The short version: The subscription is usually the smallest line. A realistic three-year total for a small food business includes the subscription, card processing, a domain, any setup fee, add-ons, and the hours you spend on it, and processing alone typically runs four to eight times the subscription. At $12,000 a year in sales, a $120 platform has a three-year cost of about $1,881, of which the subscription is $360 and processing is $1,476. Add a setup fee and a couple of add-ons and it doubles. The line nobody counts is time, and at 30 orders a week that is 150 hours over three years, which exceeds every dollar figure here.
Six categories, and most comparisons include one.
The first is what people compare. The second is usually four to eight times larger. The sixth is usually larger than both.
Two of these five lines are invisible on every pricing page: your time on workarounds and the revenue a missing feature quietly turns away. Price those at zero and every cheap platform looks cheap.
Take a business doing $12,000 a year across 480 orders of $25, on a $120-a-year platform at 2.9% plus 30¢.
| Line | Year 1 | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $120 | $360 |
| Card processing | $492 | $1,476 |
| Domain | $15 | $45 |
| Setup fee | $0 | $0 |
| Add-ons | $0 | $0 |
| Total in dollars | $627 | $1,881 |
Processing is four times the subscription. If you had chosen a platform on subscription price alone, you spent your effort optimising 19% of the bill and accepted the other 81% without looking at it.
Now the same business on a farm platform with a setup fee, using Barn2Door Entrepreneur at $119 a month annual with a one-time $399:
| Line | Year 1 | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $1,428 | $4,284 |
| Card processing | $492 | $1,476 |
| Domain | $15 | $45 |
| Setup fee | $399 | $399 |
| Total in dollars | $2,334 | $6,204 |
The gap over three years is $4,323. That is a real difference and it is worth paying if you sell by weight or run recurring shares, which is precisely what that platform is built for and what almost nothing cheaper can do. It is a bad trade if you sell twelve fixed-price items for local collection.
Because it scales with sales while everything else is fixed.
At $12,000 a year processing is $492 against a $120 subscription: a ratio of 4:1.
At $36,000 it is $1,476 against $120: 12:1.
At $100,000 it is $4,100 against $120: 34:1.
Which means the platform decision matters most when you are small, and the processing decision matters most when you are not. Above about $30,000 a year, the only cost worth optimising is your effective card rate, and the only real levers on that are average order value and bank transfer for large orders.
Work your effective rate out rather than using the advertised one: at 2.9% plus 30¢ a $10 order costs 5.9% and a $100 order costs 3.2%, because the fixed fee does not scale. Total fees divided by total sales, from a real statement, is the only number that describes your business.
The largest line, and the one no pricing page mentions.
At 30 orders a week on a setup that requires manual reconciliation, order admin runs to roughly an hour a week: transcribing, chasing payment, building the pick list, updating stock. That is 50 hours a year, or 150 hours over three years.
Put any value on your time and it exceeds every dollar figure above. At $25 an hour it is $3,750 over three years, which is twice the entire dollar cost of the cheaper option.
Which reframes the whole calculation. The question is not "what does this platform cost" but "what does this platform cost including what it fails to save me?" A $144 platform that removes two thirds of that admin is dramatically cheaper than a $0 one that does not, even though one of them is free.
That is also why the cheapest option is frequently the wrong one. The test is whether a tool replaces the whole workflow, taking the order, collecting the money, and producing the list, rather than one part of it. Anything replacing only one part leaves you reconciling, which is where the hours actually go. Our guide to tracking DM orders covers what that manual version really involves.
Five, in rough order of how often they surprise people.
Add-on drift. Modules and apps get switched on one at a time, each looking small. Cococart's modules run $19 to $59 each; a store plus loyalty plus email is $77 a month, or $924 a year. Shopify's app stack does the same thing for a local food business that needs pickup scheduling and quantity caps.
Per-location multiplication. Square Online's paid plans are priced per location, so three markets on Plus is $147 a month rather than $49: $5,292 over three years against $0 on its own free plan.
Setup and onboarding. Barn2Door's $399 to $599, or Local Food Marketplace's Launch Package. One-time, and they land entirely in year one.
Tier creep. Upgrading for one feature and keeping the tier long after you stopped using it. Worth auditing annually against a simple question: did I use the thing I upgraded for in the last three months?
Migration. Leaving costs a weekend of rebuilding plus a fortnight of customer confusion, and on some platforms a setup fee at the far end. It is not a recurring cost, but it belongs in a three-year total if you realistically expect to switch once, which most vendors do.
Six steps, about twenty minutes with last year's statements.
Step two is where the real number lives. Your effective rate is higher than the advertised one because of the fixed per-order fee, and the gap is your average order value. Use a normal month rather than your best one: fees are proportionally worst in quiet weeks, when small orders are a larger share of the total.
Step five stays separate deliberately. Mixing hours and dollars into one figure makes both useless; compare the money cleanly, then ask whether the more expensive option saves enough time to justify itself. It usually does, and the calculation only works if you keep them apart.
Usually not, and the reasons are structural.
Free plans have higher card rates. Square Online Free charges 3.3% plus 30¢ against 2.9% on its paid tiers, which is worth $288 over three years at $24,000 a year in sales. Cheddar Up Basic is $0 and charges 3.95% plus 95¢, which on $25 orders is 7.8%.
Percentage models overtake flat plans quickly. A 5%-plus-55¢ model at 40 orders a month of $25 is $2,592 over three years against $432 for a $144 flat plan.
Cheap tiers can carry fees. Squarespace Basic at $19 has a 2% store transaction fee, making it more expensive than the $29 Core plan above $500 a month in sales.
So the cheapest headline is frequently the most expensive total, and the pattern is consistent enough to be a rule: whenever a plan is unusually cheap, find out where the money is instead. It is in the card rate, a transaction fee, or a cap you will hit.
That does not make free plans wrong. Below roughly $6,000 a year in sales, a $0 subscription with a higher card rate genuinely is cheaper, and Square Online's free plan and Cottage CMS's Free Forever tier are both credible products rather than trials. The rule is only that free means the money is coming from somewhere else, and you should know where before you commit a catalog to it.
Three things, and none of them is which platform you picked.
Growth. Doubling your sales roughly doubles your processing while leaving the subscription flat. A business going from $12,000 to $24,000 sees its three-year total go from about $1,881 to $2,973, and its all-in percentage *fall* from 5.2% to 4.6%. Growth makes software proportionally cheaper.
Average order value. Moving from $25 to $40 on the same revenue cuts your effective rate from 4.1% to 3.65%, which over three years at $12,000 a year is about $162 saved for a pricing and bundling change that costs nothing.
Whether you switch. One migration inside three years adds a weekend of rebuilding, a fortnight of customer confusion, and any setup fee at the far end. That is the strongest argument for testing properly the first time.
Which is why the practical advice is to spend your effort on the trial rather than on the comparison spreadsheet. Running one real week of orders through a candidate, with your hardest product and your real cutoffs, tells you more about the three-year total than any amount of pricing-page arithmetic, because it tells you whether you will still be there in year two.
For a small food business doing $12,000 to $24,000 a year, in dollars:
Expressed as a share of revenue, the same band is roughly 4% to 6% all-in, which is normal for a small business taking cards.
The SBA's guidance on managing your finances is a reasonable framework for tracking this properly, and software and processing fees are generally deductible business expenses, which the IRS's Publication 535 guidance covers.
Our guides to tracking income and expenses and profit margin benchmarks cover where this sits against ingredients and packaging, which are considerably larger numbers.
If you want a three-year total you can calculate from the pricing page rather than discover, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission, no setup fee, no add-on modules, and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing stated up front. At $12,000 a year that is about $1,881 over three years, of which $360 is subscription. 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. The honest bounds: it does not ship nationally, has no point-of-sale, no app ecosystem, and no free tier, so below about $6,000 a year a free plan is cheaper on this arithmetic. You can run one real week through a trial and build the total from your own orders.
Subscription, card processing at your effective rate, any setup or onboarding fee, add-ons and apps, your domain, and separately your admin hours. Most comparisons include only the first.
At $12,000 a year in sales, roughly four times. At $36,000 it is twelve times, and at $100,000 it is thirty-four times. The platform decision matters most when you are small.
Frequently not. Free plans carry higher card rates, percentage models overtake flat plans quickly, and cheap tiers sometimes carry transaction fees. Whenever a plan is unusually cheap, find out where the money is instead.
Yes, but in a separate column. At 30 orders a week manual admin is about 150 hours over three years, which exceeds every dollar figure. Mixing hours and dollars into one number makes both useless.
For a business doing $12,000 to $24,000 a year, roughly $1,800 to $2,500, mostly processing. That is about 4% to 6% of revenue all-in, which is normal for a small business taking cards.
A farm or hub platform, a setup fee, an add-on stack, or per-location pricing. Above $6,000 you are usually paying a marketplace fee, and the question becomes whether it brings you customers.
Around $30,000 a year in sales, where processing is more than twelve times the subscription. Above that the only costs worth optimising are your average order value and bank transfer on large orders.
Compare totals, not subscriptions. At $12,000 a year in sales, a $120 platform has a three-year cost of about $1,881, of which the subscription is $360 and processing is $1,476. Choosing on the subscription alone means optimising 19% of the bill.
Then watch the four things that push the number up without appearing on a plan card: setup fees, add-on drift, per-location multiplication, and cheap tiers with transaction fees attached. Each of them can double a three-year total, and none of them is visible in a monthly price.
And keep the hours in their own column. At 30 orders a week, manual order admin is 150 hours over three years, worth more than the entire dollar cost of the cheaper option. That is why the free plan is often the expensive one, and why the right question is what a platform costs including what it fails to save you.
