Stan review

How much does Stan cost?

Stan costs $29 a month for Creator or $99 a month for Creator Pro, with 0% transaction fees on both. Annual billing brings them to $300 and $948 a year. There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial.

Processing comes on top. Stan's help center lists Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30 per US transaction, plus 1.5% if the buyer is in another country and 0.5% on recurring payments. Stripe payouts cost 0.25% + $0.25 each, with a $1 minimum. PayPal charges 3.49% plus a fixed fee that depends on the currency.

The monthly fee is what decides whether Stan is cheap. Against Payhip's free plan, which charges 5% plus the same processing, Stan only comes out ahead once you sell more than $580 a month. Below that, you are paying for the layout. The fee table shows where each platform wins.

What do you get on each Stan plan?

The $29 Creator plan covers selling. It includes a storefront, digital products, an unlimited course builder, a calendar and booking tool for paid calls, recurring subscriptions, lead magnets, community features, and Stan AutoDM for automated Instagram replies.

The $99 Creator Pro plan covers marketing. It adds discount codes, limited-quantity offers, upsells, order bumps, funnels, payment plans with Afterpay and Klarna, affiliate management, email broadcasts and flows, and pixel tracking for Meta, Google, Pinterest, and TikTok. Stan's help center lists Stripe's US rates for those payment plans as 6.0% + $0.30 for Afterpay and 5.99% + $0.30 for Klarna.

That split is Stan's weakest point. Payhip includes coupons, order bumps, and an affiliate program on its free plan. On Stan, the same tools cost $70 a month more than the base plan.

Does Stan handle sales tax?

No. Stan is not a merchant of record, so registering for and filing sales tax and VAT stays with you. Stan can calculate tax at checkout through Stripe if you are based in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, or the EU.

That tax tool has limits. It only works with Stripe connected, and it only charges tax in the region where you are registered. In the US, Stan's help center lists several states as not enabled, including California for digital goods and New York.

If you sell to buyers in many countries, Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy handle tax collection and filing as part of their fee.

Can you own your audience on Stan?

Partly. You can download customer and income data as CSV files, but you cannot use your own domain. Stan's help center says you cannot create or embed a custom domain, so your store lives at a stan.store address. You can forward a domain you own to it.

Bringing a list in has a ceiling too. Both plans can import contacts from a CSV file, but Stan caps manual imports at 5,000 contacts per store across all lists.

How do Stan payouts work?

Stripe sales land in your Stan balance and you cash out by hand from the Income tab. Funds take about 2 to 7 business days to clear Stripe for US creators and up to 7 business days for international creators. After you cash out, money reaches your bank in 24 to 48 hours.

The minimum cash-out is $10, and you withdraw the full available balance each time. There is no automatic payout schedule. PayPal sales skip the Stan balance and go straight to your PayPal Business account.