What does it really cost to run your own teacher store?
A store of your own costs a fixed amount each month for hosting, a small yearly fee for a domain, about 3% plus 30 cents per order in card fees, usually something for an email tool, and several hours of your time. In money it is cheap per sale. The expensive part is that it brings no buyers of its own.
The costs, one by one
Hosting or a platform fee
This is the fixed monthly cost of having a store at all. As of October 2026:
- Payhip has a free plan that takes 5% of each sale, a $29 a month plan that takes 2%, and a $99 a month plan that takes 0%. Card processing is extra on all three.
- Shopify’s Basic plan is $39 a month, or $29 a month when billed yearly, with a card rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents.
- A WordPress and WooCommerce store needs hosting and someone to look after it. Our starter store is $25 a month, or $250 a year, with hosting included.
A domain name
Your web address is a yearly charge from a domain registrar. It is a small cost next to the others. Check the renewal price, not only the first-year price, before you buy.
Card fees
Every card payment has a processing fee. Stripe’s published rate for US cards, as of October 2026, is 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful transaction, with more added for international cards.
The 30 cents is charged per order, so small orders lose a bigger share:
| Order total | Card fee | You keep | Share kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3.00 | $0.39 | $2.61 | 87% |
| $5.00 | $0.45 | $4.55 | 91% |
| $10.00 | $0.59 | $9.41 | 94% |
| $30.00 | $1.17 | $28.83 | 96% |
This is one reason bundles do well on your own store.
An email tool
You need a way to collect email addresses and send newsletters. Many email services have a free tier for small lists and charge more as the list grows. Prices vary a lot between services, so check the current pricing page of the one you are considering and look at what it will cost at 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers, not only on day one.
Sales tax
On TPT the marketplace collects and remits sales tax. On your own store the software can collect it, but you register and file. For a small store that is mostly a time cost. If you pay an accountant or a filing service, it is a money cost too. This is not tax advice. Ask an accountant how your state treats digital downloads.
Your time
This is the big one, and it is easy to leave off the list.
- Setting up: loading products, writing descriptions, making covers. If you have 150 resources, this is days of work unless someone does it for you.
- Customer questions: lost download links, wrong email addresses, school purchase orders. On TPT, the marketplace handles much of this.
- Getting visitors: emails, pins, blog posts. This never stops.
Compared with the marketplace cut
Here is what you would keep from the same amount of sales in three places. The own-store column uses our $25 a month starter price and a $5 average order, and leaves out the domain, the email tool and your time. The TPT columns use a $5 average price in orders over $3, so Basic keeps 49% after its 30-cent fee per resource and Exclusive keeps 77.5%. Exclusive’s $59.95 annual fee is left out.
| Monthly sales | Own store: after card fees and $25 hosting | TPT Exclusive (77.5%) | TPT Basic (49%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $91.10 − $25 = $66.10 | $77.50 | $49.00 |
| $500 | $455.50 − $25 = $430.50 | $387.50 | $245.00 |
| $2,000 | $1,822.00 − $25 = $1,797.00 | $1,550.00 | $980.00 |
TPT rates are from its Seller Fees and Payout Rates page and its Exclusive Seller announcement.
Why that table is unfair to TPT
The table compares the same sales in each place. In real life they are not the same sales.
TPT’s cut pays for something: teachers who are already there, searching. A store of your own does not come with marketplace search traffic. A hundred dollars of sales on TPT may arrive with no effort from you this month. A hundred dollars on your own store exists only because you sent an email, pinned a pin or wrote a post.
So the fair way to read the table is this. At $100 a month of own-store sales, the fixed cost eats a third of it and Exclusive would have paid more. At $500 and above, the fixed cost fades and your own store keeps the most per dollar. The question is never whether your own store keeps more per sale. It is whether you can bring it enough sales.
There is one more cost for anyone coming from Premium. From January 1, 2027, selling digital resources on your own store means being a Basic seller on TPT, where a $10 sale pays $5.20 where Exclusive would pay $7.75. That drop in TPT income is part of what your own store costs you. It is usually much larger than the hosting bill. The rules are in TPT’s Exclusive Seller FAQs.
About us
Up At Last builds and hosts stores for teacher-sellers. The starter store is $25 a month with hosting included. Product loading, email list setup and membership setup are add-ons. We run our own teacher store, Literacy Stations, the same way.
Up At Last is not affiliated with or endorsed by Teachers Pay Teachers.
What to do next
- Run the free calculator with your TPT sales and your current sales elsewhere.
- Add up the fixed costs for the option you are considering: platform or hosting, domain, email tool. Check each one’s current pricing page.
- Estimate your hours honestly, for setup and for each month after.
- If you want a quote for a store with your catalog loaded, get in touch.