A side-by-side review for nonprofits choosing between two donor management platforms. Honest, sourced, and updated quarterly.
Free tier real enough to actually run a small org on.
Recurring giving with retry logic and donor self-managed cards.
Pledge tracking with bill-pay reminders and forgiveness rules.
Hebcal-aware (synagogues), tithe statements (churches), alumni cohorts (schools). Out of the box, not as add-ons.
Event seating with a real seating map and walk-up checkout.
Best-of-category event registration and ticketing, including auctions.
Membership management is genuinely first-class, not a bolted-on module.
Wide native integration set with email, accounting, and event tools.
Long product history; stable feature set, predictable roadmap.
Symbols: ✓ included, ◐ partial or on a higher tier, — not available. Reviewed 2026-05-06; we re-verify quarterly. Neon CRM pricing source.
Neon's CSV exports are well-organized. The most common DonorForge migration story keeps Neon for events through the cycle and moves donor stewardship over first.
Neon CRM is a real product, made by a real team, used by real organizations. Nonprofits with active membership programs or recurring events as a core revenue stream. If that profile fits, you should evaluate it on its own terms.
DonorForge exists for a different shape of org: smaller or mid-size, want a modern UI, value a free tier they can run on, and want recurring giving and pledge tracking that work on the entry plan, not as upgrades. We are newer than the legacy CRMs, which means faster iteration and a smaller integrations library; the trade is real and we name it.
The honest version: if you are deciding by spreadsheet, the answer is whichever of these matches more rows in your spreadsheet, not the marketing page's.