Charge every month from a site you own, and keep the cut a marketplace would take.
You can bill people on a schedule from your own domain without a platform skimming a tenth off every renewal, and it takes three moving parts, not one: a page the subscription lives on, a billing engine that charges the card on a schedule, and a payment processor that moves the money. On most owned-site setups the last two are the same thing (Stripe), and the first is whatever CMS you already run. Devani, the managed CMS this blog runs on, is one fast way to own that page starting free; the recurring part rides on Stripe either way. Here's how the pieces fit, and where each route genuinely earns its place.
Replenishment
Something that runs out on a clock: coffee, vitamins, razor blades, pet food. The customer subscribes so they stop reordering, and you charge the same amount on the same day each cycle. The simplest kind to bill, because the plan is one price and one interval.
Curation and boxes
A different selection ships each month: a snack box, a book club, a hobby crate. This is the one with real logistics behind it, inventory and shipping and the occasional swap, so the billing is the easy half and fulfillment is the hard half. Physical subscriptions lean hardest on dedicated tooling.
Access and membership
Nothing ships. The subscriber pays for entry: a paid newsletter, a members-only library, a community, courses, software. No warehouse, no postage, which is exactly why this is the model most people can run off their own site with almost no infrastructure beyond the billing itself.
Six pieces to wire, most of them in Stripe, not your CMS.
The mistake is thinking you need a heavy subscriptions plugin to start. For a straightforward plan you don't. The recurring logic lives in the payment processor; your site just needs to hold a button and, ideally, a link to a self-service page.
- Decide where the page lives. This is your CMS or site builder: the URL a subscriber lands on, the pitch, the pricing, the button. It doesn't need commerce features baked in for a single access-style plan. It needs to load fast, look like you, and sit on a domain you control.
- Pick the billing engine. On an owned site this is almost always Stripe. Stripe Billing (or a Stripe subscription payment link for the no-code path) stores the card, charges it on your interval, retries failed cards, and emails receipts. PayPal runs recurring plans too if your audience prefers it; you can offer both.
- Define the plan. Set the price, the interval (weekly, monthly, annual), any free trial or intro rate, and your tiers if you want more than one. Annual plans lift retention and cash flow; a trial lifts signups but invites churn at the first real charge, so pick deliberately.
- Put the subscribe button on your page. A Stripe payment link is a URL you drop behind a button; a fuller Stripe Billing integration hands you a checkout you embed. Either way the customer leaves on a hosted, PCI-handled checkout and comes back subscribed. No card data ever touches your server.
- Give subscribers self-service. This is the step people skip and regret. Stripe's customer portal is a hosted page where subscribers update a card, switch tiers, pause, or cancel without emailing you. Link it from a "manage subscription" spot. It cuts your support load and, honestly, your chargebacks.
- Handle the unglamorous parts. Sales tax and VAT (Stripe Tax can calculate it), failed-payment retries and dunning emails so a declined card doesn't silently end a subscription, and refunds. None of this is exciting and all of it decides whether the revenue is actually reliable.
On your own site, the recurring charge isn't the thing you build. It's the one thing you delegate, to Stripe, and keep everything around it.
Three routes, and each wins a real situation.
"On your own website" is a deliberate choice against the easy default, which is to rent someone else's audience and hand them a cut. That default is sometimes the right call. Here's the honest split.
A marketplace
Patreon, Substack: fastest start, priciest to run.
- ✓ Live in an afternoon, with built-in discovery and a payments stack you never touch
- ✓ Genuinely worth it early, when proving demand matters more than margin
- × Takes roughly 10 percent of revenue on top of processing (about 12 to 16 percent gone in total)
- × Lives on their domain, and they own the subscriber relationship, not you
A full commerce stack
WooCommerce Subscriptions, Shopify plus Recharge.
- ✓ Deep subscription logic: complex tiers, box logistics, inventory, gifting, granular gating
- ✓ The right call for physical boxes at volume, where fulfillment is the real job
- × You own the upkeep: platform plans plus subscription plugins, billed monthly and maintained
- × Overbuilt for a single access plan you could run on a button
Devani plus Stripe
An owned, fast page with a free tier and Stripe doing the billing.
- ✓ Fully managed with a genuinely free tier, then simple flat plans, and the platform takes zero percent of your subscription revenue
- ✓ Database-free and served statically from a CDN: near 100/100 Lighthouse out of the box, live in under a minute on the free tier
- ✓ Your domain, your subscriber list, your design; Stripe's customer portal handles cancel and pause
- × A light store, not deep subscription commerce: heavy box logistics or metered tiers belong on the stack above
What each route actually keeps, renewal after renewal.
The reason "on your own website" is a phrase people search rather than just defaulting to Patreon is money, and it compounds. A marketplace fee isn't a one-time setup cost; it's a tax on every renewal for as long as the subscriber stays. On a member paying $10 a month who sticks around two years, a 10 percent platform cut is $24 gone, before processing. Multiply by a few hundred members and the "convenient" option is quietly the expensive one.
| Route | Platform cut | Payment processing | Runs on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patreon (new creators) | 10% of revenue | ~3% on top | patreon.com/you |
| Substack | 10% of revenue | ~3.6% (Stripe, incl. recurring fee) | their subdomain |
| Your own site + Stripe | 0% platform | 2.9% + $0.30 per charge (+ ~0.7% Stripe Billing) | your domain |
| Devani + Stripe | $0 platform cut | Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 | your domain, free tier or flat plan |
Stripe's own fees apply on every route, including inside Patreon and Substack, because they both process on Stripe. So the real question isn't whether you pay a processor, everyone does. It's whether you pay a second cut, the platform's 10 percent, forever, in exchange for discovery you may not need once you have an audience. Early on, that trade can be worth it. Once demand is proven, the owned site is where the margin lives. If deep commerce is where you're actually headed, physical boxes with real fulfillment or a large catalog, the honest move is a heavier stack; our rundown of Shopify alternatives covers those lanes, and Devani's own built-in store and Stripe checkout is deliberately the light end of that spectrum, not the deep one.
Can I sell subscriptions without a plugin or a subscriptions platform?
Yes, for a straightforward plan. A Stripe subscription payment link is a hosted checkout you reach with a plain URL, so you put it behind a button on any page and Stripe handles the recurring charge, retries, and receipts. You only need a full subscriptions plugin (WooCommerce Subscriptions and the like) when you want the logic living inside your own store: complex tiers, physical fulfillment, inventory tied to the plan.
Do I need Stripe, or does PayPal work for recurring payments?
Either works. Stripe is the most common billing engine for owned sites because its recurring tools, hosted checkout, and customer portal are mature and easy to embed. PayPal supports recurring plans too and some audiences trust it more at checkout, so offering both is reasonable. The processor is what actually charges the card on a schedule, so the choice is mostly about which one your customers prefer and which integrates cleanly with your site.
Is it better to use Patreon or my own website?
Patreon wins when you're starting cold and need its discovery, and you'd rather not touch any setup: you can be live the same afternoon. Your own website wins the moment you have an audience of your own, because you stop paying the roughly 10 percent platform cut on every renewal, you keep the subscriber relationship, and everything sits on your domain. A common path is to start on a marketplace to prove demand, then move the recurring revenue to a site you control.
How do subscribers cancel or pause on their own?
Through the payment processor's self-service portal. Stripe's customer portal is a hosted page where a subscriber updates their card, switches plans, pauses, or cancels without contacting you. You link to it from a "manage subscription" spot on your site. Setting this up early is what keeps cancellations from turning into support emails and chargebacks.
What does it cost to run subscriptions on your own site?
On the lightest owned setup, close to nothing beyond payment processing. A managed CMS like Devani has a genuinely free tier, then simple flat plans, so the platform costs little or nothing. Stripe then takes 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per charge, with a small extra recurring-billing fee if you use Stripe Billing. There's no platform percentage on top, which is the whole point of owning the page.
Own the page, keep the renewal.
If you've already got an audience and you're tired of watching a platform take a slice of every month, the owned-site route is worth an hour of setup. Look at a real fast site with a free tier you'd actually run the subscription on.