Ignition Platform Fees
Ignition Platform Fees takes a commission for your platform out of each contribution, at the moment the backer pays. The creator receives their share and you receive yours, both settled by the payment provider — there is no invoice to send and no payout to chase.
It is a premium add-on for platforms running Platform Mode, and it requires a payment method that can split a payment.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”| Requirement | Why |
|---|---|
| Ignition Crowdfunding 0.23.0 or later | The extension points the commission is built on, and the query scope its figures are counted under. |
| Ignition Platform Mode 0.2.0 or later | Commission only makes sense where campaigns belong to independent creators. |
| A payment method that splits payments, switched on and finished being set up — Ignition PayPal Gateway 0.3.0 or later | The commission is settled by the payment provider as the backer pays. |
| Pledges routed to creators | Commission is taken out of a pledge as it is split to the creator. See below. |
The add-on will not start if core or Platform Mode is missing or too old, or if PayPal is installed but older than 0.3.0. In each case it tells you which one to update.
If nothing on the site can split a payment, it does start — a future payment method may fill that role — but it warns you as soon as you configure a commission, because a commission nothing can collect is worse than no commission.
When no payment method can collect
Section titled “When no payment method can collect”Set a rate or a minimum on a site that routes pledges to creators, and if nothing can actually collect it, a warning appears across your WordPress admin screens:
Ignition Platform Fees has a commission configured, but no payment method can collect it.
A payment method only counts as able to collect when all three of these are true: it can split a pledge, it is switched on, and it reports itself as finished being set up. A gateway that is installed but half-configured — credentials still blank, say — does not count, and neither does one that is fully set up but switched off. The warning follows what will actually happen at checkout, not what happens to be installed.
The warning also appears for a minimum-only commission, not just a rate: a 0% rate with a minimum still collects on every pledge larger than that minimum.
To clear it, switch on and finish setting up a payment method that can split a pledge, or clear the commission until you have one.
When pledges come to you instead
Section titled “When pledges come to you instead”Commission is a cut taken out of a pledge on its way to the creator. If your site is set so that pledges are paid to the platform rather than to each creator, nothing is being split, so there is nothing to take a cut of — whatever rate you have configured, no commission is collected.
The settings screen says so, in a warning above the fields: “No commission is being collected.” You can leave the rate and minimum set up ready for later, or change Who Receives Pledges under Ignition → Settings → Add-ons → Platform Mode.
The warning appears whenever either field is set, not just the rate — a 0% rate with a minimum still collects, so a minimum-only setup would otherwise sit silently uncollected.
Going the other way, the Platform Mode settings screen now warns you before you make the switch. On a site that currently routes pledges to creators and has a commission configured, choosing The platform lists Platform Commission among the things that choice would turn off, and says why: commission is taken out of a pledge as it is split to the creator, so there would be nothing to take a cut of.
Setting your commission
Section titled “Setting your commission”Go to Ignition → Settings → Add-ons → Platform Fees. Administrators and operators can both change these settings. There are two fields:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Commission Rate | The percentage taken from each contribution. |
| Minimum Commission | A floor. When the percentage works out to less than this, this amount is taken instead. |
The commission on a contribution is whichever is larger — the percentage, or the minimum.
At a 5% rate with a $2.00 minimum:
| Contribution | 5% would be | Commission taken | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100.00 | $5.00 | $5.00 | The percentage is above the floor. |
| $20.00 | $1.00 | $2.00 | The floor applies. |
| $40.00 | $2.00 | $2.00 | They are equal. |
| $1.50 | $0.08 | nothing | The floor is more than the whole contribution — see below. |
The floor exists because a percentage of a small contribution can be less than what the contribution costs you to process. Set it to zero if you do not want one.
Both settings apply platform-wide. Per-creator and per-campaign rates are not in this version.
When the commission would swallow the contribution
Section titled “When the commission would swallow the contribution”A commission is only ever taken when it is less than the contribution itself. If your rate and floor work out to the whole pledge or more — a $2.00 minimum against a $1.50 pledge, or a rate at or above 100% — nothing is taken at all. The creator keeps the full amount and no commission is recorded.
The comparison is made against the pledge, not against the total the backer was charged. That distinction matters when a backer adds something voluntary on top of their pledge, such as a tip or a cover through Ignition Contributions: a bigger total does not make a commission collectable that would have taken the creator’s whole share.
This is a safety net, not a feature to rely on. It exists so a misconfigured floor cannot leave a creator with nothing, and the settings screen now tells you when your settings are about to trip it.
Warnings on the settings screen
Section titled “Warnings on the settings screen”Once you have a commission configured on a site that routes pledges to creators, the Platform Fees settings screen checks your rate and floor against the smallest pledge you accept — the minimum under Pledge Amount Limits on Ignition → Settings → General — and warns you when the two do not fit together.
| What it says | When it appears | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| “No commission will be collected.” | Your rate is 100% or more. That would take the whole pledge every time, so it is dropped on every pledge. | Lower the rate below 100%. |
| “Small pledges will not carry a commission.” | Your minimum commission is at or above the smallest pledge you accept. The warning names both amounts. | Raise the smallest pledge, or lower the minimum commission. |
| “Small pledges will not carry a commission.” | You have a minimum commission but no smallest pledge amount set at all, so nothing stops a pledge arriving below it. | Set a smallest pledge above your minimum commission. |
| “Small pledges will not carry a commission.” | Your rate rounds the smallest pledge you accept up to a commission that would take the whole of it. The warning names that pledge amount. | Lower the rate, or raise the smallest pledge. |
Each warning describes what will happen the next time a pledge of that size arrives, not something that has already gone wrong. Nothing is broken while one is showing — the smallest pledges simply carry no commission.
Which contributions are charged
Section titled “Which contributions are charged”A commission is taken only where the payment provider will genuinely settle it as the backer pays. In practice, today, that means a pledge paid through PayPal, on a site set so that pledges go to creators, on a campaign whose creator has connected a PayPal account that can receive money.
Everything else carries no commission at all:
- Offline pledges — cash, cheque, bank transfer.
- Pledges through PayPal on a site where pledges come to you rather than to the creator.
- Pledges on a campaign whose creator has not connected, or cannot currently be paid.
This is deliberate. A commission is never recorded that the platform has no way to collect, so what you are owed and what you actually received cannot drift apart.
When backers cover the commission
Section titled “When backers cover the commission”With Ignition Contributions installed, checkout can offer a backer the choice to cover the platform commission — to pay your cut on top of their pledge, so the creator does not absorb it. The exact wording a backer sees is set in Contributions, not here. Platform Fees supplies the figure that option is priced from.
The option is only offered when all of these hold:
- Ignition Contributions is active and its commission-cover section is switched on.
- The pledge is being paid online, in the site’s own currency, through a payment method that settles the platform’s cut.
- The commission on that pledge is above zero and below the pledge itself.
When a backer takes it, they see the cover as its own line in the itemised breakdown before they authorise the payment, and the total they agree to includes it. When they decline, or the option is not offered, the commission comes out of the pledge exactly as it always does. Either way your commission is the same amount — what changes is who pays it.
Everything about how that option looks, reads and is configured belongs to Ignition Contributions.
Refunds
Section titled “Refunds”When a contribution is refunded, your commission is given back in proportion. Refund half a pledge and half the commission is reversed; refund all of it and the whole commission is reversed.
PayPal performs the reversal itself at the gateway, so there is nothing for you to do. The add-on records the reversal so the figures on your screens continue to reconcile.
Where the numbers appear
Section titled “Where the numbers appear”On a single pledge
Section titled “On a single pledge”The pledge detail page in wp-admin shows, for each successful payment on the pledge, two tables side by side: what the backer was charged, itemised, and where that money went. Your commission is a Commission (platform) line in the second table, beside the net that reaches the creator.
After a refund, that line shows what your platform actually kept — the commission recorded, less what has since been reversed. When all of it has been given back the line reads $0.00 rather than disappearing, so “this commission was charged and then fully reversed” stays distinguishable from “this platform takes no commission”.
The Payment Attempts and Refunds tables further down the same page carry per-row commission columns, so the figures in the statement can be checked against the rows they came from.
Per creator
Section titled “Per creator”A creator’s detail view in wp-admin shows Platform Commission and Net after Commission beside the gross figures already there, so you can see what a creator has generated and what they have actually netted.
Both tiles follow your Live or Test view. In Live view a creator with no commission gets no tiles at all, so their page looks exactly as it would without this add-on installed. In Test view the tiles always appear, zero included — a $0.00 commission tile carrying the “Test view — live totals are hidden” caption is the honest answer, where showing nothing would be indistinguishable from the add-on being absent.
For creators themselves
Section titled “For creators themselves”A creator’s pledge export gains Commission and Net after Commission columns, so a creator can reconcile their own income without asking you. The figures agree with what you see in wp-admin.
When a net reads below zero
Section titled “When a net reads below zero”A pledge’s net can settle at a small negative number — most often after a full refund on a card pledge, where the payment processor keeps its fee even though the backer got everything back. This add-on reports that figure as it is rather than rounding it up to $0.00, so the books stay honest about a pledge that cost more than it brought in. See When a refund leaves you below zero.
What backers see
Section titled “What backers see”By default, nothing. Your commission is an arrangement between your platform and your creators, and it never appears on a backer’s receipt, in their emails, on their dashboard, or in the net figure shown for their own contribution.
A backer who contributes $50 and is refunded $25 sees $25 as their own net contribution — not the smaller figure the creator nets after your cut.
The one exception is a backer who is offered, and takes, the option to cover the commission. They are choosing to pay it, so they see what they are paying.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Platform Mode — the multi-creator setup this add-on extends, and the Who Receives Pledges setting it depends on.
- PayPal Gateway — the split payments a commission rides on.
- Contributions — the add-on that lets a backer cover your commission at checkout.
- Managing pledges — the pledge detail page the commission line appears on.
- Refunds — issuing the refunds that reverse a commission.
- When a refund leaves you below zero — why a net can settle at a negative figure.