Most comparison pages are written by the company that wants to win, which is why almost none of them are useful. This one is too, so here is how we have tried to make it worth reading: every claim about Raiser's Edge NXT below is quoted from Blackbaud's own documentation, with the date we read it, and where Raiser's Edge NXT matches us we say so plainly rather than leaving the row out.
Every screenshot on this page is labeled with whose product it shows.
How much does Raiser's Edge NXT cost?
Blackbaud does not publish a software price. On 3 September 2026 we checked the Blackbaud pricing page and the Raiser's Edge NXT product page. Neither carries a figure, a range, or a starting-from number.
Blackbaud answers the question in its own FAQ, which we will quote rather than characterize: "Blackbaud uses a tailored pricing model because each organization has unique needs. Instead of a one-size-fits-all price, we provide a personalized quote to ensure you receive the right combination of solutions, services, and support for your goals."
What Blackbaud does publish is the contract shape, and it is worth knowing before the first call. From their billing FAQ: "Contracts automatically renew on our standard 3-year term unless you contact your Renewal Representative to discuss potential contract changes." and "Reminder: All changes must be communicated at least 45 days prior to the renewal date."
A three-year term that renews itself unless you give six weeks' notice is a real commitment, and it is the sort of thing worth reading before signing rather than discovering at renewal.
What Blackbaud does publish on payments
Credit for this: Blackbaud publishes its card rates in full, which much of this industry does not. Blackbaud Integrated Payments in US dollars lists 2.99% + $0.30 for Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Diners Club and JCB, 3.5% + $0.30 for American Express, and a chargeback fee of "$15.00 USD".
There is also a platform fee, published on the same schedule. Raiser's Edge NXT online giving forms carry 1.5%, and the transactions it applies to are listed explicitly: single gifts on all forms, the first payment of a recurring gift, tribute gifts, membership and event registration. Future recurring payments and back-office gifts are not assessed.
That 1.5% is half our 3%, and we are going to say so plainly rather than hope you miss it. On a membership sold through an online giving form, Blackbaud's published platform fee is lower than ours.
What does Clerestory cost?
3% per transaction, and that is the whole of our price. No license fee, no per-seat pricing, no modules, no support tiers, no minimum and no contract. Stripe processes the payment on your own Stripe account at 2.2% + $0.30, the non-profit rate our customers receive.
Across every payment we processed through August 2026, our customers' all-in cost—software and card processing together—was 3.148%. Bare Stripe at its standard 2.9% + $0.30, with no software at all, would have cost 3.177% on the very same payments.
And 3% is a ceiling, not a floor. Our published Terms of Service say it plainly: "At higher processing volumes, the platform fee may be adjusted or capped at a mutually agreed rate."
The comparison that cannot be completed, and why that is the point
Line up what is published on each side and the shape of the problem is obvious.
Ours: 3% platform fee, 2.2% + $0.30 processing, nothing else. Measured all-in across every payment through August 2026: 3.148%.
Theirs: 1.5% platform fee on online giving forms, 2.99% + $0.30 processing, 3.5% + $0.30 on American Express, plus a software license whose price is not published, on a three-year automatically renewing term.
You cannot compute their all-in cost per dollar raised, because the largest component is not published. That is not us being unfair to Blackbaud; it is the direct consequence of a tailored-pricing model. It does mean that anyone who tells you what Raiser's Edge NXT costs without a quote in front of them is making it up, and it means the number you eventually get cannot be checked against what anyone else pays.
The boundary that decides most cultural-institution evaluations
Raiser's Edge NXT is Blackbaud's fundraising and donor-management product. It is not their admissions, ticketing and retail product. Altru is.
Blackbaud does not publish a head-to-head comparison of the two, so we are not going to pretend one exists. What they do publish is clear enough on its own. Their Supported Payment Terminals page carries the heading "Payment Terminal (for Blackbaud Altru and SKY Payments API)" and states: "It's currently available for Altru and the SKY Payments API." Raiser's Edge NXT is not named.
Timed ticketing is documented in the Altru help center: "You configure scheduled programs to sell tickets for timed events." Walk-up selling is documented in the Altru help center: "The Daily Sales screen is designed for efficiently processing walk-up sales and is configurable." Sales tax on merchandise is documented in the Altru help center: "To charge taxes during a sales process, you must add each required tax to the system and configure the rate." And Blackbaud's own product navigation describes Altru as "Ticketing and membership for arts and cultural organizations".
So an institution on Raiser's Edge NXT that wants to sell timed admission, run the gift shop, or put a card reader on a counter is looking at a second Blackbaud product, at a second price that is also not published. That is the single most expensive thing to discover late in an evaluation, and it is why this page exists.
Clerestory vs Raiser's Edge NXT, feature by feature
Read the right-hand column carefully. "Not documented" does not mean Blackbaud cannot do it. It means we searched Blackbaud's published Raiser's Edge NXT documentation for it on 3 September 2026 and did not find it. Several of these rows are documented in Altru instead, which is the point rather than an oversight, and we say so where it applies.
| Capability | Clerestory | Raiser's Edge NXT |
|---|---|---|
| Optional donation added during event registration | Yes | Yes—"Additional donation is available on the form when you select Allow registrants to make additional donations under Get started." |
| Donor option to cover processing fees | Yes | Yes—"Donor cover lets donors cover the processing fee so 100% of their donation goes directly to you." |
| Memberships as a product | Yes | Yes, through a separately licensed module—"With the optional Membership Management module" |
| Price published on the vendor's own website | Yes, 3% per transaction | No |
| No minimum contract term | Yes | No—"Contracts automatically renew on our standard 3-year term" |
| Timed-entry admission | Yes | Not documented in Raiser's Edge NXT; documented in Altru |
| Walk-up point of sale | Yes | Not documented in Raiser's Edge NXT; documented in Altru |
| Card readers and in-person hardware | Yes | Not documented—Payment Terminal is scoped in writing to Altru and the SKY Payments API |
| Online store or gift shop | Yes | Not documented in Raiser's Edge NXT |
| Sales tax on retail items | Yes | Not documented in Raiser's Edge NXT; documented in Altru |
| Retail inventory reduced automatically by a sale | Yes | Not documented in either product |
| Self-service kiosk | Yes | Not documented |
| Liability waiver captured at registration | Yes—versioned, required before payment, with signer, timestamp, IP and version hash recorded | Not documented |
| Class or workshop registration | Yes | Not documented |
Clerestory does all fourteen. Raiser's Edge NXT matches us on three of them, and we have left those three in plainly, because a comparison that finds the competitor lacking on everything is one nobody should trust. Their fee-coverage feature is good and goes further than ours in one respect: Blackbaud documents a Complete Cover option in which "Complete Cover™ lets Blackbaud pay the fee for each transaction up to $3,000."
If you run more than one 501(c) entity, ask this question first
A museum and its foundation. A society and its endowment. A club and its charitable arm. Two legal entities, two EINs, and every dollar has to land against the right one.
Blackbaud's documentation for Raiser's Edge NXT describes one primary tax ID plus one alternate, set at the level of the whole environment. The wording repays a close reading: "You may need an alternate tax ID that appears on receipts and giving statements if your organization references more than one tax ID in parts of the organization that were merged or acquired."
And changing the primary one is not self-service: "Blackbaud uses your organization’s primary tax ID to verify your non-profit status. To change it, contact Support."
That treats a second entity as the residue of a merger to be tolerated, rather than a way an institution might simply be built. To be precise about what Blackbaud does and does not say: they document one primary and one alternate. They do not publish a sentence stating that a third is impossible, and we are not going to put that claim in their mouth.
In Clerestory each entity is a payment account. It has its own EIN, its own tax classification, its own bank account, and its own tax notice on the receipt. Every campaign routes its revenue to the account you choose, so the gift lands against the right entity and the receipt carries the right EIN at the moment it is sent, rather than being corrected afterwards. Each account can carry its own reply-to address too, so a question about the 501(c)(3) reaches a different person from a question about the 501(c)(6).
What one sale looks like
This is the Clerestory kiosk mid-transaction, and it is the clearest illustration of the boundary above, because everything in it lives on the Altru side of Blackbaud's product line rather than the Raiser's Edge NXT side.
Admission, retail and a donation in one cart, on one tap, against one member record. On Blackbaud's side, the admission and the gift shop are Altru, the fundraising is Raiser's Edge NXT, and the card reader is documented for Altru.
Which is the better fit for your organization?
Raiser's Edge NXT is a serious fundraising system with decades behind it, deployed across the sector, and on three of the fourteen rows above it does exactly what we do. If your organization's work is major gifts, annual appeals, prospect research and stewardship, it is built for precisely that, and a great deal of what we build is work you do not need.
Two questions decide it the other way.
Which Blackbaud product is the quote for? If the institution has a door, a shop or a timetable, the capabilities you are picturing are documented in Altru, not in Raiser's Edge NXT. Establish that before you compare any number to anything.
What is the all-in cost per dollar raised? Ours is 3.148%, counting software and processing together, and the working is above. Theirs cannot be computed from anything published, because the license price is not published. That is not a small difference when you are the one who has to defend the number to a board, on a three-year term that renews itself.
If you are large enough that a percentage of everything makes you uneasy, say so early. Our terms already provide for the platform fee to be adjusted or capped at a mutually agreed rate at higher processing volumes, documented in writing between us and published where you can read it before you ever speak to us, rather than being something you have to discover you are allowed to ask for.
How we checked
On 3 September 2026 we read Blackbaud's own help center, knowledgebase, billing FAQ, published fee schedule and user-guide pages for Raiser's Edge NXT and Altru, and verified every quote and every rate above against the live pages in a browser rather than trusting an automated fetch. We did not use G2, Capterra, or any comparison site, and we did not treat Blackbaud's marketing pages as evidence of what the software does.
Two things we deliberately did not claim. Blackbaud's documentation names no third-party payment gateway for Raiser's Edge NXT, which is not the same as saying one cannot be used, so there is no row asserting that. And we did not date the 1.5% platform fee, because the published schedule carries no effective date.
Screenshots labeled Clerestory are from a Clerestory demo organization with test data. Screenshots labeled Blackbaud are from Blackbaud's own documentation. Every quote is reproduced as it stood on 3 September 2026. Documentation moves and products change. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
