Stan Store vs Shopify: When a Creator Store Outgrows Stan

Stan Store vs Shopify, Side by Side

Stan Store and Shopify answer different questions. Stan is built for a creator who sells from a social profile: a page at a stan.store address with checkout for digital products, course and coaching-call products already in it, and nothing to install. Shopify is a store you run on your own domain, with a catalogue, stock and shipping, where anything beyond the core store comes from an app.

Find your row below; each one is sourced in the section that covers it.

What Do Stan Store and Shopify Cost?

Both platforms charge a flat subscription and leave card processing to a payment provider. What separates them is the subscription itself, and one fee Shopify adds if you keep your own processor.

Stan Store: Creator or Creator Pro

As of October 2026, Stan Store offers two subscription plans: Creator at $29 a month or $300 a year, and Creator Pro at $99 a month or $948 a year. There is no free plan; new accounts get a 14-day free trial instead.

Stan's help center adds one clarification worth knowing before you search for a free tier: many people mistake Stan's affiliate-only accounts for a free store, but those accounts let affiliates access resell links and cash out commission and do not include Stan Store features.

Shopify: A Plan Plus Card Processing

Shopify Basic costs $39 a month on monthly billing, or $29 a month billed yearly, and Shopify Payments charges 2.9% + 30¢ per standard online card payment on Basic, in the US and as of October 2026. Shopify starts with a 3-day free trial, then most plans cost $1 a month for the first 3 months before standard pricing applies.

The honest comparison cuts against Shopify here. On monthly billing, Basic costs more than Stan's Creator plan, and the price buys a store, not a creator toolkit: the course, coaching-call and membership products Stan includes are things you add to Shopify, as the courses section below shows.

The Same $3,000 Month on Both Platforms

$3,000 in monthly sales is the point at which Shopify Basic plus its 2% third-party fee costs exactly as much as Stan Creator Pro. Take a creator selling that much in a month and leave card processing out, because in the US Stripe's standard purchase fee on Stan is the same rate as Shopify Payments' online standard card rate on Basic: Stan's help center lists Stripe's standard purchase fee in the US as 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, the same as Shopify Payments on Basic. What remains is the platform's own cost.

The mechanism is the last row. Shopify's third-party fee is a percentage of every sale, so it grows with your revenue while every subscription stays flat; on this month it lifts the entry plan exactly to Creator Pro's price, and every dollar of sales above that widens the gap. With Shopify Payments the same store stays at the plan price whatever you sell, unless customers pay with gift cards or store credit, which carry the third-party fee on stores created from May 12, 2025.

On both platforms the processor's fees grow with volume; on Stan, for US sellers on Stripe, Stan's fee page also lists a payout fee of 0.25% + $0.25 per payout (min. $1). Stan's help center says the processing fees are set by Stripe and PayPal and vary with your location, your customer's currency and the payment method, so outside the US the processing rates are worth comparing before you choose.

Selling Downloads on Shopify

Downloads are where the two platforms are closest. Stan's Digital Product type sells anything that can be downloaded or linked to, from eBooks and templates to planners and recipes. On Shopify the same job falls to a free app made by Shopify, and the platform adds nothing on top of your plan for it:

The Digital Products app is listed as free on the Shopify App Store and carries a 4.8 rating from more than 1,390 reviews, as of October 23, 2026. According to Shopify's help page for the app, each variant can hold up to 50 files with a combined size of up to 5 GB, and there is no bandwidth limit for downloads.

Two details matter to a creator. Instead of a file, the app can sell a link, but only from supported providers: Notion, Calendly, Acuity, Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Dropbox, Canva, YouTube, Vimeo and Figma. And you can attach a file or a link to a product already in your store, so a printed planner can ship with its digital edition.

Every download or service needs its shipping removed; when no item in the cart requires shipping, checkout skips the shipping address step. File protection, pricing and other delivery apps are covered in our guide to selling digital products on Shopify.

Courses, Coaching Calls and Memberships

For a creator whose income is courses and calls, Stan's case is strongest. The three product types below are part of every Stan store; on Shopify each one is a route you assemble.

Courses. Stan's eCourse product sells structured, video-based courses straight from the storefront, and it is the only Stan product with a customer log-in portal. On Shopify you either install a course app or host the course on Kajabi, Teachable or Thinkific and sell access through the Digital Products app; our guide to selling online courses on Shopify compares those routes.

Coaching calls. Stan's Coaching Call product connects to your Google Calendar, blocks the time and sends the meeting invite. Shopify sends you to its app store for the same job:

One example is Appointo, listed with a free plan available and a 4.9 rating from 934 reviews as of October 23, 2026; a Calendly or Acuity link sold through the Digital Products app is the no-install alternative. Our comparison of booking apps for Shopify covers the rest of the field.

Memberships. Stan's Recurring Membership product bills customers daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. The Shopify help pages we read on October 23, 2026 — selling services and digital products, the Digital Products app and Shopify's changelog feeds — describe no built-in course, booking or membership product, so on Shopify each of the three is an app or a linked tool; membership apps such as Appstle Memberships are listed on the App Store.

That reliance on apps is one of Shopify's structural weaknesses, and here it is the main reason to keep Stan.

Where Stan Store Ends: Physical Products

The clearest line between the two platforms is a parcel. Stan says so in its own help center:

The workaround Stan describes is a Custom Product. You collect each customer's shipping address through form fields you add yourself, and you work out postage and stock by hand, because Stan doesn't calculate shipping prices or inventory. Stan also has no pricing tiers inside one product: each tier or payment option becomes a separate product.

Shopify treats the same goods as a catalogue. Each combination of options, such as a small blue T-shirt, can be its own variant with its own stock, and when customers place orders, stock levels update automatically in your admin. At checkout you can charge flat rates, offer free shipping or use carrier-calculated rates from carriers such as UPS or FedEx.

If merch is what is pulling you towards Shopify, decide first whether a merch line suits your audience at all; our guide to launching merchandise covers that decision and the production routes.

Your Email List and Your Store's Address

Two things a creator builds over years — an email list and an address people remember — work differently on the two platforms.

Bringing Your Email List

Stan allows a maximum of 5,000 manually imported contacts per store, counted across all email lists combined, and only 10 while you are on a Creator Pro trial. A larger imported list does not fit, although contacts Stan collects through purchases or lead generation do not count toward the cap.

On Shopify, you import a customer list from a CSV file of up to 15 MB, and a bigger list goes in as several files. The same page asks you to send marketing emails only to customers who opted in, so set the Accepts Email Marketing column to yes only for those contacts.

Shopify Messaging then sends 10,000 emails a month free on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. That allowance counts emails sent, not contacts, so a larger list simply uses it up faster.

Your Own Domain and Brand

Stan's help center says you cannot create or embed a custom domain in a Stan store; you can set up a forwarding rule at your domain host so your domain opens your Stan page. Removing the Stan branding at the bottom of your store needs Creator Pro. On Shopify, you connect a domain bought elsewhere by updating its DNS records at your provider.

The address is also a question of control: a store on someone else's domain depends on that platform's rules, a trade-off our TikTok Shop vs Shopify comparison weighs in full.

Shopify's own link-in-bio tool is not an option for a new set-up: as of October 23, 2026, the App Store listing for Linkpop says the app is not currently available on the Shopify App Store.

Payments, Countries and Tax

Where you are based decides more on Stan than on Shopify, because Stan's payment options are fixed by country before you sell anything.

Stan Runs on Stripe or PayPal Only

Stan's help center states that Stripe and PayPal are the only two payment processors it supports. The constraints that follow matter most if you are outside the US or already have a Stripe account:

• Stripe through Stan only: you cannot connect an existing Stripe account; it is created in Stan's own set-up flow.
• Country list: that account is available in 39 countries and regions as of October 23, 2026, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan and EU countries; elsewhere, PayPal is the option.
• Business country: the business country you select cannot be edited later from your Stan settings; Stan's support can help change it.
• One currency: a store prices in one currency from a list of 10: USD, AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP, HKD, NZD, PLN, SEK or SGD; changing it needs Stripe connected.
• Cash-out minimum: your available balance must reach the equivalent of $10 before you can cash out.

Keeping Stripe or PayPal on Shopify Costs Extra

A creator used to Stripe or PayPal can keep using them on Shopify, at a price. Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, and the fee comes in addition to what the provider charges. Activating Shopify Payments does not switch it off for other gateways:

The one exception is PayPal: when Shopify Payments is your main payment provider, PayPal transactions are exempt from the fee. So the cheap set-up for a creator moving from Stan is Shopify Payments plus PayPal as a second option, where Shopify Payments is available to you. Our Shopify Payments guide works through the third-party fee in detail.

Who Collects Sales Tax and VAT?

Stan's tax feature is available only with Stripe connected and for sellers located in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway and the EU, and Stripe collects tax only from customers in the regions where you are registered. In some US states, including New York and California, Stan's help center says sales tax cannot be enabled. A creator on PayPal alone collects and reports tax without that help.

Shopify's help center says you can set up Shopify to handle most common sales tax calculations automatically, and Shopify Tax serves sellers whose customers are in the US, the EU, the UK and Canada. Automated filing with Shopify Tax is closed to new enrollment and open only to US stores already enrolled, so Shopify won't file or remit tax for a new store. EU customers pay VAT on digital goods at their own country's rate, wherever you are based, which our EU VAT set-up guide for Shopify covers.

Stay, Add Shopify, or Move?

The verdict at the top answers by one profile. Most creators sit across several, so this quiz crosses five signals: what you sell, how much comes from courses and calls, where your store lives, the size of your list and where you sell.

Three answers settle the route on their own: physical products with stock, a store on your own domain, and several currencies. With any of them, the quiz moves you to Shopify if courses and calls are a small share of your income, or keeps Stan beside a Shopify store if they are not. When courses and calls bring in some or most of your income, no combination of answers tells you to leave Stan entirely.

Moving a Stan Store to Shopify

Every route that opens a Shopify store runs these seven steps, and the processor choice in step three is the one that decides your fees. If the quiz kept Stan beside Shopify, run steps two and five only for the products you move, and in step seven add a link to the new store while your Stan link stays for the products that remain there.

The Bottom Line

The platforms are not rivals for every creator. Stan is a checkout for digital products with the creator tools already inside; Shopify is a store that can carry anything, and asks you to assemble the creator tools from apps. The moment a parcel, a domain or a second currency enters your business is the moment Stan stops covering it.

Frequently Asked Questions