What a delivery marketplace really costs you
The headline rate is not your bill. The number that decides things is what is left of each order.
Short answer
There is no single percentage, and be wary of anyone who answers with one: it moves with the plan you signed, who does the delivery and which campaigns are live. The real bill has four parts — commission on the order, the payment transaction fee, delivery when you fund it, and promotions, some funded by you and some by the platform and reimbursed later. Only the payout settles that; an estimate is what stops you flying blind until it arrives.
Does this sound familiar?
- You know what you sold on the marketplace, not what you received.
- What lands in the bank is never what the sum of the orders said.
- The promotion looks good until the payout arrives.
- You cannot say whether a marketplace order makes more or less than a counter one.
- The statement arrives weeks later, when nobody remembers those orders.
Why it happens
There is one selling price and there is not one cost. Each order carries a different mix of commission, transaction fee, delivery and discount — and some of it is only knowable at payout, after the sale has happened. Tracking "channel revenue" means adding up a gross number that was never yours, and the gap between that number and the money in the bank is exactly where the margin disappears.
Five changes that fix it
The steps below work with a notebook and a spreadsheet too. Software makes each one faster — the order is the same either way.
- 1
Stop looking at gross
The number that matters is net per order: what was left after everything the channel withheld. Channel revenue is a vanity metric — it goes up even while you are losing money.
- 2
Split the four costs
Commission, transaction fee, delivery and promotional discount. Lumping them into one "marketplace deduction" hides which one is hurting, and each is fixed differently.
- 3
Know whose discount it is
A platform-funded promotion comes back as a reimbursement; one you funded does not. Treating them the same distorts the margin on the dish and gets you to pull the wrong item off the menu.
- 4
Estimate now, correct at payout
An estimate at order time gives you a sense the same day; when the payout lands, the real figure replaces it. Without both, you are either blind for weeks or you never close the books.
- 5
Compare channel against channel
With net per order in hand you can answer, with a number, whether it is worth investing to move repeat customers to ordering direct.
What actually changes
You know what was left
Net per order with each deduction itemised — not channel revenue.
Promotions with a number
You can see whether the campaign made money or just made volume.
A payout that reconciles
When the statement lands it matches what the system already said — or shows you exactly where it does not.
Frequently asked
What is the marketplace commission?
There is no single number, and a page that gives you one is either guessing or out of date. It varies by the plan you signed, the delivery type and the campaigns running that month. That is why this page teaches you to measure yours instead of quoting somebody else's.
Does DoFast reduce marketplace fees?
No, and nobody does — the platform sets them. What DoFast does is show the net value of every order, with commission, fee, delivery and promotion kept apart, and reconcile it against the payout when it arrives. Then deciding whether to stay, reprice or push direct orders is a decision with a number behind it.
Can I do this without an integration?
You can, by entering the fees by hand, and it already beats nothing. With the integration on, orders and fees arrive by themselves and the manual work becomes checking. A figure you corrected by hand is also not undone by the next sync — whoever corrected it knew something the API did not.
Is it worth leaving the marketplace?
Leaving rarely is; balancing usually is. The channel brings reach you cannot buy another way, and repeat customers are where direct ordering pays. Without net per order that decision is a guess — an expensive one in both directions.
What handles this in DoFast
Ready to run your business faster?
Join hundreds of businesses already using DoFast to streamline their operations.
Set up your account in minutes.