Set Up Your Charity Website in Under a Week: Meet Rootz, the All-in-One Charity Platform

After years of building websites and campaigns for charities and masjids, I have watched the same story repeat itself: months of waiting, rising agency bills, and a website the team still cannot edit. Today we are launching our answer to it.

It is called Rootz, and it is the all-in-one charity platform we always wished existed: a charity website builder, donation platform, automated Gift Aid, donor CRM, email marketing and events in one system. Your website goes live in under a week, and you do not even pay for hosting.

If you run a charity or a masjid, you may constantly be wondering:

• How much should a charity website actually cost, and why does every quote keep going up?
• Why does every agency need months of design and coding to deliver it?
• Who is actually claiming our Gift Aid, and how much are we losing by doing it on a spreadsheet?

I run a digital agency, so I see this from the inside. Let me show you what the market really charges, and then what we built instead.

1. The real cost of a charity website in the UK keeps going up

I will be honest with you about my own industry, because I price these projects for a living. Development costs have risen every single year, and charities feel it more than anyone. In the UK today, even a simple template website from a freelancer runs £1,000 to £3,000. A semi-custom agency build sits between £5,000 and £10,000. A properly custom charity website from an established agency now starts at £15,000 to £20,000 for basic functionality, climbs to £30,000 to £50,000 once you add online donations, member areas or a CRM integration, and large national charities regularly spend six figures on a single website.

Why so much? Because agencies bill £100 or more for every hour of work, and a custom build swallows hundreds of those hours. And the invoice does not stop at launch. Hosting, SSL and basic upkeep add £100 to £600 a year. A maintenance retainer adds £100 to £500 a month. Then, every time you need a page changed, you email the agency and wait for another bill. I have seen charities paying £5,000 to £15,000 a year just to keep the lights on, before a single donation is processed.

2. Why a custom website takes months, not weeks

Ask any agency for a timeline and you will hear twelve weeks if everything goes perfectly. It rarely does, because a custom website is an enormous amount of hands-on work. Discovery workshops, sitemaps and wireframes, two or three design rounds, and then the heavy part: the coding. Front-end development, back-end and CMS development, donation and payment integration, testing across browsers and devices, bug fixes, content loading and launch checks. That is easily 300 to 600 hours of specialist time across designers and developers, spread over three to six months from kickoff to launch, and for bigger organisations it stretches to nine or twelve. I know because scoping and delivering these projects is part of my job. Every week of that timeline is a week your appeals, your Ramadan campaign and your donor communications sit waiting.

For a business, that is frustrating. For a charity, it is money that never reached the people it was raised for.

3. The hidden cost nobody budgets for: tool sprawl

The website is only one line of the spend. Here is what a typical charity’s stack looks like:

Tool	What charities typically pay
Website build (agency)	£15,000 to £50,000 for a custom build, rising every year
Hosting, SSL and maintenance	£100 to £600 a year, plus £100 to £500 a month on retainers
Donation platform	2% to 5% platform fees, or another subscription
Email marketing tool	£20 to £100+ a month as your list grows
CRM or donor database	£30 to £300+ a month, often priced per user
Events and ticketing	Per-ticket fees on every registration
Gift Aid	A spreadsheet, a volunteer’s weekends, and claims that never get filed

Seven systems, seven logins, seven bills, and none of them talk to each other. Your volunteers spend evenings copying donor details between tools while the actual mission waits.

4. What we built instead: Rootz, the all-in-one charity platform

Rootz replaces that entire table with one platform and one subscription. Here is what is included, and I mean included, not sold as add-ons:

• Charity website builder: a professional theme gallery, a page builder with drafts and version history, news publishing, a form builder, site search, a media library and your own custom domain. SEO essentials such as sitemaps, redirects and fast pages are built in.
• Hosting included: hosting, SSL certificates, security updates and backups are part of Rootz. There is no separate hosting bill, no renewal surprise and no server to worry about, ever.
• Donation platform: one-off and recurring giving, appeals with live progress, multi-cause cart checkout, a Zakat calculator, and payments through Stripe and Stripe Connect.
• Seasonal giving on autopilot: a Ramadan giving hub, automated Last 10 Nights, automated 10 Days of Dhul Hijjah, scheduled charges and peer-to-peer fundraiser pages.
• Charity CRM: one record per person with a full activity timeline, households and relationships, tags and smart segments, CSV import with dedupe and merge, a donor portal with annual statements, and unlimited team logins. We will never charge your charity per volunteer.
• Email marketing: campaigns, templates, open and click tracking, automated journeys and bounce handling, running directly on your donor data.
• Events and ticketing: ticket types, promo codes, QR check-in and attendee exports.

5. Your website, live in under a week

This is the part I am proudest of. Instead of months of design rounds and coding, here is your first week with Rootz:

• Day 1: Demo and kickoff. We walk through Rootz on your real use cases, pick your theme, and collect your content, logo and colours.
• Days 2 to 3: We build your site. Pages, appeals, donation funds and forms are set up on a professional theme, with Zakat, Sadaqah and Lillah funds typed correctly from day one.
• Day 4: Money and data. Stripe is connected, Gift Aid declaration capture is switched on, and your existing donor list is imported into the CRM with deduplication.
• Day 5: Training and go-live. Your team gets a full walkthrough, and the site goes live on your own domain, hosted by us.

No six month build, no £20,000 invoice, no hosting contract. And every future edit is something your own team does in minutes.

6. Gift Aid: the money your charity is leaving behind

For UK charities, Gift Aid adds 25p to every eligible £1. A charity raising £200,000 a year can be leaving up to £50,000 unclaimed, simply because manual claims are slow and easy to postpone. Rootz captures declarations at the point of donation, builds and validates claims automatically, and exports schedules for HMRC with a full audit trail. In your demo, we will estimate the number for your organisation. For many charities, that recovered Gift Aid alone pays for the platform.

7. Built for masjids too

Most mosque management software gives you prayer times but no real website, no CRM and no automated Gift Aid. Most charity software has never heard of Ramadan. Rootz does both properly: prayer times with a full calculation engine, Hijri calendar and Ramadan pages, alongside the same website builder, giving, CRM and Gift Aid engine every charity gets. If you run a masjid, Rootz can replace your website agency, your mailing tool and your membership spreadsheet in one move.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to set up a charity website with Rootz?

Under a week for a standard setup: demo and content on day one, site build on days two and three, payments, Gift Aid and CRM import on day four, training and go-live on day five.

How much does a charity website cost in the UK?

A custom build from an established agency typically starts at £15,000 to £20,000 and climbs to £50,000 once donations and CRM integrations are added, plus thousands a year in maintenance and hosting, and costs have risen year on year. Rootz replaces all of it, hosting included, with one subscription. Pricing is discussed on your demo.

Do we need to pay for hosting separately?

No. Hosting, SSL, security updates and backups are included in every Rootz plan.

Does Rootz handle Gift Aid claims to HMRC?

Yes. Declarations are captured at checkout, claims are built and validated automatically, and schedules are exported for HMRC with a full audit trail.

Can we take Zakat, Sadaqah and Lillah separately?

Yes. Donations are typed by fund from the start, so restricted funds stay clean for reporting.

Do you charge per user?

No. Every Rootz plan includes unlimited team logins, because charities run on volunteers.

Does Rootz work outside the UK?

Yes. Rootz is built for charities everywhere, and UK-specific features such as Gift Aid activate when you need them.

Conclusion

Add it all up. No £20,000 build. No hosting bills. No maintenance retainer. No separate subscriptions for email, CRM and events. No per-user fees as your volunteer team grows. Plus the 25% Gift Aid uplift recovered automatically on every eligible donation. One platform, one subscription, live in under a week.

We built Rootz because after years of serving charities and masjids as an agency, we knew exactly what was broken and exactly what to build. I hope it saves your organisation the months and the thousands it saved ours.

If you want to see Rootz on your own screen, book a free 30-minute demo at rootz.adlance.co.uk. We will walk through your real use cases and estimate your unclaimed Gift Aid, and we reply within 24 hours. And if you just want a bit of advice about your charity’s website or Gift Aid, I will be more than happy to give it for free. Just contact us and mention you want to speak with Jawaad.