By Rajendra Bhochalya
Art Storefronts is easily one of the best solutions I’ve seen for artists looking for a way to connect with clients, elevate their brand, and increase revenue in the digital age. The trouble is the company isn’t particularly transparent with its pricing.
Fortunately, I’ve done a little digging, and here’s a quick insight into what you’ll spend:
- Set-up fees: $1,000-$2,800
- Monthly fees: Starting at $50 per month
- Commission fees: 0% for self-made orders, or 5-15%
- Premium support and coaching: Starting at $1,499
- Extras (Marketing services): Starting at $440
Want to know more? Let’s dive a little deeper into Art Storefronts’ pricing.
How Much Does Art Storefronts Cost? Quick Overview
As an experienced ecommerce web developer myself, I know how frustrating it can be to find a platform that doesn’t share clear information about its pricing.
Other popular ecommerce solutions, like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Wix, all have dedicated pages showing you exactly how much you’re going to spend per month. Visit Art Storefront’s pricing page, and all you get is a form to request a demo.
It isn’t that Art Storefronts is trying to hide its pricing from customers. Rather, the company offers a very unique ecommerce experience, with various different solutions and services tailored to your specific needs. That means your pricing can vary pretty drastically.
To clarify things, these are the fees you’ll pay for Art Storefronts:
- Set-up fees: Art Storefronts will actually help you build your store, saving you a lot of time (and money) on working with designers and developers.
- Monthly fees: These are the standard “subscription” fees, you’ll pay for hosting, and the features available on Art Storefronts.
- Commission fees: With it’s built-in POD services, ASF can print and ship your orders for you. If you create products and ship them yourself, there are no transaction fees.
- Premium support and coaching: If you want end-to-end support, guidance, and training from Art Storefronts, you’ll pay for an extra subscription.
- Extras: Art Storefronts offers a range of services, for things like social media marketing, or content creation, these all come with a one-time fee.
Art Storefronts Pricing: The Set-Up Fees
The set-up fees for Art Storefronts are probably one of the biggest things that might put you off using this platform initially. Most other ecommerce platforms won’t charge you for “setup” – but that’s because you’re expected to handle everything yourself.
Although there are plenty of straightforward ecommerce tools that make this reasonably easy, it’s tough to create a custom storefront on your own, particularly without much technical knowledge – that’s people turn to experts like me for web development services.
If you consider that the average web developer can charge you between $60 and $80 per hour, the initial set-up costs of Art Storefronts ($1,000 to $2,800) are pretty reasonable.
Plus, it’s worth noting that the company does occasionally run promotions, offering free website setup, and free website management for life.
The Monthly Subscription Fees (and Premium Support)
The only way to get a full view of the monthly subscription fees you’ll pay for Art Storefronts is to contact the team and ask for a demo.
However, based on the reviews I’ve read, and insights from artists using the platform, you can expect to pay around $50 per month – when you’re paying annually. Again, that might seem expensive at first, but it’s actually a little cheaper than some ecommerce plans, like the mid-tier Shopify plan for $105 per month (or $79 annually).
The monthly fees are pretty decent, considering all the features you get, such as access to a direct print-on-demand solution, omnichannel selling tools, hosting, a custom domain, and Augmented Reality merchandising tools. You even get automatic SEO and upselling features.
Obviously, things get a little more expensive if you choose the add-on premium support and coaching membership for $1,499. This does give you life-long expert support, guidance, and training from the Art Storefronts team, however, which can come in handy.
Still, if you want to skip that membership, you’ll still get an excellent level of customer support, as well as access to a huge help center, packed with valuable insights.
There’s even handy software to help you, like the Art Buyer AI which can identify visitors that share the characteristics of your top buyers.
Commission and Transaction Fees on Art Storefronts
Here’s where things start to get a little trickier. Although Art Storefronts charges transaction fees, they’re not exactly the same as the transaction fees charged by other platforms – and they’re not applied to everything. If you make your products and sell them directly yourself, you don’t pay any transaction fees.
You can even order materials from Art Storefronts for wholesale prices to reduce your costs, like frames, printing services, paper, and shipping labels. The transaction fees are there to help Art Storefronts deliver a unique, next-level service to artists.
They pay for the constant new updates and features on Art Storefronts, the customer support team, advertising and coaching, and marketing studies. You’ll pay these fees to sell specific types of art work, such as Art Prints, Polyptych art, Limited Editions, and Originals.
If you’re an artist Art Storefronts applies transaction fees to all purchases of $5 or above, while Print Studios pay transaction fees on all orders regardless of size. Art Storefronts automatically applies these transaction fees to orders unless you use the self-made order option.
The Basic Transaction Fees
From the moment you set up your Art Storefronts store and start selling, you’ll be charged transaction fees whenever you make a sale. Those fees are charged in USD to your credit card, and range between 5-15% of the order, depending on the type of product.
Whether you’re using automated fulfillment, or self-fulfillment, the fee will be charged based on the sub-total of your sale. That means it doesn’t include shipping and tax costs.
For self-made orders, where you produce your products, and manage all of the processing, and delivery tasks yourself, you won’t pay any transaction fees.
Print Studios and Galleries who aren’t fulfillment partners with Art Storefronts, also pay transaction fees, but they’re not charged immediately. Instead, you receive an invoice with all the transaction fees you need to pay from the previous month on the first day of the next month. Those fees are also based on the full total of the order – including shipping and taxes.
Notably, while Art Storefronts automatically charges for transaction fees in USD, you still need to pay them if you’re using a different currency. However, the company does accommodate exchange rates, taking information from the EU central bank.
Additionally, it’s worth remembering that transaction fees are non-refundable, even if a customer returns an order, you still need to pay the transaction fee.
Extra Fees: Premium Services
Finally, as I mentioned above, Art Storefronts offers a range of “premium” extra services for companies, usually focused on things like market research or marketing.
The price for these services, and the services themselves, vary drastically. There are new sales and options available on a monthly basis, so it’s worth checking the “Services” tab on your dashboard.
Options range from simple solutions like “technical assistant support”, for $440, to comprehensive all-in-one marketing plans. These include access to everything from AI copilots, regular Instagram Reels, social media support, product descriptions, and lots more, but will cost you closer to $4,000.
I should note, all of these costs are “one-offs”, you don’t pay the same price monthly. Additionally, the services are entirely optional. You don’t have to buy them – although I’d definitely recommend taking a look, particularly if you don’t have your own marketing and design team.
The extra support from a team of experts who understand the art space, and know how to generate results for your business can really come in handy, particularly when you’re trying to scale your store.
Is Art Storefronts Good Value for Money?
There’s no denying that Art Storefronts can be expensive. However, as I advise many of my clients when they come to me for ecommerce store building support, it’s worth looking at your return on investment, as well as the initial costs.
While you might pay more for Art Storefronts than you would for a standard ecommerce solution like Wix or Shopify, you get advantages you won’t access anywhere else. This includes:
- Comprehensive setup and web design support
- Marketing assistance and guidance
- Premium coaching and support
- Print on Demand services (with much larger canvases than other companies offer)
- AI and augmented reality tools
If you created a store and bought all of those things separately, you’d probably end up paying a lot more than you would just to use Art Storefronts.
With that in mind, I do think Art Storefronts is good value for money – but it’s worth doing a bit of budgeting before you dive in. Yes, you’ll probably spend more to get started with Art Storefronts, but you could end up making a lot more money too.
