# Beacons alternatives for creators

Canonical: https://usecode.sh/compare/beacons-alternatives
Last reviewed: 2026-08-13

Beacons puts more into a free account than anything else in the category: link page, media kit, digital products, affiliate links, email sends and Instagram DM automation. It pays for that with a 9% cut of store sales and affiliate earnings, and that cut stays on the $10/mo Creator plan. Only Creator Plus at $30/mo takes it to 0%. So the right alternative depends on what you are leaving for. If you sell, the fee question is arithmetic: Stan Store is $29/mo at 0% platform fee, Gumroad is 10% plus $0.50 per sale with no monthly fee, Payhip is free at 5%. If you never touched the suite, a plain link page is cheaper and simpler. If your income is brand codes rather than your own products, usecode.sh is free and does only that.

## 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

| Why you are leaving | What actually fixes it | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The 9% cut on store sales and affiliate earnings | Stan Store at 0% platform fee, Gumroad at 10% plus $0.50 per sale, or Payhip's free plan at 5% | $29/mo, per sale, per sale |
| Creator Plus is the only tier that clears the fee | Do the arithmetic below before you upgrade or move | $30/mo |
| You use the link page and nothing else | Linktree free, or Campsite.bio with a custom domain | Free, $7/mo |
| Your income is brand codes, not your own products | usecode.sh, where every card is a code and there is nothing to take a cut of | 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](/compare/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 guides

- [usecode.sh vs Beacons for promo codes](https://usecode.sh/compare/beacons)
  Beacons bundles a store, email, and a media kit; its discount codes are checkout coupons for your own products. Where a code-first page differs, sourced and dated.
- [Stan Store alternatives for creators](https://usecode.sh/compare/stan-store-alternatives)
  Stan Store is a $29/mo checkout with no free plan and discount codes on the $99/mo tier. The alternatives sorted by what you are actually leaving for.
- [Linktree alternatives for creators](https://usecode.sh/compare/linktree-alternatives)
  What Linktree does genuinely well, the four reasons creators actually leave, and which alternative fixes each one. Sourced, dated, and usually not usecode.sh.
- [A free promo-code page: what free actually includes, and what it costs](https://usecode.sh/guides/free-promo-code-page)
  Which creator tools have a genuinely free promo-code page, what each free tier gates, and what three of them quietly take out of your commission. Sourced and dated.
- [Promo-code analytics for creators: the numbers worth having](https://usecode.sh/guides/promo-code-analytics)
  Views, shop taps, and code copies per card per day: which promo-code numbers a creator can own, and what to check before trusting any dashboard.

## Sources

- [Beacons pricing and plan comparison](https://beacons.ai/i/pricing) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Beacons Help: how to create a coupon or discount code](https://help.beacons.ai/en/articles/4700673) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Stan Store pricing (official blog; the pricing page was under construction at review time)](https://stan.store/blog/stan-store-pricing/) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Gumroad pricing and fees](https://gumroad.com/pricing) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Gumroad Help: discount codes](https://gumroad.com/help/article/128-discount-codes) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Payhip pricing and transaction fees](https://payhip.com/pricing) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Linktree pricing and plan comparison](https://linktr.ee/s/pricing/) (verified 2026-08-13)
- [Campsite.bio pricing and feature comparison](https://campsite.bio/pricing) (verified 2026-08-13)