First Sale Fees / Field guide
Free vs paid selling plans: when to upgrade
Upgrade when a needed feature or a repeatable saving justifies the subscription.
Two reasons to pay
The first is a feature you need now. Examples include room for another course, a larger email list or a checkout capability required by your offer. The second is arithmetic: a lower transaction rate saves more than the fixed subscription costs.
Keep those decisions separate. A feature can justify an upgrade even when fees alone do not. Lower fees can justify an upgrade without making the rest of the product better for you.
Use product revenue, not the amount reaching your bank
If the platform's percentage applies to product revenue, compare plans using that same fee base. A payout after fees, refunds and taxes is a different number. Mixing them can make a threshold look lower or higher than it is.
Monthly platform cost = subscription + revenue × platform rate
For an invented example, Plan A costs $0 plus 8% of sales. Plan B costs $24 plus 2%. The rates differ by 6 percentage points, so the crossover is $24 ÷ 0.06 = $400 in monthly product revenue. At $20 per product, 20 paid sales give an exact tie.
Check the month after a launch
A launch can produce an unusual spike. Run the calculation again for a quieter month and check the plan's billing period. If a monthly plan is easy to change, you may have more flexibility. If you prepay annually, compare both the average cost and the cash you must commit today.
Do not skip the middle plan
When a platform offers three plans, compare all three at your sales volume. The crossover between the cheapest subscription and the most expensive subscription can occur while the middle option is still cheaper than both.
Use the two-plan calculator for a specific pair, or compare all three Payhip plans together.