How Much Monthly Commission Before Owning Your Own Website Pays Off? (2026 Platform Fee Table)

A neighbour of mine rented an apartment for nine years. Rent was stable, location was convenient, and there was always a landlord to call when something broke. Then one day he finally did the maths: the total rent he had paid over those nine years exceeded the purchase price of the unit. He was essentially living in a home he'd already paid for — but didn't own a single key to.

Commission fees on selling platforms work in exactly the same way.

Every order you ship through Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop, or a food delivery app, a percentage leaves your revenue before it ever reaches your bank account. In the short run it feels like a reasonable cost of doing business — the platform brings customers, handles payments, and provides a trusted checkout flow. But if you accumulate those percentages over months and years, the figure can quietly exceed the cost of building your own website and customer base from the ground up.

Calculate Your Own Numbers in Three Minutes

Before reading further, try this exercise. Find your last monthly payout statement from whichever platform you sell on most. Locate the line that shows fees or commissions deducted. Now multiply that number by 12.

That annual figure is what you are effectively paying to use someone else's storefront. Compare it to the starting price of a custom-built business website (฿79,000 at TumWebSME). How many years of fees equals the cost of owning outright?

If the answer is less than two years, keep reading. If it's more than five, you may not be at the break-even point yet — but it's still worth understanding what you're paying and what alternatives exist.

2026 Platform Fee Table (Updated)

Fee structures change regularly. The figures below come from each platform's official seller centre or fee announcement pages as of the dates noted.

Shopee (Updated 4 August 2026)

These are the base transaction fees. Additional charges — such as shipping subsidies, campaign fees, or live-stream commission — may apply on top.

Lazada (Updated 1 August 2026)

Lazada publishes category-specific rates in its seller centre. Check your specific product category for the exact figure.

TikTok Shop (Updated 5 July 2026)

Food Delivery Platforms (GrabFood, LINE MAN, etc.)

A 30% GP fee means that on a ฿100 order, ฿32.10 goes to the platform before ingredient costs, labour, or packaging. For food businesses with thin margins, this fee structure is often the most challenging of all.

The Government Discount Programme: ไทยช่วยไทยพลัส (Thai Help Thai Plus)

The Thai government has run a temporary subsidy programme — ไทยช่วยไทยพลัส — offering a temporary reduction in GP fees for qualifying food businesses, bringing effective rates down to 9–12% for participating platforms and restaurants. Check with your platform's seller centre for current eligibility and duration, as the terms and participating platforms vary.

The Break-Even Formula

Here is a simple formula you can calculate yourself:

Monthly commission ÷ ฿79,000 × 12 = break-even in months

If your shop pays ฿6,600 per month in platform commissions:

฿6,600 ÷ ฿79,000 = 0.0835 → 0.0835 × 12 = just over 1 month of commission savings per year

Put differently: at ฿6,600/month in commissions, you reach the cost of a custom website (฿79,000) in approximately 12 months. After that point, every month of platform commission you pay is money that an own-channel customer base could have saved you.

This doesn't mean you should shut down your platform stores. It means the maths has reached a point where it's worth running both — and growing the channel you own.

"But My Sales Are Good Right Now. Why Change?"

This is the most common response, and it's a fair one. If volume is strong, orders are coming in, and margins are acceptable, there's no urgency to disrupt what's working. The platforms provide real value: traffic, trust, and logistics infrastructure that would take significant time and money to replicate.

The question isn't whether to leave the platforms. It's whether you are also building something parallel that you control — because platforms change their terms, their algorithms, and their fee structures. The Weloveshopping closure in 2023 is a useful reminder: a platform that was profitable the previous year can shut down within months, leaving sellers to migrate data and rebuild customer relationships from scratch.

Diversification isn't about abandoning what's working. It's about not being entirely dependent on it.

Why Starting Earlier Compounds the Benefit

An own-channel customer — someone who orders directly through your website, your LINE OA, or your own checkout — generates no commission fees. Every repeat purchase from that customer is revenue that stays in full.

If you acquire ten own-channel customers in year one, their cumulative purchases over two or three years are commission-free. If you wait until year three to start building that channel, you've forgone two years of those compounding savings. The earlier you start building the habit, the more time the numbers have to work in your favour.

This is especially relevant for food businesses paying 30%+ GP fees. Even moving 20–30% of volume to an own-channel system — through a direct LINE ordering bot, a simple website, or a QR-code-based pre-order system — has a meaningful effect on the monthly P&L.

Your Own Channel Doesn't Need to Be Big to Start

A common misconception is that building your own channel requires a large website, a full e-commerce system, and significant marketing spend. That's one approach. But starting small is entirely valid.

• A simple landing page with a LINE contact button and a bank-transfer ordering flow is a channel you own.

• A Google Form order sheet shared with your regular customers is a channel you own.

• A Facebook Shop connected to your own page, where you build the follower base directly, is a channel you own.

These aren't replacements for a fully built website. They're entry points that let you start accumulating direct customer relationships before you're ready to invest in the full system.

30-Day Action Plan

If the break-even calculation above suggests your commission costs are approaching or exceeding ฿6,600 per month, here is a practical starting point for the next 30 days:

1. Week 1: Pull your exact monthly commission figures from the last three months. Calculate the average. Run the break-even formula.

2. Week 2: Identify your top 20 repeat customers. These are the people most likely to order through a direct channel. Consider how you would reach them outside the platform (LINE, phone, email, social media).

3. Week 3: Set up a minimal direct ordering option — even a simple LINE broadcast with a payment QR code counts. Offer existing customers a small incentive (free delivery, a small discount) for ordering direct once.

4. Week 4: Review: how many direct orders did you receive? What was the commission saving on those orders? Is the experience something you can repeat and grow?

How to Measure Whether It's Working

Track one number each month: the ratio of own-channel orders to platform orders. Even a shift from 0% to 5% in the first month is progress. Over 12 months, a steady increase in own-channel share means a steady reduction in commission costs — without necessarily reducing total volume.

If direct orders are growing but platform orders are also growing, you're expanding the business. If direct orders grow and platform orders hold steady, you're reducing dependency. Both outcomes are good.

Closing Thoughts

Platform commissions are a cost of reaching customers. At low volume, they're often the most efficient way to sell. As volume grows, the monthly total quietly becomes one of the largest line items in your business expenses — sometimes exceeding what you'd pay for a full custom website in under a year.

Running the break-even calculation once is worth doing regardless of where you currently are. If the number says you're still years away from the crossover point, you have time. If it says you're already there, it's worth having a conversation about building something alongside what you already have.

If you'd like to run through the numbers for your specific shop — or talk through what an own-channel setup would actually look like for your type of business — reach out. We'll give you a straight answer.

Follow TumWebSME

Stay updated on web development and digital marketing:

• Facebook: TumWebSME รับทำเว็บไซต์ธุรกิจ

• Instagram: @tumwebsme

• TikTok: @tumwebsme

• YouTube: TumWebSME

Contact and Service Enquiries

• 088-983-9386 (Khun Ploy)

• 099-856-3198 (Khun Saennan)