Wholesale Handler
Every figure here assumes a $400 average order
Order value and order count are not the same axis, and a fee sits on one or the other. Holding an average order at $400 makes both readable: $20,000 a month is 50 orders, $50,000 is 125 orders, and $100,000 is 250 orders. Substitute your own average and the percentage rows stay put while the per-order rows move.
Three different things a fee can be charged on
A rate quoted without its base is not a price.
- Gross order value. A percentage of what the order was worth, whether or not the platform handled the money.
- Payment processed. A percentage of what actually moved through the platform's payment rail. Orders paid by bank transfer outside it are untouched.
- Order count. A fixed amount per order, indifferent to whether the order was $80 or $8,000.
Two vendors quoting 3% can mean different money by a factor of several, and the difference only shows at the end of a quarter.
A percentage of order value at three volumes
The commission layer, where marketplaces sit. Faire's standard marketplace rate is 15%, with a one-time $10 fee the first time a retailer discovers a brand there. The 25% figure that circulates applies only to brands based outside North America, and only on that first order, after which the rate reverts to 15%.
The smaller rates look harmless and are not. BlueCart publishes no pricing; the two structures third-party listings report are a low monthly fee plus 5%, or a higher monthly fee plus 1%. NuORDER's own take, on the path where a brand brings its own payment processor, is 0.50% per transaction billed quarterly.
BlueCart pricing works through every public source on what BlueCart charges and why the sources disagree. NuORDER pricing sets that 0.50% against the subscription and the implementation fee it is charged on top of.
A percentage can apply to money the platform did not handle
Rooted Farmers charges 7.9% plus $0.30 on online card orders and 5.5% plus $0.30 on orders settled by cash, cheque or any other off-platform method. The second rate is the one worth reading twice: the fee lands on a payment that went straight from the buyer's bank to the seller's.
Add $0.30 per order to both columns, so $15, $37.50 and $75 at the three volumes.
Card processing is a separate bill from the platform's cut
Conflating the two understates one vendor and overstates another. Stripe's standard US rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents for an online card charge, and 0.8% for an ACH direct debit, capped at $5. NuORDER quotes the same 2.9% plus $0.30 through Lightspeed Payments, with ACH at 0.80%. Local Line quotes 2.9% plus $0.30 on its entry plan, falling to 2.5% on its top one.
The cap is what makes ACH a different instrument rather than a cheaper one. On a $1,000 wholesale order, card processing costs $29.30 and ACH costs $5, because 0.8% of $1,000 exceeds the cap.
Rooted Farmers' 7.9% is stated as inclusive of Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30, so the platform's own share is about 5%. A vendor who quotes an all-in card rate without saying what sits inside it is quoting an unknown.
Shopify adds its own percentage on top of whatever gateway a store uses, when that gateway is not Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. That surcharge is charged on the order total, not on the processor's fee.
Per-order fees follow order count, not order value
A flat charge per order is the one model where a bigger order costs nothing more. It is also the one that punishes a wholesaler with many small drops, which is most produce rounds.
SAAVI is the clearest live example of the banded version: a monthly base with 100 orders included, then a per-order charge that steps down from A$4.50 to A$1.50 as weekly volume rises. What SAAVI actually costs once per-order fees compound runs those bands at a real order count. Ordermentum publishes monthly tiers and states that actual charges depend on usage, monthly revenue, active customers and number of orders. B2B Wave, which once had a pay-as-you-go per-order option, now states 0% platform transaction fees on every tier.
A flat fee costs the same at three volumes and at thirty
Wholesale Handler's top plan is $109/month, with no per-user charge, no per-order charge, no commission and no tier that holds a feature back. Prices are set natively in six currencies rather than converted, and up to 3 customers there is no charge at all.
Against a 15% commission at $100,000 a month, that is a difference of $14,891 in one month. The shape matters more than the size: a percentage bills the good months hardest, so the reward for landing a large account is a larger invoice from your software vendor. Flat-fee wholesale ordering software sets out what has to be true for a price to count as flat.
What the flat fee does not cover
Stated plainly, because a flat price with a hidden edge is just a percentage with extra steps.
- Wholesale Handler holds no money and processes no payments. There is no checkout, no card on file and no funds in transit. An invoice is marked paid when the customer records that they have sent payment and the merchant confirms it arrived. So Wholesale Handler takes 0% of order value, and equally provides no payment rail: whatever a merchant's bank or processor charges is between them and that provider.
- Volume is bounded by caps rather than by price. A single account carries up to 50 customers and 500 products. Beyond that the answer is a conversation, not a higher rate on every order.
- The free plan covers 3 customers, and no card is required. Nothing reaches Stripe until a merchant chooses to subscribe.
Why is wholesale software so expensive covers the implementation fees, per-seat licences and annual contracts that sit alongside the transaction layer.
