A free Stripe plugin is a little like a free puppy. The adoption is free; the ongoing costs are where the commitment shows up. In this case the ongoing cost is a small percentage of every payment you take, and at some point it quietly overtakes the price of just buying the thing.
This guide breaks down what Stripe payments on WordPress actually cost, layer by layer, and gives you a one-line formula plus a fill-in worksheet to find your own break-even point. No spreadsheets required, and the whole exercise takes about five minutes.
The two layers of cost (only one is a choice)
Every Stripe payment on your WordPress site has two cost layers stacked on it:
- Layer 1: Stripe’s processing fee. For US domestic cards online, Stripe’s standard rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction, with added fees in some cases, such as international cards or currency conversion. Every option in this guide pays it, nobody can waive it, and there are no monthly or setup fees on top. [1]
- Layer 2: your plugin’s fee. This layer is entirely your choice. Some routes add nothing at all, some add 3 to 5%, and some replace the percentage with a flat yearly license.
Since Layer 1 is identical everywhere, the whole decision lives in Layer 2. Here is what the popular routes charge there:
| Route | Plugin fee (Layer 2) | What removes it |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe Payment Links (no plugin) | $0, ever | Nothing to remove |
| WPFullPay free tier | 5% per transaction | Basic license: €79.50/yr intro, €159 on renewal |
| WP Simple Pay Lite | 3% per transaction | Personal license: $49.50/yr intro, $99 on renewal |
A small footnote on Layer 1 before moving on: the fixed 30¢ in Stripe’s rate means tiny payments carry a heavier percentage than big ones. A $10 donation effectively costs about 5.9% in Stripe fees, while a $100 invoice costs about 3.2%. Nothing in Layer 2 changes that physics, so if you collect lots of very small payments, judge your total cost by your real average payment size, not the headline 2.9%. 🪙
Yes, the first row is the plot twist: if a hosted checkout page covers your needs, the plugin-fee question disappears completely. The rest of this guide is for when you need an embedded form, which is when Layer 2 gets interesting. (Quick disclosure: WPFullPay is part of the ThemeIsle family, like this blog.)
The one formula that settles it 🧮
💡 Break-even volume = license price ÷ plugin fee rate. Take less than this per year and the free tier wins. Take more and the license wins.
Plug in the real numbers and you get the two thresholds worth memorizing:
- WPFullPay: €79.50 ÷ 5% = €1,590 per year at introductory pricing, or €159 ÷ 5% = €3,180 once you are on renewal pricing. [2]
- WP Simple Pay: $49.50 ÷ 3% = $1,650 per year introductory, or $99 ÷ 3% = $3,300 on renewal. The vendor uses the exact same $1,650 example on its own comparison page, which is a nice sign the formula is honest. [3]
Notice the trap hiding between the two columns: introductory prices roughly double after year one, so the right answer can flip at renewal. A site collecting €2,500 a year pays €125 on the free tier, which loses to the €79.50 introductory license in year one but beats the €159 renewal from year two onward. The correct move is to take the introductory year and re-run the formula at renewal with the full price. 📅
Three businesses, three different answers
Formulas are nice. Examples are nicer. Here is the same math applied to three realistic sites (plugin-side costs only, since Stripe’s own fees are identical everywhere):
| The site | Annual volume | Free WPFullPay (5%) | Free Lite (3%) | Recommended route |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekend bakery taking preorders | $3,600 | $180 | $108 | Payment Links ($0 plugin fee) or a license; free tiers both lose |
| Consultant invoicing clients | $24,000 | $1,200 | $720 | License (or Payment Links; invoices tolerate a redirect) |
| Small shop with an embedded form | $96,000 | $4,800 | $2,880 | License, and multi-site tiers if more shops are coming |
The weekend bakery is the interesting case. At $3,600 a year it sits above both break-even lines, so even the “cheap” 3% route costs more than a license. But a preorder form for Saturday sourdough does not need subscriptions or donation goals, and a hosted payment page inside a nicely branded checkout covers it for $0 in plugin fees. The right answer for most hobby-plus volume is boring: skip the plugin layer entirely.
The consultant is the volume case. At $24,000 a year the 3% option costs $720 annually, seven times the license. Invoices also forgive a redirect, because the client already knows who they are paying. Either a license or Payment Links wins; the choice between them is whether the invoice page should live on the consultant’s domain or Stripe’s, and that is a branding decision, not a financial one.
The small shop is where features start arguing back. It needs the embedded form (its checkout is part of a sales page that converts cold visitors), so Payment Links is off the table, and at $96,000 a year the license is essentially free relative to the 5% alternative. The only remaining question is which tier, and that is a features list to check against what the shop actually sells.
Two lessons hide in that table. First, “free” gets expensive fast: the small shop pays more in plugin fees every three weeks than a license costs all year. Second, the honest answer is sometimes neither plugin: the bakery and the consultant do not strictly need an embedded form, and a hosted payment page costs them nothing beyond Stripe’s own fees. Choose an embedded plugin for its features (donations, on-domain checkout, subscriptions with a customer portal), not by default.
The three-year picture 📊
Percentage fees scale with your success, while license fees mostly sit still. At $10,000 of annual volume, here is the three-year total for each Layer-2 route (first year at introductory pricing, years two and three at renewal):
| Route | Year 1 | Years 2+3 | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| WPFullPay free (5% of $10k) | $500 | $1,000 | $1,500 |
| WPFullPay Basic license | €79.50 | €318 | €397.50 |
| WP Simple Pay Lite (3% of $10k) | $300 | $600 | $900 |
| WP Simple Pay Personal license | $49.50 | $198 | $247.50 |
| Stripe Payment Links | $0 | $0 | $0 |
WPFullPay publishes in euros and WP Simple Pay in dollars, so compare each license against its own free tier rather than against each other. Either way, the shape is the same: at steady volume, three years of percentage fees buy the license several times over. 💸 And the license is not only a fee remover; both plugins bundle a year of updates and real support into the price, which is the part you appreciate the first time a payment form breaks before a launch.
Running more than one site changes the arithmetic again. WPFullPay’s licenses cover one site each, so three sites means three licenses, while WP Simple Pay’s higher tiers bundle three to unlimited sites into one plan. If you maintain payments across several sites, price the multi-site tiers before assuming the per-site math above still applies. 🗂️
Your turn: the five-minute worksheet
Grab last year’s numbers (or your best honest guess) and fill these in:
| Line | Your number |
|---|---|
| A. Average monthly card volume | $______ |
| B. Annual volume (A × 12) | $______ |
| C. Your free plugin’s fee rate (3% or 5%) | ______% |
| D. What the free tier costs you yearly (B × C) | $______ |
| E. The license that removes it (use the renewal price) | $______ |
| Verdict: if D > E, buy the license. If D < E, stay free. | ______ |
Filled in, it looks like this. Say your site took $850 a month last year: A = $850, B = $10,200, C = 5% on the free WPFullPay tier, so D = $510 a year in plugin fees. E = €159 for the Basic renewal. D is more than three times E, so the worksheet says buy, and the same $10,200 on WP Simple Pay Lite (D = $306 vs E = $99) says the same thing louder. Two minutes, one answer, and the answer survives contact with either plugin.
One refinement: if your volume is growing, run line B with next year’s guess instead of last year’s reality. Break-even decisions made with stale numbers are how sites end up tipping their plugin 5% of a record month. 🙈
💡 PRO TIP: put a yearly reminder in your calendar for this worksheet. Plugin prices change, your volume changes, and last year’s right answer expires quietly.
When the free tier is genuinely the right answer
None of this is an argument against free plugins; they are the correct choice more often than the marketing for licenses admits. Stay free when your volume sits under the break-even line, when you are testing an idea and might not take payments in six months, or when the free tier’s features already cover everything you sell. WPFullPay’s free tier includes subscriptions and donations, and WP Simple Pay Lite covers clean one-off payment forms, so “free” does not mean “crippled” here. [4]
The only genuinely wrong answers are paying a percentage on serious volume because switching felt like work, and buying a license for a form that collects $30 a month. Everything in between is a five-minute worksheet.
Want the feature-by-feature view instead of the math? The companion guide compares Stripe Payment Links vs embedded WordPress forms in plain language. And if you ran the worksheet for your own site, share the answer in the comments. 👇
Sources
- [1] Stripe pricing: processing rates and fee structure
- [2] WPFullPay pricing: Basic license and renewal terms
- [3] WP Simple Pay Lite vs Pro: the 3% fee and $1,650 example
- [4] WPFullPay on WordPress.org: free-tier features
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