7 Patreon Alternatives to Keep Your Crowdfunding Income Secure (2024)

Buy me a coffee allows video creators, artists, writers, musicians, developers, gamers, and podcasters to raise funds either through one-time tips or subscriptions. As with most similar services, subscribers can choose from different support levels to get access to more content. One nice thing about this platform is that supporters can pay you without signing up for an account, unlike most other similar services. Creators pay nothing for all the site’s features, but there’s a 5% transaction fee.

Indiegogo is one of your best options if you’re looking to replace Patreon: It offers both one-time donations and subscription options for creators, and it’s fairly well known. Plus, Indiegogo is free for nonprofits and lets you fund products in development (Kickstarter’s MO). Though it is mainly about raising money for a single product or project, Indiegogo has an InDemand feature that lets creators continue to receive funding after a campaign is done. Indiegogo charges 5% on all funds raised, plus transaction processor’s fees.

Indiegogo Review

Though it doesn’t use Patreon’s subscription model, if you’re just looking for one-time donations from a large audience, Kickstarter is a good fit. The site has high name-brand recognition, so your donors are likely not to scratch their heads about putting their payment info into some unknown entity. It’s a good fit for getting start-up funding for works of art, comics, illustrations, technology products, films, food, crafts, games, music, and books. Some large tech companies even use it as a launchpad for their new products. Kickstarter has a 5% fee on funds raised, as well as a payment processing fee of 3% plus 20 cents per pledge.

Kickstarter Review

Ko-Fi combines features of Patreon, Kickstarter, and Podia. With it, you build your own website and can collect subscriptions, sell products (both digital and physical), offer services for commissions, and receive tips or donations. Ko-Fi sites are super simple to create, and you automatically get Gallery, Posts, and About pages. You can set a goal (as in Kickstarter) or create membership tiers (as on Patreon). Free Ko-Fi accounts pay the service 5% on sales and membership revenue, but a Gold account ($8 monthly or $6 per month with annual commitment) removes those fees.

Memberful styles itself as “the best way to sell memberships.” It’s more of a bespoke monetization web platform than a social feed of individual creators to their followers. Memberful is clearly more business-targeted, but it does have a free account level that lets you offer two plans and sell private podcasts. Integrations with WordPress, a custom domain, tax collecting, and lots of analytics are strengths, and you can sell digital goods as well as subscriptions.

Meta’s subscription offering lets you charge monthly payments for access to exclusive content on eligible Facebook Pages, though you need 10,000 followers or 250-plus return viewers. I have a test Facebook page with nowhere near those numbers, but the platform indicated that I could still create paid online events or earn money from branded partner content. The Creator Studio, where you set up your paid options, lets you manage posts for both Facebook and Instagram, see insights on your traffic and how to get more followers, and message them. Going with the maker of Facebook and Instagram has one big benefit: It’s a service with huge name recognition, a built-in audience, and strong promotional potential. One the downside, some potential subscribers might refuse to join nefarious social networks. Note that Instagram doesn’t offer paid subscriptions (though it offers other monetization options), so you need a Facebook page.

Though many if not most people associate OnlyFans with adult content, the site bills itself as a social platform for “artists and content creators from all genres.” It has its own Twitter-like social media component where creators and supporters can post updates to one another. Followers and creators can send direct messages, and just as on Twitter, a bell icon alerts you when you have new messages. Creators can set up their page as a free subscription or a paid one for $4.99 to $50 per month. They can also receive one-time tips. OnlyFans creator accounts are free, but the company takes a sizable 20% of your revenue, more than any other service included here.

Podia is a website builder service with which you build a membership-focused site and invite subscription-paying as well as nonpaying members. So unlike most entries in this roundup, it’s not a central site or app where you post your content, but your own membership-focused website. In addition to subscription memberships, you can offer digital goods for sale on your Podia site, including ebooks, webinars, and online courses. Free accounts get a full website, email marketing, live chat, and let you build drafts for webinars and courses. Though you can set up such a site for free there’s a catch: The transaction fee for nonpaying host accounts are 8%, but paying $39 per month for a Mover account removes that surcharge. Podia may not have the name recognition of Patreon or some other services listed here, but it could be a good fit for the right type of entrepreneur.