For bands · from a fan
Own your table. A path off Shopify, one rung at a time.
You don’t have to leave. Rung 0 takes an hour, costs nothing, and makes the choice yours. The rest is here when you want it.
Shopify is good software. The trouble is the dependency: one company’s plan prices, fees and terms sit between you and your fans; its checkout recognizes a fan across every Shopify store; and the store is rented, not owned. Independence here means six things.
- Your domain
- Registered in your name at a registrar you control. The store lives at shop.yourband.com, so it can move without the address changing.
- Your list
- Fans’ emails exported and kept in a tool that isn’t your store.
- Your catalogue
- Products, images and orders exported monthly, and a plain feed anyone can read without scraping.
- Your payments
- A processor account in your name (Stripe, PayPal, Square), so the money path doesn’t change when the store does.
- Your fans, untracked
- No pixels you didn’t choose. No recognition of your fans across other people’s stores.
- Your exit
- A tested way out, so a platform’s terms never quietly become yours.
The ladder
Own the exits. Stay where you are.
An hour. $0. Check who owns your domain; if you bought it through Shopify, transfer it to a registrar of your own. Export products, customers and orders as CSV and put them in a folder; repeat monthly. Start a mailing list outside the store and put the sign-up on your site, not only at checkout. Remove the Meta and Google pixels you don’t use. Keep the public product feed on (it is by default) and link your store from your homepage with a plain link, which is how fan tools find you. Don’t switch payment providers while on Shopify: the Basic plan adds 2% to every sale that doesn’t go through Shopify Payments.
Gain: you’re portable. Lose: nothing; fans notice nothing.
A lighter hosted store.
A weekend. $0–30 a month. Big Cartel: free for five products, $15 a month for fifty, $30 for five hundred, no commission, your own Stripe or PayPal account for the money. Bandzoogle: a whole band site with a commission-free store from about $8 to $15 a month. Import the CSV from rung 0, set redirects on the old store for ninety days, update the link on your homepage, and tell this site so your fans’ alerts follow.
Gain: the fixed cost drops by two thirds; no platform cut. Lose: apps like bundles and pre-order timers, some checkout polish, and Big Cartel’s product limits.
A second table for records.
An afternoon. No monthly fee. Bandcamp takes 10% of physical sales plus 4–6% processing, pays daily, and emails your followers when you post something. Subvert is a co-operative owned by artists, labels, workers and supporters that opened to the public in May 2026: 0% platform fee, paid for by optional buyer contributions at checkout; it sells digital music today and says physical media and merch are coming. These are good places for records and a second door for fans, not a replacement for an apparel store at volume, because 15% is the most expensive rate on this page once you’re selling more than a few hundred dollars a month.
Gain: fans who already live there; zero fixed cost. Lose: the highest percentage.
Your own store on open software.
A weekend to set up, an hour a month to keep. $11–40 a month for hosting. WooCommerce is free and open source, and your band site may be WordPress already. Payments through WooPayments or Stripe at 2.9% + 30¢, nothing to the platform. Free themes. A public product API that fan tools read. If you’d rather not run WordPress, a static site with Snipcart (2% a sale, or $20 a month under $1,000) and Stripe does the same for a small catalogue, and a five-item table can run on Stripe Payment Links with no store at all.
Gain: everything is yours; leaving is copying a folder; no terms but your host’s. Lose: you’re the sysadmin, or you pay a managed WordPress host to be.
Own the operation.
Ongoing. Ship it yourself with Pirate Ship, which is free and sells USPS and UPS at commercial rates, or use a fulfilment partner that connects to any store rather than one that owns your storefront. Share one store with label-mates, a collection per band, on software you own. Publish your table as a small feed file so any fan tool can read it without scraping. Claim your page here, and when you move, tell us; every fan’s alerts are attached to the band, not the store, so nothing breaks.
Gain: the whole path from fan to band is yours. Lose: the afternoons.
What it costs, at three sizes
Monthly cost to the band, fees included, at an average order of $40 with US cards. No apps, no shipping. Shopify on its monthly price; annual billing takes $10 off. Percent is the share of sales the band doesn’t keep. Rates read from the vendors’ pages on 10 September 2026.
| Store | $300 a month | $1,500 a month | $6,000 a month | Fixed | On each sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic | $50 · 17% | $94 · 6.3% | $258 · 4.3% | $39 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Big Cartel Platinum | $26 · 8.7% | $70 · 4.7% | $234 · 3.9% | $15 | 2.9% + 30¢ (Stripe) |
| Bandzoogle Standard | $25 · 8.4% | $69 · 4.6% | $233 · 3.9% | ~$14 | 2.9% + 30¢ (Stripe) |
| WooCommerce, managed host | $36 · 12% | $80 · 5.3% | $244 · 4.1% | ~$25 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Static site + Snipcart | $31 · 10% | $85 · 5.7% | $339 · 5.7% | $20 under $1k | 2% + 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Bandcamp (physical) | $45 · 15% | $225 · 15% | $900 · 15% | $0 | 10% + 4–6% |
The shape of the table is the argument. At a few hundred dollars a month the fixed fee is what hurts, and Shopify’s $39 takes a sixth of a small band’s sales; a lighter store halves that. At six thousand a month every hosted option lands near 4% and the money argument disappears; what’s left is ownership, which is the point of rungs 3 and 4. Bandcamp is the only line that never gets cheaper, which is why it’s a second table, not the table.
Let your own agent build it
If you use a coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor), paste the prompt below into it in an empty folder and answer its questions. It will do rung 0 with you, recommend a rung, build as much of the store as it can on your own domain, walk you through the few outside services that can’t be avoided (payments, a host, a mailing-list tool) without ever creating an account for you, test it, and leave you a README and the next steps. It is told never to add tracking and never to touch a price.
You are helping a band own its merch table: build as much of their own online store as possible on their own domain, using no outside services except the unavoidable ones (a payment processor, a host, and a mailing-list tool), and help them set those up step by step. Work in this folder. Follow these rules for the whole job. RULES - Never create an account anywhere on the band's behalf. When a service is needed, tell them exactly what to click and what it costs, wait, and continue when they say it's done. - Never put a secret (API keys, passwords) in a file that gets committed. Use environment variables and a .env file that is git-ignored. - Never add analytics, ad pixels, social pixels, link shorteners, or any third-party script. The store's only outside calls are to the payment processor. - Every price, stock number and product name is the band's. Never invent products, never change a price without being asked. - If a step costs money, say the amount before doing it. If a step is irreversible (DNS changes, cancelling a plan), confirm first. - Finish each session with a short summary: what was done, what the band must do next, the next three steps. STEP 1 — INTERVIEW (keep it short; ask everything at once) Ask for: the band's name; their official website and where the domain is registered; the current store URL (Shopify or otherwise) and roughly how many products; the sizes they sell; where orders ship from and who packs them; which payment accounts they already have (Stripe, PayPal, Square); the mailing-list tool they use, if any; what hosting they can log in to (Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, GitHub, a WordPress host); how comfortable they are with technical work; their monthly budget for the store; whether they want to keep running WordPress or would rather have a simple static site. STEP 2 — RUNG 0: OWN THE EXITS (do this even if nothing else happens) - Domain: confirm it is registered in the band's name at a registrar they control. If it was bought through Shopify, walk them through transferring it out. - Exports: from the Shopify admin, export Products (CSV with images), Customers (CSV) and Orders (CSV). Save them in ./exports/ with today's date. Tell them to repeat this monthly. - Mailing list: help them start a list outside the store (Buttondown, Mailchimp's free tier, or a self-hosted tool) and import the customer emails who opted in. Put the sign-up on their site, not only at checkout. - Tracking: list the Meta, Google, TikTok and other pixels in their Shopify settings and help them remove the ones they don't use. - Feed: confirm the store's public product feed is on (https://<store>/products.json returns products) and that the band's homepage links to the store with a plain link. - Do NOT switch payment providers while on Shopify: the Basic plan adds 2% to every sale that doesn't go through Shopify Payments. STEP 3 — RECOMMEND A RUNG (explain the trade-off in five lines, then wait for a yes) - 10 items or fewer: a static site with Stripe Payment Links. No cart, no platform, nothing to maintain. - Up to a few hundred items and no wish to run WordPress: a static site (Astro or Eleventy, or plain HTML) with Snipcart (2% a sale, or $20 a month under $1,000 in sales) and Stripe. Host it free on Cloudflare Pages, Netlify or GitHub Pages. - They already run WordPress: WooCommerce (free, open source) with WooPayments or Stripe at 2.9% + 30¢, on a managed WordPress host they pay for ($11–40 a month). - They want hosted and simple: Big Cartel (free for 5 products, $15 a month for 50, $30 for 500, no commission) with their own Stripe. Skip the build steps; help with the import and the cutover. Read the current rates from the vendors' pages before quoting them; numbers change. STEP 4 — BUILD IT (as far as you can without their credentials) - Scaffold the store in this folder. Product pages come from the Shopify export: keep each product's handle so URLs stay /products/<handle> and old links can be redirected one-to-one. - Bring in the product images from the export's image URLs; store them in the repo or the host's asset storage, not hotlinked from Shopify. - Sizes and variants: model them; show sold-out sizes struck through, as the store publishes them. - Cart and checkout: Snipcart or Stripe Checkout, in test mode until the band has activated their account. - Shipping: collect the address at checkout; start with flat rates by region from the band's current settings. - Redirects: generate a list of old Shopify URLs → new URLs and a redirects file for the host. - Publish /merch.json in the open merch feed format (spec: https://whatsthemerch.com/merch.json), regenerated whenever products change, so fan tools can read the table without scraping. - Add schema.org Product JSON-LD on each product page, a sitemap, and an RSS feed of new items. - No third-party scripts. Self-host any font. Pass a basic accessibility check (labels, contrast, keyboard). - Check it on a phone-sized viewport. STEP 5 — OUTSIDE SERVICES (the band at the keyboard; you dictate) - Payments: Stripe (or PayPal or Square) in the band's name. Activate the account, get the publishable and secret keys into .env, turn on Checkout or Payment Links. Tell them the fee: 2.9% + 30¢ on US cards. - Host: Cloudflare Pages, Netlify or GitHub Pages for a static site (free); a managed WordPress host for WooCommerce. Deploy from this folder; give them the preview URL. - DNS: at their registrar, point shop.<band>.com at the host (a CNAME). Explain propagation. - Mailing list: the tool from rung 0; add the sign-up form to the site. - Postage: Pirate Ship (free, USPS and UPS at commercial rates) or a fulfilment partner that connects to any store. STEP 6 — TEST - Place a test order end to end in test mode; refund it. Check shipping rates, the confirmation email, the sold-out state, and the redirects. Validate /merch.json against the spec. Check the site with third-party scripts blocked: it should work exactly the same. STEP 7 — CUTOVER - Switch DNS. Keep the Shopify redirects on for 90 days, then export the last orders and cancel the plan once the last order has shipped. Update the store link on the band's homepage, Bandcamp and social bios. Claim the band's page at https://whatsthemerch.com/claim so fans' alerts follow the move. STEP 8 — HAND-OFF - Write a README: how to add a product, change a price, mark a size sold out, ship an order, export data, and where every account lives. List the next steps: a fulfilment partner if the closet fills up, a shared store with label-mates, a second table on Bandcamp for records, and the monthly export habit. Start with STEP 1 now.
Written by a fan.No tracking on this link.Numbers checked 10 Sep 2026.