New in Sharetribe 🎉 Minimum commission

A commission percentage works great for most transactions. It guarantees you always capture a relative portion of the value that goes through your marketplace. 

But a percentage doesn't always make sense for low-price listings. A 5% commission on a $10 listing generates only $0.50 in revenue, which might not even cover your payment processing fees.

That’s why you can now define a minimum commission in your Sharetribe marketplace, without coding. The minimum will be automatically used if the percentage rate is lower than the minimum. You can also use the minimum commission feature to have a flat commission for every transaction on your marketplace.

How minimum commission works

You can now set both a percentage commission rate and a minimum commission for providers and customers. As a refresher, here’s how provider and customer commissions work:

• Provider commission is deducted from the transaction value.
• Customer commission is added on top of the listing price.

If the percentage rate on a transaction is below your minimum commission, the minimum amount will be applied instead. For example, if you have a 10% commission rate and $3.00 minimum commission:

• $10 transaction: $3.00 commission (minimum applies)
• $50 transaction: $5 commission (percentage applies)
• $100 transaction: $10 commission (percentage applies)

And here’s how you set it up:

1. Go to your commission settings in Console.
2. Add a minimum commission amount in cents for provider and/or customer commissions.
3. Save changes.

And here are a couple of important things to note:

• The minimum commission is always set in cents. For example, if you want a minimum commission of $5, you should input 500. If you want the minimum to be €0.8, you should input 80.
• If you set the minimum commission to 0, the percentage will always be used.
• To guarantee that your minimum provider commission rate won’t exceed your minimum listing price, check your minimum transaction price settings and update them if needed.
• If you decide to use a minimum commission on your marketplace, it’s a good idea to communicate this clearly to your users in your pricing information.

Set a flat commission rate

You can also use the minimum commission feature to charge a flat commission rate instead of a percentage.

1. In commission settings, set your provider and/or customer commission percentage to 0. 
2. Add a minimum commission amount in cents below.
3. Save changes.

Your transactions will now have a flat commission rate that’s the same across the board, regardless of listing value.

You can also combine percentages and minimum commission: for example, have a percentage commission for providers and a flat fee for customers.

Update marketplace texts

This launch introduces new marketplace texts:

"CheckoutPage.providerCommissionBiggerThanMinPrice": "This listing is currently unavailable. Please contact support.",
"FetchLineItemsError.providerCommissionBiggerThanMinPrice": "This listing is currently unavailable. Please contact support.",
"FetchLineItemsError.unknownError": "Oops, something went wrong. Please refresh the page and try again.",

If you want to edit the texts, copy and paste them into your marketplace text editor and modify the values.

Get consistent marketplace revenue with minimum commission

With minimum commissions, you can set a base amount that you'll always earn on transactions, while still using percentage rates for larger transactions. This gives you more control over your revenue and helps cover marketplace costs reliably.

Learn more about minimum commission in our Help Center or head over to Console and update your commission settings!