Licence, subscription and transaction costs by platform type

A platform’s monthly price rarely describes the whole cost, and the reason is structural: the six platforms covered in this section actually run on three genuinely different cost shapes, and comparing a number from one shape directly against a number from another compares two different kinds of obligation as though they were the same thing.

Licence cost — paid once, or not at all

Open-source software such as WordPress carries no licence fee at all; commercial themes and premium plugins built on top of it typically charge a one-off or annual licence fee for continued updates, but the core platform itself is free indefinitely. A one-off theme or plugin licence of this kind is sometimes called a perpetual licence, distinguishing it from a subscription that stops working the moment payment lapses — though “perpetual” here still usually only covers the software as it exists at purchase, not ongoing updates, which is a separate, optional add-on. This is the cheapest-looking shape on paper, and, as covered in open source, and what it means when nobody is selling it to you, the absence of a licence fee is not the absence of an ongoing cost — it simply moves that cost into hosting and maintenance instead.

Subscription cost — the SaaS model, paid indefinitely for as long as the site exists

Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and Webflow are all SaaS (software-as-a-service) platforms that charge a recurring subscription, generally billed monthly or annually, that continues for as long as the site is live on that platform. This is the most transparent of the pricing models, because the fee is stated upfront and does not depend on how the business performs — the same amount is owed whether the site has one visitor or one thousand.

Transaction cost — a usage-based or consumption-based pricing model that scales with the business’s own success

Commerce platforms, most visibly Shopify, add a further layer on top of the subscription: a percentage fee on transactions processed through anything other than the platform’s own in-house payment system, sometimes alongside standard payment-processing rates charged by whichever gateway is actually used. This is a usage-based, or consumption-based, pricing model, unusual among the three in that it grows directly with the business’s own revenue, which makes it the hardest to compare against a flat subscription or a one-off licence — a small store pays very little of it, and a large one can pay a meaningful sum, for the same subscription tier.

Why comparing these directly is misleading

A WordPress build’s “free” software cost looks dramatically cheaper than Shopify’s subscription until hosting, premium plugins and, most significantly, ongoing maintenance labour are added to it — at which point the real totals are frequently much closer than the headline figures suggest, and the deciding factor becomes who is actually doing that labour rather than which number looked smaller at the outset. Website builder versus CMS, explained covers this specific comparison in full.

What to actually compare

Total cost over a realistic time horizon — three to five years is more informative than the first month — including hosting, any premium extensions genuinely required, transaction fees at the business’s actual expected volume, and a realistic estimate of maintenance labour, whether paid to a third party or accounted as the business owner’s own time. A platform decision made purely on the smallest headline number is very often a decision made on the shape that hides its true cost the longest, not the one that is genuinely cheapest.

Where GST fits into any of this

Whichever shape applies, ask whether the figure quoted is inclusive or exclusive of GST before comparing it to anything else — the ten per cent difference is large enough to change which option actually looks cheaper, and it is covered fully in GST on web design.

Why the cheapest cost shape depends on order volume, not business size

Two businesses of similar size can find very different cost shapes cheaper for them specifically, depending on how they actually sell — a low-volume, high-value service business exposed to transaction fees pays comparatively little of them regardless of platform, while a high-volume, low-value retailer feels a percentage-based transaction fee far more acutely, and may find a flat subscription without per-transaction fees genuinely cheaper despite a higher headline monthly price. Modelling the actual expected order volume and average order value against each cost shape, rather than comparing headline prices alone, is the only way to know which is genuinely cheaper for a specific business.

Currency and international sales, briefly

A business selling internationally as well as domestically should check how each cost shape handles currency conversion and cross-border transaction fees specifically, since these can differ meaningfully between platforms and are easy to overlook when comparing only the advertised domestic pricing.

A simple way to sanity-check any quoted figure

Ask what happens to the quoted cost if order volume doubles next year — a genuine subscription-only cost shape barely moves, while a transaction-fee-heavy one moves roughly in proportion, and the answer tells a business more about long-run affordability than the headline figure quoted at today’s volume ever will.

Free trials and their eventual expiry

Many platforms offer a free trial period at any of these cost shapes, and the eventual conversion to a paid tier is worth diarising explicitly, in the same way a domain or hosting renewal is — a trial that quietly converts to a paid plan nobody budgeted for is a small, avoidable version of the same lapsed-renewal risk covered elsewhere in this section.

Where to go from here

Choosing a platform for your business works through the fuller decision this cost comparison feeds into, and an actual, priced quote against a specific platform and scope belongs on what drives the cost of a website.