The short version: If you sell for five months a year, the number that matters is not the monthly price. It is what the platform charges in the seven months you sell nothing. On that test, three options cost $0 in a dead month: Square Online's free plan, Hotplate, and LocallyGrown.net. Every annual subscription fails it, and annual billing is the default trap: Big Cartel's annual plan only breaks even at 9.6 months and Bake.Shop's at 7.9, so a seasonal vendor paying annually is buying months they will not use. Pay monthly, or pick something with no subscription at all.
All figures came from each company's own pricing pages in July 2026.
Four things, and only the first is unusual.
Most platform comparisons rank on monthly price, which for a seasonal business is the wrong axis entirely. A $10-a-month platform billed annually costs a five-month vendor $24 per selling month. A $15-a-month platform billed monthly costs them $15. The cheaper-looking one is more expensive.
Three, and they work differently.
Square Online's free plan is $0 a month with no time limit. Your store stays up all year, and you pay only card processing on orders that happen, at 3.3% plus 30¢ online. In a dead month you pay nothing at all and your storefront is still there for anyone who wanders past.
Hotplate has no subscription. It charges 5% plus 55¢ per order, added to your customer's total by default, plus 2.9% plus 30¢ card processing that you pay. No orders means no fees. It is built for scheduled drops, which suits a vendor whose season is a handful of intense weekends.
LocallyGrown.net charges nothing to start and 3% of completed sales after your first $15,000. For a seasonal multi-grower market, that free threshold can cover an entire first season and then some.
All three share the same property: your cost is a function of your sales, not of the calendar. That is exactly what a seasonal business wants, and it is rarer than it should be.
Whenever your season is shorter than the break-even point, which for most annual plans is around ten months.
The arithmetic is just division. Take the annual price and divide it by the monthly price to get the number of months annual becomes worthwhile:
So a vendor trading five months a year:
And a three-month holiday baker:
Every pricing page in software frames annual as the smart choice, and for a year-round business it is. Seasonal food businesses are the exception, and no vendor puts that on the page because it would cost them money to say so.
Our breakdowns of Bake.Shop's monthly versus yearly pricing and Big Cartel's pricing for food sellers work both of those through in detail.
Assume $1,000 a month across 40 orders, so $5,000 in sales over five months.
Two things stand out. Bakesy with self-arranged payment is the cheapest number on that list by a wide margin, because it has no subscription commitment and its card processing is optional; you collect through Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, or Cash App yourself and pay nothing. The cost is your time chasing people, which our Bakesy pricing breakdown prices at roughly $1.28 an order.
And Hotplate at $205 beats every subscription platform for a season built on a few scheduled weekends, provided your customers accept the fee at checkout. Our Hotplate versus Square Online comparison covers that decision properly.
Keep it open, in almost every case, and the reasoning is not about money.
Pausing saves you a subscription and costs you three things that are harder to get back:
That last one is worth more than people assume. Our guide to earning off-season income from online orders covers what a genuinely seasonal business can still sell in its quiet months, and a closed storefront cannot capture any of it.
So the better pattern is: keep the store live, switch off the products, and put a note on the page saying when you are back. On a $0 platform that costs nothing. On a monthly plan it costs $15 a month to stay findable, which is usually the right spend.
One is, explicitly, and it is worth knowing about even though it is aimed at a specific business.
Farmigo charges 2% of delivery revenue with a $150 a month minimum, only in months you are actively delivering. That is the single most seasonal-aware pricing structure in this category: a farm delivering May through October pays for six months, not twelve, saving $900 against a flat year-round subscription.
The catch is that Farmigo is CSA software. It is built to manage recurring memberships with sign-ups, holds, skips, box contents, and drop sites. If you do not have members, none of that machinery helps and the $150 minimum is a large number for a problem you do not have.
But the pricing idea is the right one, and it is worth asking any platform you are evaluating: do you charge in months I am not selling? Most will say yes without noticing that it is a strange answer.
If you sell for six weekends a year, the calculation changes again.
At that scale, almost any subscription is hard to justify and the per-order models win outright. A vendor doing $3,000 across six weekends:
The differences are small in absolute terms, which is the real point: at a tiny season, stop optimising and pick whichever one you will actually set up. The hour you spend comparing is worth more than the $50 spread.
Where it becomes worth thinking about is when the season grows. A vendor doing $3,000 in year one and $20,000 in year three has a completely different answer, and percentage models that felt free at the start become the largest line on the bill.
The practical version of that is to pre-register the switch rather than trying to notice it. Write down the sales figure at which your current model stops being cheapest, check it once at the end of each season, and act when it trips. Percentage fees never announce themselves; they just quietly grow with you.
Whatever you choose, the setup happens once a year and you will have forgotten most of it by then, so make it repeatable.
That kit turns a season launch from a weekend into an hour, and it works on any platform, which matters more for a seasonal vendor than for anyone else because you will genuinely re-evaluate every year.
If you want to test a platform before your season opens rather than during it, running one real order weekend through a trial in the quiet month beforehand is the cheapest way to find out whether it expresses your pickup and delivery rules properly.
Two things that no platform choice affects.
Sales tax obligations do not pause with your season. If you have a registration, you generally still file, even for a period with no sales. A zero return is still a return, and missing one because you were not selling is a common and avoidable penalty. The IRS's overview of business taxes is a starting point, though your state's revenue department is the binding authority.
Seasonal help brings year-round rules. If your season involves hiring anyone, even for eight weeks, the obligations arrive with them. The rules that apply to a permanent employee mostly apply to a seasonal one, and the thresholds are counted by headcount rather than by how long anyone stays. The EEOC's small business guidance sets out what applies at what size, and it is worth reading before a busy season rather than during one.
Neither of these is a software problem, and both are more expensive to get wrong than any subscription on this page.
The one rule that applies to everyone: divide the annual price by the monthly price before you buy anything. If the answer is larger than your season, pay monthly. It takes ten seconds and it is worth up to $99 a year on a $15 plan.
If what you want is a straightforward storefront with local pickup and delivery that you can pay for by the month, Homegrown is $12.50 a month billed monthly, or $10 billed annually, with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing published up front, and it handles pickup at each place you sell with its own schedule and cutoff, local delivery with a radius and a route, and sales tax calculated, filed, and remitted in all 50 states. For a five-month season, monthly billing works out to $62.50 plus about $205 in processing, so roughly $268 for the season. The honest bounds: it does not ship nationally, has no drop windows or countdowns, and is not a website builder. If your season is built on timed releases, Hotplate does something it does not. There is a 7-day free trial if you want to test it on one real order weekend before your season starts.
Every platform below shows the same four commercial facts, because a table that lists one platform's transaction fee and not another's is not a comparison. "Not published" means exactly that: the company does not state it publicly.
| Platform | Cost when you pause for the off-season | Subscription (annual) | Free trial | Platform fee | Card processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homegrown | Monthly option at $12.50 lets you stop and restart | $10/mo billed annually | 7-day free trial | $0 platform fee (0% commission) | 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Hotplate | $0 when idle, so nothing to pause | $0 | n/a | 5% + $0.55 platform fee, added to the customer | 2.9% + $0.30 processing (vendor) |
| LocallyGrown | $0 when idle, commission only on sales | $0 | n/a, free to start | 3% commission after the first $15,000 | 2.9% + $0.30 processing, your own Stripe |
| Barn2Door | Annual commitment plus a one-time setup fee | $119/mo + $399 one-time setup | No free trial, demo only | $0 commission | 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Local Line | Annual pricing assumes year-round use | $79/mo Core ($950/yr) | 7-day free trial, no card required | $0 platform fee | 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Square Online | Free tier stays free while you are closed | Free tier; paid from $29/mo per location | 30-day trial on paid plans | $0 platform fee | 3.3% + $0.30 free tier, 2.9% + $0.30 paid |
It depends on your season length. Under two months, use a no-subscription option like Hotplate or Square Online's free plan. Three to eight months, pay monthly on whichever platform fits. Over eight months, annual billing starts to make sense.
Only if your season is longer than the break-even point. Divide the annual price by the monthly price: Big Cartel breaks even at 9.6 months, Bake.Shop at 7.9. Below that, monthly is genuinely cheaper.
Square Online's free plan at $0 a month, Hotplate with no subscription and per-order fees only, and LocallyGrown.net which is free until $15,000 in sales. All three charge on sales rather than on the calendar.
No. Keep it live with products switched off and a note about when you return. Closing costs you search placement, the habit of customers checking, and any off-season orders like gift boxes or wholesale enquiries.
Usually yes, if you hold a registration. A zero return is still a return in most states, and missing filings because you were not trading is a common and entirely avoidable penalty. Check with your state revenue department.
Revisit the decision annually. Percentage models feel free when small and become expensive as you grow, while flat subscriptions do the opposite. The answer that fits a $3,000 season is rarely the answer for a $30,000 one.
Very, if your season is built on scheduled release weekends. There is no subscription, so quiet months cost nothing, and the countdown and waitlist mechanics suit a business that sells out on a specific day.
Seasonal food vendors get sold the wrong number. Every pricing page leads with a monthly rate and an annual discount, and neither tells you the thing that matters: what does this cost in a month I sell nothing?
Three platforms answer that with $0: Square Online's free plan, Hotplate, and LocallyGrown.net. Everything else charges you for the calendar rather than for your sales.
If you do want a subscription platform, the rule is one division. Annual price divided by monthly price gives you the break-even in months. Big Cartel is 9.6, Bake.Shop is 7.9, and if your season is shorter than that, paying annually costs you up to $99 a year for months you will spend not selling.
