When you actually need e-commerce (and the cheap way to take payments)

“I need to take payments online” and “I need an online store” get treated as the same sentence. They’re rungs on a ladder — and each rung up costs real money, so climb only when the current rung actually hurts.

Rung 1: Payment links

Fits: deposits, invoices, gift cards, a handful of fixed offerings, “e-transfer feels unprofessional.”

Stripe and Square both let you create payment links: a URL that opens a hosted checkout page for a product or amount you define. Put the links behind buttons on your static site and you can take a deposit or sell a gift card without a store. The payment-link guide renders current Canadian and US fees from verified data.

Canadians: both support Canadian-dollar payments and settlement. Keep offering Interac e-Transfer for suitable manual invoices if your customers prefer it.

Rung 2: Buy buttons on your own site (still ~$0/month)

Fits: up to a couple dozen products, no complex shipping.

Stripe Payment Links handle quantities, shipping addresses, even simple shipping charges. Ask your AI assistant to build a products page with a grid of your products, each linking to its payment link. You now have a “store” with $0 platform fees on infrastructure you own.

The honest limit: a page of separate links isn’t a shopping cart. Customers pay one link at a time (a single Stripe link can bundle several fixed items, but they can’t browse and add as they go). Inventory doesn’t decrement, shipping logic is basic, and while Stripe Tax can calculate tax on a link for an extra fee, knowing where you must register and remit is still your job. It’s a farm stand, not a supermarket — and a farm stand is exactly the right size for many businesses.

Rung 3: A real store — Shopify and friends

Fits: many products, real inventory, combined-cart shipping, sales tax across provinces/states, returns and discount codes.

When the farm stand hurts, pay for the real thing without guilt. Shopify is the default for good reason; Square Online is worth a look if you already use Square in person. Verify the native-market plan, renewal, and payment fees when that upgrade becomes necessary.

Keep the two ownership rules even here:

1. Your domain stays at your registrar — pointed at Shopify, never registered through it.
2. Export your customer list and orders on a schedule. The store platform is replaceable; the customer list isn’t.

The decision in one paragraph

Count products and monthly online orders. Stay on payment links while they remain easy to maintain. When you consistently lose sales to missing carts, inventory, shipping, or tax handling, take rung 3 and treat the fee as a cost of running that sales channel. Do not pay store-tier money for deposit-taking that a payment link handles.