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Store costs

What a direct book store costs on Payhip

Payhip sells digital files and physical goods from a simple store. It has three plans: a free one with a 5% fee, Plus with a 2% fee and Pro with no fee. The busier your store, the more a higher plan makes sense.

Three stores, three bills

The bill changes with how many books you have, which formats you sell and how much you sell. For each store we picked the cheapest Payhip plan for those sales.

StorePayhip planPayhip, a yearLanternbee, a year
Starting outPayhip Free$858$654
A growing backlistPayhip Plus$2,304$1,812
A busy storePayhip Pro$6,672$5,820

Lanternbee shows the cheaper of Free and Author for each store. Both include card processing.

Starting out

3 titles, selling ebooks. About $500 in sales a month from 50 orders.

Monthly cost of a Payhip book store: starting out
What you pay forPriceEach month
Payhip FreeThe store itself$0 a month$0
An email toolNewsletter and automated emailsabout $17$17
Payhip feeOn $500 in sales5% of sales$25
Card processingStripe or PayPal at their standard rates, on 50 orders2.9% + 30¢$29.50
Total each month$71.50
Total for a year$858
The same store on LanternbeeEach monthA year
Lanternbee Free5% fee on $500 + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$54.50$654
Lanternbee Author$45 a month + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$74.50$894

A growing backlist

8 titles, selling ebooks and audiobooks. About $2,000 in sales a month from 160 orders.

Monthly cost of a Payhip book store: a growing backlist
What you pay forPriceEach month
Payhip PlusThe store itself$29 a month$29
An email toolNewsletter and automated emailsabout $17$17
Payhip feeOn $2,000 in sales2% of sales$40
Card processingStripe or PayPal at their standard rates, on 160 orders2.9% + 30¢$106
Total each month$192
Total for a year$2,304
The same store on LanternbeeEach monthA year
Lanternbee FreeFree covers up to 5 titlesNot availableNot available
Lanternbee Author$45 a month + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$151$1,812

A busy store

20 titles, selling ebooks, audiobooks and print books. About $10,000 in sales a month from 500 orders.

Monthly cost of a Payhip book store: a busy store
What you pay forPriceEach month
Payhip ProThe store itself$99 a month$99
An email toolNewsletter and automated emailsabout $17$17
Card processingStripe or PayPal at their standard rates, on 500 orders2.9% + 30¢$440
Total each month$556
Total for a year$6,672
The same store on LanternbeeEach monthA year
Lanternbee FreeFree covers up to 5 titlesNot availableNot available
Lanternbee Author$45 a month + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$485$5,820

What we counted

  • US prices on monthly billing.
  • An email tool for your newsletter, at about $17 a month, for every store, the same as on our pricing page. If the store's own email tools are enough for you, take that off.
  • Card processing on every sale. Lanternbee uses your own Stripe account, at Stripe's standard US rate.
  • Payhip says it calculates, collects and sends sales taxes for the US, Canada, the UK and the EU for you. That is work you would otherwise do yourself.
  • Payhip can sell physical goods, but we did not find a print-on-demand connection on its features page, so in the print scenario you would ship books yourself or use a printer's own tools.

What we left out

  • Printing and shipping costs, which you pay the printer whichever store you use.
  • Your domain name, a paid theme and any design work.
  • Sales tax and VAT themselves. Tax tools may cost extra, including Stripe Tax on your own Stripe account where you are registered to collect tax.
  • Extra card fees for cards from other countries and currency conversion.

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