How to sell online without monthly fees
Most ecommerce platforms bill you every month before you have made a single sale, and many take a share of every order on top. You can avoid both. This guide shows the ways to sell online without a monthly fee, what each one costs in practice, and how to set up a complete store that charges you nothing.
Why monthly fees matter more than they look
A plan of $29 to $39 a month sounds small. Over a year it is $348 to $468, paid whether you sell anything or not. Add a few paid apps for reviews, subscriptions or email, or a percentage fee on each sale, and the platform can cost far more than the plan price suggests.
For a new shop, that bill arrives at the worst time: before there are steady sales to cover it. For an established shop, it is margin that goes to software instead of to you.
What you will always pay
Two costs come with selling online no matter which platform you choose:
- Payment processing. Whoever handles the card or PayPal payment charges a small fee on each sale. In the US, PayPal charges 3.49% + 49¢ for a PayPal Checkout payment, and Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ for a standard card. Every platform passes this cost on in some form, including the ones that call themselves free.
- A domain name, if you want one. An address like yourshop.com costs about $10 to $20 a year from a domain registrar. It is optional, but it makes a store look established.
Everything else, the monthly plan, the extra transaction fee, the paid apps, is a choice made by the platform. That is the part you can avoid.
Five ways to sell without a monthly fee
1. A marketplace such as Etsy or eBay
Marketplaces have no required monthly plan, and they bring shoppers who are already looking. In exchange, they charge on every listing and every sale. Etsy, for example, charges $0.20 per listing, a 6.5% transaction fee and 3% + $0.25 for payment processing on each US order. You also share the page with competing sellers, and the customer belongs to the marketplace more than to you.
Good for: testing whether a product sells. Watch out for: fees that grow with every order.
2. Payment links and buttons
PayPal and Stripe both let you create a payment link or a buy button for free and paste it on any page or social profile. You pay only their processing fee. It works well for one or two products, but there is no cart, no stock tracking, no shipping rules and no store to browse.
Good for: a single product, a donation or a deposit. Watch out for: it stops scaling past a handful of products.
3. A free plan with strings attached
A few platforms have a free plan that can sell. Big Cartel's free Gold plan allows 5 products with one photo each, and no custom domain. Square Online's Free plan has no monthly fee but charges a higher card rate, 3.3% + 30¢ instead of 2.9% + 30¢ on its paid plans. Other platforms' free plans cannot take payments at all: on Wix, selling starts on the Core plan at $29 a month billed yearly.
Good for: very small catalogs. Watch out for: limits that push you onto a paid plan as soon as you grow.
4. Open-source software on your own hosting
WooCommerce, the store plugin for WordPress, is free to download. The software is free, but the store is not: you pay for hosting, usually for a few paid extensions, and you are responsible for updates, backups and security. WooCommerce itself estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, and its official Subscriptions extension is $279 a year.
Good for: people who already run WordPress and enjoy maintaining it. Watch out for: hosting and extension bills, and the time it takes.
5. Payly: a complete store with no monthly fee
Payly is a full ecommerce platform with hosting built in, and it is free. There is no monthly fee, no transaction fee and no commission on your sales. Customers pay your own PayPal or Stripe account directly, and the only fee on a sale is the processor's standard rate.
Your store runs on your own free Cloudflare account, so there is no hosting bill either. Cloudflare's free plan comfortably covers most stores, about 5,000 visitors a day, and if a store ever outgrows it, Cloudflare's paid plan is $5 a month, paid to Cloudflare. Payly stays free either way.
Good for: anyone who wants a real store, with a cart, checkout, stock, shipping, tax and subscriptions, without a monthly bill.
How to set up a store with no monthly fee on Payly
- Create a free account with your email address or Google. No credit card is asked for.
- Pick a design and change its colors, fonts, photos and words in the editor.
- Add your products, with photos, prices, variants such as size and color, and stock counts. Moving from another platform? Import your products from Shopify, Etsy, Wix, Squarespace or WooCommerce in a few minutes.
- Connect PayPal or Stripe, or both. Payments go straight to your account.
- Set shipping and tax: flat rates, free shipping or local pickup, by zone, and the tax rates you need to collect.
- Publish. The first time, you connect a free Cloudflare account and Payly puts your store online there. Add your own domain whenever you like; connecting it is free.
What a year of selling costs, side by side
Here is the platform cost alone for a shop selling $2,000 a month, before payment processing, which every option below also pays.
| Platform | Platform cost a year |
|---|---|
| Payly | $0 |
| Wix Core, billed yearly | $348 |
| Shopify Basic, billed yearly, with Shopify Payments | $348 |
| Squarespace Basic, billed yearly | $708 ($228 plan + $480 in 2% fees) |
| Shopify Basic, billed yearly, with PayPal or another provider | $828 ($348 plan + $480 in 2% fees) |
| Etsy, 40 sales of $50 a month | About $1,650 in listing and transaction fees |
Questions
Is Payly really free?
Yes. There is no paid plan, no trial that ends, no transaction fee and no commission. Every feature is available to every store.
How does Payly make money?
Payly is an official PayPal and Stripe partner, and that partnership lets Payly run the platform without charging you. Your money never passes through Payly.
What happens if my store gets very busy?
Cloudflare's free plan covers about 5,000 visitors a day. Past that, Cloudflare's paid plan costs $5 a month, paid to Cloudflare in your own account. Payly itself never charges you, at any size.
Can I leave later?
Yes. You can export your products at any time as a Shopify or WooCommerce file. Your store is yours.
Prices are as published by each company in October 2026 and can change. Payment processing fees are set by PayPal and Stripe.
