Put your own numbers in
What each one would actually cost you.
Every platform’s own published rates, run against your volume. Change any number and everything updates. If one of them comes out ahead for how you work, it will say so — that’s the point of showing it this way.
Your numbers
Monthly cost as you grow
Published rates, checked 21 August 2026
What decides this before the numbers do
- Can your customers pay cash? Dinners For Me takes cash in hand at pickup or delivery — that’s what it was built around. Hotplate requires customers to prepay by card. Bottle runs on its own integrated card payments. GoPrep and Sprwt both sell a register for in-person sales, but neither publishes anywhere that it tenders cash, and GoPrep states that on an order without an online payment method — “such as cash orders” — its application fee is charged to you rather than your customer.
- Do your customers need an account? On Dinners For Me they never make one. The link in the text message is the account — they tap it and order. Every other platform here needs a customer account, because it needs somewhere to attach a card.
- And then the pricing shape. Everyone else takes a percentage of what you sell, so their bill grows every time you have a good month. This one doesn’t move.
- No contract either way. Dinners For Me is month to month — stop whenever you like, and your customer list and order history export to a spreadsheet you keep.
On passing fees to customers. Most of these platforms let you add their percentage at your customer’s checkout instead of paying it yourself. That’s a real option and it’s worth using — but it isn’t a reason to pick one platform over another, because you could just as easily cover a flat fee by adding a few cents to a meal. So this page ignores who ends up holding the fee and compares the only thing that actually differs: how much comes out of the transaction in the first place.
How these are worked out
- Monthly figures use 4.333 weeks. Sales are meals × price per meal. Orders are meals ÷ meals per order. Text volume assumes about 2.7 messages per order — the weekly menu going out, plus a mid-week nudge and a last call.
- Dinners For Me — $400 a month, flat. No share of sales. Texts included at no extra charge. Month to month, cancel any time.
- Hotplate — no monthly fee at all. 5% + $0.55 per order, which by default their site says your customer pays at checkout: “You can pay it yourself or pass it on to customers — your choice.” Automatic text alerts are included. Customers must prepay by card — there is no cash path. (source)
- Bottle — three tiers: $39/month + 3.5% per transaction, $99/month + 2%, or $500/month + 1%. This page automatically picks whichever is cheapest at your volume and names it. 1,000 text segments are included each month; after that it’s $20 per additional 1,000. (source)
- GoPrep — $249/month on Pro; their $95 Starter caps at 100 orders a month, which is well under your volume. Plus a 1.35% application fee, and texts at “$15/mo for the phone number, and $0.08 cents per text message sent.” Their application fee is normally charged to your customer — but their pricing page also says: “For orders placed without an online payment method, such as cash orders, the application fee is charged to the store.” A customer-facing website is a separate add-on at $299 setup + $19/month. (source)
- Sprwt — three tiers: Sprout $250/month, Bloom $500, Orchard $950. Sprout is compared here because it’s their entry plan and it’s the cheapest reading of their page. Their tier card for Sprout doesn’t list the text platform, but their own feature grid further down prices it at 7¢ per message against all three tiers — so 7¢ is what’s used here. If it turns out texting starts at Bloom, their entry price for this job is $500, not $250. There’s also an unpublished monthly fee for the phone number, which isn’t counted. Transaction fee is “up to 1.5% per transaction”; they also publish an alternative of “up to $1.75 per transaction” which by default they pass to your customers. Their register is listed as “Contact Sales” with no published price. (source)
- Card processing is 2.9% + $0.30 an order, and it’s counted against every platform that needs your customers to pay online. It’s counted because taking cash at pickup is money you handle today without paying anyone. It isn’t a saving you’d bank — it’s a cost you haven’t got. If you ever moved to taking cards everywhere, you’d pay it on any platform including this one.
- Why all four carry it. Dinners For Me is the only one that documents taking cash at pickup. Hotplate requires prepayment, Bottle runs its own card payments, and GoPrep and Sprwt sell a register for “in-person sales” without stating anywhere that it tenders cash — so none of them is credited with a cash path. If any of them confirms cash works, drop that line from theirs.
- Per meal is that platform’s total spread across every meal you sell — what you’d add to a meal’s price to cover it. That works for any of them, this one included.
- What isn’t charted. One-off costs: GoPrep’s register runs on Stripe Terminal hardware at $299–$419, and their website add-on is $299 to set up. Sprwt doesn’t publish hardware costs. Sprwt’s phone-number fee isn’t published either. None of these are monthly fees, so none are in the totals — but they belong in the decision.
- Published rates as of 21 August 2026, and tiers change. Check anything here before you act on it — every source is linked above.