E-commerce: the plan that upgrades itself, and the fee that depends on how your buyer arrived
Selling online is the category where the least of your cost is the number on the pricing page. Two platforms here tie your plan to your sales volume, one of them by moving you up a tier without asking. One marketplace's rate triples depending on a decision the buyer makes, not the seller. And the payment processing underneath all of it varies by more than half on identical money. This guide sets out the mechanisms and what to check before committing a shop to any of them.
Most software pricing is a decision you make once. E-commerce pricing is a decision the platform keeps making on your behalf, because the plan you are on is frequently tied to how much you sell. That single structural fact separates this category from every other one in our records, and it is the thing to understand before comparing any of the monthly figures.
BigCommerce makes it explicit. Its entry plan carries a cap on trailing twelve-month sales, and crossing that cap moves you to the next plan up; the plan above carries a higher cap and does the same thing. Your bill rises because your sales rose, without any decision on your part and without a renewal date being involved. The tier above those adds a second meter as well — a monthly sales ceiling with a percentage charged on everything over it — so at that level the cost is partly a subscription and partly a share of revenue.
Sellfy is the structural opposite and the contrast is instructive. Nothing on its page links plan to sales volume: no cap, no automatic upgrade, no percentage above a threshold. It also happens to make an annual-discount claim that holds up, promising about a quarter off and delivering between roughly twenty-four and twenty-five and a half per cent across its three tiers. Its figures are all labelled as starting prices, so they are floors rather than fixed rates — but the plan you choose is the plan you stay on until you choose otherwise, which in this category is worth something.
Gumroad prices on a different axis again, and it is the one most likely to surprise a seller. It charges one rate on a sale made through your own link or profile, and roughly three times that rate on a sale where the buyer found your product through the platform's own marketplace. The same product at the same price yields materially different revenue depending on how the buyer arrived — which is a decision the buyer makes and the seller cannot control. Anyone modelling income from that platform needs an assumption about the mix, and the pricing page does not supply one.
Underneath all of these sits payment processing, which is where the assumption that a rate is a rate breaks down entirely. On one processor's European page a card costs one of four different percentages depending purely on where it was issued, before a currency-conversion surcharge on top; the same modest sale costs about sixty-five per cent more on an international card than on a local one. Another processor publishes on the order of seventy distinct rate lines, and the difference between two of its own ways of accepting the same money is over a hundred basis points. There is no single fee for either, and any model built on one headline percentage is built on the most favourable line of a long list.
A separate caution, and it applies to every category rather than this one. One platform in our records publishes its competitors' prices on its own pricing page. We read that page and the two competitors on the same day, and of the three rival figures it prints, one matches our reading of that vendor and two do not — one overstating a rival's monthly price, the other overstating a rival's sales allowance. The errors run in opposite directions, which reads more like a page nobody has updated than a page slanted to persuade.
Either way, the practical point stands: a comparison table on a vendor's own site is a marketing artefact, and it may be accurate, stale or selective without saying which. We record such figures as evidence of what that vendor publishes about its rivals, attributed to that page, and never as the rivals' prices. The rivals' prices come from reading the rivals.
So the checks before committing a shop are these. Ask whether your plan is tied to your sales volume, and what happens when you cross the threshold — whether you are moved, charged a percentage, or left alone. Model the payment processing separately using the rate for the cards your buyers actually hold, not the headline. If you sell through a marketplace, find out which of its rates applies to which kind of sale and make an honest assumption about the mix. And treat any price a vendor publishes about a competitor as a claim rather than a figure, including when it happens to be right.
One platform moves you up a tier automatically
Its entry plan caps trailing twelve-month sales and upgrades you when you cross it; the next plan does the same at a higher threshold. The bill rises because sales rose, with no decision by you and no renewal date involved.
And adds a second meter higher up the ladder
Above a monthly sales ceiling, a percentage is charged on everything over it. At that level the cost is part subscription and part revenue share, which no monthly comparison can express.
Another platform ties nothing to volume at all
No cap, no automatic upgrade, no percentage above a threshold — the structural opposite, and worth weighing against a lower headline figure elsewhere. Its annual-discount claim of about a quarter also holds across all three of its tiers.
One marketplace's rate depends on the buyer, not the seller
Roughly three times the fee when a buyer arrives through the platform's own listings rather than your link. The same product at the same price yields different revenue depending on a decision you do not make and cannot see in advance.
Payment processing has no single rate
One processor charges four different percentages by card origin before a conversion surcharge, so an identical sale can cost about sixty-five per cent more. Another publishes around seventy rate lines, with over a hundred basis points between two ways of taking the same money.
A vendor's table of competitors is a claim, not a price
Read on the same day as the competitors themselves, one platform's three rival figures included two that disagreed with our own readings — in opposite directions. We record such numbers as what that vendor publishes, never as the rivals' prices.
Questions people actually search
What happens when I outgrow an e-commerce plan?
It depends on the platform, and the answers differ more than the prices do. One here moves you to the next tier automatically when trailing sales cross a cap. Another charges a percentage on sales above a monthly ceiling. A third does neither and leaves the plan alone until you change it. Ask the question explicitly before comparing monthly figures, because it determines what a successful year costs you.
Why does the same sale cost different amounts to process?
Because card rates vary by where the card was issued, and often by how the payment was taken. On one processor's European page the spread across card origins is wide enough that an identical sale can cost around sixty-five per cent more, before any currency conversion. Model with the rates your actual buyers will use rather than the first line on the page.
How should I think about a marketplace fee that changes with the buyer?
As a range rather than a rate, and then make an assumption about the mix. If most of your sales come from your own audience you pay the lower rate; if the platform's discovery brings you buyers, those sales cost roughly three times as much in fees — though they are also sales you might not otherwise have had. The trade is real; what is missing from the pricing page is any way to predict the proportion.
Should I trust the comparison table on a vendor's own site?
Treat it as a claim about a competitor rather than that competitor's price. In the one case we could check directly, reading the vendor and both of its named rivals on the same day, two of three figures disagreed with our own readings and the errors ran in both directions. That is consistent with an unmaintained page rather than a dishonest one, and it is a reason to verify rather than to accuse.
Do you earn a commission from any platform named here?
No. We hold no affiliate relationship with any e-commerce platform or payment processor discussed on this page, and this page carries no affiliate links. Our method is on the method page.
This page publishes no absolute prices. Every quantity in it is a ratio or a percentage computed from figures the vendors print, because the platforms and processors discussed were each read in a single market while this guide appears in three editions, and several store their prices in fields our pages cannot resolve into figures. Records were read between 2026-08-27 and 2026-09-03. Where one vendor publishes a competitor's price, that figure is recorded as a claim attributed to the page that printed it, and is never written into the competitor's own record; the comparison described here was made against our own dated readings of those competitors, taken the same day. This page carries no affiliate links. Related: the price is not the bill, automation: a saving that does not exist and how to read a price record. The method →
Found a price that no longer matches the vendor’s page? Tell us — corrections are dated and stay on the page.