4 Platforms For Making Money In 2025
If you're a creator or solopreneur eager to start making money online in 2025, you're in the right place. Today, we'll explore the differences between four platforms: Squarespace, Kit, Podia, and Stan Store.
I’m here to help you figure out which platform aligns best with your goals.
Who This Is For
Quick disclaimer: this guide is primarily for creators or solopreneurs who are just getting started making money. If you're a well-established business, this guide isn’t tailored to your needs.
Also: if you haven't checked out my video on why you don't need a website or logo to start, it may be worth a look — especially the bit about logos. As a solopreneur, your face is your most memorable visual part of your “brand identity.”
Understanding Payment Fees and Platforms
A caveat before diving deep: we're focusing on money-making platforms because, typically, when you're just beginning, you don't have a lot to spare.
Each of these platforms requires Stripe to process payments, charging a standard 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. However, some, like Kit, may bump this up to 3.5%. Squarespace and Podia have additional charges depending on your plan tier. We'll cover these fees further as we go on.
The Platform Comparison Table
| Features | Squarespace | Kit | Podia | Stan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site Builder | Full | Landing pages | Full | Landing pages |
| Store | $23/month +3% or $28/mo | Included, +0.6% on top of Stripe norm | $33/mo +5% or $75/mo | $29/mo or $99/mo |
| Design Flex | Extensive | Moderate | Moderate | Minimal |
| Your Domain | Yes | Yes | Yes | No (soon?) |
| $7-68/month | Free to 10K with 1 automation or $9/month & up | $7/month & up | Transactional free + automations on $99/plan only | |
| Scheduling | $16/month & up | Nope (use Cal) | Nope (Cal) | Included |
| Courses | 9% fee & up | Nope (use Circle) | Included | Included |
| Subscriptions | 9% fee & up | Included | Included | Included |
| Community | Nope (Circle) | Nope (Circle) | Included | Included |
| Affiliates | Nope (Peach’s) | Not really (Sparkloop) | On $75/plan only | On $99/plan only |
| Upsells | Nope | Yes | Yes | On $99/plan only |
| Coupons | Yes | Yes | Yes | On $99/plan only |
| Zapier | Yes | Yes | On $75/plan only | Yes |
| Cost with 2K contacts + no affiliates upsells coupons | $156/mo +9% on subscriptions | $140/month +0.6% on all sales | $53/month + 5% or $95/month | $29/month with Kit free emails |
| All features & 10K contacts | $176/month +9% on subs | $189/month +0.6% on all sales | $125/month | $99/month |
Add Ons
Email Marketing
If you wanted to get started with email marketing cheaply while using Squarespace or Stan, you could use Zapier to add customers and contacts to Kit or Mailerlite. Kit gives you up to 10K subscribers for free, with little to no automation. Mailerlite gives you up to 1K subscribers for free, with unlimited automations. The pros and cons to each is obvious.
Courses + Community
Circle almost got its own column in this comparison, but they don’t let you sell products or offer any kind of landing page or site builder. Circle can handle community for $39/month or community & courses for $89/month. They have an email marketing add-on that starts at $19/month and is $99/month for a list of 10K. If your community and/or courses are your main thing, you could use their affiliate program.
Affiliates for Squarespace
Peach’s can handle affiliates on Squarespace starting at $59/month.
Scheduling
Cal.com is as good as paid Calendly for individual scheduling, and it’s free.
Tidycal is also solid and is a one-time cost of $39.
Automations
Zapier connects everything, but it can get pricey. They give you 5 automations that can run 100 times/month for free. Anything more than that starts at $19/month. So the more things work together natively, the cheaper.
Oddball: Thrivecart
Thrivecart is a checkout/sales platform that includes a free courses feature. It offers:
product, course, and subscription checkout
affiliates, coupons, and upsells
moderate design flexibility
Zapier and tons of native integrations
I didn’t include it in the comparison, because it does not include:
a traditional site,
scheduling,
community, or
email marketing (but does have customizable transactional emails, and connects directly to all the major email platforms)
What’s unique is that it’s currently available at one-time pricing of $495.
Which one is right for me?
It depends, of course!
If a real website and design flexibility are important to you, choose Squarespace
Pair it with Thrivecart for powerful ecomm or Circle for community (and/or courses without Sqsp’s 9% fees). Just be prepared to invest time and/or money in the buildout. This might be you if you work as a consultant to companies. The people who want to hire you need to look good to their boss, so it helps to have a slick website they can use to make the case for hiring you.If email is at the heart of your strategy, choose Kit
That’s their core strength; email is an add-on with all the others here.If community and/or courses are at the heart of your strategy, choose Circle or Podia
(IMO Circle is stronger in almost every way except that it doesn’t have a site builder or products.)If you value having everything in one platform, and/or if you want to get started quickly and figure out your strategy as you go, choose Stan
If you decide to try one or more of these, let me know it goes.
Here's to your success in 2025!
