Guide

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The cheapest plan on a pricing page is often not the cheapest plan in a bank account. Some platforms charge a monthly bill and then take a percentage of every sale on top of it. The percentage stays quiet because it only shows up when the tool starts working. A beginner who is not selling yet sees a small bill. A beginner who starts selling discovers the plan was priced in two places all along.

This guide ranks the four biggest cuts the research behind this directory found, biggest first. The math uses a simple yardstick: one thousand dollars of sales in a month. Nearly every seller also pays card processing, around 2.9 percent plus 30 cents a sale through Stripe or PayPal, and that charge is not counted below, because it follows a seller almost everywhere. The cuts below are what the platform itself takes, above its monthly bill.

Skool is a community and course platform, and its Hobby plan costs 9 dollars a month, the friendliest looking price in this entire directory. The plan takes 10 percent of every sale made through it. On one thousand dollars of sales, Skool keeps one hundred dollars of it. That is more than eleven months of the plan price, taken in a single good month. The upgrade, called Pro at 99 dollars a month, lowers the cut to 2.9 percent, and even there the percentage never fully goes away.

Teachable hosts and sells online courses, and its Starter plan costs 39 dollars a month. The plan takes 7.5 percent of every sale. On one thousand dollars of course sales, 75 dollars never reaches the seller, on top of the 39 dollar bill. The next plan up, Builder at 89 dollars a month, removes the cut entirely. Teachable does real work for its money, including handling sales tax and value added tax paperwork through its payments system, and this directory is not calling the platform dishonest. The fee is published. It is just quiet, and a beginner deserves to hear it out loud before the first sale, not after.

Kartra is an all in one marketing platform, and its Essentials plan costs 59 dollars a month. The plan takes 5 percent of everything sold through it, so one thousand dollars of sales sends 50 dollars to Kartra before processing. The plan holding that cut is also the small one: 500 contacts, 5 pages and 1 product. The next plan up, Starter at 119 dollars a month, removes the cut. A beginner reading only the sticker would think Kartra starts at 59 dollars. A beginner reading the whole bill knows the honest starting point is 119.

Podia is a calm all in one platform for creators, and its Mover plan costs 49 dollars a month. The plan takes 5 percent of every sale, the same 50 dollars on a thousand. Mover also includes email only up to a small subscriber limit before email starts costing extra, so the meter is running in two corners of the same room. The next plan up, Shaker at 99 dollars a month, removes the cut. Podia is one of the friendliest dashboards in this directory, and none of that changes the arithmetic.

The four plans above are the headline cases, not the only ones. Thinkific charges no platform cut on its paid plans when a seller uses its own payments system, but a seller who brings her own Stripe account on the Basic plan meets a 5 percent gateway surcharge. AWeber charges 1.0 percent on product sales made through its own checkout on the Lite plan, and 0.6 percent on Plus. Kit charges 3.5 percent plus 30 cents on product sales made inside the service. Circle takes 2 percent of paywall payments on its Professional plan, which already costs 89 dollars a month. None of these is a scandal. Every one of them belongs in the true cost column before a beginner signs anything.

Honesty cuts both ways, and this directory keeps it that way. Gumroad takes 10 percent plus 50 cents on direct sales and 30 percent on sales through its Discover marketplace, and it charges no monthly fee at all. There, the percentage is the whole price, printed in the open, and a quiet month costs a seller nothing. Systeme.io takes no percentage on any plan, including its free plan. Stan Store takes no percentage on either of its plans. The trap is never one number by itself. The trap is the stack: a monthly bill, plus a percentage on top, plus limits low enough to push a growing seller toward the upgrade. When a plan shows all three, the cheap price is a doorway. It is not the room.

Ask what the plan costs in a good month, not in the first month. Price the plan at the sales level the beginner is working toward, fee included, and compare that number with the flat plans beside it. If the platform earns more from the good month than the beginner planned on, the plan was never cheap. It was just patient.

That is also why the top pick in this directory is a flat membership. Inside Home Business Academy, the tools are paid for with the membership itself, and sales run through the seller's own Stripe checkout inside the builder. There is no second toll booth for the platform standing behind the monthly bill.

Every tool in this directory does one job. The top pick, Home Business Academy, does all of them in one place: the builder, the email service, courses and memberships, webinars, traffic tools and writing help, under one login and one bill. That is why it sits at the top of this directory, and it is the first place this directory sends a beginner who wants simple over scattered.

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