Compared Sep 2, 2026
Website builders with no transaction fees
Platform commission and card processing are two different charges, and a builder advertising no transaction fees is talking about the first one only. Squarespace charges an online store transaction fee of 2% on Basic and 0% on Core, Plus and Advanced; Naratake takes 0% of every order because the card is charged in the merchant’s own Stripe account (Sep 2, 2026). Six platforms below, each with the fee it publishes, the sentence it publishes it in, and the date we read it.
Almost every list of “no transaction fee” builders merges two different charges into one column, and that is the reason they are hard to act on. Platform commission is what the website company takes for letting you sell. Payment processing is what the card network and the processor take for moving the money. A platform can charge 0% and still leave you paying more per sale than one charging 2%, because the processing rate underneath it is higher. This page keeps the two apart, and it prints both. Every figure below was read on Sep 2, 2026 on the vendor’s own page, and each of those pages is linked at the foot: Squarespace lists an online store transaction fee of 2% on Basic and 0% on Core, Plus and Advanced; Shopify lists third-party transaction fees of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus; BigCommerce charges $0 on orders through its embedded payment providers and 2.0% on Core for orders through an outside one; Ecwid says it charges no setup or transaction fees on any of its plans; Square prices online payments at 3.3% + 30¢ on Square Free and 2.9% + 30¢ on Square Plus and Square Premium; Naratake takes 0% because the card is charged in your own Stripe account. Rates move, and that is an argument for dating a figure rather than withholding it. The one you buy on is the one on the linked page on the day you buy — where it disagrees with this page, believe the vendor.
What this page judges
- Platform commission
- What the website company takes out of each sale, on top of card processing. This is the number the phrase “no transaction fees” is usually about, and it is the number printed in the table below: 0% on every Ecwid plan, 0% on Squarespace’s Core, Plus and Advanced plans, and 2% on Shopify Basic when the order is processed somewhere other than Shopify Payments, all read Sep 2, 2026.
- Card processing
- What the payment processor charges to move the money. Nobody avoids this one. Stripe publishes 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction for US domestic cards, and Square publishes 2.9% + 30¢ for online payments on its paid plans, both read Sep 2, 2026. The questions are whose rate you get, and whether you are allowed to choose the processor at all.
- What the 0% is paid for with
- A 0% commission is usually bought with something else, and each of these sits on the vendor’s own page, read Sep 2, 2026: Squarespace prices digital content and memberships apart from goods, at 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus and 0% on Advanced; BigCommerce attaches its percentage to orders processed through an outside payment provider; Shopify attaches its percentage to processing anywhere other than Shopify Payments. Read the row that matches what you sell rather than the headline.
The six, with the fee each one publishes
| Platform | Best for | The published fee, in their words |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | A shop that wants a designed store and will buy Core, Plus or Advanced, where the online store transaction fee is 0% | Its pricing page prices the cut plan by plan, one line each: “Online store transaction fee of 2%” on Basic, and “Online store transaction fee of 0%” on Core, Plus and Advanced (Sep 2, 2026). Card processing is a separate line on the same page — “Credit card rates starting at 2.9% + $0.30” on Basic and Core, 2.7% on Plus, 2.5% on Advanced. Read it as design bought at the entry price and 0% bought one plan up: if you sell goods, the plan to compare is Core, not the cheaper one on the poster. |
| BigCommerce | A large catalogue whose orders go through BigCommerce’s own embedded payment providers, priced at $0 a sale | Its pricing table charges “Orders through Embedded Payment Providers” a “$0 fee” on every plan, and defines the other line as “A monthly fee charged by BigCommerce for orders processed through Open Payment Providers, calculated on the GMV attributed to those providers at the order level.” It prices that line at 2.0% on Core, 1.0% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale and 0.0% with contract on Performance (Sep 2, 2026). Read that as a deal about whose processor you use: the $0 is on their own rails, and bringing your own is the thing that carries a percentage. Price the processor you actually want before you compare monthly figures. |
| Ecwid by Lightspeed | Adding a store to a site you already have, with 0% taken by Ecwid on every plan | Its pricing page answers the fee question in its own words: “No, we don’t charge any setup or transaction fees on any of our plans.” (Sep 2, 2026), and the plan table prices the row “Fees charged per sale by Ecwid” at 0 on Starter, Venture, Business and Unlimited. Judge Ecwid on the rest, then: it is a store you bolt onto a site that already exists, which is the right shape when the site is not the thing you were replacing. |
| Naratake | A local business that wants the site, the ordering and the bookings in one place at 0% commission, and the source code afterwards | Naratake takes 0% of every order on Storefront Pro at $79/month or $758/year, and the reason is structural rather than generous: card payment on a published site is charged in the merchant’s own Stripe account, so the money never passes through us and there is nothing here for us to take a cut of. Stripe still charges its own rate — its pricing page publishes 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction for US domestic cards, read Sep 2, 2026 — and that fee is between you and Stripe. Two things to price in before you buy. The keys are yours because the money is: you connect your own Stripe account once, and the sale lands there rather than anywhere of ours. Ordering and bookings go live on that same Storefront Pro plan; Storefront at $49/month or $468/year is the plan that builds and previews them. |
| Square Online | A shop or restaurant already running a Square register, where the processing rate is the whole fee | Its fee page prices online payments at 3.3% + 30¢ on Square Free and 2.9% + 30¢ on Square Plus and Square Premium, and explains the free tier in one sentence: “With Square Free, there are no monthly subscription costs — you only pay processing fees when you take a payment.” (Sep 2, 2026). Read that as one bill instead of two: the rate on that page is the number to compare, because it is the number Square puts on the plan. A fair trade if you already run a Square register and having the till and the website agree is worth more to you than the rate; a poor one if you were expecting to negotiate. |
| Shopify | A product business with inventory and shipping that intends to process with Shopify Payments | Its pricing page says “There are no setup fees on any of our plans. Third-party transaction fees may apply when you use a third-party payment provider (instead of Shopify Payments). The rate depends on your plan.” (Sep 2, 2026), and its comparison table prints the rates that depend on it: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, with online standard card rates from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic. So the percentage is charged for processing somewhere else, and that is their sentence rather than ours. Judge Shopify on whether you ever intend to use another processor; if you never intended to, the bargain is a fair one. |
Who this page is not for
If you are shipping physical products at volume — inventory counts, carrier rates, returns, cross-border tax — the percentage is the smallest number in the decision, and a platform that has already built those systems is worth its fee. Buy the fee. If what you sell is digital downloads or memberships rather than boxes, the headline rate is the wrong row to read: Squarespace prices that separately at 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus and 0% on Advanced (Sep 2, 2026), and a gap of that size is usually wider than the gap between platforms. And where we sit in this: the card is charged in your own Stripe account, which you connect once with both live keys, and that is the whole mechanism behind the 0% — the money never passes through us, so there is nothing here for us to take a cut of. The write side of a published site — ordering, bookings and the card payment itself — goes live on Storefront Pro at $79/month or $758/year; Storefront at $49/month or $468/year is the plan that builds and previews it.
Questions people actually ask
Does “no transaction fees” mean I keep 100% of a sale?
No, and that is the most common misreading. It means the website company takes nothing. The card networks and the payment processor still take theirs: Stripe publishes 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction for US domestic cards, and Square publishes 3.3% + 30¢ for online payments on Square Free and 2.9% + 30¢ on its paid plans, both read Sep 2, 2026. A platform advertising 0% is telling you about its own cut, not about your total.
Which of these is actually cheapest?
It turns on how much you sell. At $1,000 a month in card sales, 2% is $20 and the subscription decides it. At $10,000 a month, 2% is $200 and the subscription barely registers. So work out your own crossover before you choose: multiply your monthly card sales by the commission, add the monthly fee, and run it for the two plans you are genuinely choosing between. It is one multiplication, and it beats any list including this one.
Why can Naratake charge 0% when the bigger platforms cannot?
Because we are not in the payment path. Your published site charges cards with your own Stripe keys, so the money goes from your customer to your Stripe account without passing through us, and there is nothing here for us to take a percentage of. Stripe’s own fee still applies at its published rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction for US domestic cards (Sep 2, 2026), and that one is between you and Stripe. The trade is that you bring the Stripe account and set it up yourself; the platforms that take a cut are, in exchange, doing that part for you.
Is a 0% platform commission always the better deal?
Not always. A platform that takes 2% and gives you inventory, shipping labels and tax calculation can cost far less overall than a 0% platform you have to bolt three other subscriptions onto. The commission is one line in the bill, not the bill. What the figure is genuinely good for is spotting pricing that gets worse exactly as you succeed: the third-party rate falls from 2% on Shopify Basic to 0.2% on Plus, and from 2.0% on BigCommerce Core to 0.0% with contract on Performance (Sep 2, 2026) — the cheapest percentage sits on the most expensive plan.
Where these numbers came from
Every claim above was read off the provider’s own page on Sep 2, 2026. Pages change without notice; if one of these is out of date, the linked page is the one to believe, not us.
If the 0% is the part that matters
On Storefront Pro at $79/month or $758/year, Naratake takes 0% commission on every order and the card is charged in your own Stripe account. Ordering, bookings and reservations are blocks in the industry starting points rather than an app you install. See what a plan includes — and what it does not.