We believe in honest comparisons. Every charity is different, and the right CRM depends on what you need. Here's how Alder stacks up.
Beacon is an excellent CRM. It scores 4.9/5 in the Fundraising Magazine CRM Survey 2025, with 100% recommendation rate and 5.0 for tech support. If fundraising is your primary need, Beacon is a strong choice.
But if your charity also delivers services, manages cases, coordinates volunteers, tracks compliance, and needs board reporting — you need a platform, not just a fundraising CRM. That's where Alder is different.
All features included, every tier. Beacon gates features by tier. Alder includes everything at every tier. Whether you're on Free, Grow, Pro, or Scale, you get case management, volunteer scheduling, compliance tools, and board reporting. You're never held back by a pricing tier.
Case management built in. Beacon has basic pipelines. Alder has structured case records, safeguarding workflows, outcome tracking, and linked contacts. If your charity works with vulnerable people or delivers services — not just fundraises — this matters.
Broader than fundraising. Beacon is a fundraising CRM. Alder is all-in-one: fundraising, case management, volunteers, events, email, grants, compliance, governance, and board reporting. One platform, one data model, no integrations needed.
Transparent pricing. Beacon Starter is £36/month for 3 users and 2,000 contacts. Alder Free is £0, forever, for 500 contacts and 3 users — every feature included. Alder Grow is £59/month for 1,000 contacts and 10 users. As your charity grows, pricing stays sensible.
| Alder CRM | Beacon CRM | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — 500 contacts, 3 users, every feature | No |
| Lowest paid tier | £59/mo (1,000 contacts, 10 users) | £36/mo (2,000 contacts, 3 users) |
| Case management | Full (records, safeguarding, outcomes) | Basic (pipelines) |
| Volunteer management | Full (scheduling, DBS, hours) | Limited |
| Governance/board tools | Yes | No |
| Compliance tools | Yes (GDPR, safeguarding, DBS) | Limited |
| AI grant search | Yes | No |
| Feature gating | None — all features, every tier | Yes |
| Free data migration | Yes (Pro and Scale) | No |
| Built in the UK | Yes | Yes |
| CRM Survey 2025 | New — not yet rated | 4.9/5 (71 respondents) |
Beacon is a mature product with a large customer base. If fundraising is your sole concern and you want to work with a platform that's been battle-tested by hundreds of charities, Beacon has deep, sophisticated fundraising features and strong community support. Their tech support rating is excellent.
Alder is an all-in-one platform. If your charity does more than fundraise — if you manage cases, coordinate volunteers, track compliance, or report to trustees — Alder is built for you. No feature gating means you never outgrow a tier. And a free tier for 500 contacts with every feature lets you try without cost or credit card.
Donorfy is a solid CRM with a 4.2/5 rating in the Fundraising Magazine CRM Survey 2025 and 96% recommendation. They were acquired by Access Group in 2024, which raises reasonable questions about future roadmap and feature direction.
Full platform, not just fundraising. Donorfy is fundraising-focused. Alder covers fundraising, case management, volunteers, events, compliance, and governance. If you need to track more than donor interactions, Alder is the better fit.
No feature gating. Donorfy Essentials is limited. Alder Free has every feature: case management, volunteer scheduling, compliance workflows, board reporting, everything. Pay only for scale, never for capability.
Significantly cheaper at scale. For a 100,000-contact charity, Donorfy costs £933/month (estimated). Alder Scale is £349/month for unlimited contacts. That's a difference of £7,008 per year — enough to fund an extra team member.
Free data migration and parallel running. Switching CRMs is painful. Alder Pro and Scale include free data migration and guides to run both systems in parallel while you verify. Donorfy's PM said it best: "Changing CRMs is like open-heart surgery." We make sure you survive it.
| Alder CRM | Donorfy | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — 500 contacts, 3 users, every feature | No (trial only) |
| Typical cost (10k contacts) | £59–149/mo | £99–249/mo |
| Case management | Full (records, safeguarding, outcomes) | Basic |
| Volunteer management | Full (scheduling, DBS, hours) | Limited |
| Feature gating | None — all features, every tier | Yes (Essentials vs Premium) |
| Free data migration | Yes (Pro and Scale) | No |
| Governance/board reporting | Yes | No |
| CRM Survey 2025 rating | New — not yet rated | 4.2/5 (47 respondents) |
Donorfy's 2024 acquisition by Access Group brings uncertainty. We can't predict Access Group's roadmap or investment priorities. If you're considering Donorfy, it's worth trying Alder free first — 500 contacts, every feature, no credit card. See if a purpose-built charity platform feels right before committing to a larger vendor with different strategic goals.
CiviCRM is impressive open-source software. It has a 4.7/5 cost rating, enormous flexibility, and an established community. If you have technical capacity — or a partner who does — CiviCRM can do almost anything.
Simplicity vs flexibility. CiviCRM requires a developer or partner to set up, configure, and maintain. Alder is fully hosted and managed. Log in and start using it. No configuration, no plugins, no ongoing technical overhead.
Hosted and maintained. CiviCRM runs on your server or a hosting provider. You own the data, but you own the responsibility too: updates, backups, security patches, performance tuning. Alder handles all of that. You focus on your mission.
All-in-one vs extensions. CiviCRM's power comes from extensions. Case management, volunteer scheduling, reporting — each is a separate extension that needs integration and testing. Alder is built as one platform. Everything works together out of the box.
The cost calculation. CiviCRM is free software, but the total cost of ownership is often higher than you think. Hosting (£50–200/mo), a partner to set it up (£2,000–5,000), ongoing support (£100–500/mo), staff time to learn and troubleshoot — it often exceeds £59/mo, and that's before you factor in the complexity cost. Alder is £0–349/mo, fully managed, zero configuration.
| Alder CRM | CiviCRM | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary SaaS | Open source (AGPLv3) |
| Setup time | 5 minutes (sign up and go) | Days or weeks (needs developer) |
| Hosting | Fully managed by Alder | You or a hosting provider |
| Case management | Built in | Yes (CiviCase extension) |
| Volunteer management | Built in | Via extensions |
| Governance/board tools | Built in | Limited |
| Typical total cost (first year) | £0–2,088 | £2,000–10,000+ (hosting, setup, support) |
| Ongoing maintenance | None (Alder handles updates) | Monthly (updates, backups, security) |
CiviCRM's flexibility is unmatched. If your charity has highly unusual workflows or needs deep customisation, CiviCRM can be adapted to fit. The open-source community is established and generous with knowledge.
Alder requires no developer and no configuration. Log in and start managing supporters, cases, volunteers, and compliance — all built in and ready. Alder is fully hosted and maintained, with security, backups, and uptime as our responsibility. Your team focuses on mission, not infrastructure.
Roughly 30% of UK charities have no formal CRM. They're managing on Google Sheets, shared documents, shared drives. You're not alone — but you're also at risk.
Data protection. A shared spreadsheet has no access controls, no audit trail, no consent management. Everyone can see everything. Anyone can delete anything. You can't prove who changed what, when, or why. GDPR compliance becomes guesswork.
Safeguarding. A spreadsheet shared across your team is a safeguarding risk. Sensitive information about vulnerable people is visible to anyone with the link. You can't restrict access to certain records. You can't track who accessed what.
Board reporting. A finance trustee needs to see annual giving. A safeguarding trustee needs to see case counts and outcomes. An operations trustee needs to see volunteer hours. Pulling this data from multiple spreadsheets takes days. Your data is fractured.
Automation. No automatic thank-you letters. No DBS renewal reminders. No donation receipts. No Gift Aid tracking. Every action requires manual work — and manual work scales linearly with your charity's growth. At some point, someone is spending 40 hours a week on spreadsheet maintenance.
Single view. The same person is in four rows with four different name spellings. You send two donation receipts by accident. You don't know that Jane Smith (row 42) is the same person as J. Smith (row 156). Your data quality spirals.
| Alder Free | Spreadsheets | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £0 (forever) | £0 (but hidden time cost) |
| Access controls | Yes (role-based) | No (all or nothing) |
| Audit trail | Yes (all actions logged) | No |
| Consent tracking | Yes (GDPR-ready) | No |
| Safeguarding workflows | Yes (restricted access) | No |
| Automation | Yes (emails, reminders, Gift Aid) | No |
| Board reporting | Yes (pre-built dashboards) | Manual extraction |
| Duplicate detection | Yes (prevents data quality issues) | No |
| Data quality assurance | Yes (validation rules) | No |
Alder is free — 500 contacts, 3 users, every feature, forever. No credit card, no trial period, no upsell email. Alder Free is built for micro-charities trying a CRM for the first time. It guides you with governance checklists, safeguarding workflows, compliance reminders, and Gift Aid tracking. Everything a charity needs.
If you've been meaning to move off spreadsheets but haven't found the right moment — this is it. No cost barrier. No "we'll wait until next budget cycle." Start today.