The short version: Free is not one thing, it is six different arrangements with six different catches, and the gap between them is larger than the gap between most paid plans. At $12,000 a year across 480 orders, Square Online's free plan costs you $540 and Cheddar Up's free plan costs $930. Both are advertised as free, and they are $390 apart. The rule that survives every case: free means the money is coming from somewhere else, and it is worth ninety seconds to find out where. Usually it is the card rate, sometimes a capability cap, occasionally your customer's bill.
Worth separating, because the catch is different in each and so is the right response.
1. Free forever with a higher card rate. Square Online Free at 3.3% plus 30¢ against 2.9% on its paid tiers. Cheddar Up Basic at 3.95% plus 95¢. The subscription is genuinely $0 and the processing pays for it.
2. Free forever, limited features. Big Cartel's Gold plan, described as free with limited features. Wix's Free plan, which cannot accept payments at all. You are not paying money; you are paying in capability.
3. Free until a threshold. LocallyGrown.net charges nothing until $15,000 in sales, then 3%. BakeBug is free through 31 December 2026 for anyone signing up by 1 December, then $4.99 a month.
4. Free subscription, fee on your customer. Hotplate has no subscription and adds 5% plus 55¢ to the customer's total by default. Free to you, not free to the transaction.
5. Free software, paid infrastructure. WooCommerce's plugin is $0 and its own page puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month with extensions at $29 to $299 a year.
6. Free now, narrower later. Cottage CMS has a Free Forever plan including pre-orders and drops, and has said full-feature access is moving up when its Scale tier arrives. Free today, scope unknown tomorrow.
Six structures, one word, and no way to compare them without knowing which you are looking at.
Six different structures wear the same four-letter word, and the table below prices each one at real volume. If the exercise leaves you wanting a number you can simply read, the published-price side of the category takes the ambiguity out entirely.
Far enough that the comparison matters more than most paid comparisons.
At 480 orders a year averaging $25, which is $12,000 in sales:
| Platform | Subscription | Free trial | Platform fee | Card processing | Annual all-in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square Online Free | $0 forever | no free trial needed, the plan is free | $0, no commission | 3.3% + 30¢ online | $540 |
| Cottage CMS Free Forever | $0 forever | no free trial needed, the plan is free | $0 stated on the free tier | card processing runs through Square checkout at Square's published rate | about $540 |
| Homegrown | $10/mo billed annually | 7-day free trial | $0, 0% commission | 2.9% + $0.30 | $612 |
| Cheddar Up Basic | $0 forever | no free trial needed, the plan is free | $0 platform fee | 3.95% + $0.95; eCheck not available | $930 |
Cheddar Up's free plan costs $390 a year more than Square's free plan, and $318 more than a paid plan at $120 a year. Both are honestly described as free. The difference is entirely in the fixed 95¢, which on a $25 order is 3.8% on its own.
That is the single most useful fact in this article: a free plan with a high fixed fee is more expensive than a paid plan with a low one, at any volume a real food business operates at.
Three situations, and they are more common than the sceptical framing suggests.
Below about $6,000 a year in sales. A $120 subscription is 2% of revenue at that level, and a free plan with a slightly higher card rate wins on arithmetic. Square Online Free and Cottage CMS's Free Forever tier are both credible products rather than trials.
When you are testing whether the business works at all. Paying nothing while you find out is entirely reasonable, and the money you save is better spent on ingredients or photography.
When a threshold has not been used up. LocallyGrown.net's free first $15,000 is worth $450 and lasts fifteen months for a market selling $1,000 a month. That is a genuine head start and it gets more generous the smaller you are, which is the right way round.
None of that is a trap. The trap is only ever staying past the point where it stops being cheapest, which is why the next section matters more than this one.
Calculate it once and write it down, because it will not announce itself.
Against Square Online Free at 3.3% plus 30¢, a $120-a-year plan at 2.9% plus 30¢ costs the same when the subscription equals the rate saving:
$120 ÷ (0.004 × $25) = 1,200 orders a year, or 100 a month.
Below that, the free plan is cheaper. Above it, the paid one is, and it keeps widening. At 2,400 orders a year the paid plan saves $120; at 4,800 it saves $360.
Against Cheddar Up Basic, the crossover arrives much sooner, because the gap per order is 91¢ rather than 10¢:
$120 ÷ $0.91 = 132 orders a year, or 11 a month.
So a vendor taking a dozen orders a month has already passed the point where paying $120 beats Cheddar Up's free plan. That is a strikingly low threshold and it is entirely a function of that 95¢.
Do this calculation for your own numbers: subscription ÷ (per-order difference). Write the answer down as a monthly order count and check it once a season.
The second kind of catch, and it is harder to put a number on.
Wix Free cannot take payments. Neither can its $17 Light plan. Selling starts at Core, $29 a month, so a vendor on Wix Free has a website rather than a store.
Big Cartel's Gold plan is described as free with limited features, and the limits are not spelled out on the pricing page. Historically free tiers in this category cap the number of products, which is the usual shape.
StandScout's free tier gives you a listing, an in-stock toggle, customer reviews, and basic analytics. Paid tiers buy inventory tools rather than prominence, so free is genuinely sufficient for most stands.
The question to ask of any free tier: what specifically is missing, and will I hit it? Product caps and payment restrictions are the two that stop a business rather than inconvenience it.
Worth noting the one that is usually fine. A free tier showing the platform's branding on your storefront is the most common limitation and the least important. Customers do not care, and paying to remove a small logo is close to the worst use of $180 a year available to you. What actually converts on an ordering page is photographs and clear collection details, not the absence of a small logo. Our guide to writing product descriptions that sell food online covers the things that genuinely make a difference.
The sixth kind, and the one that needs a plan rather than an answer.
Cottage CMS's Free Forever plan currently includes pre-orders, weekly schedules, and drops, which is unusually capable. The company has also said full-feature access is moving up when its Scale tier launches, priced at $370 a year.
That is not a criticism. Companies re-tier as they grow and it is normal. What it means practically is that a free tier is a current fact rather than a guarantee, and building a year of process on one carries a risk that a paid plan does not.
The sensible response is not to avoid free tiers. It is to:
Two things, both real and neither on a price list.
Support. Free tiers generally get slower or more limited support. That matters enormously on a Saturday morning when an order will not go through, and it does not matter at all on the other fifty-one weekends. Whether that trade is acceptable depends on how much of your revenue lands in a two-hour window.
Your attention. A free plan that requires a workaround costs you hours, and hours are the largest line in any small food business. At 30 orders a week, manual reconciliation runs to roughly 50 hours a year. A $120 plan that removes two thirds of that is dramatically cheaper than a free one that does not.
That is the honest counterweight to everything above: the dollar arithmetic favours free at low volume, and the hours arithmetic often does not. Compare the money cleanly, then ask separately what each option costs you in time.
Our guides to tracking income and expenses and profit margin benchmarks cover where both sit against the costs that actually move your margin.
Six steps, about ten minutes.
Step two is the whole exercise. Every free plan on this page is honest about what it charges instead; none of them hides it. The failure is not being misled, it is not looking.
Step five deserves a specific test rather than a reading of the feature list: load your real catalog and try to take a real order. A product cap you would hit shows up in ten minutes; a payment restriction shows up the moment you try to check out. Both are far more reliable than a comparison table, and a trial takes about an evening whether it is free or paid.
The CFPB's guidance on prepaid and stored-value products is a reasonable plain-language reference for how money behaves in the various free tools vendors end up combining, and Census Bureau data on small business statistics is a reminder that most food businesses sit exactly in the range where these crossovers fall.
If you are past your crossover and want a flat plan with the rate published rather than discovered, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing stated up front, which is about $612 a year all-in at $12,000 in sales. 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: there is no free tier, plus no national shipping, no point-of-sale, and no app ecosystem. Below about 100 orders a month, Square Online's free plan is genuinely cheaper on the arithmetic above and you should use it. You can run one real week through a trial and work out which side of your own crossover you are on.
The subscription is, and the money comes from somewhere else: a higher card rate, a capability limit, a sales threshold, a fee added to your customer's bill, or paid infrastructure you supply yourself.
At $12,000 a year across 480 orders, Square Online Free costs about $540 all-in and Cheddar Up Basic costs about $930. Both are free plans, and they are $390 apart.
Because of the 95¢ fixed fee. On a $25 order, 3.95% plus 95¢ is $1.94, or 7.8%. The fixed component alone is 3.8% of that order, which is punishing at food-sized baskets.
Below roughly $6,000 a year in sales, while testing whether the business works, or while a free threshold like LocallyGrown's first $15,000 is still unused. All three are sound reasons.
At your crossover: subscription ÷ per-order difference. Against Square Online Free that is about 1,200 orders a year. Against Cheddar Up Basic it is about 132, because the per-order gap is nine times larger.
It can narrow. Cottage CMS has said full-feature access is moving up when its Scale tier arrives, so a free tier is a current fact rather than a guarantee. Keep your catalog in a file you own and your domain in your own name.
Wix Free cannot accept payments at all, and neither can its $17 plan. Big Cartel's free Gold plan is limited without the limits being published. Ask what specifically is missing and whether you would hit it.
Free is six different arrangements, and the useful habit is one question: where is the money coming from instead? It is the card rate, a capability cap, a sales threshold, your customer's bill, or infrastructure you pay for yourself. Every platform here is honest about it; the failure is not looking.
The number worth remembering is that two free plans can be $390 a year apart. Square Online Free costs about $540 at $12,000 in sales and Cheddar Up Basic costs about $930, entirely because of a 95¢ fixed fee that is 3.8% of a $25 order on its own.
So calculate your crossover and write it down as a monthly order count: subscription ÷ per-order difference. Against Square that is around 100 orders a month. Against a high-fixed-fee free plan it can be eleven. Free is often the right answer at the start, and it stops being the right answer much earlier than most vendors notice.
