About

What this site is

A research site about the costs and plan limits behind services creators use to sell online.

The platforms in this category — community hosts, course tools, and digital-product storefronts — publish clear monthly prices and much less clear information about everything else. The transaction fee. Whether card processing is included or charged on top. Which features are add-ons or capacity limits. Where the crossover between two plans actually falls.

Those details usually cost more than the subscription. We work them out and publish the arithmetic.

Why it exists

Every comparison of these platforms leads with the headline price, and the headline price is the least useful number available. When I started looking for an honest answer to what a creator would actually pay at a meaningful revenue level, I could not find one. Every article I read either copied the pricing page verbatim or quoted figures that were two years old.

So I built the spreadsheet myself and decided to publish it.

Who writes it

Keptrate is written and maintained under the editorial pen name Ryo Kitamura, used by the site’s Japan-based operator.

I have no ownership or editorial relationship with any of the companies covered here, though this site earns affiliate commissions from some of them — see the Affiliate Disclosure. I am not part of the US creator-economy scene, I do not go to the conferences, and I have no reason to be diplomatic about anyone’s pricing page. I read the documentation and I run the numbers.

That distance is deliberate. Most comparisons in this category are written by people inside the industry who know each other, and it shows in how carefully they avoid saying anything unflattering. This site does not have that problem.

What I do not claim: I am not reporting on months of hands-on use of every platform here. This is a research site. I compare published pricing, terms and documentation, and I show the arithmetic so you can check it yourself. Where an article draws on anything beyond public sources, it says so.

Contact: ryo@keptrate.com

How I work

The full research process is on the Methodology page — what sources I use, what assumptions the calculations make, and what I will not do.

The short version: primary sources as a rule, total cost rather than sticker price, every figure dated, everything re-verified quarterly. When a source cannot be directly confirmed, I say so.

How this site makes money

Affiliate commissions. Some links here earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. See the Affiliate Disclosure.

I do not accept payment for placement, and no vendor reviews articles before publication. Where a platform I earn nothing from is the better choice, I say so — the three-platform cost comparison does exactly that where the numbers support it.

Corrections

Found an error? Tell me. I correct mistakes and note the correction in the article.