Stan Store Alternatives: Beacons, Kajabi, Gumroad and Your Own Site

Published November 10, 2026 · Comparisons

Beacons is the closest Stan Store alternative on price: its free plan and $10 Creator plan keep 9% of each sale until you move to Creator Plus at $30 a month, and Gumroad charges no monthly fee at all, taking 10% + $0.50 per direct sale instead. Kajabi costs $179 a month, or $143 billed annually, and puts courses, coaching, memberships and your own website in one plan with no cut of sales. If you sell courses, priced sessions and memberships and want them on a website of your own, CloserAccess does that, free to start with a per-sale fee (rate not published), and its store can sell a file download too.

CloserAccess wrote this post and is one of the options in it. Every competitor price comes from that company's own pages, checked November 9, 2026.

What Stan costs, and what the others cost instead

Stan. Stan lists its prices in a pricing post on its own blog and in its help center. There's no free plan, just a 14-day free trial. Creator is $29/mo or $300/yr, and Creator Pro is $99/mo or $948/yr. A third plan, Creator Max at $299/mo, is new and not yet released to all creators. Stan takes 0% of your sales. In the US, Stripe processing is 2.9% + $0.30 per standard card payment, and each payout costs 0.25% + $0.25, with a $1 minimum. PayPal payments carry PayPal's own fees.

Beacons. The Beacons pricing page lists a free plan, Creator at $10/mo or $100/yr, Creator Plus at $30/mo or $300/yr, and Creator Max at $100/mo or $1,000/yr. Its fees article puts the seller fee at 9% on Free and Creator and 0% on Creator Plus and Creator Max. Processing comes on top: Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30, or PayPal at 3.49% plus a fixed fee.

Kajabi. The Kajabi pricing page lists Basic at $179/mo, Growth at $249/mo and Pro at $499/mo, or $143, $199 and $399 a month billed annually. Kajabi takes no revenue share. US card processing through Kajabi Payments is 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic, 2.8% + 30 cents on Growth and 2.7% + 30 cents on Pro. If you use an outside processor other than PayPal where Kajabi Payments is offered, Kajabi adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth or 0.5% on Pro. There's a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Gumroad. Gumroad has no monthly fee. Its fees article puts direct sales at 10% + $0.50 per transaction, and card processing (2.9% + $0.30) or PayPal's fees are not included in that. Sales that come through its Discover marketplace pay a flat 30%, processing included. Once your paid sales pass $20,000 in a calendar month, new direct sales that month drop to 5% + $0.50.

CloserAccess. There are two ways in. You can build the site yourself for free: no monthly fee, no setup cost and no card to start. A platform fee applies only when a customer pays you, at a rate CloserAccess doesn't publish (ask before you start), and it shows as its own line on each transaction. The free site lives at yourname.closeraccess.com. Or you can have the CloserAccess team build it as a Starter Website, Premium Website or Digital Master, for a fixed price quoted before any work starts. Card payments run through your own Square account at Square's own rate, which CloserAccess doesn't mark up. The fees page walks through it.

Here's what that looks like on 20 sales of a $50 course in a month, $1,000 in all, before card processing:

• Stan Creator: $29.
• Beacons Creator: $10 plus 9% ($90), or $100. Creator Plus: $30.
• Gumroad: 10% ($100) plus $0.50 a sale ($10), or $110 on direct sales.
• Kajabi Basic: $179, or $143 billed annually.
• CloserAccess: we don't publish the rate, so ask for it before you put it next to these.

A flat plan wins as sales grow. A percentage wins while sales are small.

What each one sells

• Stan's help center lists coaching calls (one-to-one or group, over Zoom or Google Meet), digital downloads such as ebooks, templates and guides, courses, memberships billed daily to yearly, a community, webinars, lead magnets and custom products. Calendar and booking tools are on Creator. Email broadcasts and flows, discount codes, order bumps, payment plans with Afterpay and Klarna, and affiliate management are on Creator Pro. Stan says it's best used for digital products and doesn't calculate shipping or inventory.
• Beacons sells unlimited digital products on every plan. You get one course without video hosting on Free and Creator, and unlimited courses with video hosting from Creator Plus, where memberships also start. Email sends run from 50 a month on Free to unlimited on Creator Plus. It includes a website builder and a media kit for brand deals.
• Kajabi sells courses, coaching, memberships, downloads and podcasts, with a private community and unlimited email sends on every plan. Basic caps you at 5 products, 2,500 contacts and 1 website, and shows a "Powered by Kajabi" footer. Live cohort courses and your own affiliate program start at Growth. A branded app in the App Store comes with Pro.
• Gumroad sells digital products, e-books, courses, tutorials and memberships. Its features page lists pay-what-you-want pricing, several versions of one product (PDF, ePub and Mobi, for example), license keys for software, and email broadcasts with automated workflows.
• CloserAccess sells courses with enrollments and course analytics, and services you can book by time slot, by request answered with a quote, or with a deposit up front. Booked services can run as live video calls, and a feature called Meeting Reports writes an AI recap from the call transcript. Memberships come with tiers, and the same site can carry events with tickets, an online store, tips, a blog and email campaigns and automations. A links page at /links goes in your bio. A digital book can be sold and read on the site through the courses page, which is how Reyna By Design sells her memoir.

Downloads on CloserAccess

The CloserAccess store can sell a file as a product. You pick Digital Download as the product type and upload the file, and after paying, the buyer downloads it from the order page in their account. Reyna By Design's book works differently: it's read in the browser through the courses page, not downloaded.

If files are most of what you sell and a bio-link store is all you want, Stan, Gumroad and Beacons are built around that, and Kajabi sells downloads too. CloserAccess fits when files sit next to a course people take on your site, a session they book with you, or a membership they keep paying for.

Your storefront, your domain, your payments

• Stan stores live at stan.store/yourusername on Creator and Creator Pro. A custom domain comes only with Creator Max. Card payments go through a Stripe Custom account managed by Stan, and you can't connect a Stripe account you already have. Stan also supports PayPal.
• Beacons includes a custom domain from Creator, and its plans article says it's free for your first year. You can import and export your contacts, and buyers pay through Stripe or PayPal. Its pricing page lists selling in 20+ currencies.
• Kajabi includes your own website and custom domain on every plan, with checkout built in through Kajabi Payments. Its processing fees article notes that the rates on the pricing page are for US businesses.
• Gumroad lets you put your profile or a product on a custom domain, and you can export your followers and customers at any time. Its pricing page says it acts as merchant of record and handles sales tax collection and remittance worldwide.
• CloserAccess sites start at yourname.closeraccess.com, and team-built sites run on your own domain. Payments settle to your own Square account on Square's payout schedule, and our fee comes off as a line you can see. The pricing page puts ownership plainly: "Your domain stays yours. Your content stays yours."

Our limits here are real. CloserAccess checkout is in US dollars only, runs on Square with no PayPal, and works out sales tax as a single flat-rate estimate rather than through a tax engine. If you sell to buyers in many countries and want the platform to carry tax, Gumroad does more of that work.

Who builds it and keeps it running

Stan, Beacons, Kajabi and Gumroad are self-serve. You set up the products, write the pages and connect payments, and each has a free plan or a trial so you can try it first.

CloserAccess has a self-serve route too: pick a template, set your colors and launch the same day. The other route is a team build. Starter sites can launch in a few days, and Premium and Digital Master usually take one to three weeks. After launch you change pages, prices, posts and products from one dashboard. There's no drag-and-drop page builder: you edit each page through form fields with a live preview, and bigger design changes are done by the team.

Getting found

A link-in-bio store sells to people who already follow you. Stan and Beacons lean into that with Instagram tools: Stan AutoDM, which sends a message to anyone who comments or DMs a keyword, comes with Stan's Creator plan, and Beacons includes Smart Reply auto-DMs on its free plan. Gumroad has its own marketplace, Discover, where new buyers can find you, and those sales pay 30%. Kajabi gives you a website, landing pages and funnels.

CloserAccess is a full website rather than a link-in-bio store. Its links page, the one you put in your bio, is one page of it. A website gives strangers more ways in: a page for each course and each service, plus a blog, each one something a person can find in search. Done-for-you CloserAccess packages also include free promotion on CloserAccess's discovery pages.

When Stan or another tool is the better choice

• Pick Stan if you sell downloads, coaching calls and courses from your bio, want one flat price with 0% taken from sales, and like answering Instagram comments with automatic DMs. Creator Pro adds payment plans through Afterpay and Klarna.
• Pick Beacons if you want to start free or at $10/mo, your buyers pay with PayPal or in other currencies, or you want a media kit for brand deals.
• Pick Gumroad if your products are files, your sales are still small enough that a percentage beats a monthly fee, or you want the platform to handle sales tax as merchant of record.
• Pick Kajabi if you run a course business with a big email list, a community and live cohorts, and the monthly price fits. Its Pro plan adds a branded app in the App Store.
• Skip CloserAccess if you only sell files from your bio and don't want a website, if you need other currencies or PayPal, or if you want a drag-and-drop editor.

CloserAccess fits when you sell courses, sessions and memberships and want them on a website under your own name. If sessions are the main thing, our Calendly alternatives with payments post looks at paid booking in more detail.

CloserAccess sites that sell courses, a book and sessions

• NCLEX Buddy sells NCLEX prep with separate RN and PN/LPN core reviews. The RN course is included with a Study Plan subscription, and the site gives away a short course on how the exam works plus 44 practice exams with a written rationale on every question. Everything is listed on NCLEX Buddy's courses page. Read the NCLEX Buddy story.
• Reyna By Design is a one-book site. It sells Chapter 11.11, Reyna's memoir, for $35, read in the browser on any device, and the title chapter is free to read before you buy. See it under Books by Reyna. Read the Reyna By Design story.
• The Star Quality Project sells tarot and astrology readings at set prices, from a $22 recorded reading to an $88 live video call, plus a three-session series for $222, on The Star Quality Project's services page. Its astrology and tarot courses run from free to $22, and the site also offers membership plans. Read the Star Quality Project story.

If memberships matter most to you, our Patreon alternatives for creators post compares that side. If you mainly want a bio link that takes bookings, see our Linktree alternative with booking post. You can start a free site the same day.

Frequently asked questions

Does Stan Store have a free plan?

No. Stan offers a 14-day free trial, then the Creator plan at $29/mo or $300/yr.

Does Stan take a cut of sales?

No. Stan takes 0% of sales. In the US, Stripe processing is 2.9% + $0.30 per card payment, plus 0.25% + $0.25 per payout with a $1 minimum.

Is Beacons cheaper than Stan?

At low sales, yes. Leaving card processing out, Beacons Creator costs $10/mo plus 9% of each sale, so once you sell more than about $211 a month, Stan Creator's flat $29 costs less. Beacons Creator Plus, at $30/mo with 0% taken from sales, costs about the same as Stan Creator.

Is Stan or Gumroad better for digital downloads?

It depends on volume. Gumroad has no monthly fee and takes 10% + $0.50 per direct sale, which is $5.50 on a $50 product. Leaving card processing out, Stan Creator's flat $29 costs less from six $50 sales a month, when Gumroad's fees reach $33.

Can I use my own domain with Stan Store?

Only on Creator Max, at $299/mo, which isn't released to all creators yet. On Creator and Creator Pro, your store lives at stan.store/yourusername. Beacons includes a custom domain from its Creator plan, Kajabi on every plan, and a team-built CloserAccess site runs on your own domain.

Can CloserAccess sell digital downloads?

Yes. Its store has a Digital Download product type: you upload the file, and the buyer downloads it from their order page after paying. The same site sells courses, priced sessions, memberships and tickets, and a digital book can be sold and read on the site through the courses page.

Prices checked November 9, 2026, on each company's own pages. Plans and fees change, so check the linked pages before you decide.

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