The Best Platform for a Mail Club: An Honest Comparison
Part of How to Start, Run, and Grow a Mail Club
The best platform for a mail club is usually the simplest one that lets your members stay yours when you scale.
At the size most clubs actually start, the fancy tools barely beat the simple ones on money. What separates them is not the fee: it is whether you own your members, how much the tool does for you, and, in one case, whether it can even bill a subscription at all.
The one question that decides it: whose list is it?
Before fees, ask the question that outlasts them: when a member joins, whose member is it, yours or the platform’s?
A checkout tool keeps your money moving. It does not keep your members. The difference shows up the day you want to leave, or the day the platform changes its rules. If you can export your members’ email addresses and take them with you, you own a business. If you cannot, you are renting an audience on someone else’s terms, and the rent can go up.
Most of the tools below let you own and export your list. Keep that in the front of your mind while the fees try to pull it to the back.
What a mail club actually needs from a platform
A mail club is simpler than a store. It does not need inventory, variants, or a shipping calculator. It needs five plain things:
- Take a recurring payment. Charge the same members the same amount every month, automatically.
- Hold a member list you own. Names, emails, addresses, exportable, yours.
- Reach your members. A way to email the people who joined.
- Capture a signup. A page or link a stranger can join from without emailing you first.
- Stay out of the way. No store bloat you will never use, no forced complexity.
Every platform below is scored on those five. The ones that try to be a whole storefront are not “better,” they are just heavier, and heavy is only worth it when you have grown into it.
The fees, at 100 members paying $10 a month
This is the number everyone wants, so here it is, worked all the way through. One hundred members at $10 is $1,000 coming in each month. This is what is left after the platform’s cut and card processing, at the cheapest sensible plan for each.
Fees checked 2026-07-15. Prices change; treat this as the shape, not gospel, and check each platform’s own page before you commit.
| Platform | What it costs | ~You keep (of $1,000) | Own your list? | Bills a subscription? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIY Stripe (link + spreadsheet) | 0% platform, card fees only | ~$934 | Yes, fully | Yes |
| MailClubly (Pro) | $9/mo, 0% platform | ~$932 | Addresses yes | Yes (built for it) |
| Ko-fi (Gold) | $12/mo, 0% platform | ~$929 | Yes | Yes |
| Subbly (Lite) | $14/mo, 2% + $0.19 | ~$888 | Yes | Yes |
| Shopify + a subscription app | ~$45/mo total | ~$896 | Yes | Only with an app |
| Etsy | 6.5% + listing + card | ~$860* | No, restricted | No auto-renew |
| Patreon | 10% | ~$841 | Yes | Yes |
| Substack | 10% | ~$834 | Yes | Yes (it is email) |
*Etsy cannot auto-bill a subscription at all (see below), so its number only holds if 100 people manually re-buy every single month. Treat it as a footnote, not a real option for the club itself.
The simplest possible setup, a plain payment link, keeps you the most money, and the tool built specifically for mail clubs is a dollar or two behind it. The all-in-one platforms cost a little more because they do more. The two biggest names, Patreon and Substack, cost the most in fees, because a 10% cut on every payment adds up faster than a flat monthly charge.
The spread across the whole field is about $100 a month at this size. Choose on the columns to the right of the money. And keep it in proportion: platform fees are just one line of what a mail club really costs, where paper, postage, and your own hours dwarf them.
The platforms, one by one
Same shape for each: what it is, the fee reality, whose list it is, who it is for, and who should skip it.
DIY Stripe (a payment link plus a spreadsheet)
What it is: Stripe is the plumbing under half the internet. You make a subscription payment link, keep your member list in a spreadsheet or a free database, and send email with a free tool. No platform sits on top taking a cut. The fees: No platform fee and no monthly fee. You pay card processing and a small recurring-billing charge, and keep roughly $934 of every $1,000. Whose list: Entirely yours, in your own account. Best for: Anyone comfortable wiring a few simple tools together, and anyone who wants to keep every dollar and own everything. In the interest of full disclosure, the clubs in our own family run on exactly this kind of plain Stripe setup. Skip it if: You want zero setup and one dashboard that does everything. Stripe does not send a newsletter or hold your list for you; you bring those.
MailClubly (the mail-club-specific tool)
What it is: The one platform on this list built only for snail-mail clubs. It knows what a cut-off date and a fixed ship day are, exports the addresses you need to mail, and lets members pause or skip a month without cancelling. The fees: A free plan that takes 8% of each payment, or Pro at $9 a month for no platform cut. On Pro you keep about $932 of $1,000, essentially tied with the plain Stripe setup, with far less to wire yourself. Whose list: You can export your mailing addresses. (Whether you can export members’ email addresses is not something their site spells out, so confirm it matters to you before you rely on it.) Best for: A creator who wants the mail-club workflow handled and does not want to build anything. You pay a small, honest amount for that convenience, and it is a fair deal. Skip it if: You already run comfortably on your own tools, or you want a full newsletter and marketing suite in the same place.
Ko-fi
What it is: A friendly creator-support platform with recurring membership tiers, a simple shop, and member messaging. The fees: Free with a 5% cut on memberships, or Ko-fi Gold to remove it. Gold is $12 a month for new sign-ups now (older members were grandfathered at $6). On Gold you keep about $929. Whose list: Yours, emails included and exportable. Best for: A small, low-fuss club run by someone who likes a warm, uncomplicated tool and already has a little audience. Skip it if: You want serious retention tools or a real store. Ko-fi keeps things light, which also means it does the least to help you hold members.
Substack
What it is: An email newsletter platform with paid subscriptions baked in. If your club has a written or story element, Substack doubles as your publishing home and your billing. The fees: 10% of every subscription, plus card processing, so you keep about $834. The most expensive on fees, but you are also getting a full email platform and a built-in discovery network. Whose list: Fully yours and exportable. Strong on ownership. Best for: A club built around writing, a story in installments, or a creator who wants the newsletter and the subscription to be the same thing, and who values reaching new readers. Skip it if: Your club is mostly objects (art, stickers, trinkets) rather than words, or that 10% stings once you are past a few hundred members.
Patreon
What it is: The best-known creator membership platform. Tiers, member posts, direct messages, a large built-in audience of people used to paying creators monthly. The fees: 10% for creators who start now, plus processing, so about $841 kept. Whose list: Yours, emails exportable. Best for: A creator who already has a following on Patreon or wants its tier-and-community features, and does not mind the 10%. Skip it if: You are fee-sensitive at scale, or your club is a straightforward one-tier monthly envelope that does not need the community layer.
Shopify (plus a subscription app)
What it is: A full online store. Powerful, professional, and built to grow, but it does not bill subscriptions on its own, so you add a subscription app on top. The fees: About $45 a month all in (the store plan plus a modest app), with no extra platform cut beyond card processing. You keep about $896. Whose list: Fully yours. Best for: A club that is also becoming a real brand or shop, selling one-off items alongside the subscription, and a creator who wants room to grow into something bigger. Skip it if: You just want to mail one thing a month to a list of members. Shopify is a lot of store for a simple club, and you will pay a monthly fee for capabilities you may never touch.
Subbly
What it is: An all-in-one platform built specifically for subscription boxes: a storefront, a subscription engine, email tools, and the strongest member-keeping features in this group (pause and skip, save-offers when someone tries to cancel, and automatic failed-card recovery). It now also sells one-off products from the same store, which it did not always do. The fees: Lite is $14 a month plus a 2% cut and 19 cents per transaction, so you keep around $888. Whose list: Yours and exportable. Best for: A club that is really a subscription-box business, or a creator who wants the most done-for-you retention tooling in one place. Skip it if: You are a small, simple mail club. It is built for boxes and box-scale operations, and much of it will sit unused on a one-envelope club.
Etsy
What it is: A marketplace, not a subscription tool. Millions of buyers browse it, which makes it good for being found and for gift purchases. The honest catch: Etsy cannot auto-bill a monthly membership. There is no true recurring subscription for buyers; the only “subscriptions” on Etsy are services you pay Etsy for. To run a club on it, you would sell a fixed prepaid block (say, three months as a one-time purchase) or manually charge people again each month, which is not a real subscription. Whose list: Not yours. Etsy owns the customer relationship and restricts using buyer emails for marketing. Best for: Discovery and gifts. A great front door that sends people toward your real club, or a way to sell a prepaid gift subscription. Skip it (as the club engine): Always. Let Etsy do what it is good at, finding you buyers, and run the actual recurring club somewhere you own the members.
The one thing no platform does for you
Some of these tools help when a card fails. The better ones (Subbly, Shopify with an app, and Stripe underneath most of the others) will automatically retry the charge and nudge the member to update their card, so you do not lose someone over an expired card instead of a lost interest.
That is worth having, and it is genuinely uneven across the field: the simplest and cheapest options do the least of it.
But recovering a failed card is not the same as keeping a member. No platform on this list writes the second envelope that lands better than the first. None of them gives a member a reason to stay past the novelty. None of them turns a first-month subscriber into someone who is still opening your mail a year later.
That work is creative, and it is yours, the same way the art is yours. It is also the whole difference between a club that grows and one that slowly leaks.
The platform can move the money. Keeping mail club members past month three is the part that decides whether the club lasts, and it is a skill, not a setting. The M.A.I.L. Method™: Automate the Admin is where you build the systems that do it on purpose.
So which one? A three-question decider
You can pick right now. Answer these three.
1. How many members do you have, honestly, today? Under about a hundred: go simplest. A plain Stripe link, or MailClubly Pro if you want the mail workflow handled, or Ko-fi if you want warm and easy. You keep the most and learn your club cheaply.
2. How much do you want to build yourself? Nothing, please: MailClubly (for a pure mail club) or Subbly (if it is really a box business). Happy to wire a few free tools: the DIY Stripe stack, and keep every dollar.
3. How much does reaching and owning your people matter? A lot, and you write: Substack, where the newsletter and the subscription are one thing. A lot, and you want a real store: Shopify or Subbly. Either way, protect one rule: pick something you can export your list from, so your members are always yours to keep.
The honest through-line: start on the lightest tool that fits, keep your list portable, and only graduate to something heavier when your member count makes the extra cost pay for itself. Most clubs never need more than the simple option. The full stack of tools a mail club runs on breaks down each free piece, and the whole picture, from first envelope to members who stay, is how to start, run, and grow a mail club.
Best platform for a mail club: quick answers
What is the cheapest platform for a mail club? At a hundred members paying $10, a plain Stripe payment link keeps the most (around $934 of $1,000), with MailClubly Pro a dollar or two behind. But the spread across every option is only about $100 a month at that size, so “cheapest” is rarely the reason to choose. Owning your list and picking a tool you will actually keep matter more.
Can I run a mail club subscription on Etsy? Not as a true subscription. Etsy cannot automatically bill members every month; there is no auto-renew for buyers. You can sell a prepaid block or a gift on Etsy, and it is excellent for being found, but the recurring club itself needs to live somewhere you can auto-bill and own your members.
Do I need MailClubly? No, but it is a fair choice. It is the one tool built for mail clubs specifically, it handles the cut-off dates and mailing addresses for you, and Pro costs $9 a month with no cut. You pay a small amount for convenience. If you are happy wiring a few free tools together, you can match it for less. If you want it all handled, it earns its keep.
Whose customers are they, mine or the platform’s? On Stripe, Shopify, Substack, Ko-fi, Subbly, and Patreon, they are yours: you can export your members’ emails and leave whenever you like. On Etsy, they are not; Etsy holds the relationship. Owning an exportable list is the single most important thing to protect, because it is what turns a club into a business you control.
What happens to fees as I grow? The percentage platforms (Patreon, Substack) cost more as your revenue climbs, since the cut scales with every payment. The flat-monthly tools (MailClubly, Ko-fi, Subbly, Shopify) get cheaper per member the bigger you get. Re-run the math once you pass a few hundred members; the best platform for ten members is not always the best one for five hundred.
The honest verdict
The best platform for a mail club is the simplest one that lets your members stay yours. Spend the money you save on better paper and prettier stamps, not on a store you will not use.
Whatever you pick, protect the one thing that matters: keep your list portable, so your members are always yours.
The platform moves the money.
You build the club.
Ready to price it and plan it properly? How to Start a Mail Club in 15 Days: The M.A.I.L. Method™ Blueprint sets your numbers, your tools, and your launch in fifteen guided days, and The M.A.I.L. Method™: Automate the Admin is where you build the systems that keep members past the novelty.