Beacons vs Stan Store in 2026: Both Cost $300 a Year

Beacons Creator Plus is $300 billed annually. Stan Store Creator is $300 billed annually. Both take 0 percent of your sales.

That coincidence makes this the cleanest comparison in the creator-store category, because price cancels out entirely and the only remaining question is what the same $300 buys.

And it buys noticeably different things: courses, memberships, and email marketing are included on one and gated behind a $948 plan on the other.

A creator store is a hosted page that presents digital products, coaching, or memberships to a social audience and takes payment on the spot.

Beacons arrived at it from the link-in-bio direction and Stan Store from the checkout direction, and after several years of converging they now sell the same thing at the same price.

Full disclosure: Framekit is our own website builder and it is not a like-for-like alternative to either of these. We cannot bill recurring subscriptions at all, so memberships and payment plans are impossible on our platform, and we say where that rules us out in a marked section near the end. Every figure below comes from each company's own published pricing or help documentation, read in August 2026.

How We Compared Beacons and Stan Store

We priced one creator on both. The profile: a coach selling a $150 coaching package and a $47 digital workbook to an Instagram audience, turning over $3,000 a month, with an email list of about 2,000 people and one small paid community.

Both accounts were created fresh in August 2026 with no promotional code. Stan Store publishes its plans through its own blog and help centre rather than a nav-linked pricing page, and we cite those sources directly.

Measured means we built the store and ran the flow. Verified means we read it in the vendor's own published pricing or help documentation in August 2026 and are reporting it with a link. Community sentiment means creators report it consistently and we did not reproduce it.

Judgements about design and conversion feel are labelled as ours, because neither can be measured from outside.

You will find no star ratings in this piece. The big review aggregators refused our automated checks while we were researching it, and a rating we cannot verify is worth less than a price you can click, so every figure below is linked to the page it came from.

In one lineone coach with a $150 package, a $47 workbook, $3,000 a month in sales and a 2,000-person list, priced on every tier of both platforms.

The Two Ladders

Both companies charge $300 a year for their entry zero-fee plan.

Stan's own help centre confirms that Stan earns 0 percent from transactions, with only your payment processor's fee applying, and Beacons' pricing page shows 0 percent seller fees starting on Creator Plus.

What $300 a Year Buys

In one lineat the same annual price, Beacons Creator Plus includes courses, memberships, and unlimited email, and Stan Store Creator includes none of the three, which is the single most decision-relevant difference between them.

Line the two $300 plans up against each other and the gap is not subtle.

On Beacons Creator Pluscourses with video hosting, unlimited memberships, unlimited email sends, buy-now-pay-later options at checkout, 100 percent of affiliate link commissions, unlimited AI credits, plus everything from the lower tiers including a free custom domain and the self-updating media kit.

On Stan Store Creatorunlimited digital products and AutoDM. Funnels, order bumps, dynamic pricing, payment plans, email marketing, and campaign tracking all sit on Creator Pro at $948 a year.

For our coach, who has a 2,000-person list and a small paid community, that difference is decisive on paper. Email marketing to 2,000 people is included in Beacons' $300 and would require Stan's $948 plan.

The membership is included on Beacons and needs Stan's payment-plan tooling to be equivalent.

The honest counterweight, and it is worth stating because a feature table always flatters the platform with more rows: included is not the same as good.

Beacons' email tooling exists inside a link-in-bio product and is not a substitute for a dedicated email platform, and its course hosting is a video player rather than a learning management system.

If your course is the business, neither of these is the right home and a course platform is. Feature parity on a comparison table and parity in use are different things, and we would rather say so than let a row count decide your purchase.

Where Stan Store Wins

In one lineit is a checkout product first, and it shows in the shape of the page and in tooling built specifically around converting Instagram traffic.

The page is a funnel, not a list. This is our judgement rather than a measurement.

Stan's store is organised around one path from arrival to purchase, with less visual noise between the two, and creators who use it consistently report that the design does its job.

Beacons offers more, and more is not always better on a page whose purpose is a single decision.

AutoDM. Automated Instagram replies that deliver a link or a product when someone comments a keyword is a mechanic that a large share of Stan's audience actively uses, and it is included on the $300 Creator plan rather than an upsell.

Simplicity as a feature. Two plans, one clear jump. Stan asks you to make one decision, and Beacons asks you to work out whether you need Creator or Creator Plus, and whether the custom domain or the zero seller fee matters more first.

The gotchathe jump from Creator to Creator Pro is $648 a year, and the things behind it are the things a growing business needs, namely email marketing, funnels, and payment plans. There is no middle tier. If you outgrow Creator, the next step is more than triple.

Skip it ifyou need email marketing to a real list, or memberships, at anything below $948 a year.

Where Beacons Wins

In one linemore product at the same price, a custom domain, and a free tier you can genuinely run a store on, provided you understand what its 9 percent costs.

The custom domain. Beacons includes a free custom domain from Creator at $8.33 a month billed annually.

That means your store address can be yours rather than a rented handle, which over three years is the difference between links that survive a platform change and links that do not.

The free tier is a real product. Unlimited digital products, a media kit that updates itself from your social accounts, affiliate links, and real-time analytics at $0. Stan Store has a 14-day trial and no free plan.

More at the same price. Courses, memberships, unlimited email, and BNPL are all inside the $300 that Stan charges for a store and AutoDM.

The gotcha, and it is seriousthe free and Creator tiers charge 9 percent on sales. At our coach's $3,000 a month, that is $270 a month, or $3,240 a year, against a $300 plan that would charge nothing.

The crossover is $278 a month in sales, because 9 percent of $278 is $25. Anyone selling above that on Beacons Free or Creator is losing money every month, and the fee never appears on an invoice because it is deducted before the payout.

Skip it ifyou want a single decision rather than a ladder. Beacons rewards reading the plan comparison carefully and punishes not doing so.

What Our Coach Actually Pays

This is the same coach priced on every tier of both platforms, at $3,000 a month in sales, before card processing, which both charge separately at broadly the same rate. It is the table that shows how strange the middle of the Beacons ladder is once the seller fee is counted.

The two plans worth considering cost exactly the same. Everything below them costs ten times more, and everything above them costs three times more.

The number to remember if you take nothing else from this$278 a month in sales. Below it, a Beacons free plan at 9 percent is cheaper than either $300 plan. Above it, both $300 plans are cheaper than anything with a percentage attached, and staying on a cheaper tier is the most common and most expensive mistake in this category.

What Neither of Them Solves

In one lineboth platforms rent you a store rather than selling you one, and neither hands back a working copy when you leave, so the only durable difference is whether the address you spent years publicising belongs to you.

A creator store accumulates links over time: in bios, in captions, in emails, on other people's podcasts. After two years that address is how people find your offer.

On Stan Store, that address is Stan's. Leave and every reference breaks, with no redirect available because you never controlled the address.

On Beacons, you can bring your own domain from the Creator plan at $8.33 a month billed annually. If you leave with your own domain, the address survives and points somewhere else.

That is the most valuable thing in this comparison that is not a fee, and it costs $100 a year.

Neither exports a working copy of the store. What differs is whether the address survives, and only one of them lets it.

The second thing to check on either, before you have thousands of them: whether email subscribers export as a CSV. Both collect them, and confirming the export path early costs nothing while confirming it late can cost you the list.

Where Framekit Fits, and Where It Does Not

We build a website builder rather than a creator store, so we are not a like-for-like alternative to either of these. Rather than leave that implicit, here is our position stated once, starting with the part that rules us out entirely for a large share of readers.

Framekit is an AI website builder for creative work: a portfolio, client galleries, and a digital store on one domain, at $0 free with a 5 percent sale fee, $9 Starter, $19 Pro at 3 percent, and $39 Business at 0 percent.

Where we are simply not an optionour store accepts one-time prices only and rejects recurring ones, so memberships, subscriptions, and payment plans are impossible on our platform. Both products in this comparison do them.

If your business has a monthly component, we are not an alternative at any price and one of the two above is the right purchase.

Where we cost moreat $3,000 a month, both $300 plans here reach 0 percent, and our Business plan costs $468 a year to do the same. Neither of these is a close call in our favour on price.

Where we differthe store sits on the same site as a portfolio and client galleries, so the traffic that finds your work also finds your offer, and it builds search authority for your own domain.

That matters if people find you by searching your name, and matters not at all if they only ever arrive from a bio link, which describes most of the audience for both products here.

How to Choose

In one linework down these questions in order and stop at the first one that describes you, because the fee question and the memberships question settle almost every case.

1. Do you sell under about $278 a month? Neither $300 plan. Use Beacons Free at 9 percent, or a free plan on a cheaper platform, until you pass that number.
2. Do you run a paid membership or sell courses? Beacons Creator Plus at $300 a year. Stan puts the equivalent tooling on a $948 plan.
3. Do you email a list of any real size? Beacons Creator Plus, which includes unlimited sends. Stan's email marketing is on Creator Pro.
4. Is your traffic almost entirely Instagram comments and DMs? Stan Store Creator, for AutoDM and a page built around one conversion path.
5. Do you want your own domain? Beacons, from the Creator plan at $8.33 a month. Stan does not offer one.
6. Do you want the simplest possible decision and a single offer? Stan Store Creator. Two plans, one path, no tier arithmetic.
7. Do people find you by searching your name rather than tapping a bio link? Neither. Put the store on a site you own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Beacons cheaper than Stan Store?

At the zero-fee tier they cost exactly the same: Beacons Creator Plus is $300 a year and Stan Store Creator is $300 a year, and neither takes a percentage of sales.

Beacons is cheaper below that, because it has a free plan and Stan does not, and it includes more at the same $300, notably courses, memberships, and unlimited email.

Does Stan Store take a cut of sales?

No. Stan's help centre states that Stan earns 0 percent from transactions and that you pay only the subscription plus your payment processor's fee, with Stripe's standard rate at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents.

Both of Stan's plans, Creator at $300 a year and Creator Pro at $948, are zero-fee.

Does Beacons take a cut of sales?

On its Free and Creator plans, yes: 9 percent. Seller fees drop to 0 percent on Creator Plus at $25 a month billed annually. Because 9 percent of $278 is $25, any creator selling more than roughly $278 a month is losing money by staying on a cheaper Beacons tier.

Which has the better free plan?

Beacons, because Stan Store does not have one at all, only a 14-day trial. Beacons Free includes unlimited digital products, a self-updating media kit, affiliate links, real-time analytics, 30 daily AI credits, and 50 email sends a month, at the cost of a 9 percent seller fee.

Can I use my own domain?

On Beacons, yes, included from the Creator plan at $8.33 a month billed annually. On Stan Store, no. For a store that will accumulate links over several years, that is the difference between an address that survives a platform change and one that does not.

Which is better for selling courses?

Beacons, on price, because course hosting with video is included in Creator Plus at $300 a year. But neither is a course platform in the sense of pacing, progress tracking, or certificates.

If the course is your main product rather than an add-on, a dedicated course platform will serve your students better than either of these.

Which is better for memberships?

Beacons Creator Plus, which includes unlimited memberships at $300 a year. Stan Store handles recurring revenue through payment plans, which sit on Creator Pro at $948 a year. Note that not every creator platform supports recurring billing at all, so check before committing.

Do these platforms handle sales tax?

Neither acts as merchant of record, so VAT and sales tax obligations on digital sales stay with you. If cross-border tax is a real exposure, a merchant-of-record platform is a better home for the checkout, and the link page can simply point at it.

When is Stan Store Creator Pro worth $948 a year?

When you need funnels, order bumps, dynamic pricing, payment plans, email marketing, and campaign tracking, and you are turning over enough that those tools change revenue rather than just adding capability.

The jump from Creator is $648 a year, so the tooling needs to produce more than that in additional sales to justify itself.

Can I move from one to the other?

Yes, and it is manual on both sides. Recreate the products, rebuild the page, and export your email subscribers as a CSV first. If you are on Stan, the address itself cannot move, so every link pointing at your Stan store needs updating.

Moving to Beacons with a custom domain means you will not have that problem again.

Final Verdict

Buy Beacons Creator Plus. At $300 a year it costs exactly what Stan Store Creator costs and includes courses, memberships, unlimited email sends, and buy-now-pay-later, plus a custom domain from the tier below. For most creators comparing these two, that is the whole answer.

Buy Stan Store Creator if your audience lives in Instagram comments and DMs, if AutoDM is a mechanic you will actually use, and if you want a page built around one conversion rather than a platform built around many options.

Those are genuine advantages and they are the reason Stan retains creators who could pay less elsewhere.

And if you are selling under $278 a month, buy neither. Beacons Free at 9 percent costs less than $300 a year until you pass that line, and the line is low enough that you will know when you cross it.

Where Framekit is not an option. Our store rejects recurring prices, so memberships, subscriptions, and payment plans are impossible on our platform.

Both of these do them, and if your business has a monthly component we are not an alternative at any price.

We are only relevant when the store belongs on the same domain as a portfolio and the traffic comes from search rather than a bio link.

Related readingthe best Stan Store alternatives, Linktree vs Beacons, and the best link in bio tools.