I've spent twenty years building payment systems — the kind that move real money for real businesses. I'm building an ordering and point-of-sale platform right now. And I've taken hundreds of DoorDash deliveries myself.
That last part is why I can write this one. I've seen what the merchant loses, what the driver actually nets, and what the customer really pays — not from a pricing page, but from inside the transaction. It's also why I started building an alternative.
So here's the honest version of DoorDash Storefront — including the part where I tell you to go use DoorDash's product.
What DoorDash Storefront actually costs
Storefront is DoorDash's commission-free online ordering system. It puts a DoorDash-powered ordering page on your own website, your social profiles, and your Google listing. Customers order directly from you instead of browsing the DoorDash app.
The published costs, as of July 2026:
| What you pay | Storefront | Marketplace (the app) |
|---|---|---|
| Commission per order | 0% | 15% – 30% |
| Card processing | ~2.9% + $0.30 | ~2.9% + $0.30 |
| Setup / monthly fee | $0 | $0 |
| Dasher delivery | ~$7 – $9 flat per order | Built into commission |
| Tablet (no POS integration) | ~$6/week | ~$6/week |
That 0% is real. It is not a trick. If you are currently paying 25% commission on the DoorDash app, Storefront is a dramatically cheaper way to take an order.
(These are DoorDash's published rates at the time of writing. Your contract is the only number that actually counts — go read it.)
Is DoorDash Storefront really commission-free?
Yes — and no. The commission is genuinely zero. But the money didn't vanish. It moved.
It moved into two places: card processing and delivery.
Card processing at 2.9% + $0.30 is sticker price. It's the same rate a hobbyist gets on a starter payment account, and on real volume it is not a small number. And Dasher delivery at $7–$9 a run is a hard cost that has to land on somebody — you, or your customer, or split between you.
So "commission-free" is accurate. "Free" is not. Let's put actual numbers on it.
Storefront vs. Marketplace: the real math
Take a restaurant doing $17,500/month in online orders — a $35 average ticket, 500 orders a month, with about half needing delivery.
On the Marketplace at 25% commission:
- Commission: $4,375
- Card processing: $657
- Total: about $5,032 per month — roughly $60,000 a year.
On Storefront at 0% commission:
- Commission: $0
- Card processing: $657
- Dasher delivery: 250 delivery orders at $7.99, passing $4.99 to the customer → you absorb $750
- Tablet: $26
- Total: about $1,433 per month — roughly $17,200 a year.
Storefront saves that restaurant about $3,600 a month. Around $43,000 a year. For free. On DoorDash's own product.
I want to be blunt about this, because most articles on this topic are written by people trying to sell you something and they bury this part:
If you are on Marketplace commission today and you have regulars who would happily order direct, turn Storefront on. This week. It costs nothing, and it is the single biggest margin decision available to you right now. Nobody selling you an alternative should pretend otherwise.
Now let's talk about what you're trading.
What you're actually trading
Storefront is not an exit from DoorDash. It's a retention product — it exists so that restaurants who are furious about a 30% commission have somewhere to go that isn't away. That's smart business by DoorDash. It's also worth understanding before you build your entire direct-ordering strategy on top of it.
You're on rented land. Your ordering page, your menu, your checkout — all of it lives inside someone else's product, on their infrastructure, under their terms. It works beautifully right up until the day the terms change. Ask any restaurant owner who remembers what commission rates looked like when the apps were courting them.
Zero percent is a posture, not a promise. DoorDash sets that number and DoorDash can move it. You have no leverage in that conversation, because your ordering flow is theirs.
The processing spread is where the money quietly sits now. Once commission is zero, card processing becomes your largest controllable cost — and 2.9% + $0.30 is retail. A real merchant account priced on interchange-plus commonly lands closer to an effective 2.5% + $0.10 on card-not-present orders. On our example restaurant, that's the difference between $657 and about $488 a month. Call it $2,000 a year you're leaving on the table for no reason other than convenience. (If that sentence was gibberish, I wrote a plain-English explainer on how interchange fees actually work.)
Your own ordering page: the honest comparison
Here's where I'm supposed to tell you that owning your own stack saves you a fortune. It doesn't. Let me show you.
Same restaurant, running its own ordering page with its own merchant account:
- Card processing at interchange-plus: ~$488
- Delivery: you still need it. Your own drivers, or a flat-rate delivery API — realistically about the same $750
- Your ordering platform: $0 – $200/month
- Total: roughly $1,240 – $1,440 per month.
Compare that to Storefront's $1,433.
It's a wash. Maybe a couple hundred dollars a month, mostly from the processing spread. If someone tells you that owning your ordering page will save you thousands over DoorDash Storefront, they are selling you something and the math does not support them.
So why would you ever do it?
Because the reasons have nothing to do with next month's statement:
- You set the price. Nobody can reprice your checkout without your say-so.
- The relationship is yours. Not co-owned, not mediated, not sitting inside a platform whose incentive is to nudge your customer back toward the app where the commission lives.
- You can build on it. Loyalty, subscriptions, catering, house accounts, a second location — those are yours to add when the rails are yours. On someone else's storefront, you get the features they decide to ship.
- Nobody can turn it off. Products get sunset. Terms get rewritten. A business that runs on infrastructure you control is a business that can't be surprised.
Owning your ordering isn't a cost decision. It's a control decision. Anyone who frames it as cost savings is doing you a disservice — and, frankly, setting you up to be disappointed.
So which should you pick?
Honest guidance, in order:
- Still on Marketplace commission? Turn on Storefront and start pushing your regulars to it. That's ~$43k a year in our example. Do this first, today. Everything else is a rounding error next to it.
- Already on Storefront? Go look at your card processing rate. That's where your remaining money is hiding, and it's the one line you can negotiate. Our merchant services guide walks through how to read a statement and spot the markup.
- Thinking about the next ten years? Then start planning to own the rails — not because it'll save you money next month, but because it's the difference between having a business and having a booth inside someone else's.
You can run all of this against your own real numbers. The DoorDash fee calculator has a Storefront mode — flip between Marketplace and Storefront, put in your actual ticket size and order volume, and see your own version of the table above.
What I'm building
Full disclosure, because you should know where I'm coming from.
I've designed and built an ordering and point-of-sale platform: a back-end that handles inventory, transactions, and multiple locations, and a customer-facing storefront that runs on top of it. Your ordering page, your customer, your processor, your data. It is not live yet — it's built and working, but I haven't deployed it to a real store, and I'm not going to tell you it's something it isn't. It's launching soon.
That's the honest state of it, and it's exactly why I'd rather tell you to go turn on Storefront today than wait for me.
But if the "own your rails" argument is one you've been chewing on — if you've looked at your DoorDash statement and thought there has to be a version of this that I control — put your email in the box below. I'll tell you when it's ready, and in the meantime you'll get the plain-English payments and software writing I do here.
And honestly? If enough restaurant owners raise their hand, that tells me to build faster. If nobody does, that's worth knowing too.
Either way, go run your numbers first.
