SamCart vs Stan Store: which should you use?
·Founder, Stakk
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18 October 2026
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7 min read
Use Stan Store if your buyers find you on social media and you want courses, bookings and a community for $29 a month. Use SamCart if you run your own sales pages and want A/B testing, cart recovery and team seats, from $79 a month. Stan takes 0% of each sale, and SamCart lists no added fee on its own processor beyond card processing. The gap that matters most is order bumps and one-click upsells: Stan puts them on its $99 plan, SamCart on its $199 plan. Checked 12 October 2026.
Both are good at what they are built for. They are just built for different sellers, and the price of the same feature is very different on each.
What is the difference between SamCart and Stan Store?
Stan Store is a storefront for creators. SamCart is a checkout and sales page platform for businesses. You can see it in what the cheapest plan gives you.
Stan's $29 Creator plan includes a storefront that works on phone and desktop, calendar and booking tools, an unlimited course builder, recurring subscriptions, lead magnets, community features and Stan AutoDM, which answers Instagram messages for you. It is set up for someone whose buyers arrive from a social profile.
SamCart's $79 Core plan includes unlimited pages, products and checkouts, an AI assistant, a courses app, cart abandonment emails and its integration engine, with one team seat. Pro at $199 adds A/B testing, an affiliate center, advanced analytics, third-party payment processors and ten team seats. SamCart says you can sell digital products, courses, services, subscriptions and physical goods.
So they overlap more than you might think. Both host courses and both sell subscriptions. The real difference is the kind of business each one expects you to run, and what it charges before you get the tools that raise the value of each order.
How much do SamCart and Stan Store cost?
Stan Store is $29 or $99 a month. SamCart is $79 or $199 a month. Neither has a free plan, though SamCart offers a 7-day free trial and a third tier, Done For You, that is priced on a call.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Per-sale fee | Order bump and upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SamCart Core | $79 | $711 a year | 2.9% + 30c on SamPay | No |
| SamCart Pro | $199 | $1,791 a year | 2.9% + 30c on SamPay | Both |
| Stakk | $0 | No plan | 10% + $0.50, card processing included | Both |
| Stan Store Creator | $29 | $300 a year | 0% to Stan, Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 | No |
| Stan Store Creator Pro | $99 | $948 a year | 0% to Stan, Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 | Both |
The prices come from SamCart's pricing page and Stan's plan comparison. Switch SamCart's page to yearly and it takes 25% off: Core shows $59 a month, billed $711 a year, and Pro shows $149 a month, billed $1,791 a year. If you want the full picture of one side, there is a breakdown of what Stan Store costs and one of SamCart's pricing.
What does each one take from every sale?
Mostly card processing. Stan takes nothing for itself, and SamCart lists no added fee on its own processor beyond a small tax collection rate.
Stan's fees article says Stan earns 0% from transactions. You pay Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 on a US card, 1.5% more when the buyer is in another country, and a payout fee of 0.25% + $0.25 each time you cash out, with a $1 minimum. A sale paid through PayPal costs PayPal's 3.49% plus a fixed fee instead.
SamCart's pricing page lists its own processor, SamPay, at 2.9% + 30c on both plans, with "no added fees on SamPay". The same table lists a tax collection rate of 50 basis points on Core and 35 on Pro, which is 0.5% and 0.35%. The page does not say what that rate applies to, so ask SamCart before you count it.
On a $50 sale by US card, both come to $1.75 in processing. Per sale, they are close to even, which makes the monthly fee the real price gap. Stakk works the other way round: no monthly fee, and 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, which is $5.50 on that same $50 sale.
Which one has order bumps and one-click upsells?
Both do, and both keep them off the cheaper plan. Stan needs Creator Pro at $99 a month. SamCart needs Pro at $199.
Our own arithmetic on both vendors' published monthly prices. Billed yearly, Stan's Creator Pro is $948 a year and SamCart's Pro is $1,791 a year.
Stan's order bump sits on the checkout page, one per product. Post-purchase offers live in Stan's funnels, which are also Creator Pro only. Its funnels help article allows up to 20 pages and up to five levels of upsells and downsells. Funnels take card payments only, and you cannot add an order bump inside a funnel. Stan's articles do not say whether the buyer types their card again for an upsell. There is more on this in whether Stan Store has order bumps.
SamCart's Pro plan lists "1-Click Upsells + Order Bumps". Its pricing page describes the upsell as a one-click upgrade after checkout, and the bump as an extra product added at checkout with a single checkbox. Core has neither.
Who holds your money on SamCart and Stan Store?
On Stan, Stan does until you cash out. On SamCart, the pages I read do not say.
Stan's Stripe setup article says you create a new Custom Stripe account that Stan manages, and that you cannot connect a Stripe account you already have. Your sales show in Stan's Income tab. Stan's help center says funds take 2 to 7 business days to settle inside Stripe, usually around 2, before you can cash them out, and each cash out carries the payout fee above.
SamCart calls SamPay its own processor, powered by Stripe and available on every plan. Its pricing page puts third-party processors on Pro, and its processors page names Stripe, PayPal and Authorize.net. I could not find a SamCart page that says where SamPay money sits before it reaches your bank, so I am not going to guess.
On Stakk the charge goes straight into your own Stripe account, and Stripe pays your bank on the schedule you choose. We never hold it. Which platforms let you use your own Stripe account has the full list if that matters to you.
Should you pick SamCart or Stan Store?
Pick Stan Store if your buyers come from your social profile and you want products, courses, bookings and a community in one place. The $29 plan covers all of that, and it costs $50 a month less than SamCart's cheapest plan. It is the better pick for a creator still finding out what sells, and if order bumps are why you are comparing the two, Stan gets you there for $100 a month less.
Pick SamCart if you send traffic to your own sales pages and want to test them. A/B testing, cart abandonment emails, ten team seats and third-party processors are on its list, and none of those appear in Stan's plan comparison. It is the better pick for a business with a team and an ad budget, where a $199 plan is one line among many.
When is Stakk the wrong choice instead of either?
If you need courses, bookings, a community, email marketing or subscriptions, Stakk is the wrong choice and either of these will serve you better. Stakk has none of those, sells in US dollars only, caps prices at $999 and has no link-in-bio page builder. And if cost per sale is the whole decision, use Systeme.io or Whop instead. Systeme.io charges no transaction fees on any plan, including a free one that never expires, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card with no monthly cost. Both take less per sale than our 10% + $0.50.
What Stakk does differently is the checkout. The order bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two. The upsell after payment is one tap against the card the buyer just used. It is a second charge, so our fee applies to it again. Both are on every account with nothing held back for a $99 or $199 plan, which fewer platforms do than you would expect, and the layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.
Want an order bump and an upsell with no monthly plan?
Stakk is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, and no monthly fee. You connect your own Stripe account, add a bump and an upsell to any product, and a month with no sales costs you nothing. When a sale comes in, the money is in your Stripe account, not in a balance we hold.