Beacons alternatives for creators

Reviewed by the usecode.sh team on

Beacons is the broadest free tier in this category, so leaving it is usually about one specific friction rather than the product as a whole; work out which friction is yours before you switch, because for several of them the answer is a different tool than ours.

How we checked

Plan names, prices and transaction fees come from each product's official pricing page, read on 2026-08-13 and linked in Sources. Beacons publishes several free-tier capabilities as icons in a comparison table without stating a tier, and this page treats those as unconfirmed rather than repeating them as free, which is the same standard applied to every product here.

What Beacons is genuinely good at

The free tier is the argument, and it is a strong one. A link page, media kit, digital products, affiliate links, email sends and Instagram DM automation all sit on an account that costs nothing, and a custom domain arrives at Creator for $10/mo, which is less than most rivals charge for the domain alone. For a creator who wants one login for the whole business, nothing else bundles this much this early. Leaving means reassembling those pieces from separate tools, and that is a real cost rather than a footnote.

The reasons creators actually leave, and what fixes each

  • The 9% cut on store sales and affiliate earnings

    What actually fixes it
    Stan Store at 0% platform fee, Gumroad at 10% plus $0.50 per sale, or Payhip's free plan at 5%
    Cost
    $29/mo, per sale, per sale
  • Creator Plus is the only tier that clears the fee

    What actually fixes it
    Do the arithmetic below before you upgrade or move
    Cost
    $30/mo
  • You use the link page and nothing else

    What actually fixes it
    Linktree free, or Campsite.bio with a custom domain
    Cost
    Free, $7/mo
  • Your income is brand codes, not your own products

    What actually fixes it
    usecode.sh, where every card is a code and there is nothing to take a cut of
    Cost
    Free

Do the fee arithmetic rather than feeling it. Beacons' 9% costs the same as Creator Plus at about $333 a month in sales, so below that the free tier is cheaper and above it the subscription is. Against Stan Store's $29/mo at 0%, Beacons' 9% costs the same at about $322 a month. Against Gumroad's 10% plus $0.50, Beacons' 9% is simply lower per sale, which is the one row where staying put wins outright. These are divisions on published rates, not forecasts, and they ignore flat per-sale charges and payment processing.

The alternatives in one line each

  • Stan Store. A paid storefront: Creator $29/mo or $300/yr, Creator Pro $99/mo, a 14-day trial and no free plan, and 0% platform fee on sales. It earns the fee once your product sales clear roughly $322 a month. Note that discount codes on your own products sit on the $99/mo Pro tier, so leaving a 9% fee for a coupon feature can cost more than the fee did.
  • Gumroad. No monthly fee at all: 10% plus $0.50 per transaction on direct sales, 30% on buyers its Discover marketplace sends you, and it acts as merchant of record for sales tax worldwide. Discount codes are a documented standard feature with scheduling, quantity limits and minimum spend rules. The trade is a percentage that never stops scaling with you.
  • Payhip. The middle path: Free forever at 5% per transaction, Plus $29/mo at 2%, Pro $99/mo at 0%, and its pricing page puts all features on every plan. Its free tier undercuts Beacons' 9% without asking for a subscription.
  • Linktree or Campsite.bio. If you only ever used the link page, this is the honest move: Linktree free, or Campsite.bio at $7/mo with a custom domain included. The full set is on Linktree alternatives.
  • usecode.sh. Codes and the links attached to them, free, with views, shop taps and code copies counted per card. There is no store, so no fee is possible on anything you bring.

What you have to redo when you switch

  1. Move the products before you cancel. Files, product pages and checkout links live inside Beacons, and anything a buyer bookmarked breaks the day the page goes.
  2. Export the email list first. It is the one asset on Beacons you cannot rebuild from public information, and it stops being reachable when the account does.
  3. Re-point the domain, and be glad you have one. If you were on Creator or above with a custom domain, your public URL survives the move, which makes a Beacons exit meaningfully cheaper than a Linktree exit.
  4. Rebuild the media kit somewhere, or keep the last PDF. Brands ask for it during exactly the week you do not have one.
  5. Assume active memberships and subscriptions do not port. Ask the destination in writing whether it can import existing subscribers, and plan on asking people to re-subscribe, because that is the step that actually costs money.
  6. Leave the Beacons page live for a few weeks pointing at the new address, then take it down.

What usecode.sh does not do

Most reasons to leave Beacons are about selling, and usecode.sh sells nothing, so for most of this page we are not the answer. There is no store and no checkout, no email marketing, no media kit, no DM automation, no scheduling, no courses and no custom domain. It does codes and their links, and it counts page views, shop taps and code copies, which is code interest and copy activity. It cannot see redemptions or sales, and no bio page can. Come here if your bio's job is handing out brand codes; go to one of the four above if its job is anything else.

Honest limits and unverified points

  • Beacons' pricing page states the 9% on store sales and affiliate earnings for Free and Creator; whether that percentage sits on top of payment processing is not stated there, while Gumroad publishes a single per-transaction figure. Compare like for like before switching on the strength of a percentage.
  • The break-even numbers are arithmetic on published rates, not predictions, and they ignore flat per-sale fees and processor charges.
  • Beacons' coupon feature is documented as a per-product discount code created in the product's price section. That article does not state which plans include it, so treat the tier detail as unverified.
  • Beacons, Stan Store, Gumroad, Payhip, Linktree and Campsite.bio are trademarks of their owners. This is an independent comparison, verified on the date shown, and implies no endorsement.

Related comparisons and guides

If you are leaving because you never sold anything

The live example is a page with nothing to sell: every card is a code, and nothing on it can take a cut.

See a live code page

Sources