Cost comparison
What a month of selling costs, on each platform, at your volume
Subscription plus platform fees plus card fees, with every platform on the same outside payment processor so the only thing that varies is the platform.
What does it cost to sell online on each platform?
The cost of selling on a commerce platform is three things added together: the monthly subscription, the platform's own cut of each order, and the card processor's fee. Which one dominates depends entirely on your volume, because the subscription is fixed and the other two scale with sales. At low volume the subscription decides it and the cheapest plan wins; at high volume a dearer plan with a lower per-order rate is usually cheaper overall, which is why this calculator prices every plan a platform publishes and picks the cheapest total rather than the cheapest sticker price. Enter your monthly orders and your average order value below and it will rank them, including Crate, wherever Crate happens to land.
Your result
Fill in the fields above and the answer appears here.
There is no published cost comparison for your market yet. We only compare platforms whose current plan prices and fees we could read from their own pricing pages, and we have not been able to do that for this market.
A single total cannot be worked out for your market, because the subscriptions are priced in one currency and your orders are in another. Crate does no currency conversion anywhere, and a total built on an invented exchange rate would be worse than no total. See the pricing page for what Crate costs in your market.
At orders a month at , the cheapest of the platforms compared is at a month.
On cost at this volume Crate ranks 0 of 0. At this volume Crate is the most expensive of the platforms compared. That is what the arithmetic says and we are not going to hide it.
| Platform | Cheapest plan at this volume | Subscription | Platform fee per order | Card fee per order | Total for the month | As a share of sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crate | ||||||
| Shopify | ||||||
| BigCommerce |
Platforms not compared here, and why
- Squarespace: its transaction-fee policy is published, but its current plan prices were not readable from its own pricing page when this was checked. Half a sourced row is not a row.
- Wix: its transaction-fee policy is published, but its current plan prices were not readable from its own pricing page when this was checked. Half a sourced row is not a row.
- Etsy: it charges on a different basis, so a single monthly total would compare two different things and flatter one of them.
- WooCommerce: it charges on a different basis, so a single monthly total would compare two different things and flatter one of them.
How this is worked out
Subscription plus platform fees plus card fees, with every platform on the same outside payment processor so the only thing that varies is the platform.
- For each plan a platform publishes, the calculator works out the subscription for the month plus the number of orders multiplied by the cost of one order, and the cost of one order is the platform's own percentage of the order value plus the card processor's percentage plus the card processor's fixed fee. It then picks the plan with the lowest total, not the cheapest plan, and ranks the platforms by that total. Nothing is weighted and there is no special case for Crate.
A worked example
Suppose 200 orders a month at an average of 50, a platform taking 2 per cent of each order, a card processor taking 2.9 per cent plus a fixed 30 cents, and a subscription of 27 a month. One order costs 1.00 to the platform, 1.45 to the processor and 30 cents fixed, which is 2.75. Two hundred of those is 550, and 550 plus the 27 subscription is 577 for the month. The calculator repeats that for every plan each platform publishes and keeps the cheapest total, which is not always the cheapest plan.
What this assumes
- Every platform is priced with the same outside card processor, so the comparison isolates the platform. Using a platform's own bundled processor usually removes its surcharge, and none of them publish that in-house card rate where we could read it.
- For each platform the plan chosen is the one with the lowest total at the volume you entered, not the cheapest plan. On these platforms a dearer plan buys a lower per-order rate.
- Crate's own fee, stated above, is charged on top of the card processor's fee and not instead of it. It is rounded up to the nearest minor unit, so on any single order you may pay up to one cent, kobo or penny more than the exact percentage. That is a rounding footnote rather than a scandal, and burying it is what would make it one.
- Crate's plan prices are still being finalised, so the Crate row moves when they are signed off.
- Apps, themes, domains, shipping, refunds, chargebacks and currency conversion are not counted on any row. They are real costs; they are just not costs this comparison can source for every platform.
Where the outside figures come from
Questions about this calculator
Short answers, and none of them hedge. If yours is not here, ask us on the contact page.
Why is Crate not always the cheapest here?
Because at a lot of volumes it is not. Crate takes a percentage of each order on top of the card processor's fee, and a platform charging a smaller percentage will beat it on cost at the same order value. The table ranks by the computed total with no exception for our own row, and if Crate comes last at the numbers you entered then it comes last.
Why is my platform not on the list?
Because we could not read its current plan prices and fees from its own pricing page. Every figure here is linked to the page it was read from and dated, and a rate we cannot source is a rate we will not print. The platforms we tried and could not complete are named under the table.
Does this include the card processing fee?
Yes, and it is the same processor on every row so it does not distort the ranking. The rate is pre-filled from a published card rate and you can change it to whatever your own processor actually charges you, which for a high-volume shop is often less than the published figure.
Is the yearly price the annual total?
No. It is the per-month figure each company advertises for annual billing, which is the number on their own pricing page. Multiplying it by twelve gives you the year.
Is anything I type here sent to Crate?
No. The figures live in the address bar and nowhere else. Nothing is stored, no cookie is set for this and the page works with JavaScript switched off, in which case the server does the arithmetic and returns the page.
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