3% of Upsell sales generated during the survey. Totally free if you do not
have any add-on upsell for your campaign survey.
Post-campaign fulfillment is one of the largest hidden costs in crowdfunding. Between platform fees, payment processing charges, and setup costs, creators can lose a significant portion of their raised funds before a single reward ships. Understanding how pledge manager pricing works is essential for protecting your campaign budget.
PledgeBox uses a transparent pricing model designed to keep costs low for creators. There is no campaign fee — PledgeBox never charges anything on your original Kickstarter or Indiegogo funds. The only platform fee is 3% on add-on revenue collected through backer surveys. This means if backers purchase additional products during the survey process, PledgeBox takes 3% of those new sales. If your campaign does not offer add-on products, the platform is completely free.
For creators who set up a pre-order store to accept late backers and new customers after the campaign ends, the platform fee is 5% on pre-order store revenue. This covers the hosted storefront, payment processing integration, and order management tools.
Stripe and PayPal processing fees are billed separately at their standard rates and go directly to those payment providers — not to PledgeBox. Because PledgeBox uses instant payouts, funds from backer payments go straight to your connected Stripe or PayPal account. There is no waiting period and no intermediary holding your money.
This pricing structure means most creators use PledgeBox at near-zero cost. Campaigns that only need to collect shipping addresses and product preferences — without selling add-ons — pay nothing. Even campaigns with active add-on sales benefit from the industry's lowest platform fee at 3%, significantly less than BackerKit's tiered fees or the 5% charged by Kickstarter's built-in pledge manager and Gamefound.
See how PledgeBox's pricing stacks up against other crowdfunding pledge managers.
The difference in pledge manager pricing becomes significant as campaign size grows. Here is how costs compare across platforms for a typical campaign scenario.
Consider a campaign that raises $100,000 on Kickstarter and generates $20,000 in add-on sales through the pledge manager. With BackerKit, the creator pays approximately $1,500 to $2,000 as a campaign fee on the original funds, plus $700 on add-ons at the 3.5% rate — totaling $2,200 to $2,700 in platform fees alone. With PledgeBox, the creator pays $0 on the original funds and $600 on add-ons at the 3% rate — a total of $600.
Using Kickstarter's built-in pledge manager for the same scenario, the creator pays 5% on all add-on revenue including shipping and tax in the fee base. If $20,000 in add-ons includes $5,000 in shipping and tax, the effective fee is 5% of $25,000, or $1,250. With PledgeBox, the fee is only 3% of the $20,000 in add-on product revenue — $600.
For larger campaigns, the savings scale dramatically. A campaign raising $500,000 with $100,000 in add-ons would pay BackerKit between $10,500 and $13,500 in platform fees. The same campaign on PledgeBox costs $3,000. That is a savings of $7,500 to $10,500 — money that goes back into product development, manufacturing, and shipping.
Every dollar saved on platform fees is a dollar that can be reinvested in delivering a better product to your backers.
The All-in-One Toolkit to Launch, Manage & Scale Your Kickstarter / Indiegogo Campaign
