How we compare
Every one of these is a reasonable place to sell a pattern. Here is what each is good at and where Loopstore is different.
| Platform | Monthly | Their cut | Your domain | Memberships | You keep the customer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loopstore | £0 | 8%1 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Etsy | £0 | 6.5–20%+2 | No | No | No |
| Ribblr | £0 | per-sale commission3 | No | No | No |
| Payhip | £0 | 5% on the free plan4 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
- 1.Loopstore: The whole of our cut, on pattern sales and membership payments alike. Stripe’s processing fee is charged on top and goes to Stripe, as it would wherever you sold.
- 2.Etsy: The 6.5% transaction fee is the start of it. A listing fee is charged per item and again when it sells or renews, payment processing is charged on each order, and Offsite Ads take a further share of any sale they are credited with — which sellers above a sales threshold cannot opt out of. A cheap digital pattern sits at the top of that range, because the flat parts are a larger share of a small sale.
- 3.Ribblr: Published as a commission per sale rather than a single rate; check their current terms.
- 4.Payhip: Their paid plans lower the percentage. Payment processing is charged on top.
Competitor figures are from their public pricing pages and change often, and what a sale actually costs depends on its price and how the buyer found it. Check the current terms before you decide.
The honest version
Etsy
Good at: Enormous built-in audience. If you want people to find you without doing the finding yourself, it is the obvious place.
Where we differ: The customer belongs to Etsy, not you. You cannot email your buyers, you cannot run a membership, and your shop looks like every other Etsy shop. Fees are charged per listing as well as per sale.
Ribblr
Good at: Built for crafters, with an interactive pattern reader makers genuinely like, and a community that already understands what a pattern is.
Where we differ: You are a tenant in their marketplace rather than the owner of a shop. No custom domain, and designer memberships are not the model.
Payhip
Good at: Generalist digital-product platform. Clean checkout, memberships, your own domain, and fair pricing.
Where we differ: It does not know what a crochet pattern is. No round-by-round reader, no errata handling, no testers, no yarn weight or hook size — you sell a file and the rest is on you.
When not to use Loopstore
If you have no audience at all, a marketplace will find you buyers faster than a shop of your own will. Loopstore works best when you already have makers who follow you somewhere — Instagram, a newsletter, a Ravelry following — and you want to sell to them without a platform standing in between. Plenty of designers sell in both places at once, and nothing here stops you.
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