Looking for a Stan Store alternative? Here is how to choose one

Most creators do not go looking for a new storefront because they are bored. They go looking because something specific broke: the fees got noticeable, the page could not do what they needed, or the checkout stopped feeling like theirs. Stan Store popularized the one-link-storefront category, and that category is now crowded. The hard part is not finding an alternative. It is knowing which differences actually change your revenue.

This is the framework we use, and yes, we build one of these platforms. We will be explicit about where xoxo.bio is a good fit and where it is not.

1. Work out what you actually keep

Creator platforms price in three different ways, and they are not equivalent even when the headline number looks similar.

• Subscription only. A flat monthly fee. Your cost is fixed and predictable, so your effective rate falls as you sell more.
• Revenue share only. No monthly fee, but the platform takes a percentage of every sale. Cheap while you are small, expensive the moment you succeed.
• Both. A monthly fee and a per-transaction cut. Common on entry tiers, where the transaction cut is often the thing that quietly disappears if you upgrade.

Separate from all of that, there is payment processing. Stripe and PayPal charge their own percentage on every card, and no platform can remove it - anyone claiming otherwise is rolling it into their own take. When you compare platforms, compare the platform fee and treat processing as a constant.

For reference: xoxo.bio is subscription-only. Creator is $27/month, Creator Pro is $97/month, and the platform takes 0% of what you sell on either plan. At $2,000/month in sales, a 5% revenue share costs $100. At $10,000/month it costs $500. Flat pricing stops mattering when you are tiny and starts mattering a lot when you are not.

2. Find out whose Stripe account the money lands in

This is the question almost nobody asks and everybody should. There are two models:

Neither is inherently wrong - merchant-of-record platforms can handle sales tax for you, which is genuinely useful. But you should know which one you are signing up for before your first big launch, not during it. xoxo.bio uses Stripe Connect, so you sell through your own Stripe account and money moves on Stripe's schedule, not ours.

3. Check the product types against your next twelve months

Every platform in this category handles a simple digital download. The gaps appear at the edges, and the edges are where creators grow into.

1. Digital downloads. Files delivered instantly after payment. Table stakes.
2. Video courses. Ask whether video is hosted or just embedded from YouTube or Vimeo. Hosted video with a real player and per-lesson progress is a different product from a page of unlisted links.
3. Bookings. Coaching and consulting calls need availability, time zones, and a confirmation flow - not a link to a third-party scheduler that breaks your branding.
4. Memberships. Recurring access is the difference between a launch spike and a monthly floor.
5. Email capture. If you cannot collect emails, you are renting your audience from an algorithm.

xoxo.bio covers all five natively - downloads, hosted video courses, bookings with time zone support, memberships, and email signup blocks - plus plain links for everything that lives elsewhere. The point is not the feature count. It is that adding your second product type should not mean adding your second subscription.

4. Look at how much of the page you actually control

Storefront builders tend to give you a template and a color picker. That is fine until your page looks like every other page in your niche, which is exactly what happens when ten thousand creators share four templates.

Things worth checking: can you set button shape and style, not just color? Can you change the header layout? Can you reorder and group products with section headers? Can you upload a real background? Can you edit the page while looking at it, or do you edit in a form and hope?

xoxo.bio is built around editing the page directly - you click the thing you want to change and change it, and it saves as you go. Themes, button shapes, layouts, and header styles are all yours. There is no preview-versus-editor gap because the editor is the page.

5. Price the switch, not just the destination

Moving costs you something even when the new platform is better. Budget for:

• Rebuilding product listings and re-uploading files (usually an evening, not a week).
• Updating the link in every bio, pinned post, and email footer you control.
• Re-onboarding active members if you run a recurring product - this is the painful one.
• A short overlap period where both platforms are live and you are paying for both.

Where xoxo.bio is and is not the right answer

Good fit: you are selling, or about to sell, digital products to an audience you already have. You want the money in your own Stripe account, you would rather pay a predictable monthly fee than a share of every sale, and you care what the page looks like.

Poor fit: you sell nothing yet and just need a free list of links - a flat subscription is a bad deal at zero revenue. You need sales-tax handling as merchant of record. Or you ship physical inventory, which needs real shipping and stock tooling.

If you are in the first group, you can build the whole page and test a live purchase during the 21-day trial before you move your bio link. See pricing for the full breakdown of both plans.