Are you look­ing to add a Pay­Pal donate but­ton on your Word­Press site? 

Pay­Pal makes it super-easy to accept dona­tions on your web­site. It is con­ve­nient, cost-effec­tive, secure, and already used by mil­lions of users around the world. 

In this arti­cle, we will show you how to eas­i­ly add a Pay­Pal donate but­ton on your Word­Press site.

Why Use a PayPal Donate Button in WordPress?

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

Non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions also use their web­sites to fundraise for their caus­es. Pay­pal donate but­ton pro­vides them an easy way to accept donations. 

Tip: If you want a more ful­ly-fea­tured fundrais­ing solu­tion, check out these best dona­tion and fundrais­ing plu­g­ins for WordPress.

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 con­tent, so you can eas­i­ly jump to the sec­tion you need:

1. How to Add Pay­Pal Donate But­ton in Word­Press (Free Plugin)
2. How to Add a Smart Pay­Pal Dona­tion Form in Word­Press (using WPForms)
3. How to Man­u­al­ly Add a Pay­Pal Donate But­ton in Word­Press (Code Method)

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 is very lim­it­ed in terms of what you can do. 

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

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

Here, you need to enter your Pay­Pal email address. This is the address you use to login to PayPal.

The dona­tion cur­ren­cy will default to US dol­lars. To change this, sim­ply select your pre­ferred cur­ren­cy from the drop­down menu.

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 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 are 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 Pay­Pal donate but­ton any­where on your Word­Press web­site using a shortcode. 

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

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

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

This plu­g­in also let you add the Pay­Pal dona­tions but­ton to a side­bar or foot­er wid­get area. Sim­ply go to the Appear­ance » Wid­gets page and drag the Pay­Pal Dona­tions wid­get 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 Save 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 3 mil­lion web­site owners.

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

This method gives you more flexibility. 

You can col­lect donor infor­ma­tion, add them to your email list (WPForms works with all top email mar­ket­ing ser­vices), col­lect phone num­bers, run sur­veys, polls, and more. 

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

Note: You will need the Pro ver­sion of WPForms or high­er in order to take Pay­Pal payments.

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, vis­it the WPForms » Set­tings page to enter your license key. You will find this infor­ma­tion under your account on WPForms website.

Next, go to the WPForms » Addons page. 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 buikder. 

First, you 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 click the Add Fields tab on the left-hand side. We’ve added a ‘How Did You Hear About Us?’ mul­ti­ple choice field. 

You might want to change the Sub­mit but­ton to read Donate instead. To do this, either click on the but­ton or go to the Set­tings » Gen­er­al tab for your form.

Once you are hap­py with your form, click on the Save but­ton at the top to save your changes.

Next, you need to go 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, select Donation.

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

Tip: You can send donors a receipt for their dona­tion. Take a look at our instruc­tions on cre­at­ing a form with mul­ti­ple recip­i­ents for help with this.

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, 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 live on your site.

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

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, sim­ply click the ‘Donate’ but­ton option.

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

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. Keep it open in this tab or save it in a safe place.

Next, 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.

Paste the fol­low­ing code into your HTML block:

<a href="Your Shareable Link that you got from PayPal" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"><img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but21.gif" alt="Click to Donate" /></a>

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.

Tip: You can also paste this HTML code inside a Word­Press Cus­tom HTML wid­get to add it to your sidebar.

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 found 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

<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" alt="Click to Donate" />

Option 2

<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" alt="Click to Donate" />

Option 3

<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_SM.gif" alt="Click to Donate" />

Option 4

<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but21.gif" alt="Click to Donate" />

Option 5

<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but04.gif" alt="Click to Donate" />

Option 6

<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but11.gif" alt="Click to Donate" />

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 File Link. Next, add that link in the code below:

<a href="Your Sharable Link that you got from PayPal" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"><img src="The Image URL" alt="Click to Donate" /></a>

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.

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

• Pay­Pal Dona­tion – This plu­g­in is owned by an offi­cial Pay­Pal part­ner. It has sup­port for all PayPal’s lan­guages and currencies.
• Seam­less Dona­tions – This plu­g­in works with both Stripe and PayPal.
• Pay­Pal Dona­tion But­ton – This plu­g­in can send a donor con­fir­ma­tion email.

We hope this arti­cle helped you add a Pay­Pal donate but­ton in Word­Press. You may also like our proven tips on how to make mon­ey online with Word­Press, and our guide on how to increase your web­site traf­fic.

If you liked this arti­cle, then please sub­scribe to our YouTube Chan­nel for Word­Press video tuto­ri­als. You can also find us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

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