How to Add a Donation Form to a Ghost Site

What Ghost does natively (and what it is for)

Ghost connects to Stripe and gives you two related things out of the box: memberships (free and paid tiers) and, more recently, tips. It is worth being precise about what each is for.

Paid memberships are subscriptions to your content. A reader pays a recurring fee, often gated to premium posts or a members-only newsletter. The whole model assumes you are selling something, access, in exchange for the money. That is publishing, not donating.

Tips are closer to donations, a reader can leave a one-off amount to support you. This is genuinely useful and, for some creators, enough on its own. But tips are intentionally simple. You do not get the full kit of suggested-amount tiers, a strong monthly-giving prompt, branded donation receipts, or donation-flavored records. They are a tip jar, not a donation program.

When the native tools are enough

Do not over-engineer this. For a lot of Ghost creators, the native tools are completely fine, and bolting on a separate donation form would just add complexity for no gain.

The native route is enough when:

• Your support model really is "pay for my writing." Paid memberships are purpose-built for that, and you should use them.
• You are an individual creator and a simple tip jar matches how your readers think about supporting you.
• You do not need suggested-amount tiers, a prominent recurring-giving ask, or formal donation receipts for tax purposes.

If that describes you, turn on Ghost tips or paid memberships and move on. The rest of this is for the people who need more than a tip jar.

When you need a real donation form

The native tools start to pinch the moment your giving looks like nonprofit fundraising rather than paid content. You probably need a real form if:

• You want suggested amounts and a custom-amount field, the 25 / 50 / 100 row that anchors what people give.
• You want a clean monthly-giving ask that is framed as a donation, not a content subscription.
• You need donation receipts and records that read as gifts, which matters for nonprofit accounting and for donors who want acknowledgment.
• You run campaigns with a goal and want progress tracking, which a tip jar does not do.

This is the gap between "support my writing" and "fund our mission." Ghost was built for the first. When you are doing the second, you embed a dedicated form, and the good news is Ghost makes that easy.

The HTML card route, step by step

Ghost’s editor has an HTML card, a block where you can paste raw HTML, including an embed snippet from a donation tool. This is your way to put a real form on any post or page.

1. Build and brand your form in your donation tool first, set suggested amounts, turn on the monthly option, add your logo and colors. Copy the embed snippet it gives you.
2. Create the page in Ghost. A dedicated page (say, a "Donate" page) is usually the right home, though you can drop the card into any post.
3. Add an HTML card. In the editor, click the + to add a card and choose HTML (or type /html). Paste your snippet into the card.
4. Preview, then publish. The form may show as a placeholder in the editor and only render on the live page, which is normal for embeds. Preview the published page to confirm it loads.
5. Add it to your navigation so readers can find it, and link to it from your posts and newsletter.

That is the whole mechanism. One card, one snippet, a real form on your Ghost site, no theme editing required.

Native vs. embedded, side by side

Here is the honest comparison so you can pick without second-guessing.

If your needs live in the left column, stay native. If you find yourself wanting several things in the right column, the embed is the move, and it sits happily alongside your existing Ghost memberships if you run both.

Keeping it fast, branded, and on your own Stripe

Whatever you embed, hold it to the same standard as the rest of your Ghost site, which tends to be clean and fast. The form should match your brand, load quickly without shoving your layout around, and send funds to your own Stripe account rather than pooling them somewhere.

Watch for embeds that are secretly redirects, a button that throws the reader to a hosted page on another domain breaks the calm, coherent feel Ghost is known for. An inline form rendered right in the HTML card keeps the reader on your page. KindLumen works this way: paste one snippet into a Ghost HTML card and you get a branded, mobile-first form with suggested amounts, monthly giving, receipts, and donor records, all flowing to your own Stripe. You can see how the embed and recurring options fit together on the features page, and if you want recurring done right specifically, adding recurring donations to your website goes deeper.

And the usual closing reminder: open your finished donate page on a phone and make a real one-dollar gift to yourself before you trust it. Most Ghost readers are on mobile, and a two-minute test beats discovering a broken form after a launch email goes out.