Best Ecommerce Platforms for Restaurants Under $10 a Month
For a restaurant taking food orders on less than $10 a month, the realistic answers cost $0 a month. Square Online's free plan gives you an ordering page with pickup, delivery or shipping and charges 3.3% + 30 cents per online card payment, while DoorDash's Storefront takes 0% commission on direct orders, so you pay only card processing.
Only two products in the table sell a plan that actually lands between $0 and $10: Hostinger Website Builder at $3.99/mo on a 48-month term, and Ecwid by Lightspeed at $5 a month for up to 10 products. Both are store builders, better for gift cards and jars of sauce than for dinner orders. That is the main divide here. Seven platforms are built to take food orders with pickup and delivery, and the rest are general shops or self-hosted software you would bend toward a restaurant.
Our picks
- Food orders with no monthly bill: Square Online. $0 a month for pickup, delivery or shipping, sharing one menu with the restaurant POS if you run it; online cards cost 3.3% + 30 cents.
- Free ordering, customers paying on delivery: GloriaFood. No monthly fee, no commission, unlimited orders and table reservations; taking cards online is a US$29 a month add-on.
- Delivery without marketplace commission: DoorDash Online Ordering (Storefront). 0% commission on orders from your own site, Google listing or QR code, with the company's drivers available and the customer paying the delivery fee.
- Gift cards on a website you already have: Ecwid by Lightspeed. $5 a month, month to month, for up to 10 products that drop into a WordPress, Wix or Squarespace site, with no transaction fees.
- Your own site with a shop attached: Hostinger Website Builder. $3.99/mo with hosting, a domain and email, but paid as $191.52 up front for 48 months and renewing at $16.99/mo.
At a glance
| Option | Cost | What you pay to start | Per-order fee | Built for | What the cheapest plan includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free plansource | $0 a month, with no startup costsource | 3.3% + 30 cents on online card payments on the Free plan (2.9% + 30 cents on paid plans)source | Restaurant online orderingsource | A website builder, a single ordering page or a full store, and your choice of pickup, delivery or shippingsource | |
| Free plansource | $0 a month, with no setup fee, no contract and no card requiredsource | No commission per ordersource | Restaurant online orderingsource | An order button for your own site, Facebook ordering links, mobile ordering and table reservationssource | |
| Free plansource | $0 a month; you pay only card processingsource | 0% commission on direct orderssource | Restaurant online orderingsource | Commission-free direct orders, menus synced to the DoorDash app, and its delivery networksource | |
| Free plansource | $0 for restaurants already on Grubhub Marketplacesource | Order processing fees only, per ordersource | Restaurant online orderingsource | A branded ordering site with built-in delivery and automatic menu updatessource | |
| Free plansource | $0 a month, no credit card requiredsource | 5% of each sale on the free plan, plus your PayPal or Stripe ratesource | General online storesource | Every feature, with no limit on products or revenuesource | |
| Free plansource | $0 on the free Gold plan; Platinum is $15/mo after a 7-day trialsource | General online storesource | Custom domains, physical and digital products, shipping labels and design control come with the $15 Platinum plansource | ||
| Free plansource | $0 a month for one app, with unlimited userssource | General online storesource | eCommerce plus the Website and Invoicing apps it depends on, at no chargesource | ||
| Free and open sourcesource | $0 to download the plugin; paid extensions and support are optionalsource | Self-hosted store softwaresource | The full store platform, plus hundreds of free and paid extensionssource | ||
| Free and open sourcesource | $0 for the software; you choose and pay for hostingsource | Self-hosted store softwaresource | The full store software, with thousands of modules and themes sold separatelysource | ||
| Under $10 a monthsource | $3.99/mo on a 48-month term ($191.52 up front), renewing at $16.99/mosource | 0% transaction feessource | General online storesource | Hosting, a domain name, email, SEO tools and marketing integrationssource | |
| Under $10 a monthsource | $5 a month for the Starter plan, month to monthsource | No setup or transaction fees on any plansource | General online storesource | Up to 10 products, 70+ site templates and a free company.site domainsource | |
| $10 to $50 a monthsource | $1/month for the first 3 months, then $39/mo ($29/mo billed yearly)source | 2.9% + 30 cents on online card payments with Shopify Paymentssource | General online storesource | A full-featured online store, themes, unlimited products and social and marketplace sellingsource | |
| $10 to $50 a monthsource | $49 a month for the Web Ordering module, up to 75 orderssource | No commission on orderssource | Restaurant online orderingsource | The ordering storefront only; the branded app is another $49 a locationsource | |
| More than $50 a monthsource | $229 to $249 a month for Launch, plus a $119 to $499 setup feesource | 2.95% + $0.29 per transaction, with no commission on orderssource | Restaurant online orderingsource | A direct ordering tool, an SEO-optimized website and a branded mobile appsource | |
| More than $50 a monthsource | $249/month plus 5% per order, or $499/month with no per-order feesource | 5% restaurant fee per order on the $249 plan; none on the $499 plansource | Restaurant online orderingsource | An AI-optimized website built to rank on Google, on every plansource |
Where the free ordering plans make their money
A $0 monthly price moves the cost somewhere else. Square Online charges 3.3% + 30 cents on online cards on its free plan, against 2.9% + 30 cents on paid plans. GloriaFood charges no commission but sells the pieces around the order: US$29 a month to take cards online, US$19 for advanced promotions, US$49 a month per location for its POS. A restaurant that wants customers to pay when they order is over this budget the day it switches that on.
The delivery companies' storefronts carry conditions rather than monthly fees. Grubhub Direct is free only to restaurants already on Grubhub Marketplace, so the cost is the commission you pay there. DoorDash's version asks nothing up front, but the storefront, the customer data and the delivery all stay inside the company whose marketplace fees you are trying to avoid.
Store builders and free software for merch and gift cards
None of the general store builders knows what a food order is, so no pickup times, delivery zones or kitchen tickets. They make sense for a side shop. Payhip is free and takes 5% of each sale on top of your PayPal or Stripe rate, Big Cartel still has a free Gold plan but does not publish its limits, and Odoo eCommerce is free for one app until you add a second, such as its restaurant POS, when it becomes US$31.10 per user per month.
WooCommerce and PrestaShop cost $0 to download and take nothing per sale themselves, but you pay for hosting and do the upkeep, and the food-ordering add-ons for both are mostly paid. They suit a restaurant that already runs WordPress, or a group with its own developer.
What the full-service ordering platforms charge
Four rows sit well over budget, and they show what the rest of the market costs. Shopify's cheapest door is now Basic at $39/mo ($29/mo billed yearly), after $1/month for the first 3 months. UpMenu charges $49 a month for web ordering up to 75 orders, about 65 cents an order before card fees. ChowNow's Launch plan runs $229 to $249 a month plus a $119 to $499 setup fee, and Owner.com is $249 a month plus 5% per order, or $499 with no per-order fee, which Owner says pays off past roughly $5,000 a month in online sales.
The options in detail
Square Online
Square's free plan is the closest thing to a default answer for a restaurant with no budget: you get a hosted ordering page or a full site, pickup, local delivery and shipping, and it shares one menu and one dashboard with Square's restaurant POS if you already run one. Nothing is charged monthly, so the real cost is the card rate, and that is where the free tier is expensive: 3.3% + 30 cents per online order against 2.9% + 30 cents on the paid plans, which is roughly a dollar more on a $25 order. Paid tiers buy back the lower rate plus custom site design and QR-code ordering. The trade-off worth knowing: your ordering page lives on Square's platform and its design controls are modest compared with a general store builder.
GloriaFood
GloriaFood gives away the ordering system itself: unlimited orders, unlimited locations, an order button for your existing site, Facebook ordering links and a table-reservation widget, with no monthly fee and no commission. The catch is payments. Connecting your own payment gateway so customers can pay by card online is a US$29 a month add-on, so a restaurant that wants card-on-order and not cash-on-delivery is over this question's budget the moment it switches that on. Other extras are priced the same way: US$19 a month for advanced promotions, US$49 a month per location for the POS. Used as designed, though, it is the most complete free ordering setup here for a single independent restaurant.
DoorDash Online Ordering (Storefront)
This is DoorDash's answer to restaurants who resent its marketplace commission: orders placed on your own website, Google listing or a QR code carry no commission at all, and there is no monthly fee, so you pay only card processing. Your menu stays in sync with the DoorDash app, and you can hand deliveries to DoorDash's driver network while the customer pays the delivery fee. It is the cheapest way to get commission-free ordering with delivery attached. The reason to think twice is dependence: the storefront, the customer data and the delivery all sit inside the company whose marketplace fees you are trying to avoid.
Grubhub Direct
Grubhub's version of the same idea: a branded ordering site of your own, with hosting, commission and delivery fees waived, so the only cost is order processing. It comes with a site styler, automatic menu updates, access to your own customer data for email and social marketing, and it can be bolted onto a website you already have. The condition is the important part: it is offered to restaurants that are already Grubhub Marketplace customers, so it is free in the sense that it comes with a relationship you are already paying commission on elsewhere. If you are not on the marketplace, this is not the free option it looks like.
Payhip
Payhip is a store builder for people who do not want a store platform: you get a free page, unlimited products and unlimited revenue, and it takes 5% of each sale instead of a monthly fee. For a restaurant that means gift cards, sauces, merch or a ticketed supper club can go on sale today at no fixed cost, with Stripe or PayPal charging their own rate on top. What it is not is an ordering system, so there is no pickup time, no delivery zone and no kitchen ticket. The 5% is also worth doing the maths on: past roughly $600 a month in sales, the $29 plan's 2% cut is cheaper.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel was built for artists selling a handful of things, which is a surprisingly good fit for a restaurant's merch table: a small shop, physical and digital products, shipping labels, and a design you control. There is still a free Gold plan, though the pricing page now leads with a seven-day trial of the $15 Platinum plan and says only that Gold is limited, without publishing its ceiling. Platinum is the plan that adds a custom domain and print-on-demand apps, and at $15 a month it sits just over this question's budget. Like the other store builders here, it has no concept of a food order.
Odoo eCommerce
Odoo's One App Free plan is the most generous offer in this table if you read the small print: one app, unlimited users, hosted by Odoo, free forever, and because eCommerce depends on the Website and Invoicing apps you get those too. So a restaurant can run a real site with a store and issue invoices without paying anything. The wall arrives the moment you install a second app you actually want, such as the restaurant POS or inventory: the plan flips to Standard at US$31.10 per user per month. It is also the most business-software-shaped option here, which is either the appeal or the reason to skip it.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the store half of WordPress, free to download and free to keep, and it is the option that costs nothing in licence terms while costing something in effort: you need WordPress hosting, a domain, and someone willing to update plugins. For a restaurant already running a WordPress site it is the cheapest way to add a shop, and food-ordering extensions exist for pickup times and delivery zones, most of them paid. Nothing is taken from your sales by WooCommerce itself; your payment gateway sets that rate. Budget for hosting and treat the maintenance as the real price.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is the other free, self-hosted route: download the source, install it on hosting you choose, and own the store and its data outright. Its module marketplace is where the money goes, and most of what a restaurant would want, such as delivery slots or a menu layout, is a paid module. Compared with WooCommerce it is a standalone application rather than a plugin, which suits a restaurant group with an in-house developer and suits nobody who wants to be selling by Friday. Nothing is deducted per order by PrestaShop itself.
Hostinger Website Builder
If you want your own site with a store attached and will not accept a platform's ordering page, Hostinger is the cheapest honest way in: the plan that includes ecommerce is $3.99 a month, and it bundles hosting, a domain for the first year, email and SEO tools, with nothing taken from your sales. The price has a string attached that the table cannot show in one figure: it is a 48-month prepayment of $191.52, and the renewal is $16.99 a month. Treat it as roughly $8 a month averaged over eight years, or as $3.99 if you are confident about four. It is a site builder, not a restaurant system, so pickup times and kitchen tickets are not part of it.
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid's trick is that it drops into a website you already have, whether that is WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, so a restaurant with a site it likes can add a shop without rebuilding anything. The Starter plan is $5 a month and caps you at ten products, which is enough for gift cards, a few jars of sauce and a t-shirt, and Ecwid takes nothing per sale on any plan. Note that the free plan Ecwid was known for is no longer on its pricing page, so roundups still calling it free are out of date. Selling on Instagram and Facebook, and a custom domain, start at the $29 Venture plan.
Shopify
Shopify is in this table as the benchmark that no longer has a cheap door. The $5 Starter plan that made it a sensible place to sell gift cards is closed to new merchants, so Basic at $39 a month, or $29 billed yearly, is the entry point, plus 2.9% + 30 cents on online cards and a further 2% if you use a gateway other than Shopify Payments. What you get for it is the strongest checkout and app ecosystem here, including third-party restaurant ordering apps. For a restaurant whose online sales are a few gift cards a month, that is a lot of platform to rent.
UpMenu
UpMenu sells restaurant ordering as modules you assemble, and the one you cannot do without, Web Ordering, is $49 a month for up to 75 orders, rising to $89 for 210 and $169 for unlimited. Everything else is priced separately: your own branded app is another $49 a location, pulling Uber Eats and DoorDash tickets into one panel is $9, a driver app is $14 per driver. Orders themselves carry no commission, and plans are monthly with no contract, which suits a seasonal restaurant. It is the clearest illustration in this table of why commission-free is not the same as cheap: at 75 orders a month, $49 works out around 65 cents an order before card fees.
ChowNow
ChowNow is the full-service end of commission-free ordering: its Launch plan bundles a direct ordering tool, an SEO-built website and a branded mobile app, and orders through any of them carry no commission. That arrives at $229 to $249 a month before a $119 to $499 setup fee, 2.95% + 29 cents per transaction, and a $99 Apple developer fee if you want the app in the App Store. The pitch is that this is cheaper than paying a marketplace roughly a fifth of every order, which is true at volume and expensive at ten orders a week. It is in this table to mark the ceiling, not the budget.
Owner.com
Owner.com sells one bundle rather than modules: a website built to rank on Google, online ordering, a branded app, loyalty and automated marketing, month to month with no contract. Pricing is a choice between $249 a month plus 5% of each order, or $499 a month with no per-order cut, which means the flat plan only makes sense past roughly $5,000 a month in online sales, as Owner itself says. Its own caveat is unusually direct: partnering with Owner means giving up some control over how your digital presence looks. Like ChowNow, it is here to show what the far end of the market costs, not as an answer to a $10 budget.
How we researched this
We kept a few platforms that no restaurant on a $10 budget would buy, ChowNow and Owner.com above all, because without them the free rows' promise of commission-free ordering has nothing to be measured against. Gumroad's FAQ rules out physical goods, so it is absent, Menufy no longer publishes prices, and Zoho Commerce, Squarespace, Wix, Slice, Flipdish and Popmenu either show no public prices or none we could quote. Toast and CloudWaitress are absent only because neither site would give us a product image to display.
Starting prices are left in each vendor's own terms, since a 48-month prepayment, a three-month promo and a per-location module do not add up to one number. Per-order fees are empty for Big Cartel, WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Odoo eCommerce because none of them states a per-sale cut; for the self-hosted two, your payment provider sets the rate. Two older bargains are gone as of September 2026: Shopify's $5 Starter plan is closed to new merchants and Ecwid no longer lists a free plan, so an older roundup that says otherwise is out of date.