Recurring PayPal Donations
The Recurring Donations plugin allows you to accept recurring donations via PayPal from your website.
Use with caution
Recurring PayPal Donations works, but test it on a staging site before relying on it in 2026. It runs on 800+ sites, is rated 3.4/5 and was last updated 1 year ago, and scores 42/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (800+ active installs)
- Mixed reviews — 3.4/5 from 10 ratings
- No update in over a year
- Only tested up to WordPress 6.8 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Recurring PayPal Donations stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| donate | #87 |
| donation | #37 |
| paypal | #92 |
| recurring | #24 |
| subscription | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 3.4 from 10 reviews
About Recurring PayPal Donations
From the official readme · v1.9Description
The Recurring Donations plugin allows you to accept recurring donations via PayPal from your website.
It has a user-friendly and simple shortcode that lets you place a donate button anywhere on your WordPress site. You can add the subscription donation widget to your sidebar, posts, pages etc.
The recurring donations widget this plugin creates is nice looking and user-friendly.
Your users will be able to select a subscription or recurring donation amount and pay you monthly.
This plugin allows you to accept one time donations also. So if some users prefer to pay a one-off donation, they can click on the “Donate Once” tab and make a one-time donation payment.
- Quick installation and setup.
- Easily take recurring donations via PayPal. Accept ongoing subscription donation on your site.
- The ultimate plugin to create PayPal recurring donations buttons.
- Create the donation buttons on the fly and embed them anywhere on your site using a shortcode.
- Ability to add multiple recurring donation widgets on your site for different causes. Accept subscription donation for various purposes.
- Allow your users to specify a donation amount that they wish to pay.
- Ability to accept recurring payment in any PayPal supported currency.
- Send your users to a custom thank you page after the payment.
- Option to send your users to a custom cancel return page from PayPal.
The setup is very simple and easy. Once you have installed the plugin, all you need to do is enter your PayPal Email address in the plugin settings and your site will be ready to accept recurring donations from users.
Shortcode
Insert the following shortcode into a page or post to create a donation button.
[dntplgn recurring_amt1="25" recurring_amt2="50" recurring_amt3="100" item_name="For the victims of XX"]
Here, am1, am2 and am3 are the donation options.
Widget
In order to place a widget on the sidebar, go to “Appearance -> Widgets” and add a new text widget. Now add the following shortcode to the text widget.
[dntplgn]
After adding the widget to the sidebar, you can enter a title for the widget and some descriptive text that will appear above the button. You can also customize the shortcode parameters to override the default options.
For detailed instructions please check the Recurring Donation Plugin documentation page.
Installation
- Upload plugin
donate pluginfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Activate the plugin using the ‘Plugins’ menu in your WordPress admin panel.
- You can adjust the necessary settings using your WordPress admin panel in “Donate Plugin”.
- Create a page or a post, customize button settings and insert generated shortcode into the text.
Frequently asked questions
How can I add Donate Plugin form to my website?
Use the following shortcode to add a recurring donation button to your website: [dntplgn recurring_amt1=”25″ recurring_amt2=”50″ recurring_amt3=”100″ item_name=”For the victims of XX”]
Can I add more then one Donate Plagin form on the same page or post?
Yes, you can add multiple Donate Plugin forms on your page or post or text widget.
Can I create multiple recurring donation widgets using different paypal accounts?
Yes, you can specify the paypal email address (where the donation should go to) in the shortcode. Example below: [dntplgn recurring_amt1=”10″ recurring_amt2=”20″ recurring_amt3=”50″ item_name=”For a good cause” paypal_email=”paypalemail@example.com”]
Changelog
none
1.9
- Added proper output escaping to admin input fields.
1.8
- Added output escaping to the shortcode parameters.
1.7
- Small fix for WordPress 5.5
- Updated the jQuery UI css file.
1.6
- Added a new option to specify a “Cancel” URL in the settings menu. PayPal will send the users to this page if they click on the cancel link on PayPal’s checkout page.
- Added new translation strings.
1.5
- Added a new option in the settings to allow customization of the currency symbol.
- Added a new shortcode parameter that can be used to customize the currency symbol using the shortcode.
- The item name parameter value now gets transferred to PayPal for the one time custom donation also.
1.4
- More strings are now translatable.
Screenshots
For developers
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FAQ
Recurring PayPal Donations: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Oct 16, 2026
Is Recurring PayPal Donations free?
Yes. Recurring PayPal Donations is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Recurring PayPal Donations safe to use in 2026?
Recurring PayPal Donations works, but test it on a staging site before relying on it in 2026. It runs on 800+ sites, is rated 3.4/5 and was last updated 1 year ago, and scores 42/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Recurring PayPal Donations?
Recurring PayPal Donations is active on 800+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 28,083 times since it launched in February 2015. It was downloaded 287 times in the last 30 days.
Does Recurring PayPal Donations work with WordPress 7.1?
Recurring PayPal Donations is officially tested up to WordPress 6.8.11, while the latest release is 7.1.3. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Recurring PayPal Donations last updated?
The latest version, 1.9, was released on August 21, 2025 (1 year ago).
Who makes Recurring PayPal Donations?
Recurring PayPal Donations is developed and maintained by wpecommerce.
What are the best alternatives to Recurring PayPal Donations?
The most popular alternatives to Recurring PayPal Donations are GiveWP (100K+ installs), Charitable (10K+ installs) and Accept Donations with PayPa… (10K+ installs).
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