The fee to hunt for is usually already gone.
A store doing $80,000 a year on Squarespace's Business plan hands over about $2,400 in platform transaction fees, on top of the roughly $2,300 the card processor already takes and the annual subscription. Three percent of every order, skimmed by the platform before you see a cent. That number is exactly what "website builder with no transaction fees" is trying to avoid, and the good news is that most builders quietly stopped charging it. Wix, BigCommerce, Ecwid, Square, the Shopify plans when you use Shopify Payments, and options like WooCommerce and Devani all take zero platform cut. The catch has moved. It's now hiding in one specific Squarespace plan, in Shopify's third-party gateway surcharge, and in the monthly subscription almost nobody counts as a fee at all.
There are two fees, and only one is the platform's to charge.
Almost every "no transaction fees" search runs aground on the same confusion, so it's worth being blunt about it before comparing anyone. Selling online involves two separate charges, and they get lumped together constantly:
- Payment processing fees. This is the card network's cut, collected by your processor: Stripe, PayPal, Square, or Shopify Payments. The going rate in 2026 is about 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per sale. Nobody escapes this. It exists on every platform, including the free and open-source ones, because it's the cost of moving money, not the cost of your website builder. Any page promising to eliminate it is selling you something that isn't real.
- Platform transaction fees. This is an extra slice your website builder takes on top of processing, purely for the privilege of running your store on their software. It's optional, it varies wildly, and it's the only one worth shopping around for. When a builder says "no transaction fees," this is the fee they mean: zero platform surcharge, you keep everything except what the processor takes.
So the honest version of the question isn't "which builder has no fees" (none of them waive processing), it's "which builder doesn't stack its own percentage on top." That list is longer than it used to be.
The platform cut, builder by builder.
Every figure below is the platform's own transaction fee, separate from the roughly 2.9 percent plus $0.30 your processor charges everywhere. Prices in USD.
| Builder | Platform transaction fee | The catch worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Wix | 0% on all paid plans | The free plan can't take payments at all; you need a paid plan to sell |
| Squarespace | 3% on the Business plan, 0% on Commerce plans | The one mainstream builder still charging a real cut, and only on the cheaper tier |
| Shopify | 0% with Shopify Payments; 0.5% to 2% otherwise | Use a gateway other than Shopify's own and it surcharges you 2% (Basic), 1% (Grow), 0.6% (Advanced) |
| BigCommerce | 0% on every plan | Genuinely zero regardless of which processor you plug in; a real strength for a serious store |
| WooCommerce | 0% (self-hosted, open-source) | No company to take a cut, but you own the hosting, updates, and plugin upkeep |
| Ecwid / Square / Big Cartel | 0% | Free tiers exist but cap products (Big Cartel 5, Ecwid 10) or show branding |
| Devani | 0% platform cut | Fully managed with a genuinely free tier; connect your own Stripe and keep everything but the processor's cut |
Read down that column and the pattern is clear: a platform transaction fee is close to extinct in 2026. The two places it still bites are Squarespace's Business plan, where 3 percent of every order (shipping included) is real money on any volume, and Shopify when you refuse to use Shopify Payments, where the surcharge is effectively a penalty for bringing your own processor. Everywhere else, "no transaction fees" is just table stakes now, which means it's the wrong thing to be comparing on. If you want the full picture on those two, Shopify versus Squarespace digs into how their fee structures actually play out for a real store.
Zero platform fee gets you most of the way there. The subscription is the tax nobody writes on the whiteboard.
The fee you already agreed to and forgot to count.
Here's what the "no transaction fees" framing quietly skips: a 0 percent platform fee still comes attached to a monthly bill. Wix wants $29 a month for a store, Squarespace's fee-free Commerce plans cost more per month than the Business plan that charges the 3 percent, and Shopify's Basic runs $29 a month billed annually. That subscription is a fixed tax that doesn't care whether you sell nothing or a fortune. For a low-volume store, the flat $348-a-year plan can easily cost more than a 3 percent fee would have. For a high-volume one, the percentage fee is the killer. Either way, you're paying the platform. A fee-free builder just moved the charge from the variable column to the fixed one.
The purest way to get to genuinely zero platform money, no percentage cut and no mandatory subscription, is to run open-source software nobody rents to you. WooCommerce charges nothing to use, because there's no company sitting between you and your customer to take a slice; the trade is that you own the hosting, updates, and upkeep in exchange. If you'd rather not run a server, a managed platform with a genuine free tier gets you most of the way to the same place. Devani, the CMS running this blog, ships with a built-in store and Stripe checkout, starts free on its managed tier, and takes exactly nothing per sale, so the processor's cut is the only charge on each order. The Devani ecommerce overview walks through what the built-in store actually does.
A fee-free hosted builder
Wix, Squarespace Commerce, or Shopify on Shopify Payments.
- ✓ 0% platform transaction fee, so you keep everything past processing
- ✓ Everything managed for you, nothing to host or update
- × A fixed monthly subscription ($23 to $39 and up) that's a tax whether you sell or not
- × Locked to their editor and export rules; leaving is rarely clean
Devani
Managed with a free tier, and a built-in Stripe store.
- ✓ 0% platform fee on every sale, and a genuinely free managed tier to start
- ✓ Connect your own Stripe; the processor's cut is the only per-sale charge you ever pay
- ✓ Database-free and served statically, so it's fast out of the box, which matters for checkout conversion
- × A light store, not deep commerce: no multi-warehouse inventory or heavy tax automation, so a large complex catalog is better served elsewhere
That last line is the honest limit, and it's worth taking seriously. If you're running hundreds of SKUs with real inventory logic, multi-channel selling, or complicated tax and shipping rules, a purpose-built commerce platform earns its keep. BigCommerce charges 0 percent on every plan and is built for exactly that depth; Shopify on Shopify Payments is the same story with the biggest app ecosystem behind it. Devani's zero-fee store is aimed at the shop selling a focused catalog, digital goods, or a handful of products alongside a fast marketing site, not at replacing a serious commerce back end. For where the deeper platforms fit, Shopify alternatives lays out the field by store type.
What "no fees" should actually make you check.
Which plan the 0% applies to
A builder can advertise "no transaction fees" while charging them on its entry tier. Squarespace is the live example: fee-free on Commerce, 3 percent on Business. Read the fee against the specific plan you'll actually buy, not the headline.
Whether it forces its own processor
Zero platform fee often comes with a string: use our payment gateway or pay a surcharge. Shopify waives its cut only on Shopify Payments and adds up to 2 percent otherwise. Check that you can bring the processor you want without a penalty.
The subscription against your volume
Do the math both ways. On low sales, a flat $30-a-month plan can cost more than a 3 percent fee would. On high sales, the percentage is what hurts. The cheapest option flips depending on what you actually sell.
What leaving costs you
A fee you can't escape is lock-in. Can you export your products, content, and customers cleanly? WooCommerce lets you self-host indefinitely, and Devani exports the whole site as plain files any time, so leaving is clean either way, which is the strongest form of "no ongoing fee" there is.
The things people ask right before they pick.
What's the difference between a transaction fee and a processing fee?
A processing fee is the card network's cut, collected by your payment processor (Stripe, PayPal, Square, Shopify Payments) at roughly 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per sale. It exists on every platform and can't be waived, because it's the cost of moving money. A transaction fee is an extra percentage your website builder adds on top, purely for hosting your store on its software. That second one is optional and is what "no transaction fees" refers to. Only the platform fee is worth shopping around for.
Can you actually sell online with zero fees?
You can get to zero platform fees, meaning your website builder takes nothing per sale. You can't get to zero processing fees, because a processor still has to move the money and takes about 2.9 percent plus $0.30. The closest thing to genuinely fee-free is a self-hosted open-source tool like WooCommerce, which has no platform cut and no mandatory subscription. A managed platform with a free tier, like Devani, gets close too: zero platform cut per sale and nothing to pay on the free tier, so the processor's charge is the only per-sale cost.
Does Wix or Squarespace charge transaction fees?
Wix charges 0 percent platform transaction fees on all its paid plans; you pay only standard card processing. Squarespace is split: its Business plan takes a 3 percent cut of every order, while its higher Commerce plans charge 0 percent. If you're on Squarespace to sell, the fee-free move is a Commerce plan, not Business.
Why does Shopify charge a fee on some payments?
Shopify waives its platform transaction fee entirely when you use Shopify Payments, its built-in processor. Route payments through an outside gateway instead and it adds a surcharge: 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced, on top of that gateway's own processing. It's a nudge to keep you inside Shopify's payment system rather than a fee on the sale itself.
Which website builder is truly cheapest for a store?
It depends entirely on volume. For a low-sales store, a percentage fee barely registers and the flat monthly subscription is the biggest cost, so the cheapest plan wins. For a high-volume store, any percentage cut dwarfs the subscription, so a strict 0 percent platform is what matters. For a store that wants neither the fee nor the subscription, a free open-source builder you host yourself, at roughly $5 a month for a server, is the lowest floor. Run your own numbers both ways before deciding.
If avoiding a platform cut is what pushed you to search, the reassuring part is that you've mostly already won: the platform transaction fee is close to dead, and the two places it survives are easy to route around. The sharper question is the one underneath it. Are you happy renting your store from a builder for a fixed monthly fee, or would you rather keep the whole thing on a plan that starts free and pay no one but your processor? Both are defensible. Just make sure you're comparing the total, subscription and percentage together, not the badge on the pricing page.
Keep the whole sale, minus the processor.
Devani takes zero per transaction and starts free on its managed tier, with a built-in Stripe store on a fast static site. Go see what a no-platform-fee store actually looks like.