Why Tokolane
You are almost certainly comparing us against somewhere you already sell. So this page is the evidence for the pitch rather than the pitch — and it ends with the list of things we haven't built, because a comparison page with no losses on it is one you'd be right to ignore.
Prices and plans are on the landing page; the contractual detail is in the merchant FAQ.
The short version
- Flat monthly price, 0% of your sales.
- Plans differ in how fast we answer. Nothing else.
- Stripe settles to your bank. We can't touch it.
- Per-store scoping plus row-level security in the database.
- No per-seat AI upsell. Bring your own key if you'd rather.
- Mobile-first storefronts, two-tap checkout, wallets up top.
What's actually different
The bill doesn't grow because you had a good month
Tokolane charges $49, $99 or $149 a month and takes 0% of what you sell — not on any plan, not above any revenue threshold. A platform that takes a percentage is a partner in your growth in one direction only: the month your marketing finally works is the month its invoice goes up, for doing exactly what it did in the quiet months.
The price you sign up at is the price you keep — a later change to the list price doesn't reprice a subscription that already exists — and paid yearly it is ten months for twelve. Your card processing fees are Stripe's own and are charged by Stripe, not by us.
Every feature is on every plan
Starter, Growth and Scale get the same catalogue, storefront, checkout, discounts, gift cards, reviews, returns, shipping, suppliers, appointments, pop-up events and storefront assistant. What the higher plans buy is a faster answer from us — two business days on Starter, one on Growth, four business hours on Scale — and anything that stops a live store taking money is treated as urgent on every plan.
There is no add-on marketplace, so there is no version of this where a feature you were shown in a demo turns out to cost $19 a month from a third party who can deprecate it. Changing plan switches nothing off: the only thing that changes is the reply time.
We never hold your money
Payments run through your Stripe account, and Stripe settles directly to your bank on their normal payout schedule. We never take custody of your funds — not as a float, not overnight, not at all. This is worth being precise about because it isn't a promise, it's an architecture: we could not withhold a payout if we wanted to, because the money is never in an account we control.
The consequence is that you are the merchant of record. The contract is between you and your customer, the receipt has your business on it, and refunds and chargebacks are yours to handle in Stripe. That is also why your registered name, address and contact details have to be filled in before you can publish.
One merchant reading another's data takes two failures, not one
Every query in the application is scoped to a single store, and the database carries row-level security policies underneath that. Both have to fail before one merchant sees another's orders — which is the only version of multi-tenancy worth trusting, because the application-level check is the one a future bug will eventually miss.
Card details never touch our servers at all: checkout hands off to Stripe, so nothing here ever sees a card number.
The AI is included, and you can point it at your own key
The storefront assistant and the writing tools run on the platform's key by default, at no extra cost on any plan. Settings → AI lets you point them at your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Google key instead — in which case that usage is billed to you by them and not by us, and we stop being in the middle of it.
Built for the phone the sale actually happens on
Roughly three in four shoppers arrive on a phone, so the storefront is tuned for that first rather than scaled down from a desktop layout: wallet payments sit above the card form, and checkout is two taps for a returning shopper.
The two shapes of bill
Most platforms bill a subscription plus a percentage of every sale, and sell a good part of the feature list as monthly add-ons. We bill the subscription and stop. Which comes out cheaper depends entirely on how much you sell — so here is the comparison in the only form that stays true, the shape of each bill rather than someone else's current price list.
| What you're charged for | Percentage platforms | Tokolane |
|---|---|---|
| Platform subscription | Monthly, by tier | Monthly, by tier |
| Share of each sale | A percentage, often reduced by paying more | None, on every plan |
| Card processing | Your processor's rate | Stripe's rate, charged by Stripe |
| Reviews, filtering, discounts, cart recovery | Usually paid apps, billed monthly each | Included |
| Higher tier unlocks | Features, and a smaller cut | A faster reply from support |
| A record month | A bigger invoice | The same invoice |
The honest reading: at low volume a percentage plan can be the cheaper one, and we'd rather say so than have you work it out afterwards. The crossover is wherever your monthly percentage plus your app subscriptions passes the flat price — and it arrives sooner than most merchants expect, because the app subscriptions are the half nobody adds up.
What we haven't built yet
Not a roadmap and not a maybe — these are gaps today, and each one is a reason somebody has chosen not to use us.
You can't map your own domain yet
Your store lives at tokolane.com/store/your-name. Custom domains aren't built. When they are, the address you already have keeps working — but if your own domain is non-negotiable today, this isn't the platform for you today.
One account, one store
A second store needs a second account and a second subscription.
Exporting everything is a conversation, not a button
Your catalogue exports to CSV from the Products screen, in the same format the importer takes. Orders and customers don't have a one-click export yet — ask and we'll get them to you. If that matters to your decision, say so when you write in: it's a gap we'd rather close than argue about.
Invite emails aren't sent
You can add your team under Settings → Members with the right roles, but nobody gets an email about it. Someone you invite is linked automatically the first time they sign in with the address you invited, so you have to tell them yourself.
Worth a look if…
- You're paying a percentage of revenue and it's started to hurt.
- Your monthly app bill has quietly overtaken your platform bill.
- You sell in person as well as online — pop-ups, road shows, appointments.
- You'd rather have one bill that doesn't move than a cheap headline rate.
Look elsewhere if…
- You need your own domain on the storefront today.
- You run several brands and want them under one login.
- You want a marketplace of thousands of third-party apps to assemble.
- Your payments can't go through Stripe, or Stripe can't pay out to your country.
See it before you decide
Three ways, in increasing order of effort. Open a live demo store — those are real storefronts running on this platform, and they cost you nothing but a click. Request a demo and we'll walk your own catalogue through it. Or start the 14-day trial — no card, and you can build the whole store during it.
Comparing against something specific and want a straight answer about it? Write to sales@tokolane.com. If they do it better, we'll say so.