The True Cost of E-Commerce Transaction Fees
When evaluating e-commerce platforms, most business owners focus on the monthly subscription price. A plan that costs $29 per month seems affordable. But the subscription is only part of the equation. Transaction fees, which many platforms charge on top of payment processor fees, can quietly become your largest e-commerce expense as your business grows.
Here is how it works. Your payment processor, whether Stripe, PayPal, or another provider, charges roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. That fee is unavoidable regardless of platform. But some platforms add their own transaction fee on top. Shopify charges 0.5% to 2% depending on your plan tier. On their basic plan at 2%, a $100 sale costs you $2.90 in processor fees plus $2.00 in platform fees, for a total of $4.90. That is nearly 5% of revenue gone before you factor in any other costs.
The impact scales with your business. At $50,000 in annual sales with a 2% platform fee, you are paying $1,000 per year in transaction fees alone. At $200,000, it is $4,000. At $500,000, it is $10,000. These are real dollars that could fund new equipment, marketing, or hiring. And because the fees are percentage-based, they grow in lockstep with your success. The more you sell, the more you pay.
Some platforms justify transaction fees by pointing to their payment processing integrations or security features. But payment processing is handled by Stripe or PayPal regardless, and security is a baseline expectation, not a premium feature. Transaction fees are simply a revenue model. They allow platforms to offer lower subscription prices while extracting more from successful businesses.
Kaniva keeps it simple: Pay As You Go is $0/mo + 2% of sales. Solo is $49/mo for up to 200 orders a month; Shop is $129/mo with no order cap. Both have a 0% platform fee. Every plan includes every module. Yearly billing is ten months' price. Stripe and other card processing fees are separate on all of them. A manufacturer doing $200,000 in annual sales pays $4,000 a year in platform fee on Pay As You Go, or $0 in platform fee on Solo.