What it costs
Pricing: one subscription for the counter, the stock and the store
Pricing in this category is difficult to compare because vendors charge along different axes — per terminal, per user, per location, or as a percentage of what you sell. A headline monthly figure can be the cheapest on a list and the most expensive at your actual volume.
Our shape is deliberately the simple one: a single monthly subscription per business, with the plan determining which capabilities are switched on rather than how many tills you may open. There is no per-terminal licence, no per-user fee, and no commission on your sales.
Billing is in KES, because that is what the card is actually charged. The dollar figures on this page are an approximate conversion so the numbers mean something wherever you are reading from — there is a section on that below.
What you get
What this gives you
No per-terminal licence
A second till on a busy Saturday costs the price of the tablet and nothing else. This is the single biggest hidden cost in most competing quotes.
No commission on sales
We do not take a percentage of what you sell. Payment processors charge their own fees, and those are between you and them — we do not sit in the middle of the money.
The online store is not a separate subscription
From the Basic plan the storefront on your own domain is included, sharing the same catalogue. There is no second ecommerce bill and no connector to license.
No hardware you must buy from us
It runs on phones, tablets and laptops you already own, with commodity 80mm thermal printers, scanners and drawers. Nothing proprietary and nothing bundled.
A trial long enough to be a real test
Fourteen days, no card. That is enough to load real products and run the new system alongside the old one for a fortnight, which is the only honest way to evaluate this kind of software.
Your data leaves with you
Products, customers, suppliers, stock movements and transactions are exportable, and the accounts come out as standard statements. Staying should be a preference, not a constraint.
What each plan is for
Starter is a single-location till with inventory: selling, stock tracking, quotations and barcode scanning. It does not include the online store. It suits a shop that wants its counter and its stock correct and is not selling online yet.
Basic adds the things most growing shops discover they need at roughly the same time: the online store on your own domain, and more than one location. This is the plan the unified argument actually applies to, because it is the one where the counter and the storefront exist together.
Growth adds double-entry accounting, the loyalty programme and price lists. The accounting is the substantive item — it is the difference between exporting to an accountant and having a trial balance, P&L and balance sheet that are simply true at any moment.
Enterprise adds statutory e-invoicing, where your market requires it — KRA eTIMS in Kenya — and removes the scale limits, for wholesalers and multi-branch chains.
How to compare this against a percentage-of-sales quote
Take your realistic annual turnover and multiply by the percentage. That is the number to compare against twelve months of subscription, and for most established shops it is considerably larger than people expect when they look at a single transaction.
The difference in shape matters as much as the total. A subscription is a fixed cost you outgrow — it falls as a share of revenue as you grow. A percentage is a variable cost that never does, and it takes its share of your best month as readily as your worst.
Where a percentage genuinely wins is at very low or highly seasonal volume, because it costs nothing in a quiet month. If that describes your business, model both honestly rather than taking either side's word for it.
- Compare annual totals, never headline monthly figures
- Include every till and every location you will realistically run
- Add any connector, plugin or integration subscriptions the setup needs
- Model transaction percentages against a full year of turnover
- Count the hardware you would be required to buy, not the hardware you could
About the currency
Subscriptions are charged in Kenyan shillings (KES), and the invoice says KES. Any dollar figure shown on this site is a rounded approximation at a rate we pin and review rather than a price you can be charged — it exists so the numbers are legible to someone who does not think in shillings, not as a second price list.
If you are trading in another currency, the practical questions are what your card issuer charges for a foreign-currency transaction, and which payment rails are available to you locally for taking money from your own customers. The second is the one worth asking us about before you sign up.
Questions
Pricing — questions
Is there a free plan?
No. Every plan is paid after the 14-day trial, which needs no card. We would rather say that plainly than advertise a free tier that turns out to be a trial with a countdown, which is the more common arrangement in this market.
Do you charge per till or per user?
Neither. The subscription is per business, and the plan determines which capabilities are on rather than how many devices may connect. A shop running three tills on a Saturday pays the same as one running a single till on a Tuesday.
Do you take a percentage of my sales?
No. Your payment provider charges you their processing fees directly — those are between you and them, on rates you negotiate. Money from a sale goes to your own account; we are not in the flow of funds.
Can I change plan later?
Yes, in either direction. Moving up switches capabilities on against the data you already have — going from Starter to Basic publishes a storefront from the catalogue you have already built, rather than starting anything again. Moving down turns capabilities off without deleting the records behind them.
What happens at the end of the trial?
You choose a plan, or you stop. Nothing is charged automatically because no card was taken to begin with. Your data stays available to export whichever you decide.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
What hardware do I need?
None to start. sell.ke runs in a browser and as an Android app, so a phone, tablet or laptop you already own is a working till on day one — the phone camera reads barcodes. When volume justifies it, add an 80mm thermal receipt printer (Bluetooth or USB), a handheld scanner and a cash drawer the printer opens. There is no proprietary terminal to buy and no per-terminal licence, so a second till on a busy Saturday costs nothing.
Which countries does sell.ke work in?
The software is not geographically limited — the counter, inventory, the storefront, reporting and accounting work anywhere, in multiple currencies. What is market-specific is two things: the payment rails available to you, and your country's tax-invoicing rules. We currently run with merchants in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, and the deepest local payment and compliance integrations are in Kenya. If you are outside those markets, ask before you sign up and we will tell you precisely what would and would not be connected for you.
What happens to my data if I leave?
You export it. Products, customers, suppliers, stock movements and transactions are all exportable, and the accounting side produces standard statements rather than a proprietary format. We would rather you stayed because moving is not worth it than because moving is not possible — a business whose records are hostage is a business that resents its software.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
Best POS for a small business
How to judge one honestly, and the trap that catches most first-time buyers.
What an online store costs
The four cost shapes, what is genuinely unavoidable, and where budgets overrun.
POS systems explained
What a point of sale system is, what it replaces, and how to choose one.
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store
One system for the counter, the stock and the website — not three that sync.
POS hardware
Receipt printer, scanner, drawer — what you need, what you don't, and in what order.
Ecommerce website builder
An online store on your own domain, built from the catalogue you already sell from.
Go deeper on a feature
Setup, growth and the plumbing
Trial, product import, opening stock, eTIMS enrolment and a custom domain — in the order they matter.
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.