The real cost of a percentage-based platform
A commission looks small next to a subscription. Run it forward twelve months and the ranking usually reverses.
Percentage pricing is persuasive because it starts small. One or two per cent of nothing is nothing, and while you are figuring out whether this business works at all, that feels fair. The trouble starts precisely when it starts working.
The arithmetic nobody runs upfront
At €10,000 a month in sales, a 1.5% commission is €150 — comparable to a mid-tier subscription, and it feels like a wash. At €50,000 it is €750 a month, and the platform is doing exactly what it did before. At €100,000 you are paying €18,000 a year for software whose cost of serving you barely moved.
The subscription model has the opposite shape: it is expensive when you are small and cheap when you are large. That is uncomfortable at the start and correct over a lifetime.
Where the incentives point
A platform paid by percentage earns from your growth whether or not it contributed to it. That is not a moral complaint — it is a prediction about where its engineers will spend their time. Features that raise gross merchandise value get built. Features that save you an hour a day compete for attention with nothing to show on a revenue chart.
What to compare instead
- Total cost over twelve months at your realistic sales, not this month’s.
- The cost of the apps you actually need, not the ones in the marketing page.
- What it costs to leave: is there an export button, or a support ticket?