For most people, the best Beacons alternative in 2026 is InBio: a page that's up in a minute, free with no card, and sells downloads and paid calls at 0% the day you're ready. Selling is on Business at $29 a month, a dollar under Beacons' cheapest 0% plan. Pick Stan Store at $29 for courses and Instagram auto-DMs, or Komi at $20 for downloads and unlimited email.
The reason most people look is the 9% Beacons takes from every sale on Free and on Creator, the $10 plan. Past about $333 a month in sales, that cut costs more than a flat $29 plan at 0%. If you use courses, memberships and email together, though, upgrading to Beacons Creator Plus at $30 is usually cheaper than leaving. It removes the fee and the badge, and no cheaper 0% plan here lists those three tools.
Checked October 2026: Beacons, Stan Store, Planoly, Komi, Payhip, Podia, Gumroad and Carrd against each company's own pricing page or help center, on 2 October 2026, and Beacons again on 8 October. Two exceptions: Payhip's coaching details come from a 2021 help article, and Linktree served us local-currency prices, so its US prices come from two write-ups checked in September 2026. Prices here move often; confirm before you commit.
Sites like Beacons, compared
| Tool | Best at | Free plan | Cheapest plan at 0% |
|---|---|---|---|
| InBio | Downloads and paid calls on a page you design | Yes; selling starts on Business | Business, $29/mo |
| Stan Store | Courses, calls and auto-DMs in one plan | No; 14-day trial | Creator, $29/mo |
| Komi | 0% on downloads, with unlimited email | Yes, but it can't sell | Pro, $20/mo |
| Planoly Creator Store (formerly Snipfeed) | A store and DM automation inside a social planner | App only | Starter, $14/mo (plan contents unclear) |
| Payhip | A smaller cut than Beacons, no subscription | Yes, 5% a sale | Pro, $99/mo (Free takes 5%) |
| Podia | Courses, community and email in one | No; 14-day trial | Shaker, $99/mo (Mover takes 5%) |
| Gumroad | No monthly fee, sales tax handled | Pay per sale: 10% + $0.50 | None |
| Linktree | The name your audience knows | Yes, 12% a sale | Premium, $35/mo |
| Carrd | The cheapest page you build yourself | Yes, 3 sites | No platform fee; embeds from $19/year |
| Beacons Creator Plus (staying) | Keeping everything Beacons does | Beacons Free, 9% a sale | Creator Plus, $30/mo |
What changed in 2026
- Creator Max went from $90 to $100 a month. Archived copies of Beacons' pricing page show $90 through 14 August 2026 and $100 by 28 September; the yearly price stayed $900. Creator Plus, the plan where the 9% fee ends, is still $30.
- The 9% didn't move. Beacons' pricing FAQ still says it charges "a 9% commission on all sales as part of the Free and Creator plans" (checked 8 October 2026).
- One alternative closed. Bento, the link-in-bio tool Linktree bought in 2023, shut down on 13 February 2026 and now redirects to Linktree (AlternativeTo). Everything below is still trading.
Why people leave Beacons
Beacons does a lot well. The free plan costs nothing until something sells, the media kit updates itself daily, and DM automation is on every plan. Plenty of people should stay. The four reasons people leave all come from Beacons' own pricing page or help center.
9% of every sale on two of four plans. Free takes 9%. So does Creator at $10 a month: the $10 buys a custom domain, 500 email sends instead of 50, and more AI credits, but not a lower fee. Beacons' help center says the 9% seller fees "apply to all sales (except invoices, which are 0%)". Only Creator Plus and Creator Max sell at 0%.
The Beacons badge stays until $30. Removing Beacons branding, from both your page and your product pages, starts on Creator Plus. On Free and Creator, the advanced Instagram DM automations carry Beacons branding too.
The tools people grow into start at $30. Creator Plus is where these begin:
- memberships
- courses with video hosting (Free and Creator get one course without it)
- Buy Now Pay Later and payment plans
- more than one connected Google calendar
- the setting Beacons describes as making "your product pages indexable by search engines"
A lot of dashboard for a link page. Beacons calls itself "a creator's AI-powered business platform". Its menu names seven tools — link in bio, websites, store, email marketing, media kit, Instagram DM automation, affiliate links — plus "More", and its AI teammate is metered in daily credits. If you use only the link page and a store, most of that menu isn't for you.
How we picked
Five things decide whether a Beacons alternative fits, the same lens as our Stan Store alternatives comparison:
- The cut on sales, since that's why most people leave.
- What it costs before the first sale, since Beacons Free costs nothing until then.
- What you sell: downloads only, or courses, memberships and calls too.
- Which Beacons parts it keeps: email, Instagram DM automation, bookings, a media kit, your own domain.
- How the page looks without someone else's badge on it.
Every tool here was checked on the same five lines. The sections below are not a ranking.
Past about $333 a month, a flat 0% plan beats 9%
The monthly price is half the bill; the cut on each sale is the other half. Here's what each plan takes at $250, $1,000 and $3,000 a month in sales, assuming a $25 product (10, 40 and 120 sales) and monthly billing.
Card processing is left out of the table. Where the tool runs payments through a Stripe account, as Beacons, InBio and Stan do, Stripe's standard US rate of 2.9% + 30¢ adds about $10 at $250, $41 at $1,000 and $123 at $3,000. PayPal charges differently, and Gumroad's Discover sales include processing in their 30%.
| Plan | Monthly price | Cut on sales | You pay at $250/mo | At $1,000/mo | At $3,000/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beacons Free | $0 | 9% | $22.50 | $90 | $270 |
| Beacons Creator | $10 | 9% | $32.50 | $100 | $280 |
| Beacons Creator Plus | $30 | 0% | $30 | $30 | $30 |
| InBio Business | $29 | 0% | $29 | $29 | $29 |
| Stan Creator | $29 | 0% | $29 | $29 | $29 |
| Komi Pro | $20 | 0% | $20 | $20 | $20 |
| Planoly Starter | $14 | 0% | $14 | $14 | $14 |
| Payhip Free | $0 | 5% | $12.50 | $50 | $150 |
| Payhip Plus | $29 | 2% | $34 | $49 | $89 |
| Podia Mover | $49 | 5% | $61.50 | $99 | $199 |
| Podia Shaker | $99 | 0% | $99 | $99 | $99 |
| Gumroad | $0 | 10% + $0.50 | $30 | $120 | $360 |
| Linktree Free | $0 | 12% | $30 | $120 | $360 |
| Linktree Premium | $35 | 0% | $35 | $35 | $35 |
| Carrd Pro Standard | ~$1.58 ($19/yr) | none from Carrd | ~$2 | ~$2 | ~$2 |
What falls out of it:
- Creator is the plan to leave first. Against Creator Plus, the $10 plan costs more once sales pass about $222 a month, because 9% of $222 is the $20 gap between them.
- On Free, 9% passes a flat plan quickly. It costs more than a $20 plan past about $222 a month in sales, and more than a $29 plan past about $322. Even $35 is cheaper past about $389.
- $1,080 a year is what 9% takes from $1,000 a month in sales on Beacons Free. A $29 flat plan costs $348 a year at the same volume.
- Under about $156 a month in sales, Beacons Free is hard to beat, since that's where 9% first passes the cheapest flat plan here, $14. The exceptions are Payhip's free plan, whose 5% undercuts 9% at every volume, and a Carrd page with a checkout you embed yourself.
The same arithmetic with Stripe's fee included, for selling from an Instagram bio, is in how to sell digital products from your Instagram bio.
Which alternatives keep email, DM automation and courses
Beacons bundles a lot, so the right alternative depends on which parts you'd miss. "Not listed" means the vendor's pricing page and help center, as we read them, don't mention it.
| Tool | Email to your list | Instagram DM automation | Courses | Paid 1:1 calls | Own domain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beacons | 50 sends/mo free, 500 on Creator, unlimited on Plus | Every plan | 1 course without video; unlimited on Plus | Appointments, Google Calendar | From Creator ($10) |
| InBio | Collects contacts on Pro; no sending | No | No | Business, live availability | No |
| Stan Store | Collects on Creator; broadcasts on Creator Pro ($99) | Stan AutoDM on Creator | Unlimited on Creator | Calendar on Creator | No; forwarding only |
| Komi | Unlimited campaigns on Pro | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed | On Pro |
| Planoly Creator Store | Unlimited sends on a $59 plan, per its help center | Every plan from $14 | Listed, plan not stated | Listed (Zoom or Meet), plan not stated | On its $20 Creator Store plan, per its help center |
| Payhip | Not listed | Not listed | Every plan | Via Calendly or Zoom | Not listed |
| Podia | 100 subscribers on Mover, 500 on Shaker | Not listed | Every plan | Coaching on every plan | Every plan |
| Gumroad | Not listed | Not listed | Yes | Not listed | Not listed |
| Linktree | Mailing-list integrations from Pro | Auto-replies on Premium | Via Kajabi | Listed, plan not stated | Not listed |
| Carrd | Sign-up forms to Mailchimp, Kit and others | No | No | No | From Pro Standard |
Three things stand out:
- Courses, DM automation and 0% together: Stan Creator at $29, Linktree Premium at $35, and possibly Planoly, depending on the plan. Beacons Creator Plus does it at $30.
- The media kit has no match. None of these lists one. It's on Beacons Free, though, so you can keep a free account just for the kit.
- If your $10 bought a custom domain, Komi Pro, Podia and Carrd connect one directly. Anywhere else, you can forward the domain to your new page from your registrar.
InBio: downloads and paid calls at 0%, on a page you design
InBio is a link-in-bio page for anyone, from a personal page to a business that takes bookings, and it becomes a store when you need one. The page at in.bio/yourname holds your links, media and galleries, then sells digital downloads and paid one-to-one calls on Business.
On Business you set your opening hours once. Each call type gets its own length, notice and booking window. A slot can't be sold twice. Payments go through your own Stripe account, and InBio takes 0%.
What's good: it costs a dollar less than Creator Plus for the same 0%, the InBio badge comes off at $9 rather than $30, and every page can be found by search engines on every plan, Free included.
Pricing: Free is your page with links, media and galleries, plus basic analytics: views, clicks, click-through rate and time on page. Beginner, $4/mo or $40/yr, adds every theme, font and layout, and image and video backgrounds. Pro, $9/mo or $90/yr, adds contact forms and lead magnets (a file delivered when someone signs up), advanced analytics (clicks per link, traffic sources, countries and devices), an SEO title and description, and removes InBio branding.
Business, $29/mo or $290/yr, adds selling downloads, paid bookings, 0% selling fees, an AI chat that answers visitors in your words, and a checkmark the InBio team verifies. Paid plans start with a 14-day trial for first-time subscribers. Billing is per page, so each brand runs on its own plan; see pricing.
What to watch: InBio doesn't host courses, send email or connect a custom domain.
Stan Store: the Beacons Creator Plus mix for a dollar less
What's good: Stan's $29 Creator plan does most of what people pay Beacons $30 for: unlimited courses, memberships, a community, calendar bookings and Stan AutoDM for Instagram, with 0% from Stan.
Pricing: Creator $29/mo ($300/yr); Creator Pro $99/mo ($948/yr). No free plan, only a 14-day trial.
What to watch: you pay from day one, which Beacons Free never asks. Email broadcasts and flows, contact import, discount codes and upsells are Creator Pro only, at $99. And there's no custom domain: the store lives at stan.store/you, and Stan's help center suggests forwarding your domain to it.
Komi: 0% and unlimited email for $20
What's good: Komi Pro gives you the two things Beacons charges $30 for, 0% on digital product sales and unlimited email campaigns, for $20, with your own domain and no Komi branding. It also has a brand-deal side, which matters if you came to Beacons for sponsorships.
Pricing: Pro is $20/mo, or $16/mo billed yearly. The free Starter plan can't add digital products.
What to watch: Komi's pricing page lists digital products, custom products, tipping, email and brand deals, but no courses, memberships or bookings.
Planoly Creator Store: a store and auto-DMs inside a social planner
What's good: if you used Snipfeed, this is it now: snipfeed.co/pricing redirects to Planoly. Creator Store is a link-in-bio store attached to a social media planner. Planoly's help center lists digital products, courses, 1:1 consultations over Zoom or Google Meet, memberships, tips and Printful merch, with no transaction fees on paid plans and payments through your own Stripe or PayPal.
Pricing: Planoly's pricing page shows three plans, $14, $24 and $47 a month, each with the store and Instagram DM automation, and a 14-day trial. Its help center describes different Creator Store plans, $20 and $59 a month, with unlimited email sends only on the $59 one.
What to watch: the two pages disagree, so use the trial to confirm your plan sells courses and sends email before you move anything. You're also paying for a content planner, which only helps if you schedule posts.
Payhip: Beacons Free's model at 5% instead of 9%
What's good: if you like Beacons Free because it costs nothing until you sell, Payhip's free plan works the same way and takes 5% instead of 9%. It sells downloads, courses, memberships, coaching and physical products.
Pricing: Free Forever, $0 with a 5% fee; Plus, $29/mo at 2%; Pro, $99/mo at 0%. PayPal and Stripe charge their own fees on top.
What to watch: it's a store website, not a link page, so your other links live somewhere else. Coaching is scheduled through Calendly or Zoom integrations, and Payhip's help article on it was last updated in 2021.
Podia: when the course is the business
What's good: courses, coaching, events, a community, a website on your own domain and email are on every plan. Podia also offers migration help: up to 50 products on Mover, including course content, downloads and the customer emails attached to them.
Pricing: Mover $49/mo ($42 billed yearly) with a 5% fee; Shaker $99/mo ($84) and Earthquaker $179/mo ($150) with no Podia fee. No free plan; a 14-day trial with no card.
What to watch: it costs more than Beacons Creator Plus before you sell anything. Mover's email covers 100 subscribers, and its 5% keeps it cheaper than Shaker only until about $1,000 a month in sales.
Gumroad: fixes the tax admin, not the fee
What's good: no subscription at all, and since January 2025 Gumroad is the merchant of record, collecting and remitting sales tax for you. Beacons leaves that with you.
Pricing: $0 a month; 10% + $0.50 per direct sale, with card processing on top. Sales through Gumroad's Discover marketplace carry a flat 30%, processing included.
What to watch: on a $25 product that's 12% of every sale, more than Beacons' 9%. Leave for Gumroad because of tax, not price.
Linktree: the familiar name, 0% on Premium
What's good: recognition, courses through Kajabi, and Instagram auto-replies on Premium, so it covers Beacons' DM automation too; Linktree and Beacons side by side shows what else carries over.
Pricing: Starter $8/mo, Pro $15/mo, Premium $35/mo, billed monthly in the US. On its pricing page's fee table, sales carry 12% on Free, 9% on Starter and Pro, and 0% on Premium, plus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30. The same page's Pro card says "Sell and earn with 0% fees", so confirm your plan's fee before you rely on it; our Linktree pricing breakdown budgets 9% on Pro.
What to watch: Premium at $35 is the dearest 0% plan among the link pages here. Our Linktree alternatives comparison covers the rest of that market.
Carrd: a $19-a-year page, if you'll build the checkout
What's good: Carrd is a one-page site builder priced per year. Pro Standard, $19 a year, connects your own domain, embeds a Stripe, PayPal or Gumroad checkout, and sends sign-ups to Mailchimp, Kit and others: the cheapest way to keep a domain and an email list.
Pricing: free for up to 3 sites; Pro Lite $9/yr; Pro Standard $19/yr; Pro Plus $49/yr.
What to watch: there's no store underneath, so file delivery, bookings and DM automation come from whatever you embed, and Gumroad's fee applies if that's Gumroad.
Switching from Beacons without losing a sale
- Export your audience first. In Beacons, open Audience and click the grey download icon under the blue "Import Audience Members" button. That CSV is your email list.
- Save your media kit as a PDF, with your rate card, if brand deals matter.
- Rebuild products and appointment types on the new page at the same prices and lengths, and open the new calendar only after the last call already booked on Beacons, so nobody books you twice.
- Ask Beacons about members before you move them. Beacons connects your own Stripe account, but its help center doesn't say what happens to active memberships when you leave. Email support@beacons.ai, set members up on the new platform, give them a date, and only then close them on Beacons.
- Write down every Instagram DM keyword and reply, rebuild them in the new tool, and only then switch Beacons' off, or a comment asking for "LINK" gets no answer.
- Swap the URL everywhere in one sitting: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, your email signature, and your domain's forwarding if Beacons was serving it.
- Unpublish your Beacons products, then cancel (on desktop; see the FAQ for what stays behind).
Who should pick what
- Most people: InBio, free to start, with 0% on downloads and paid calls at $29 once you sell.
- Courses, calls and auto-DMs at 0%: Stan Creator at $29.
- 0% on downloads plus unlimited email for the least: Komi Pro, $20.
- Under about $156 a month in sales: stay on Beacons Free, or move to Payhip Free for 5% instead of 9%.
- A course business with community and email: Podia.
- You came from Snipfeed or you schedule posts anyway: Planoly, after confirming your plan in the trial.
- You use courses, memberships and email together: upgrade to Beacons Creator Plus. $30 removes the fee and the badge, and you move nothing.
- The cheapest page with your own domain: Carrd, $19 a year.
Whichever you pick, export your Beacons audience before you touch anything else. Products can be rebuilt; a list you didn't download can't. If you're still choosing between link pages in general, our roundup of link in bio tools compares them beyond selling.
This post is part of our link in bio basics series: what a link in bio is, how the tools compare, and what the numbers mean.
We make InBio. Every tool here, InBio included, was checked the same way: on its own pricing page and help center, October 2026.
