Beacon 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

Beacon

4.9

(32)

Pricing

Starting at £30.00 per month

About Beacon

Beacon is a cloud-based software solution that offers nonprofits the benefits of modern technology to manage fundraising, donations, and volunteers. It gives users the ability to manage people, member information, and relationships from a unified platform. It also allows members to raise money and brand their communications without having to design any emails. Additionally, fundraisers can manage events, build campaigns, handle grants, and accept volunteering applications.

Beacon provides an API, which lets users integrate the platform with several third-party applications, including Stripe, PayPal, Outlook, Mailchimp, Sendgrid, Gmail, Donr, Facebook Donate, Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Drupal, WordPress, and Google Analytics.

Beacon Screenshots

Beacon Pricing and Plans

Starting price: £30.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Starter

£30.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

3 Users and 10 Read-Only Users
500 - 2000 Contacts

Standard

£104.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

10 Users and Unlimited Read-Only Users
2500 - 50000 Contacts

Premium

£230.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

10000 - 100000 Contacts
30 Users and Unlimited Read-Only Users

Confused about pricing? We've got you covered.

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Beacon Features

Popular features found in Fundraising
Campaign Management
CRM
Event Management
For Nonprofits
Membership Management
Mobile Giving
Pledge Management
Receipt Management
Recurring Giving
Registration Management
Reporting & Statistics
Volunteer Management
More features of Beacon
Access Controls/Permissions
Accounting Integration
ACH Payment Processing
Alumni Management
API
Auction Management
Campaign Planning
Committee Management
Contact Database
Contact Management
Contribution Tracking
Credit Card Processing
Customizable Fields
Customizable Forms
Dashboard
Data Import/Export
Donation Tracking
Donor Management
Electronic Payments
Email Marketing
Email Templates
Event Ticketing
Forms Management
Fundraising Management
Gift Matching Management
Grant Management
Online Forms
Online Giving
Payment Processing
Real-Time Notifications
Reminders
Reporting/Analytics
Third-Party Integrations
Web Forms
Website Integration

Beacon Integrations

GoCardless

PayPal

Meta for Business

Stripe

Zapier

Mailchimp

See all 12 integrations

Beacon User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.9

Ratings Breakdown

88%

13%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.8

Value for money

5.0

Customer support

5.0

Functionality

4.7

Adam D.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2019

Beacon takes the Bacon for a nonprofit needs

With Beacon we’ve simplified our entire process for handling donations. Beacon automates everything - from taking donations via an easy to build & integrate 'drag and drop' donation form builder (that's easily associated with the leading payment portals - Stripe, PayPal etc) to acknowledging donors / staff immediately via custom notification templates. The admin heavy task of a Gift Aid submission has been cut dramatically with a built-in Gift Aid tracker. Reports are submitted directly to HMRC from with the Beacon portal without any spreadsheet in sight.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Chapel & York has been advising and assisting charities for over 20 years. We've had experience using multiple Donation Processing CRMs, and Beacon is by far the easiest CRM to use for any type of staff skill level. The navigation is simple and straight forward and the flexibility of the system can suit as bespoke need.

Cons:

The excellent customer support team means that any small con is quickly dealt with. Beacon developers are constantly approving the system and actively set out to listen to users recommendations when rolling out updates and improvements.

Reasons for choosing Beacon

The pricing structure was more suitable.

Reasons for switching to Beacon

Little Green Light could not guarantee that their system would meet GDPR regulations.

Vendor Response

Many thanks Adam! Really glad to hear Beacon is working for you and the team.

Replied September 2019

Jane E.

Verified reviewer

Fund-Raising

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed July 2021

Beacon CRM

We have the ability now to record a lot more donor information. We can now tag our donors to learn more about their journey and what interests they have. We could not manage without it now, I really don't know how we coped before Beacon it has just made life much easier and accessible.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

We started using Beacon nearly 12 months ago and it has been a complete game changer for our medium sized charity. It can do so much that our previous CRM could never have done. It is very intuative and easy to navigate which is a real positive, it is like one of the team! It works out much cheaper than other CRMs we looked at because we have a small team of users. We can take payments through an embedded form on our website which is then recorded directly into Beacon, something we had to do manually previously saving so much time and resource. Event ticketing is a new feature which is also really useful. The Beacon support is so good, they are always on hand to answer queries and help with any problems.

Cons:

Beacon does not have an auto address fill function so our analytics for demographic are not very precise. However if you need something that Beacon does not currently provide then just ask their support team. This particular problem will be short lived as Beacon are now working on an automated system for inputting addresses so this should be up and running very soon. We have also had some teething problems with duplicate records but I believe this would be a problem for every CRM and after a bit of training and input from the support team this is much improved over time.

Reasons for choosing Beacon

We looked at 3 CRMS and Donorfy and Beacon were our favourites for similar reasons. We chose Beacon because of cost and projections over the next 5 years with donorfy would be a lot more expensive. Also heard a lot of good things about Beacon from users in our field of work.

Reasons for switching to Beacon

We had a major software virus and the old system was not cloud based.

Sarina H.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed August 2019

Big Change - Beacon Review

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

- We like that the platform was built specifically for non-profits and with smaller teams in mind - Beacon is customisable and is super easy to build and great for a team with limited resources - With Beacon being an innovative and agile product we've been able to build the product around what we need so it's fit for purpose, rather than trying to make something that already exists fit to our needs.

Cons:

- With the product being so new there have been some teething problems and barriers where critical functionalities are not yet built, such as integration to gmail and calendar.

Vendor Response

Thanks Sarina! I'm glad that Beacon is working for you. Appreciate the feedback on email/calendar integration - these are certainly coming.

Replied August 2019

Ruth K.

Verified reviewer

Philanthropy

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed August 2019

Highly recommended, personal service

This is an excellent product from a fantastic company with unparalleled user experience.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The software is extremely user-friendly; my colleagues found it very easy to take over and populate. It's very easy to edit, giving a fantastic degree of flexibility (something we need due to the nature of our beneficiaries). However, the absolute best thing so far has been the fantastic and personal customer service.

Cons:

It would be great if it had a ticketing function.

Reasons for choosing Beacon

CRM is easy to download and you can do almost anything with it, but it's very hard to use - this means you rely on a lot of support. I've found that companies like Civi have a lot of costumers and therefore can't prioritise you unless you're paying them a lot of money via a user service agreement. We are a small charity with no IT team and therefore need support for less money.

Vendor Response

Thanks Ruth - really glad to hear Beacon is flexible enough for your organisation :)

Replied September 2019

Dianne W.

Verified reviewer

Philanthropy

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed November 2022

I am totally in love with Beacon

Excellent experience. Greatly adding to our efficiency as we automate more processes.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Easy to use once basics are grasped and is backed up by brilliant customer service. So many features, so versatile, so easy to customise. The more I find out about it, the more efficient we are able to make our business processes

Cons:

It would just be lovely to have forms that allowed donations to be made to different fundraisers for the same event. Then we could do away with third party giving platforms and their fees, the need for double checking etc and just deal with Beacon

Hannah R.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2022

Easy, yet effective interface and 5 star customer service!

Beacon has been revolutionary for our small charity. It has helped us reach more people easily and more effectively. It has also been a solid platform to track and trace our performance all in the same place rather than switching between programmes like we were doing before. It has saved staff time, has boosted our campaigns resulting in increased donations, and has continued to deliver excellent customer service since the day we switched. I'm so grateful I am able to use this product and I will continue to recommend this to others asking for high-quality CRM platforms.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The most impactful feature has been the extremely high quality of customer service within the entire Beacon team! Unlike other CRM's, this software is very easy to learn so when I had a problem it was always a very specific issue and, due to my background not being IT, sometimes I didn't know how to even ask what I was looking for. Each and every time I was supported by the Beacon team and found a solution to the problem.

Cons:

I genuinely have no cons about Beacon. When I had a problem, there was always a solution and when I made suggestions to the team they listened and improved the product to suit our charity's needs.

Tom B.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed October 2021

Driving our charity forwrad

It's truly helping us drive our membership growth, improve our volunteer management and fundraising activities. The free read only licences are also improving transparency and reporting whilst reducing the time we spend writing and analysing reports

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It's helping us drive our charity forward at pace, by being simple to use with great back up we spending our time managing things that matter not our software. Also the team at Beacon have a great understanding of our sector, and continually look to add value. Genuinely a business that sees opportunities not problems.

Cons:

None - The few we highlight get solved quickly

Reasons for choosing Beacon

Beacon was one of the few packages/companies that truly understood and catered for the needs of small-medium sized charities. And they where one of the few presenting who seemed to really enjoy what they did .

Reasons for switching to Beacon

For a system more aligned to our working practices, so we could better manage our membership, fundraising and volunteers, without increasing resources allocated (£ and time).

Ruth D.

Verified reviewer

Civic & Social Organization

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed October 2021

Thanks Beacon!

One of the best things is that you are always talking with people who really understand the system and seem to genuinely love their product! Beacon are a pleasure to work with and we would definitely recommend them.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

We are a small charity (ten part time staff) and started using Beacon 6 months ago. It's been a really good experience! We don't have a lot of inhouse IT support and were a bit nervous about moving to a new system. The staff at Beacon were really helpful. They took the time to understand what we needed and helped us to make decisions about what would work best for us. The set up process took a few weeks and went really smoothly. The database is easy to use and the webchat support responds in a couple of minutes if you need help. It does everything we need it to do and has saved us a lot of data entry time by integrating with JustGiving and our website. They are also frequently adding new functions, so even if it doesn't do quite what you want now it may do soon.

Cons:

No major cons for us so far. It is easy for users to batch update and change large amounts of data so it's important that users are careful with these features!

Paula B.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed July 2020

Excellent Service

First rate - a really collaborative approach that has allowed us the functionality we need and the time saving value that we required. From start to finish the team have been on hand to advice about the obvious and problem solve the more unusual problems. Brilliant Customer Experience.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The software is intuitive and easy to demonstrate for others and use. We use the system in a slightly different way to other Charities - the Beacon Team has always been on hand to help us with the slightly more modified system that we have developed.

Cons:

We use the system in a slightly different way to other Charities - for example we collect members as "organisations" that has at times meant the system has been a little trickier to apply to what we need. But, help has always been on hand.

Reasons for choosing Beacon

The collaborative approach and the interest the team had in developing a system to meet our needs, even though they were different to those of a standard charity.

Reasons for switching to Beacon

for a more intuitive system and greater functionality. We also wanted to start with a simple system that we could add to. Our previous system was overly complicated.