RallyUp vs.
GiveSmart 

GiveSmart publishes no subscription price — pricing is demo-gated, and third-party directories estimate plans starting around $3,000/year. Its published card rates are 3.5%, or 3.95% for American Express, per GiveSmart’s own fee page, which was last updated in December 2022, and there is also a “$0 license” Pay-As-You-Go option that carries those higher all-in card rates. RallyUp publishes its numbers instead: a free plan with a 0% platform fee funded by optional donor tips, or Flex at 2.9% for Events and Store, 4.9% for Auctions, A-Thons and Crowdfunding, 6.9% for Raffles and Sweepstakes, and 0% for Donation Pages, Peer-to-Peer and Livestreaming, plus processing of 2.9% + $0.30 (1.9% + $0.30 for ACH). There is no subscription, no contract and no sales call. See RallyUp pricing.

No. GiveSmart is a paid annual subscription, and while it offers a “$0 license” Pay-As-You-Go route, that option carries a higher all-in card rate of 3.5%, or 3.95% for American Express. RallyUp has a genuinely free plan: a 0% platform fee funded by optional donor tips, and RallyUp Donation Pages charge no platform fee and ask donors for no tip at all. Tipping can be switched off on RallyUp at any time in favour of flat-rate Flex fees, so you choose the model per campaign rather than per contract.

GiveSmart is a capable events platform — auctioneer-led live bidding, paddle raise, a live leaderboard, seating and guest management, unlimited events inside the subscription, and optional on-site staffing are real strengths. RallyUp runs the same gala-grade infrastructure — Live Auction, Fund-a-Need, Paddle Raise+ and Live Display — and adds Event Balances, which gives each guest one tab across every activity all night that settles in a single charge, with line-free checkout that is instant or fully automatic; GiveSmart documents neither paddle numbers nor a single one-charge guest tab. RallyUp also adds Auction Gifts, where non-winning bidders pledge a gift charged only if they win nothing, lifting auctions 20–35% on average. And you can rehearse the whole night before donors ever see it: Power Preview runs real test card transactions through checkout on a draft campaign, which GiveSmart does not document.

GiveSmart supports raffles and games of chance, but a 50/50 format, a configurable split, an in-platform draw and a live prize total are not documented, and sweepstakes are not offered at all. RallyUp runs four raffle formats — Single-Prize, Multi-Prize, 50/50 and Enhanced 50/50 with your own split, such as 60/40 — draws the winner automatically inside the platform, and shows the winner’s live prize total on the campaign page; Raffles and Sweepstakes are 6.9% on Flex and carry no platform fee on the free plan. RallyUp also runs Sweepstakes as a standalone campaign or stacked with others, and a sweepstakes always includes a free method of entry. Whether a raffle or sweepstakes is permitted — and what’s required to run one — depends on several factors, not just your state; it’s the organizer’s responsibility to research the applicable rules and confirm legality for their own situation, including with the relevant authorities and their own legal counsel as needed. RallyUp doesn’t provide legal advice or confirm that any campaign is legal.

GiveSmart gives you a drag-and-drop editor with homepage design templates, and implementation services come bundled with the license, but a free done-for-you build is not documented, and one-on-one consulting and on-site staffing are limited to its Champion and Expert plans. RallyUp’s fundraising experts will build the entire campaign for you free, usually within one business day, then review and optimize it before launch and plan it with you on a call — all at no cost. On support access, RallyUp’s rule is simple: ask for a human, get a human — on every plan, with free fundraising experts by chat or email and phone and Zoom available. Start at Create My Campaign.

RallyUp is the strongest GiveSmart alternative for organizations that want event-grade tooling plus a full year of fundraising: it adds the formats GiveSmart lacks — Sweepstakes, A-Thons and a separate storefront — plus built-in Livestreaming with fundraising games, where GiveSmart livestreams only through third-party platforms such as YouTube. RallyUp accepts credit and debit cards, ACH transfers, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, while GiveSmart has no native ACH support, no PayPal, and Google Pay only on its Champion and Expert plans. RallyUp is rated 4.8/5 on G2 from 115 reviews and 4.5/5 for ease of use on Capterra, offers custom branding down to logo, colors, fonts and a custom domain, and needs no annual subscription or demo to get started.