How to Add a PayPal Donate Button in WordPress (3 Methods)

Adding a PayPal donate button to your WordPress site is a smart way to accept online contributions. PayPal makes it easy, affordable, and secure for users to donate. Plus, millions of people around the world already trust and use PayPal.

By adding this button, you can encourage visitors to support your cause or project with just a few clicks. It’s a great way to boost donations without a complicated setup.

In this guide, we will walk you through the steps to easily add a PayPal donate button to your WordPress site.

Why Use a PayPal Donate Button in WordPress?

Many bloggers add PayPal donate now buttons on their WordPress sites to help cover the website’s running costs.

Non-profit organizations also use their websites for fundraising for their causes. A PayPal Donate button provides them with an easy way to accept donations.

Before you start, you will need to create a PayPal account or log in to your existing account.

Since this is a comprehensive guide, we have created a table of contents so you can easily jump to the section you need:

Ready? Let’s get started.

1. How to Add PayPal Donate Button in WordPress (Free Plugin)

This method is recommended if you are looking for a free WordPress PayPal donation plugin. It is simpler but very limited in terms of what you can do.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Donations via PayPal plugin. For more details, you can see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll want to go to the Settings » PayPal Donations page to create your donation button.

Here, go ahead and enter your PayPal email address. This is the address you use to log in to PayPal.

You might notice that the donation currency is set to US dollars by default. To change this, simply select your preferred currency from the dropdown menu.

Then, you may want to create a Thank You page on your site and set this up as the ‘Return Page’ in the ‘Optional Settings’ section.

You can optionally add a default amount, purpose, and reference for your PayPal donations.

Next, you can select a donate PayPal button style or enter a URL for a custom button image. You can also change the donation country and language, which defaults to the United States and US English.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to press the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Adding Your PayPal Donate Button to Your Website

The plugin allows you to easily display the PayPal donate button anywhere on your WordPress website using a shortcode.

Simply edit the post or page where you want to display the donate now button, and then add the Shortcode block in the content editor.

Inside the settings, you need to add [paypal-donation] a shortcode. You can now save your changes and preview your post or page.

Here’s the donate PayPal button live on our demo site.

This plugin also lets you add the button to a sidebar or footer widget area.

Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page from the WordPress dashboard. After that, click the + button and add the ‘PayPal Donations’ widget block to your sidebar or footer.

The widget has the same settings, so all you need to do is provide a title and text. Don’t forget to press the ‘Update’ button to create your widget.

Here’s the donate widget in our demo website’s sidebar.

2. How to Add a Smart PayPal Donation Form in WordPress (using WPForms)

Another great way to create a PayPal donation button is with WPForms. It is the best WordPress form builder plugin on the market, used by over 6 million website owners.

WPForms allows you to easily create beautiful donation forms that let you accept payments using a credit card and/or PayPal.

This method gives you more flexibility.

You can collect donor information, add them to your email list, collect phone numbers, run surveys, polls, and more. The best part is that WPForms works with all top email marketing services.

Basically, you can engage with users, which helps you create a stronger community.

First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll want to head over to WPForms » Settings to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the WPForms website.

Next, let’s navigate to WPForms » Addons.

Here, you need to install the PayPal Standard Addon. Simply find it in the list then click the ‘Install Addon’ button below it. The addon will be automatically installed and activated for you.

Now, it’s time to create your donation form.

Simply go to the WPForms » Add New page in your WordPress admin area to launch the form builder.

But first, you’ll need to provide a title for your form and then choose the ‘Donation Form’ template.

WPForms will now automatically load your form template in the WPForms builder. It’s easy to add, remove, or change the fields on your form.

To add a field, simply drag the field from the left-hand side menu. We’ve added a ‘How Did You Hear About Us?’ multiple choice field.

Next, you might want to change the Submit button to read Donate instead.

To do this, you can either click on the button or go to the Settings » General tab for your form. Under the ‘Submit Button Text, simply add the text ‘Donate.’

Next, let’s navigate to Payments » Paypal Standard to set up the payments for your form.

Simply check the ‘Enable PayPal Standard payments’ and enter your PayPal email address. Under Payment Type, go ahead and select ‘Donation.’

Once you’re done, click the Save button to store your settings.

Adding Your Donation Form to Your Website

Once you’ve finished creating your PayPal donation form, it’s time to add it to your website.

WPForm makes it super easy to add forms anywhere on your website.

Simply create a new post or page or edit an existing one. Then, you can add a WPForms block to the WordPress content editor and select the form you created earlier from the dropdown menu.

Once you’re ready, preview or publish your page to see your donation form.

Congratulations, you’ve now created a smart PayPal donation form in WordPress.

You are now ready to take donations!

3. How to Manually Add a PayPal Donate Button in WordPress (Code Method)

If you don’t want to install a plugin or if you’re using WordPress.com instead of WordPress.org, then you can manually add a PayPal donate button.

First, you need to log in to your PayPal account and go to the Pay & Get Paid » PayPay Buttons page.

On the next page, you’ll see different types of buttons.

Simply click the ‘Donate’ button option.

Now, you can follow the on-screen instructions to create your button.

For example, select your country, language, and button style. When you’re done, click the ‘Continue’ button.

After that, you will have some optional settings.

On the final screen of the button creation wizard, click the ‘Finish and Get Code’ button.

You will now see a page with a shareable link.

This is the URL you need, so you’ll want to keep it open in this tab or save it in a safe place.

Next, you can go to your WordPress admin area and edit a post or page where you want to add the PayPal donate button.

You need to add a new HTML block to your page or use the Text mode if you’re using the Classic editor.

From here, paste the following code into your HTML block:

Let’s make sure to replace the words ‘Your Shareable Link that you got from PayPal’ with the actual link from PayPal.

Go ahead and publish your page. You now have a PayPal donate button on your WordPress site without using a plugin.

If you want to add the donation button to other places on your site, you can also paste this HTML code inside a ‘Custom HTML’ widget to add it to your sidebar or other widget areas of your block-enabled theme.

Here’s a live example of the donate button:

Feel free to click on it to see how it works. You can make a donation to help us if you find this article helpful.

Customization Options

The reason why we chose the shareable link instead of the full donate button code is so you can easily customize the donation image.

Below are some other official PayPal donate buttons. Simply copy the code and replace the image section in your main code above.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

Option 6

If you don’t like any of these images, then you can create your own. Simply upload that image into your WordPress media library and get the direct link to that file. Next, add that link in the code below:

Best PayPal Donation Plugins for WordPress

We recommend the PayPal Donations plugin as the easiest way to add a PayPal donation button to your site. It’s free and very straightforward to use.

If you want to gather information from your donors, then WPForms is the best option for you.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a full-featured WordPress donation plugin, then we recommend using Charitable. It’s used by over 10,000 nonprofits to create fundraising campaigns and accept PayPal donations online.

With Charitable, you can create your first fundraising campaign in less than 5 minutes. It offers unlimited fundraising campaigns, easy donor management, GDPR-ready donation forms, and more.

There’s also a free version of Charitable to get you started.

If you would like more options to choose from, then here are some other good PayPal donation plugins:

• Accept Donations with PayPal – This plugin is owned by an official PayPal partner. It has support for all of PayPal’s languages and currencies.

We hope this article helped you add a PayPal donate button in WordPress. Next, you might also want to check our guide on how to raise money with crowdfunding or our proven tips for top donation form best practices to boost donations.

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