What Stan is
Stan is a creator store that has been running for years and sells a wide product range from one dashboard. Their own help center lists what a creator can sell there: digital downloads, e-courses, coaching calls, webinars, memberships, communities, lead magnets, external links and custom products, plus order bumps and funnels, an affiliate share program, email marketing and their AutoDM tool.
That is a large product. A community in the same place as your store, with live sessions inside it, is something we both have now. Theirs are webinars members sign up for, with Zoom or Google Meet links made automatically; ours are live events members RSVP to, in a private Jitsi Meet room shown in the page, at the creator's own link, or in a Google Meet made on the creator's connected Google Calendar. No Zoom link is made for you yet.
What Nimbus is
Nimbus is a store page for selling files, courses, memberships, communities and calls, and it is early. At its core are three things: a colorful page, price options on a product, and the file in the buyer's hands the second the payment clears.
The one thing we do differently
The money. On Nimbus, the buyer pays into your own Stripe account. We never hold your balance and we take 0% of your sales — not 0% with an asterisk that points at a cut somewhere else. What we charge is the subscription, and that is the whole of what we charge.
Stan also advertises 0% transaction fees on their home page, and charges a subscription. On that point we are the same, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Where we differ is whose payment account the sale lands in, which decides who controls payouts, receipts and refunds.
Where Stan is ahead of us today
- Range: automatic Instagram replies, PayPal, affiliates paid automatically, one builder for funnels, Zoom links made for each booking and webinar, and stores with no limit on products. We have none of those. PayPal does not reach our checkout, because Stripe does not support it for the direct charges every sale here is made with; our affiliates are paid by you; our funnels are pages and offers you connect rather than one builder; our video rooms, for calls and live events alike, are Google Meet links made on your connected Google Calendar, your own meeting link, or Jitsi Meet rooms, where the first person in may have to sign in to Jitsi; and a store holds up to 2,000 products.
- Years of running: their support library is deep, and ours is a few pages.
- A native creator app: their help center states their creator app is currently available only on iPhone and iPad. We do not have a native app at all — our studio and every store install to the home screen from the browser, on both iPhone and Android, and the studio can send notifications of sales, which is a different trade-off, not a better one in every case.
- Integrations with third-party tools, which they list on their site. We have webhooks that Zapier, Make or your own server can catch, and no app of our own in anyone's directory.
Where we think we are ahead
- The money lands in your own Stripe account, so payouts, receipts and refunds are yours.
- Price options on a single product, with the right file delivered for the tier that was paid for.
- Reviews only buyers can write, checked against the payment. Stan's help center says reviews there are added by the creator.
- A team with roles, each person signing in with their own email. Stan's help center says the only way to give someone admin access to a store there is to share your login.
- Sales pages, landing pages, discount codes, payment plans and offers after payment on the $29 plan (Stan's help center puts discount codes, payment plans and upsells on their $99 Creator Pro plan), and a store in any of 15 currencies.
- Bundles that hand over each of your products as if bought on its own. Stan's help center lists bundles among the files you can sell as one download.
- Moving in from a spreadsheet: up to 50,000 contacts, 500 products and 20,000 past buyers per file, where Stan's help center sets a limit of 5,000 imported contacts per store in all, and buyers are given access one at a time.
- A live demo store anyone can buy from with a test card, before signing up for anything.
- Terms and privacy policy published as pages on the site, where Stan links to them as PDF files.
How to decide without trusting either of us
- 1Write down your own numbersYour price, your sales per month and the features you actually need. Find the plan each platform would put you on for those features, and compare the monthly totals.
- 2Buy something from bothGo through a real checkout on each. Whose name is on the receipt? How fast did the file arrive? Could you do it on a phone with one hand?
- 3Read the payout pageA balance the platform sends you later, or a payment account in your name? That answer outlives every other feature on the list.