Percentage commission vs flat fee: how much you really hand over to your platform

Same sales, two different bills

Picture a store that sells 200 orders a month at an average of €700. Revenue: €140,000. Now let's see what stays in your pocket under two billing models.

With a 2.9% commission on cart value, every order costs €20.30. Two hundred orders means €4,060 a month handed over to the platform.

With a flat fee per order, the same order costs €0.39 - whether the customer bought socks or an e-bike. Two hundred orders means €78.

The difference: €3,982 a month on identical sales. It is not tax optimisation or an accounting trick. It is simply a different way of calculating the same bill.

Why a percentage hurts exactly where it hurts most

A percentage commission has one nasty property: it grows precisely when you sell at higher prices. And the products you sell at higher prices are usually the ones you put more work and more capital into, and the ones that sat in the warehouse the longest.

Look at it from the margin's point of view, not revenue:

On a €20 cart the difference is bearable. On a €2,000 cart you hand the platform €58 for a single transaction - often more than your margin on a cheaper product from the same store.

A store selling electronics, furniture, bikes or building equipment pays a percentage levy simply because its products are expensive. Not because the platform did more work on them - it didn't. Handling a €2,000 order costs exactly as much infrastructure as a €20 one.

When a flat fee is NOT cheaper

To be fair: there are stores for which a percentage commission works out cheaper. Those are stores with a very low cart value.

On a €10 cart a 2.9% commission is €0.29 - less than the €0.39 flat fee. If you sell small items for a few euros each, a percentage may suit you better. At a 2.9% rate the break-even point sits at around a €13 cart: above it the flat fee wins, below it - it loses.

Run the numbers on your own data, not someone else's. Open your admin panel, check the average cart value for the last three months and multiply it by the commission rate you pay today. Then compare it with the number of orders multiplied by a flat fee. It takes five minutes and usually ends in a surprise - one way or the other.

The fine print that eats the rest

The percentage is not everything. When comparing offers, check three things that are easy to miss:

• Is the commission charged on the amount including shipping? If so, you also pay a percentage on money you hand over to the courier anyway.
• Do you get the commission back when goods are returned? In many models you don't. The customer returns the product, you refund them - and the commission on that transaction stays with the platform.
• Is there one rate, or does it rise with the payment method? Cards, instalments and buy-now-pay-later can carry their own, higher brackets.

These are questions to ask a provider before you sign the contract, not after the first invoice.

How we charge

DoSwiftly has no fee calculated as a percentage of cart value. There is a flat fee per paid order: €0.39 on Pay-as-you-go, €0.06 on the Grow plan (with a €75 monthly subscription). A €20 order and a €2,000 order cost the same, because they genuinely cost us the same.

Three things we say up front, so nothing is left unsaid. First: the fee is charged only on paid orders - an abandoned cart or an unpaid order costs you nothing, and a cash-on-delivery order counts as paid only once the parcel has been delivered. Second: the fee is not refunded when an order is returned - just like in many percentage models, except that what stays with us is a flat amount, not a percentage of the cart. Third: the payment provider's fee (PayU, Przelewy24) is a separate cost that you pay the same way with any provider. Nobody can remove it, because it is a fee of the banks and card schemes, not of the store platform.

Want to see what it looks like on your numbers? The pricing page has a calculator - enter the number of paid orders and your average cart, and it points to the cheapest plan, tells you at how many orders the next one pays off, and shows what the same would cost with a commission-based competitor.