For bands · a tool
What a store costs at your size
Type what you sell in a month. The table shows what each store keeps, from the rates on the vendors’ own pages. Nothing is saved and nobody is told.
About 38 orders a month. Fees included, US cards, no apps, no shipping. Percent is the share of sales you don’t keep.
| Store | A month | Of sales | A year | Vs Shopify |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic $39 a month ($29 on annual billing). +2% per sale if you don't use Shopify Payments. | $94 | 6.3% | $1,125 | |
| Big Cartel Free for 5 products, $15 for 50, $30 for 500. No commission; Stripe or PayPal for the money. | $70 | 4.7% | $837 | saves $288/yr |
| Bandzoogle Standard $14.95 a month ($12.46 annual): a whole band site with a commission-free store. | $70 | 4.6% | $836 | saves $289/yr |
| Your own store on Cloudflare + Stripe The finished store on this site. Hosting is free; the domain is about $12 a year. | $56 | 3.7% | $669 | saves $456/yr |
| WooCommerce on a managed host The software is free; a managed WordPress host is $11 to $40 a month. $25 used here. | $80 | 5.3% | $957 | saves $168/yr |
| Static site + Snipcart $20 a month under $1,000 in sales, then 2% of sales, on top of Stripe. | $85 | 5.7% | $1,017 | saves $108/yr |
| Bandcamp (physical) 10% of the sale plus 4 to 6% processing (5% used here). No fixed cost; never gets cheaper. | $225 | 15.0% | $2,700 | costs $1,575/yr more |
How to read it
At a few hundred dollars a month the fixed fee is what hurts: Shopify’s $39 takes a sixth of a small band’s sales. At several thousand a month every hosted store lands near 4% and the money argument fades; what’s left is ownership. Your own store is the cheapest line at every size because it has no rent, and the saving against Shopify is the same $470 a year whether you sell $300 or $6,000, plus whatever you pay for apps. Bandcamp is the only line that never gets cheaper, which is why it’s a second table, not the table.
Card fees are the same everywhere (2.9% + 30¢ on US cards). Shopify adds 2% per sale if you use any processor but its own. Stripe Tax, if you turn it on, adds 0.5% of each sale it calculates tax on.
Rates read on 26 Sep 2026 from shopify.com, bigcartel.com, bandzoogle.com, snipcart.com, bandcamp.com, stripe.com.