Payhip vs Beacons splits by the job you need. Payhip is a store, free with 5% a sale, that handles VAT and sales tax for EU, UK, US and most Canadian buyers. Beacons is a bio link page with store and email, free with 9% a sale or $25 a month billed yearly for 0%.
On each platform’s own pricing pages, Beacons Creator Plus, billed yearly, costs less than any Payhip plan above about $500 a month in sales, and Payhip’s free plan costs less below it. For files sold from a bio link, CartMango is a third option (free right now, then about $0.83 a month billed yearly, 0% a sale). Card fees are extra on all 3.
A fee comparison tells you what each platform takes from a sale. It says nothing about where your followers land, who sends your newsletters, or who files the tax when a buyer in Paris or Toronto checks out.
Each gap you leave open usually means another tool and another monthly bill to pay. Beacons and Payhip each cover some of these jobs, and each hands a different set back to you.
You will see who covers each of 5 jobs, what each costs from $300 to $5,000 a month in sales, and where each tool leaves the work with you instead.
Key Takeaways
- Fees. Payhip’s free plan keeps 5% of each sale and Beacons’ free plan keeps 9%, with card processing extra on both.
- The $10 plan. Beacons’ $10 Creator plan still keeps 9%. The fee drops to 0% from Creator Plus, at $30 a month or $300 a year.
- The $500 line. Above about $500 a month in sales, Beacons Creator Plus on yearly billing costs less than any Payhip plan.
- Tax. Payhip collects and pays EU and UK VAT plus US and most Canadian sales tax. Beacons’ terms never say it does.
- Email. Beacons sends newsletters, 50 a month on its free plan. Payhip’s email tool only reaches past buyers.
- Third option. CartMango takes 0% a sale, free right now and from $10 a year once paid plans start, and pairs with a free LinksMango page.
Payhip vs Beacons at a glance
Payhip is a store first and Beacons is a bio link page first, and that difference runs through most of the rows below.
Picking the platform is 1 decision of many. I cover 5 common selling mistakes in the free Online Selling Mistakes Challenge, 1 short email a day.
Payhip’s free plan takes 5% and handles tax in 4 regions, Beacons takes 9% on its free and $10 plans but adds a bio page and email, and CartMango takes 0% for $10 to $30 a year once paid plans start.
| Platform | Price a month | Cut per sale | Bio link page | Email sending | Sales tax and VAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payhip | Free, $29 or $99 (no yearly plan) | 5%, 2% or 0% | Custom pages in its store builder | Past buyers only | EU, UK, US and most of Canada, paid for you |
| Beacons | Free, $8.33, $25 or $83.33 billed yearly ($10, $30 or $100 monthly) | 9% on Free and Creator, 0% from Creator Plus | Yes, built for it, on every plan | 50, 500 or unlimited a month | Not in its terms or store help pages |
| CartMango | Free right now, then about $0.83 to $2.50 billed yearly ($10 to $30 a year) | 0% | Through a free LinksMango page | Passes buyers to your email tool | Your job |
Payhip lists monthly prices only, so its row stays monthly. I run CartMango and LinksMango, so read that last row knowing both are mine. That row is for a seller of files who wants no cut of each sale and a small yearly bill instead. CartMango’s $10 Silver plan is limited to 10 products.
The page your followers tap first
Beacons is built as a link-in-bio page on every plan, Free included, while Payhip is a store whose page builder can make a links page but has none of Beacons’ social extras.
On Beacons, the page takes unlimited links and subpages, an image or video background, music embeds and a QR code. Every plan also gets Smart Reply. It sends an automatic Instagram DM when someone comments a keyword on your post. You also get a media kit for brand deals that updates daily. The $10 Creator plan adds a custom domain for your page and store, free for the first year, and Creator Plus at $30 removes the Beacons branding.
Payhip gives you a store, at a Payhip address or on your own domain. Its store builder can add custom pages with text, images, videos, buttons and embeds, and Payhip’s own blog pitches that as a link-in-bio page. Its feature list shows no comment-to-DM replies and no media kit. Your store’s About Me section and footer can show Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest icons.
ecomm.design’s guide to Beacons alternatives suggests pairing Payhip with a separate free link page for a full links hub. Some sellers simply run both. In a Created In Canva Facebook group thread on this exact question, with more than 50 comments, 1 seller said they use Beacons for digital products, email and their website, and Payhip for physical products.
A third route is LinksMango, a free bio page my team built. Its product cards have a Buy button that goes to your own checkout, and it takes 0% of the sale. The free page gives you 10 product cards with no LinksMango line at the bottom, or 20 cards if you keep the small “Made with LinksMango” line. A card can point at a Payhip checkout, since Payhip gives every product a direct checkout link.
If most of your buyers come from Instagram, our guide to selling digital products on Instagram covers what that bio link has to do. Stan Store is the other bio-link store people weigh against Payhip, and Payhip vs Stan Store compares those 2.
What Payhip and Beacons keep from your sales
On a $29 sale paid by US card, Payhip’s free plan leaves you $26.41 and Beacons’ free plan leaves you $25.25, because Beacons keeps 9% where Payhip keeps 5%.
Both numbers already take out Stripe’s card fee of 2.9% plus $0.30, which comes to $1.14 on that sale and is the same on both platforms. You can check the rate on Stripe’s pricing page. PayPal costs more: Beacons lists it at 3.49% plus a fixed fee that depends on the currency, and Payhip passes on the standard rates of both processors.
Beacons’ $10 Creator plan keeps the same 9% as Free, as Beacons’ own transaction fees article says, and the fee only drops to 0% on Creator Plus at $30 a month, or $25 a month billed yearly.
Beacons’ own compare-plans table, monthly prices. Read the seller fee row: 9% on Free and on the $10 Creator plan.
That table sits on the Beacons pricing page. Our Beacons price breakdown covers every plan in more detail.
At $1,000 a month in sales, Payhip’s cheapest plan costs $49, Beacons Creator Plus costs $25 on yearly billing, and CartMango Silver costs about $0.83 once paid plans start, before card processing on all 3.
| Monthly sales | Payhip, cheapest plan | Beacons, cheapest plan (billed yearly) | CartMango Silver (billed yearly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $300 | $15 (Free, 5%) | $25 (Creator Plus) | About $0.83 |
| $1,000 | $49 (Plus, $29 + 2%) | $25 (Creator Plus) | About $0.83 |
| $3,000 | $89 (Plus, $29 + 2%) | $25 (Creator Plus) | About $0.83 |
| $5,000 | $99 (Pro) | $25 (Creator Plus) | About $0.83 |
Payhip’s plans swap places twice. Plus at $29 plus 2% beats Free once you pass about $967 a month, and Pro at a flat $99 beats Plus above $3,500.
On Beacons, Creator Plus at $30 a month beats the free plan’s 9% once you sell more than about $333 a month, or $278 on yearly billing. Below that, stay on Free. On monthly billing the $300 row changes too: Free costs $27 there and Creator Plus costs $30, so Free wins.
Put the 2 side by side and the crossover sits at $500 a month, where Payhip’s free plan takes $25 and Beacons Creator Plus costs $25 on yearly billing. Under it, Payhip Free is the lower bill. Over it, Beacons Creator Plus is lower than every Payhip plan, and the gap reaches $74 a month at $5,000. If you pay Beacons monthly, the crossover moves to $600.
The chart shows the main plans at that same $1,000 month, with Beacons and CartMango on yearly billing. Beacons’ $10 Creator plan comes to $98.33 ($8.33 a month billed yearly plus the 9%), more than Beacons Free at $90, because it adds its own price on top of the same 9%. Payhip Free comes to $50, Payhip Plus to $49 and Payhip Pro to its flat $99.
At $1,000 a month in sales, Beacons’ $10 plan costs more than its free plan, and Creator Plus on yearly billing costs least of the Payhip and Beacons plans shown.
CartMango‘s column includes its plan price. CartMango Silver allows up to 10 products for $10 a year, and Gold at $20 a year (about $1.67 a month) adds upsells after checkout and cart abandonment. Right now every CartMango plan is free.
Payouts work the same way on both platforms. The money goes straight into your own Stripe or PayPal account as soon as a sale clears, with no holding period from the platform, and CartMango pays out the same way. Both also offer discount codes and a checkout add-on on every plan. Beacons calls it an order bump, and Payhip calls it a cross-sell order bump, a discounted extra it offers when a buyer puts a product in the cart.
Emailing your buyers and followers
Beacons can email everyone on your list, and Payhip can only email people who already bought from you.
Beacons sends 50 emails a month on Free, 500 on Creator and unlimited from Creator Plus up. Every plan keeps unlimited contacts, a welcome email, emails after a store purchase, signup forms and list exports. Watch the send limit, though. Say your list has 120 people: 1 newsletter uses 120 sends, which is more than the free plan’s 50, while Creator’s 500 covers 4 newsletters a month to that list.
Payhip’s built-in sending is called Email Updates, and it goes to customers only: all of them, or the buyers of 1 product. Buyers in the EU are left out unless they ticked the consent box at checkout. When a visitor hits Follow on your store, or subscribes through a newsletter section, Payhip files them under a Followers tab, outside Email Updates. Its help center says to export that list into your own email software.
To send signups straight into an email tool, Payhip has you embed that tool’s own form, which needs your store on a custom domain. Payhip connects directly to more than 10 email tools, plus Zapier. In the same Facebook thread, a Payhip seller wondered whether Beacons had better email on its free plan, because on Payhip “I couldn’t do the email thing”.
Payhip also offers cart abandonment emails, which you switch on yourself. If a buyer types their email at checkout and leaves, Payhip sends a reminder 24 hours later, with an optional discount code, and EU and UK buyers only get it if they ticked the consent box.
CartMango sends no newsletters at all, and it passes every buyer into the email tool you connect, such as BirdSend, the email tool I also run, or Kit, ActiveCampaign or Beehiiv. Cart abandonment on CartMango’s $20 Gold plan goes out through that same tool.
Selling courses, memberships and payment plans
Payhip includes courses, memberships, coaching and payment plans on its free plan, while Beacons keeps memberships, payment plans and video courses for Creator Plus at $30 a month or $300 a year.
A Payhip course can mix video, text, quizzes, downloads, surveys, assignments and embeds. It can drip lessons out over time, sell preorders and hand out completion certificates. Video hosting costs extra: Payhip charges $5 a month for each 16 hours of hosted video, or you can embed lessons from YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia for free. Payhip also sells physical products on every plan.
Beacons’ Free and Creator plans allow 1 course, with no video hosting. Creator Plus opens unlimited courses with video hosting, unlimited memberships, installment payment plans and buy now, pay later through Klarna, Affirm or Afterpay.
Payhip offers installment plans too, but no buy now, pay later option. Its installments reach you over time, so a buyer who stops paying leaves you short.
CartMango sells online courses on its $30 a year Platinum plan. Lessons hold text, images, audio, files and a pasted video link, with no video file hosting and no quizzes or certificates. Every CartMango plan sells subscriptions. CartMango’s community feature is not live yet.
So for a course with quizzes and certificates, Payhip is the better fit today. For video courses and memberships sold from the same page as your links, Beacons Creator Plus does it in 1 account. If courses are the main thing you sell, Payhip vs Teachable puts Payhip against a course-first platform.
Sales tax and VAT: who files it for you
Payhip collects and pays sales tax and VAT for EU, UK, US and most Canadian buyers on every plan, and Beacons doesn’t say it collects any: its terms don’t, and none of the 47 articles in its help center’s Products section is about it.
On Payhip, EU and UK VAT, the sales tax those countries add to digital products, is switched on by default.
Since July 1, 2026, Payhip also collects and pays US sales tax. It does this as a “marketplace facilitator”, meaning US law treats Payhip as the party that owes the tax. In its own words, it “won’t charge you a cent” for that. Payhip’s help center adds that you may still need to file a zero-dollar return, a form showing you owe nothing, in a US state where you have a physical presence.
Canada works the same way since July 2026, with 1 exception. Payhip collects GST, HST and PST, Canada’s federal and provincial sales taxes, but you still handle Quebec’s QST yourself if you are required to. For any other country, Payhip can add a tax at checkout, but it passes that money to you to pay.
Payhip’s help center also gives a worked example. A $10 product sold to a buyer in France, with 20% VAT added on top, charges the buyer $12. Payhip takes its 5% ($0.50), sets aside the $2 of VAT to pay the tax office, and sends you $9.50 before card fees. If you build the VAT into your $10 price instead, you get $7.91.
On Beacons, none of the 47 articles in the Products section of its help center is about collecting sales tax or VAT on your store sales. The one tax clause in its terms of service covers tax on the fees you pay Beacons.
Since Beacons doesn’t say it collects tax, plan on handling it yourself. For EU buyers of digital products, the EU’s One Stop Shop page says you charge VAT at the rate of the buyer’s country. A seller based outside the EU can register in 1 EU country and file 1 VAT return each quarter for every EU sale.
With CartMango you stay the legal seller, so sales tax and VAT are your job too. If a big share of your buyers live in the EU, the UK, the US or Canada, Payhip saves you paperwork that the other 2 leave with you.
Payhip vs Beacons: who covers each job
Payhip covers EU, UK, US and most Canadian tax plus a full store, Beacons covers the bio page and newsletters, and CartMango covers a 0% checkout for $10 to $30 a year once paid plans start.
| Job | Payhip | Beacons | CartMango |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bio link page | Custom pages, no social extras | Yes, with Instagram auto-DMs | A free LinksMango page |
| Cut per sale | 5%, 2% or 0% | 9%, or 0% from $25 a month billed yearly | 0% |
| Newsletters | Past buyers only | 50, 500 or unlimited a month | Through your email tool |
| Courses | Every plan, video hosting from $5 a month | Video courses from Creator Plus | $30 a year plan, video links only |
| Sales tax and VAT | EU, UK, US and most of Canada | Not in its terms or store help pages | Your job |
Pick Payhip if you want a full store, sell courses with quizzes, or sell to many buyers in the EU, UK, US or Canada and would rather not file VAT yourself. Pick Beacons if your buyers come from social media and you want the bio page, the DMs and the newsletter in 1 login, moving to Creator Plus once you pass about $333 a month, or $278 on yearly billing.
Pick CartMango behind a free LinksMango page if you mostly sell files, already use an email tool, and would rather pay a small yearly fee than a percentage.
FAQ
What are the disadvantages of Payhip?
Payhip’s free plan keeps 5% of every sale, and its email tool only reaches past buyers, so followers go to a separate one. Hosting course videos costs $5 a month for each 16 hours. In our Payhip review, 48 of the 68 one-star Trustpilot reviews written in English described a closed, deleted or locked store, about 9% of the 553 reviews it had at the time. Most of Payhip’s replies cited copyright or resold PLR, meaning content bought with the right to resell it.
How much do Payhip and Beacons take per sale?
Payhip takes 5% on Free, 2% on Plus ($29 a month) and 0% on Pro ($99 a month). Beacons takes 9% on Free and on Creator ($10 a month), and 0% on Creator Plus ($30) and Creator Max ($100). Card processing comes on top of both, 2.9% plus $0.30 per US sale through Stripe.
Can you make money on Beacons, and is it worth it?
Yes, sellers do. Beacons’ free plan costs nothing to join and keeps 9% of each sale, paid straight to your own Stripe or PayPal. Our Beacons price breakdown quotes 1 Reddit seller who averaged $1.5k to $3k a month selling products on Beacons for over a year. It is worth it if you want the bio page, store and email in 1 account, and Creator Plus pays for itself above about $333 a month on monthly billing.
Is Beacons trustworthy?
Beacons pays your sales straight into your own Stripe or PayPal account, so it never holds the sale money. Beacons has not claimed its Trustpilot profile, which shows a TrustScore of 1.9 from 44 reviews, and a recent review complains that support is hard to reach. Payhip manages its own Trustpilot page, which now shows 4.5 from 572 reviews.
Is Beacons better than Stan Store or Linktree?
Against Stan Store, Beacons has a free plan and Stan does not. Stan’s Creator plan costs $29 a month or $300 a year, the same $300 a year as Beacons Creator Plus.
Against Linktree, Beacons’ free plan includes more of the extras: auto-DMs, a store and a media kit. Linktree’s own pricing page puts selling with 0% fees on its Pro plan and unlimited Instagram auto-replies on Premium. Our Linktree vs Stan Store guide covers Linktree’s plans.
What’s the best site to sell digital products: Payhip, Beacons or Etsy?
Pick Etsy if you need buyers who are already searching, since Etsy charges per listing and per sale for that reach. Pick Payhip for a store you send your own traffic to, with EU, UK, US and most Canadian tax handled. Pick Beacons when buyers arrive from a social bio. Pick CartMango if you sell files from your own links and want no cut of each sale. Our Payhip vs Etsy post runs the numbers on a $10 sale.
Paying neither the 9% nor the 5% on file sales
To pay neither fee on file sales, put a free bio page in front of a checkout that charges by the year instead of by the sale. For a seller who mostly sells files and already has an email tool, that route skips the Payhip vs Beacons fee question, with sales tax left to you.
LinksMango gives you the free bio page with product cards. CartMango runs the checkout behind each Buy button with no cut of the sale, order bumps on every plan and upsells from the $20 a year plan, and it is free right now, from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
Related Reading
- Beacons price: all 4 plans, the 9% fee and when Creator Plus pays for itself
- Payhip review: what its Trustpilot reviews say, closed stores included
- Payhip vs Stan Store: the other bio-link store against Payhip
- Linktree vs Stan Store: what a link-in-bio page has to do
- Sell digital products without a website: setups that need no site of your own