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Weighed Aug 2026

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Rates weighed Aug 2026 · no tie to any platform on the dock.

Unit economics for store builders

What do you actually pay per sale?

Bay 01Goods out — priced per order
  • ShopifyBasic plan$1.75to move one $50 order — processing only
  • SquarespaceBasic plan$2.75to move one $50 order — plus a 2% platform fee

+$1.00 on the same order, the same customer× 40 orders a month

The ranked ledgerRun your numbers

Every store builder review here is an audit: plan fee, processing rate, platform surcharge — totalled per month and per sale. If a number appears on this site, it has been checked against the vendor's own fee schedule and it balances.

Consignment docketCartCraft · sample audit

A $2,000/mo store · 40 orders

  • Shopify Basic · annual$29.00
  • Processing 2.9% × $2,000$58.00
  • Fixed $0.30 × 40 orders$12.00
  • Platform fee$0.00

TOTAL / MO$99.00

* 5.0% of sales · rates verified Aug 2026 · run your own numbers

Load rangeSame store, same month, seven bays

One $2,000 month, all-in, depending on the name on the invoice:

$612 a year between the two, on identical revenue.

Latest audits

The full journal →

CartCraft reviews ecommerce website builders the way a bookkeeper closes a month: nothing posts without a source, and nothing gets recommended until it has been priced. Most comparison sites rank store platforms by feature checklists. We rank them by what they take from each sale, because that is the number that compounds.

What an audit is

Three lines decide what a store builder really costs. The plan fee — the only number vendors advertise. The processing rate — a percentage plus fixed cents on every order. And the platform surcharge — the quiet extra percentage some builders add on top of processing. An audit totals all three, per month and per sale. On a $50 order, Shopify Basic takes $1.75 in processing; Squarespace's Basic plan takes $2.75 once its 2% platform fee posts. Same order, same customer, $1.00 more in fees — and $1.00 forty times a month is a second plan fee you never agreed to.

Per-sale math beats feature lists

Features are a one-time judgment; fees are an annuity. The advertised plan price is usually the smallest number on the invoice — at $2,000 a month in sales, our benchmark store pays between $78 and $129 a month all-in depending on the builder, a $612-a-year spread on identical revenue. The cheapest sticker in that set produces the most expensive bill. That is the pattern feature lists cannot see and per-sale math catches every time. Multiply any percentage difference by twelve months of orders before you call it small.

The calculator

The flagship tool here is the fees calculator: enter your monthly sales and order count, and it posts a ledger for every builder we track — plan cost plus processing plus surcharge, ranked cheapest first, with an effective take rate on each line. It runs on the same verified rate table as every review on the site; when a vendor changes a fee, the calculator and the copy change together. Bookmark it for the day a vendor announces simpler pricing.

Independence, itemized

Some links on this site are affiliate links; if you buy through one, the vendor pays us a commission at no cost to you. That commission never touches a rate, a ranking, or a verdict — the figures come from vendors' published fee schedules, and arithmetic does not take sponsorship. The full accounting is in our affiliate disclosure.

Where to start

Two entries cover most readers. The ranked ledger — the best ecommerce website builders, audited by what you pay — carries a verdict and a worked total for every builder. If you only want the rates, transaction fees compared itemizes every processing fee and surcharge side by side. Either way: run your own numbers before you sign anything. The fees do not care how the demo felt.

Itemized questions

Which ecommerce builder has the lowest fees?
It depends on your sales volume, which is why we built a fees calculator rather than naming one winner. The platform cut, the payment-processor rate and your order size all move the answer — a low monthly plan can cost more per sale than a pricier one.
Does Shopify charge transaction fees?
Shopify charges an extra transaction fee only if you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments; on Shopify Payments that platform fee is zero, though the processor's own card rate still applies. Our review shows where that math favours it.
What's the cheapest way to sell online?
For a handful of products, a free or low-cost plan with a fee-free checkout beats a feature-heavy platform you underuse. We rank by what each option takes from a real month of sales, not by feature checklists.
Wix or Shopify for a store?
Shopify is the stronger dedicated commerce engine; Wix is better if the store is one part of a broader site. Our head-to-head prices both against a sample month so the difference is in dollars, not adjectives.
Do free ecommerce plans still take a cut of sales?
Most do — a "free" store plan often charges a higher per-transaction fee that quietly costs more than a paid plan once you sell steadily. We flag every one of these in the ranking.