Most advice about starting an online business assumes you already pay for four or five tools. A landing page builder, an email platform, a checkout, something to connect them. Several hundred pounds a year before a single person has bought anything.
You do not need any of that to begin. This page answers the questions people actually ask before they start — what you need, what it costs, and where the free version genuinely runs out.
What do you actually need to sell something online?
Three things, and only three:
- A page that explains what you are selling and asks for either an email address or a payment. This is a landing page, or a funnel if it runs to more than one step.
- A way to collect and email the people who are interested. An opt-in form and somewhere to store the contacts.
- A way to take payment and deliver the thing, if you are selling rather than list-building.
Everything else — the website, the blog, the social scheduling, the analytics stack — is optional and can wait. Most people build those first and the three above last, which is why they spend months preparing and never launch.
Do you need a website to sell online?
No, and this is the single most expensive assumption people make.
A website is a place people browse. A funnel is a page that asks for one thing. If you are selling a digital product or building an email list, the funnel does the job and the website is decoration you will maintain for years.
Start with one page that does one thing. Add a website when you have something to fill it with.
More on this: how to start an email list with zero followers walks through the order that works when you have no audience yet.
What does a free plan actually include?
Worth being specific, because "free" is used loosely and most free tiers are trials with a countdown attached.
On systeme.io's free forever plan you get 2,000 contacts, unlimited emails to them, three sales funnels, one blog, one online course, one affiliate programme and one custom domain — with unlimited file storage and no transaction fees on anything you sell. No card, no expiry.
The meaningful limits are the funnel and course counts. Three funnels covers a lead magnet, a product and a thank-you page comfortably. You will feel it when you are running several offers at once, and that is the point where paying starts to make sense — by which time the list should be covering it.
The honest test is not whether a tool is good. It is what your list or your product is earning per month. If it comfortably exceeds the subscription, pay and stop thinking about it. If it earns nothing, you are paying to store contacts.
What does it cost to start, really?
The software can be nothing. Two things are not:
- A domain, roughly £10 a year, if you want your own address rather than a subdomain.
- A mailbox on that domain, if you intend to send marketing email at any volume. Gmail and Yahoo tightened their sending rules and a shared address increasingly lands in spam.
That is the honest answer. The platform is free. The address is not. Everything else — pages, emails, automations, checkout, file delivery — is included.
For what the paid platforms charge to do the same job, here are six of them side by side, from $29 a month to $179.
How do you get paid without monthly fees?
Transaction fees are where most platforms take their cut, and they are easy to miss because they only bite once you are actually selling. A 5% cut sounds small until you are doing a few thousand a month — at $5,000 a month it turns the cheapest plan into the most expensive one.
Systeme.io charges 0% transaction fees on every plan including the free one. You connect Stripe or PayPal, they take their normal processing fee of roughly 2.9% plus 30¢, and nothing else comes off the top.
If you are selling on a marketplace at the moment, this is the comparison worth running — marketplace fees plus their cut of your customer relationship against a free plan where you keep both.
What if you are already paying for something?
Different question, and the answer is usually to work out the number before you decide anything.
Before you cancel anything at all: export your email list first. Most platforms lock the export behind the plan you just left, so the order matters more than the timing.
Then build the new version alongside the old one, move the list, send one ordinary email to check it arrives, and cancel after that. One month of overlap costs a single payment. Cancelling first can cost you the list.
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All of the above is far easier to judge with the dashboard actually open than read about in the abstract — you can see what is included, build a page, and decide whether it does what you need. It is free forever rather than a trial, and it does not ask for a card, so there is nothing to cancel if you decide against it.
Free forever plan — 2,000 contacts, no credit card
What should you build first?
One thing, not all of it — and the order matters more than the tool. The three steps that get a first funnel live in an afternoon are here, along with what to do differently if you are already paying for a platform.
If you want every step laid out with screenshots, the free 30-page quickstart guide takes it from an empty account to your first delivery. No cost, no upsell.
Common questions
How much does it cost to start selling digital products?
The platform can be free. Budget about £10 a year for a domain if you want your own address, and card processing of roughly 2.9% plus 30¢ per sale. There is no monthly fee unless you choose to pay one.
What is the difference between a landing page and a website?
A landing page asks for one thing and has no navigation. A website invites browsing and needs maintaining. For a first product you need the page, not the site.
Do free plans expire?
A free plan does not; a free trial does. If a platform asks for a card before you can use it, that is a trial regardless of what the page calls it.
Can you take payments without a business bank account?
Stripe and PayPal both allow sole traders to take payments into a personal account in most countries, though rules vary. Check what your own tax authority expects before you start selling rather than after.
How long does it take to set up?
An afternoon for a first funnel — a page, a form and an automatic delivery. Longer if you try to build the whole business at once, which is the usual reason people never finish.
Related reading: the free tools that actually run an online business · how to sell digital products on Pinterest without a shop