You probably picked your WordPress subscription plugin based on features. Maybe the setup looked easy, or it had the integrations you needed. What you might not have looked at closely is the fee structure.
Most subscription plugins charge a percentage on every transaction. Somewhere between 1% and 5%, depending on the plugin and the plan you are on. That is on top of what Stripe already charges you (1.5% + €0.25 in Europe, or 2.9% + 30¢ in the US).
Do the math on a napkin
Say you process €10,000 a month. At 3%, your plugin vendor takes €300 every month. That is €3,600 a year for software that connects your WordPress site to Stripe.
Scale that to €25,000 a month and you are handing over €9,000 a year. At €50,000, it is €18,000.
The annoying part: as your business grows, the fee grows with it. But the plugin does not do anything differently for you at €50,000 than it did at €5,000. You are just paying more because you are earning more.
Two pricing models, very different outcomes
Subscription plugins either charge a percentage per transaction or a flat annual license fee.
With percentage pricing, your costs scale with your revenue. The more you process, the more they take. With a flat license, you pay the same amount whether you process €5,000 or €500,000 a month.
The crossover point comes faster than most people expect. At just €500 a month in processing, a 3% fee already costs €180 a year. A €149 annual license is cheaper from day one at that volume. At €2,000 a month, the percentage model costs €720 a year. At €10,000, it is €3,600.
If you have paying customers, you have probably already passed the point where a flat fee makes more sense.
Things worth checking before you pick
Transaction fees are the obvious one, but they are not always obvious. Some plugins bundle them into a payment gateway add-on, so you do not see the percentage until you are already set up.
Stripe integration matters too. Plugins that use Stripe Checkout and the Billing Portal let Stripe handle PCI compliance and the payment UI. Plugins that build their own payment forms put that responsibility on you.
If you sell in Europe, check whether the plugin supports iDEAL, Bancontact, and SEPA Direct Debit. These are not niche payment methods here. They are how people actually pay.
And if you run anything usage-based like APIs or metered services, you will need more than flat-rate subscriptions. Not every plugin handles that.
How Profinto handles this
We charge a license fee. That is it. The free tier covers up to €2,500 in monthly processing with 3 subscription products. Paid plans start at €149 a year. No transaction fees, no percentage cuts.
Under the hood, the plugin connects to Stripe via OAuth, sends customers to Stripe Checkout, and lets them manage their own subscriptions through Stripe Billing Portal. European payment methods work on every plan, including the free one.
If you want the full backstory on why we went with flat pricing, we covered that in our first post. And if you are curious about who is behind this, we are a small team building e-commerce tools for WordPress.
