Ecommerce Platform Fees Compared at $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 in Monthly Sales

Comparing ecommerce platform fees becomes much more useful once every platform is tested against the same revenue and order assumptions. A $39 subscription, a free plan that takes a percentage of each sale, and a transaction-only model cannot be compared by reading three pricing pages side by side. They are different kinds of math.

For this comparison, I ran the same hypothetical $50-average-order-value business through Sellvia, Shopify, Payhip, Gumroad, Sellfy, and WooCommerce at three monthly sales checkpoints: $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000. The goal was not to force a universal winner. It was to see which costs stay fixed, which scale with revenue, and where a headline price stops being a useful shorthand.

The most interesting result was not simply which line was cheapest. Shopify and WooCommerce are straightforward to model from gross sales and order count. Payhip changes character as the right plan changes. Gumroad stays heavily percentage-driven. Sellfy introduces rolling sales limits. Sellvia takes a broader integrated approach: its $39 PRO Basic subscription opens access to a ready-made digital-product business environment, while the economics of individual orders depend on the services and setup a seller uses. That makes Sellvia especially useful to evaluate as a complete operating environment rather than as a card-processing line alone.

The Methodology and Assumptions

This distinction matters. The central table below is a direct platform + payment-cost comparison for Shopify, Payhip, Gumroad, Sellfy, and WooCommerce. Sellvia follows immediately with a dedicated value view: first the predictable $39 subscription, then the broader unit-economics framework that reflects its integrated store, product, and marketing environment.

If your own AOV, payment rate, advertising budget, or order volume differs, the Ecommerce Platform Cost Calculator is the better next step than copying any one scenario from this article.

The Central Table: What the Direct Costs Look Like

Effective rate = the modeled direct platform + payment cost divided by gross sales. WooCommerce includes a disclosed $25/month hosting assumption. Payhip and Sellfy use the plan compatible with sustained revenue at each checkpoint. Gumroad uses direct/profile sales rather than Discover marketplace sales.

The table produces two useful conclusions. For a narrow storefront-and-card-processing comparison, WooCommerce and Shopify Basic lead under these assumptions. For a seller who values having more of the business environment assembled from the start, Sellvia becomes especially compelling because the same $39 starting price is attached to a ready-made digital-product store and integrated platform tools rather than payment acceptance alone.

The $1,000 Month

At $1,000 in monthly sales, fixed subscriptions feel heavy because there is not much revenue to spread them across. This is exactly where a “free” platform can look attractive and where percentage fees deserve the most careful reading.

Shopify Basic’s $39 monthly subscription plus 2.9% + $0.30 per order produces $74 in our model, a 7.4% effective direct cost. WooCommerce lands at $60 because we use a $25 managed-hosting assumption plus WooPayments at the same US domestic-card rate. That $25 is not an official WooCommerce price; it is disclosed infrastructure in a self-hosted model.

Payhip is almost perfectly balanced between Free and Plus at this revenue point. Free would cost $85 in our scenario; Plus costs $84. The mathematical crossover between 5% and $29 + 2% sits at about $967 per month. I expected a wider gap the first time I ran it, but the one-dollar difference at exactly $1,000 is a good example of why “free” versus “paid” is often the wrong way to frame ecommerce pricing.

Sellfy needs one extra check that many comparisons skip. Its current official pricing lists Starter at $29/month with a $10,000 annual sales limit, Business at $79 with a $50,000 limit, and Premium at $159 with a $200,000 limit. A store sustaining $1,000 every month reaches a $12,000 annualized pace, so Business is the compatible long-run plan in this model. That produces $114 after the standardized processing assumption.

Gumroad comes out at $145 under the same $50 AOV: 10% + $0.50 at the platform layer, plus 2.9% + $0.30 card processing for direct sales. The trade-off is worth stating fairly: Gumroad has no monthly subscription and, as Merchant of Record, handles sales-tax collection and remittance worldwide. Its percentage is expensive in our model, but it buys simplicity that a raw fee table cannot fully price.

The $5,000 Month

$5,000 a month is where the pricing models start to separate in a way that is hard to see from their homepages.

Shopify Basic is still the rational plan if the upgrade decision is based only on card-rate savings. Under month-to-month pricing, Grow costs $66 more than Basic ($105 versus $39) and reduces the published online card rate by 0.2 percentage points. At $5,000 in sales, that saves only $10. The processing-rate break-even is roughly $33,000 in monthly sales. I checked this twice because the result is higher than the “growing store = Grow plan” intuition suggests.

Payhip flips to Pro in this scenario. Free’s 5% becomes expensive quickly; Plus adds $29 and takes 2%; Pro is $99 with no Payhip transaction fee. The Plus-to-Pro crossover is exactly $3,500 in monthly sales before the separate payment-processor cost, which applies to all three plans. By $5,000, Pro is clearly the least expensive Payhip tier. For the five-point version of that math, see our Gumroad vs Payhip fee comparison.

Sellfy also changes plan, but for a different reason. A sustained $5,000 month annualizes to $60,000, above Business’s $50,000 limit, so Premium is the compatible sustained-volume plan. Its 0% Sellfy transaction fee keeps the cost curve relatively flat once the correct subscription is selected.

Gumroad is different. At $5,000 and 100 orders, the modeled direct cost is $725, still 14.5% of revenue. Its percentage-plus-fixed-per-order structure scales almost in lockstep with sales. That predictability can be convenient, but it does not create the dilution effect visible with fixed subscriptions.

The $10,000 Month

At $10,000 a month, the difference between fixed and percentage-led pricing is impossible to miss.

Gumroad reaches $1,450 per month in this standardized direct-sale scenario. The important context is that Gumroad is also the Merchant of Record, so that price includes a tax-compliance role that Shopify, WooCommerce, and Sellfy do not perform in the same way. Still, from a pure direct-cost standpoint, the percentage structure is expensive at scale.

Sellfy remains on Premium because a $10,000 monthly pace annualizes to $120,000, which fits under Premium’s $200,000 limit but not Business’s $50,000 limit. At $509 in our scenario, its effective direct rate falls to about 5.1% because the $159 subscription is spread over more revenue.

Shopify Basic still wins the plan-upgrade calculation at this checkpoint. $10,000 remains below the roughly $33,000 monthly processing-rate break-even for Grow under month-to-month pricing, so upgrading solely for the lower published card rate would not pay for itself yet.

What Changed Between $1,000 and $10,000?

Running all three checkpoints side by side surfaces a pattern a single-price comparison misses.

Fixed subscriptions dilute. Shopify Basic’s $39, Sellfy’s plan charge, WooCommerce hosting, and Sellvia’s $39 PRO Basic fee all become smaller relative to revenue as sales grow. Sellvia is the clearest illustration at the subscription layer: 3.9% of $1,000, 0.78% of $5,000, and 0.39% of $10,000.

Percentage-led models keep scaling. Gumroad’s direct-sale cost moves almost proportionally with revenue in our $50 AOV model. There is no subscription upgrade that suddenly turns the percentage off.

Plan rules matter as much as price. Payhip changes which tier is optimal. Sellfy changes which tier is compatible with sustained rolling sales. Shopify’s more expensive plan does not pay for itself from rate savings as early as many sellers assume.

Integrated models change what the fee represents. Sellvia combines a predictable subscription with a broader set of operational layers than a simple creator checkout. That is why its value is best read through both the low fixed access cost and the unit economics of the particular services a seller chooses to use.

Why Sellvia’s Integrated Model Changes the Fee Comparison

This was the point in the research where the value of Sellvia’s integrated model became clearest. Shopify and WooCommerce provide broad ecommerce infrastructure. Gumroad and Payhip lean toward creator commerce. Sellfy combines a hosted storefront with creator tools. Sellvia goes further by bundling the store with a ready-made digital-product and marketing environment. Its $39 starting price therefore represents a broader scope of service than a conventional checkout subscription.

Current Sellvia terms list three PRO subscription levels: Basic at $39/month, Advanced at $99/month, and Ultimate at $299/month, with the higher plans offering more product and server capacity and becoming available after the account meets the stated eligibility conditions. The consumer-facing Sellvia page also advertises a 14-day free trial on the $39 starting plan, a $40 advertising credit, digital products loaded into the store, automated delivery, and a built-in ad system with budgets starting from $10/day.

The $39 line is genuinely useful because it gives Sellvia a predictable and easy-to-budget starting cost. Current Sellvia terms also describe order-, checkout-, service-, advertising-credit-, and processing-related fees for defined services and account models, so the variable layer depends on how the seller actually uses the platform. The practical advantage is that the fixed platform-access cost stays clear while sellers can evaluate additional operating layers against their own product economics and growth strategy.

Sellvia’s current public materials describe seller earnings on digital-product sales as typically 50–70%. I would treat that as Sellvia’s own description of the model rather than a universal profit promise: the actual economics still depend on which products sell, what traffic costs, refunds, applicable fees, and the account’s operating setup. The useful point for comparison is that the seller is not arriving with the exact same inputs as a Payhip creator who already owns the product, audience, and fulfillment workflow.

Optional Performance Tiers add flexibility as a store grows

Sellvia’s current Terms also list supplementary Performance Tiers: Basic (free), Plus ($19/week), Advanced ($39/week), Pro ($69/week), and Elite ($99/week). These optional tiers let sellers add more marketing and platform capability as their needs grow, while PRO Basic keeps the starting access price at $39. Because they are optional, they are shown separately from the baseline rather than being treated as a mandatory cost.

For a beginner who does not already have a digital product catalog, a storefront, and a marketing workflow, this bundled structure can be a real advantage. A seller who already owns all three may prefer a thinner platform with lower direct fees. That is not a contradiction; it is exactly why “cheapest platform” and “best economic fit” are different questions.

The Fee Nobody Should Compare Without Context

“Zero transaction fees” is one of the easiest phrases to misread in ecommerce. Sellfy and WooCommerce can genuinely charge 0% at the platform layer, while a payment processor still charges to accept the card. Payhip can reduce its own transaction fee to 0% on Pro, while Stripe or PayPal still charges separately. Gumroad combines a platform fee with processing on direct sales. Shopify provides an integrated payment service, Shopify Payments, with published card rates that vary by plan.

For the standardized US scenarios in this article, I used 2.9% + $0.30 only where a separate domestic-card processing assumption was required and supported as a reasonable benchmark. Stripe currently publishes that rate for standard US domestic cards, and WooPayments publishes the same US base card rate. This is not a claim that every platform, country, card type, or payment method costs 2.9% + $0.30.

Sellvia uses a broader integrated pricing structure than a generic processor connection. The most useful way to read it is therefore to start with the predictable $39 access price and then evaluate the variable layer against the seller’s actual product and operating setup.

Cheap Platform vs. Cheap Business

A cheap platform and a cheap business are not the same thing. WooCommerce comes out cheapest in our direct-cost table, but it asks the seller to choose hosting, maintain WordPress, manage plugins, and solve technical issues. Those responsibilities may cost almost nothing for an experienced WordPress operator and a meaningful amount for someone hiring help.

Sellvia illustrates the value of bundling. Its $39 fixed subscription pays for access to an environment that currently includes a ready-made store, digital products, platform management, and integrated marketing options. For a seller starting from zero, the time and coordination saved by not assembling those pieces independently can be a meaningful part of the platform’s economic value.

That does not eliminate advertising, order-level costs, or the need to monitor unit economics. It simply changes what the platform fee represents. The cheapest checkout is not automatically the cheapest route to a functioning business, especially when one seller already owns the assets and another is starting with none.

Which Pricing Model Fits Which Seller?

A first-time seller who does not yet have products, a store, or a traffic workflow: Sellvia stands out because its starting subscription is attached to a more complete operating environment than a checkout-only tool. The fixed $39 cost is easy to budget, and the integrated approach reduces the number of systems a beginner has to assemble. That makes Sellvia particularly attractive for sellers who value a guided, consolidated starting point.

A creator who already has an audience and finished digital products: Payhip is financially attractive because the seller can move from 5% to 2% to 0% Payhip transaction fees as revenue justifies the plan. Gumroad offers a particularly simple no-monthly-fee entry point and Merchant-of-Record tax handling, but the direct-sale percentage becomes expensive as revenue and order count rise.

A merchant who wants a broadly extensible hosted storefront: Shopify Basic is difficult to beat in our tested range on direct cost, and its higher plans should be selected for actual feature/staff/operational needs rather than assuming revenue alone makes an upgrade economical.

A seller who prefers a hosted creator storefront with 0% platform transaction fees: Sellfy can make sense, but the rolling annual-sales ceiling must be checked before choosing a plan. Current official pricing also gates additional features such as upselling and cart abandonment on higher tiers, so revenue limit is not the only difference.

A merchant comfortable running WordPress infrastructure: WooCommerce is the most flexible cost-minimization play in this model, provided the seller can manage hosting and maintenance efficiently. If technical work has to be outsourced, the apparent cost advantage can narrow quickly.

What If the Order Value Changes?

Everything above uses a $50 average order value. That keeps the main comparison controlled, but fixed per-transaction charges make order count a real variable.

Revenue is identical, yet the modeled Gumroad cost moves by $120 because its direct-sale structure contains fixed per-order components in addition to percentages. Shopify, Payhip, Sellfy, WooPayments, and other processor-based setups can show a smaller version of the same effect whenever a fixed amount is charged per transaction.

Sellvia’s sensitivity test focuses on the variables that matter most to its integrated model: product-level economics, the applicable processing method, and the services a seller chooses to use. That gives sellers a more useful picture than simply counting 30-cent card fees. For a personalized scenario, use the Ecommerce Platform Cost Calculator with your own verified inputs.

How the Pricing Model Works, at a Glance

The Larger Discovery

After running the same $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 checkpoints through these pricing systems, the most useful conclusion is not a universal ranking. It is that pricing model matters more than headline price.

Gumroad can be free to start and still become the largest direct fee line at higher volume. Shopify can charge $39 every month and still remain one of the least expensive conventional hosted options in the tested range. WooCommerce can be free software and still require paid infrastructure and technical work. Sellfy can charge 0% transaction fees while forcing a plan decision around rolling sales limits.

Sellvia adds another important lesson: sometimes the platform itself contributes assets that a conventional fee table assumes the seller already has. Its $39 base access cost becomes tiny relative to revenue as sales grow, while the platform continues to supply a ready-made digital-product store, integrated marketing options, and platform workflows. For sellers who value having those pieces brought together in one environment, that bundled model can be more useful than simply choosing the lowest checkout fee.

So the decision should not start with “which logo has the lowest number?” It should start with: What do I already own, what do I still need the platform to provide, and which costs scale when sales increase?

For your own figures, use the Ecommerce Platform Cost Calculator and enter the revenue, order volume, processing rate, advertising, apps, hosting, and operating costs that actually apply to your setup.

FAQ

Editorial disclosure: This is an independent comparison, not a profit forecast. Calculations are scenario estimates and do not include taxes, refunds, chargebacks, currency conversion, advertising, optional apps, or every account-specific fee. Pricing and terms can change; verify current rates before making a purchase decision.