Creator and commerce decision
Ecom Nation
Build — a single technical user can replace this hosted product by self-hosting a mature open-source commerce platform (Medusa or Spree) for lower recurring cost, accepting the tradeoffs of managing hosting, payments, and maintenance themselves.
Visit website↗$1/mo
$12/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off50 h to build
$20/mo4 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 29 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Ecom Nation alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- List products, accept payments, deliver digital downloads/subscriptions, and manage products/orders via an admin UI.
What it still won’t have
- Hosted billing, tax, and compliance handled by the vendor
- Built-in integrations and managed payment/platform UX
- Vendor support, hosting convenience, and product branding
- Any Lemon Squeezy-specific platform features (licenses, analytics)
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 29 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal self-hosted e-commerce service using Medusa (Node) for the backend, Next.js for the storefront/admin, Postgres for persistence, and S3-compatible storage for digital assets; integrate Stripe for payments/subscriptions. Core features in scope: product catalog (CRUD), storefront product pages, checkout (one-time + subscription), secure signed download links, basic order and subscription management in admin, user authentication, and automated deployments to a single Linux droplet. Out of scope: multi-vendor marketplace, complex tax engines, large-scale scaling, and advanced analytics. Include error handling, input validation, unit and integration tests for checkout flows, and deployment scripts (Docker + simple CI).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- An open-source build was found+5
- 3 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score93
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official pricingEcomNation.io — pricing and product listing
- open sourcemedusajs/medusa
- open sourcespree/spree
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
