Ko-fi alternative: keep the tips, add real bookings and a page that's actually yours
Ko-fi charges 0% on tips and 5% on shop sales, memberships, and commissions on its free plan — or $12/month for Ko-fi Gold to remove that entirely. Here's how Keepp compares on fees, bookings, custom domains, and lead ownership.
By Keepp Team
Ko-fi built its name on tips being free — 0% on a one-off “buy me a coffee”-style donation, no monthly fee to start. That’s a real, genuine offer, and it’s why so many creators land there first. Where it gets more complicated is everything past the tip jar: a shop, memberships, commissions — the parts of a creator’s business that look less like support and more like a real storefront.
This post lays out what Ko-fi actually costs as of writing, and where Keepp closes the gap for anyone whose page needs to sell physical products, take bookings, or hold onto its own domain and its own lead data — not just collect a tip.
What Ko-fi actually costs, as of writing
0% on tips, 5% on everything else — on the free plan. Ko-fi’s free tier takes nothing from a one-off tip or donation. Shop sales, memberships, and commissions are charged 5%. New accounts are opted into “Contributor” status by default, which applies that same 5% to tips too, unless you go find the setting and opt out. Worth checking on your own account rather than assuming you’re on the original 0%-tips deal.
Ko-fi Gold removes the fee — for $12/month. Gold takes Ko-fi’s own cut down to 0% across the board — tips, shop, memberships, commissions. Past roughly $240/month in shop or membership sales, Gold is cheaper than paying 5% on everything.
Payment processing is separate and on top. Whichever plan you’re on, Stripe or PayPal’s own processing fee still applies — commonly around 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. That’s true of almost every platform in this category, Keepp included, so it’s worth factoring into any fee comparison rather than treating the headline percentage as the whole cost.
Money goes straight to your own Stripe or PayPal — Ko-fi is genuinely not in the middle of it. This is one thing Ko-fi does get right: it’s a direct-pay platform. Payments land in your own connected account, not Ko-fi’s. That part isn’t a real point of difference from Keepp — both models put you, not the platform, as the one actually holding the money.
No native booking calendar. Ko-fi covers tips, memberships, commissions, and a shop. Scheduling a paid 1:1 call means pointing people at a separate tool — Cal.com, Calendly, or similar — pasted in as a link, not something the page itself understands as a bookable slot with real availability.
No custom domain. You can pick a custom URL slug (ko-fi.com/yourname, with Gold unlocking shorter ones), but the page itself lives on Ko-fi’s domain. There’s no way to point your own yourname.com at it.
Keepp vs. Ko-fi
| Keepp | Ko-fi | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | Free $0, Pro $9.99/mo, Influencer $24.99/mo | Free (Contributor 5% by default), Gold $12/mo |
| Fee on sales | 5% Free / 3% Pro / 0% Influencer, plus Stripe’s processing fee | 0–5% on tips (plan-dependent), 5% on shop/memberships/commissions on free, 0% on Gold, plus Stripe/PayPal processing |
| Fee on free & pay-outside listings | 0% — order still captured and confirmed | Not applicable — Ko-fi doesn’t have a separate “display price, pay elsewhere” mode |
| Who holds the money | Your own connected Stripe account — you’re the merchant of record | Your own connected Stripe or PayPal — also direct-pay |
| Physical / made-to-order products | Yes — real products with variants, orders captured with buyer details | Shop is oriented toward digital goods and one-off extras |
| Bookings | Real availability, Google Calendar sync, automatic Zoom or Google Meet link per remote appointment | No native slot-based booking calendar — requires a separate tool |
| Affiliate & promo-code cards | Dedicated affiliate cards with promo codes, plus for-sale and showcase cards | Not offered |
| Lead capture & export | Form blocks with your own fields; submissions filterable and exportable to CSV | Supporter list held on-platform |
| AI-assisted page management | HTTP Agent API for managing your page conversationally | Not offered |
| Custom domain | Included on Pro ($9.99/mo) | Not available — pages live at ko-fi.com/yourname |
| Shareable link per item | Every product, booking, and form has its own link and QR code | Single page; no per-item shareable links |
Where the difference shows up
When “commission” means an actual appointment
Ko-fi’s commissions feature is a request form, not a calendar — someone asks for a custom piece, you agree on scope over messages, and there’s no concept of a bookable time slot anywhere in the product. If what you’re actually selling is your time — a consult, a session, a paid call — that’s a fundamentally different shape of product than a commission request.
Keepp’s booking block holds real availability, syncs with Google Calendar so you can’t be double-booked, and generates a Zoom or Google Meet link automatically for remote sessions — included on the free plan. A booking can be priced through Stripe, free, or display-only, the same three modes any product on Keepp uses.
A shop built for things, not just downloads
Ko-fi’s shop leans digital — ebooks, presets, templates, one-off extras alongside physical items creators bolt on manually. Keepp’s product blocks handle real inventory natively: variants, stock limits, and orders captured with full buyer details, checkout running through your own connected Stripe account. Connecting Stripe takes a few minutes and works on the free plan.
Every item gets its own link
A Ko-fi page is one URL — everything you sell or offer sits behind the same link, so pointing someone at “just the mug” or “just Saturday’s session” means sending your whole page and asking them to scroll. On Keepp, every product, booking, and form has its own shareable link and QR code — a Story pointed at one specific offering goes straight to it, not to the top of your page.
Recommending, not just receiving
A card block covers something for sale, an affiliate link with a promo code, or a pure showcase piece. Affiliate income is a real revenue stream for a lot of creators, and it’s a first-class card type on Keepp rather than something stapled onto a support page.
Who owns the relationship
Every lead, buyer, and booking on Keepp is yours — form submissions are filterable and exportable to CSV whenever you want them, and purchase and booking history stays visible in your own dashboard. Nothing about switching plans holds that data back. Keepp never locks you in covers this in full.
The page is yours to shape — including the domain
Beyond the commerce, a Keepp page carries your own styling and font pairing, a custom domain on Pro, scheduled blocks for launches, and analytics that go past view counts. There’s also an HTTP Agent API — point an AI assistant at your page and manage it conversationally.
What to weigh
On tips alone, Ko-fi’s free-plan offer is genuinely strong if that’s the whole business — 0% is 0%, and Gold at $12/month is a fair deal once volume justifies it. Where the comparison shifts is the moment your page needs to sell physical products with real inventory, take a booked and paid appointment, hand a specific item its own shareable link, or live on a domain you actually own. That’s a different shape of page than a tip button plus a shop — one Keepp is built for from the free plan up.
Claim your page at keepp.link — free to start, no card required. See pricing for what changes at each plan.