reach the charity's bank account within 5 weeks. Donorfy's own Gift Aid feature page also confirms the claim is submitted from inside the system rather than through a separate HMRC login. Donorfy additionally supports the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme, which lets a charity claim on cash and contactless gifts of £30 or less without needing an individual declaration for each one, useful for charities running bucket collections or small in-person events.

Whichever platform you choose, you will still need your charity's Government Gateway details and HMRC Gift Aid reference before you can submit a claim from either system.

Beacon and Donorfy Compared

If your organisation mostly delivers frontline services, such as casework, referrals or grant distribution, Beacon's built-in case management tools cover a good deal of that ground alongside fundraising, whereas Donorfy is built for donor management and does not offer an equivalent, so a Donorfy charity running significant casework would need a second system for that work.

For charities that are comfortable running their own server and want a genuinely free option, CiviCRM is an open-source CRM with a community-maintained UK Gift Aid extension. It carries no licence fee, but a charity still pays for hosting and, in most cases, a developer or specialist partner to install, configure and maintain it, so the real saving depends on whether anyone at the charity has the technical skills to run it.

For a broader shortlist beyond these three, independent coverage such as Charity Digital's CRM roundup also lists Charitylog, a case-and-service-delivery CRM priced on charity turnover rather than per contact, which suits organisations delivering services rather than pure fundraising.

Questions to Ask Before You Switch or Sign

• What is our current and projected supporter count over the next two years, and which plan does that put us on with each supplier?
• Does the quoted price include or exclude VAT, and what is the total including VAT on a monthly and annual basis?
• What does data migration from a spreadsheet or an existing CRM actually cost, and who does the work?
• How long does a typical small-charity implementation take, and what does the charity need to prepare beforehand?
• Can we see the exact Gift Aid data that will be submitted to HMRC before it is sent, and can we correct errors before submission?
• What happens to our data if we cancel? Can we export our full donor and Gift Aid history in a usable format?
• Is training included, or billed separately, and is it enough for a small team with limited spare time?

Editorial analysis

For a charity with a genuinely small and fairly stable supporter base, under 2,000 people, Beacon's flat Starter price is clearly the more predictable and cheaper option on the evidence above: one fee covers the full range up to 2,000 contacts, at £37 a month, against Donorfy, whose own price rises twice within that same range, to £114 a month including VAT past 500 constituents and to £223.20 including VAT past 1,000. Donorfy's proposition is strongest at the very small end: its free Essentials tier is a genuinely useful way to trial a proper CRM at zero cost, and its Starter plan at £48 a month including VAT is close to Beacon's price only while a charity's constituent count sits under 500.

The two platforms converge more than they differ on the Gift Aid mechanics that matter most to a small charity: both submit claims directly to HMRC from inside the software, both appear on HMRC's own recognised supplier list, and both remove the manual spreadsheet-to-Charities-Online step that costs volunteer time and causes rejected claims. Where they diverge more than price alone suggests is case management: Beacon's built-in casework and grant-making tools give a charity that also runs services a reason to prefer it even before cost is considered, while Donorfy stays a pure fundraising and donor tool. For a charity whose supporter count is heading past 1,000 in the next year or two, that combination of lower cost and broader built-in functionality makes Beacon the more defensible choice, though Donorfy under 1,000 constituents remains a close and reasonable alternative.

Sources

• Beacon Pricing and Plans - Beacon
• Donorfy Pricing | Fundraising CRM pricing - Donorfy
• Donorfy Starter Pricing - Donorfy
• GBP Pricing (Donorfy Professional bands) - Donorfy
• Donorfy Essentials - Donorfy
• Claiming Gift Aid as a charity or CASC - GOV.UK (HMRC)
• Find commercial software suppliers for Charities Online - GOV.UK (HMRC)
• Casework and registrations data: April to June 2026 - The Charity Commission
• Gift Aid - Beacon help guide
• Gift Aid - Frequently Asked Questions - Donorfy support centre
• Gift Aid - Donorfy
• VAT rates - GOV.UK (HMRC)
• The best CRM systems for 2026 - Charity Digital
• Introduction - UK Gift Aid - CiviCRM documentation
• Case Management - Beacon
• Access Group swoops for charity software provider - Insider Media