Crowdfunding is a marvelous way to raise money for various initiatives and projects in short periods of time. By Crowdfunding one can test the validity of a business idea or for raising equity for your existing business. Also, crowdfunding is a sustainable business model to build up if you’re willing to provide and manage the platform. Whether you want to provide your website visitors with charity-like crowdfunding, provide them with rewards (like Kickstarter does), or with an investment opportunity with a calculated financial return, such as equity crowdfunding for a startup or real estate investing, you will need a crowdfunding plugin. In the “IgnitionDeck Vs. WP Crowdfunding” article, we are going to review IgnitionDeck and WP Crowdfunding plugins— which allow you to add crowdfunding functionality to your website.
What are These Platforms About?
IgnitionDeck and WP Crowdfunding are both crowdfunding platforms. Crowdfunding itself is the process of raising money to achieve certain financial goals. That later will allow bringing the idea to reality. Crowdfunding has emerged as a way for entrepreneurs to infuse cash into their businesses that they might not get through a traditional bank or business loan.
IgnitionDeck White Label, Self-Hosted, Crowdfunding Platform
IgnitionDeck is one of the most popular, longest-running, WordPress Crowdfunding plugins. It provides users with the means to create a fully functional, white-label, self-hosted, crowdfunding platform. Also, it has several types of payment gateways to choose from. Moreover, with the premium plugin upgrade options, you can incentivize different types of investors using custom reward levels. It will allow you to have a display of backers, who have supported a specific crowdfunding campaign. The plugin works with most WordPress themes without theme editing, and it also provides you with a selection of pre-made themes to choose from.
WP Crowdfunding
WP Crowdfunding plugin is another popular choice for creating crowdfunding projects on your website pages. It is based on WooCommerce. Overall, it has very nice ratings. The plugin allows you to manage all your investors. So that you can keep track of the investments and the type of investment. Using the free version of the plugin should be enough to power your crowdfunding page. However, the paid subscriptions allow you to have more additional opportunities.
Main features
So, both plugins are about crowdfunding. Now, the question is which one is the best? And, we are going to find that out soon. First of all, let’s take a look at the main features of both platforms.
IgnitionDeck Crowdfunding Platform
- Crowdfunding Project management. As an administrator, you can create crowdfunding projects and campaigns. Also, you can monitor their progress in real-time, with a flexible control system for easier use.
- Payment gateways. Project Creators have several payment gateways to choose from including PayPal, Stripe, or credit card payments. IgnitionDeck now supports Bitcoin Crowdfunding payments, via their CoinPayments integration
- Fee Splitting and fee options. Speaking of payments, you can choose how you are getting them. Split the fees, charge custom payments, get your donations at the checkout, and more. You can choose when to capture the payments, too.
- Crowdfunding data. Collect data about your crowd-funders. Allows to export the data and create labels. You can also compile the shipping addresses. Then, those would be used in the user’s CRM.
- Built-in CRM. With a CRM that is embedded in IgnitionDeck, you can easily handle information about your investors or donors. The data includes transaction history, addresses, on-site information, and others.
- Frontend project creation. Your project creators don’t need to have access to your WordPress editor in order to create new campaigns. Project creators simply need to log in to the front end of your website where they can easily manage and update their crowdfunding projects.
- Mailchimp integration. To further enhance your email campaigns, you may use the integration with MailChimp. All you need to do to collect your donors’ emails is to roll in your API key.
The free features of this plugin already demonstrate the robust functionality available to users; however, there are premium upgrade options, too! Let’s take a look at those as well.
Premium Features
IgnitionDeck has two premium tiers, and each has compelling features. Let’s have a look at IgnitionDeck Echelon:
Features for IgnitionDeck Echelon include;
- WooCommerce. Crowdfunding is available for websites powered by WooCommerce.
- Themes. Use all of IgnitionDeck’s crowdfunding themes for your website. They are customizable, responsive, and SEO-friendly, giving your website a professional look.
- Advanced payment gateway system. With an Echelon subscription, you can use other gateways such as CoinPayments, Authorize.net, First Data, Square, Paytm, Secupay, Offline Checkout, and others.
- Recurring payments. Allows to power a subscription-based donation system. The system offers recurring payments that can repeat daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.
- Reward levels. Create reward levels for crowdfunding campaigns to incentivize investment.
Features for IgnitionDeck Enterprise include:
- Front-end management. User-generated projects can be submitted via the front end of your website. You can use it to manage your account, creator and payment profiles, and more.
- It can be used on multiple domains
- Additional email templates. Use email templates for project submission, confirmation, publication, and updates.
- White-label. Create fully white-labeled crowdfunding projects.
- Multi-Site Capable. Create a WordPress network of crowdfunding websites
By offering two types of subscriptions with advanced functionality, IgnitionDeck provides choice and flexibility.
WP Crowdfunding
- Project submission & Published project options. When the project is already published, you can update it. Also, display the backer name as anonymous.
- Front-end dashboard
- WooCommerce. The plugin is based on WooCommerce. So, it is fully integrable with your eCommerce website built on WooCommerce.
- Stripe gateway. Integration with Stripe Connect will allow your donors to use Stripe for money submissions.
- Front-end management. Submit and update new crowdfunding projects via the front-end of the website, add different payment methods and manage your finances.
Pro Features
Some Pro features include:
- Standard WordPress dashboard. Access the WP dashboard for managing the WP Crowdfunding plugin, your WooCommerce website, and others.
- Add more payment methods for your donors.
- Use the unlimited reward system.
- Integration with Google reCAPTCHA will allow you to eliminate bots, so you can have meaningful and actual donations.
- Emails. Get email notifications about the state of your projects, and also send email notifications to your donors to update them on the project.
- Reports & Social Media
- 2Checkout. 2Checkout integration will allow you to get pledges from users all over the world.
WPCrowdfunding also offers good functionality. However, in comparison with the IgnitionDeck, it lacks in variety of features serving different purposes. Therefore, in the aspect of main features, IgnitionDeck officially wins.
Pricing
Now, let’s review the pricing options. This will help to understand which one of these two platforms wins in this criteria.
IgnitionDeck Crowdfunding Platform
It has three types of plans, which includes a fully working Free plan that will allow you to create a still useful and convenient crowdfunding campaign. IgnitionDeck Foundation (that is free of charge) plan provides you with an unlimited number of crowdfunding projects with limitless reward levels, a custom dashboard and management system, and other features such as PayPal integration.
IgnitionDeck Echelon ( $149 / annually) has credit card fundraising, CAPTCHA and WooCommerce integration, recurring payments, and IgnitionDeck basic themes on top of the free features.
And IgnitionDeck Enterprise ($349 / annually) provides you with a fully white-labeled crowdfunding platform with all the Premium themes, project creator functionality, and user-created campaigns.
WP Crowdfunding
WP Crowdfunding comes as an annual subscription. However, you can also purchase a lifetime license.
As a subscription, you have three types of plans. The Individuals plan provides you with a license for 1 website and updates and support for one year. It includes all the addons, costing $149 / year. The Freelancers plan ($199 / year) works on five websites and has pretty much all the same features as the Individual plan does. But, whereas the Individual plan has only one free installation service, the Freelancers has two such. The Agencies subscription gives you access to the functions of the plugin for an unlimited number of websites and five free installation services on top of 1-year updates and support for $299 / year.
Not only is IgnitionDeck more affordable but it also offers more flexibility and useful features. Therefore, if you want to save money and get even better quality, I will recommend you to go with IgnitionDeck.
Benefits
The next aspect of the “IgnitionDeck Vs. WP Crowdfunding” comparison article is Benefits. Let’s outline some significant benefits that both platforms have.
IgnitionDeck Crowdfunding Platform
- The Advanced Management system works either via the front-end of your website or through the WP dashboard. You can easily manage your donors and provide them with different types of membership levels.
- Data. Collect data using the CRM tool and export it for your future use.
- Email campaigns. IgnitionDeck allows you to create powerful email campaigns. Also it has a third-party integration MailChimp.
WP Crowdfunding
- WooCommerce Integration
- Recurring payments. The addition of recurring daily, weekly, monthly, or annual pay
IgnitionDeck clearly provides more benefits than WP Crowdfunding. However, the benefits of both platforms are valid and useful. Who is the winner at the end of the day?
Which One is Better?
The purpose of a crowdfunding plugin is to provide you with powerful tools. Tools that will allow the creation and management of the crowdfunding process. Throughout the “IgnitionDeck Vs. WP Crowdfunding” article we compared the number of useful features. Also, their relation to the price, the availability of diverse pricing plans, and other aspects of these two plugins. So, we came to the conclusion that IgnitionDeck is superior to WP Crowdfunding. So, for example, IgnitionDeck provides you with a more sophisticated system of tracking different types of investments. It is a benefit to your management system. The amount of useful features that IgnitionDeck has is too greater than that of WP Crowdfunding. So, we definitely recommend you to use IgnitionDeck.
Did you like the “IgnitionDeck Vs. WP Crowdfunding” article? Then, do not forget to check out the “Best WordPress Affiliate Plugin – Coupon Affiliates VS AffiliateWP” article as well.
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