01 / Compare · Stora
The open alternative to Stora.
Everything you need to run and grow a storage business — the open API, advanced reporting and dynamic pricing included as standard, not reserved for a premium tier, at roughly half Stora’s entry price.
The short answer
Stora is a strong, growth-focused platform, genuinely good at what it does. The difference is what you get on one plan: StoreBay includes the public API, advanced reporting and dynamic pricing that Stora reserves for its Advanced and Premium tiers — on a single published plan, at about half Stora’s entry price, with unlimited free sites. Choose StoreBay for open access and transparent pricing; choose Stora if its marketplace, academy and longer track record matter more to you.
Public API
Included
Sites
Unlimited, free
Pricing
Published
At 50 units
£63/mo +VAT
02 / The comparison
StoreBay and Stora, side by side
Dated against Stora's own published plans and docs. Gaps are phrased as no public evidence, not as facts we cannot check.
| Capability | StoreBay | Stora |
|---|---|---|
| Open API & webhooks | Included on the one plan | Advanced/Premium only; 10 req/s · 60 req/min baseline |
| Advanced reporting & live analytics | Included, live multi-site | "Essential reports" on Essentials; advanced is Advanced+ |
| Dynamic pricing | Included | Advanced/Premium only |
| Custom roles & unlimited seats | Included | Premium only (5 / 10 / unlimited by tier) |
| Collections / dunning | Included — full dunning state machine; auto-overlock/restore coming soon | "Debt collections" marked Beta (all tiers) |
| In-house billing engine + event-log audit | Included — every payment and message retried, replayed, audited | No public evidence of an equivalent reliability spine |
| Website builder | Composable, section-based + block library | Template-based |
| Embeddable checkout | Fully embeddable, multi-step | Hosted payment step |
| Native accounting sync | Native two-way, Xero + QuickBooks (coming soon) | Via third-party integrations (Xero, QuickBooks) |
| Pricing | Published base + per-unit ladder · unlimited free sites | Tiered (Essentials / Advanced / Premium); from-price published |
| UK data residency | DigitalOcean LON1 + UK GDPR + PCI SAQ-A | No public evidence of a scoped UK-residency commitment |
03 / The core difference
Included, not gated
Stora bundles the core platform into Essentials, then reserves the operationally valuable capabilities for higher tiers. StoreBay includes them.
The capabilities that actually grow revenue and cut admin — a public API to connect your own tools, advanced multi-site reporting, and dynamic pricing — sit on Stora’s Advanced and Premium tiers. Custom roles and unlimited seats are Premium-only. The from-price you see is real, but it may not include the features you came for.
StoreBay takes the other approach: one published plan with everything included — API, webhooks and a sandbox; collections and a full dunning state machine; live multi-site analytics; unlimited users and custom roles; unlimited, free sites. There is no tier to upgrade to, because there are no tiers.
Underneath it is a dependable billing spine — a transactional outbox and append-only event log, so every payment, message and access command is retried, replayed and audited. That is the trust layer, not the headline.
04 / Pricing
Half the entry price, with more included
StoreBay's price is a published formula you can compute; Stora publishes a from-price and shows the ladder on a demo.
| Portfolio | StoreBay (everything included) | Stora (the comparable tier) |
|---|---|---|
| 50 units | £63/mo +VAT | £126/mo (Essentials) |
| 2,000 units, with the public API | £999/mo +VAT | £1,604/mo (Advanced — the tier that includes the API) |
The honest like-for-like is against the Stora tier that includes what you need. Because Stora reserves the public API for Advanced, a growing operator comparing on capability is usually comparing StoreBay’s one plan against Stora Advanced — where StoreBay lands around 38% lower at 2,000 units, with unlimited free sites on top. See the full, published breakdown on our pricing page.
Stora pricing, as Stora publishes it
How much does Stora cost?
Stora publishes a from-price rather than a flat fee: Essentials starts at £126 per month (£105 per month billed annually) for up to 50 units, and the price rises with your unit count on a slider. There are three tiers — Essentials, Advanced and Premium — so the figure you actually pay depends on both how many units you have and which tier carries the capabilities you need. Captured 2026-07-18.
Does Stora publish its pricing?
Yes — and that is worth saying plainly, because most of this market does not. Stora shows a public pricing page with a unit slider and a tier grid, so you can work out an indicative figure before speaking to anyone. What the page does not settle is which tier you need, since that depends on capabilities rather than unit count.
What is included in each Stora tier?
The tiers differ mainly on platform capabilities rather than core storage management. As at our capture date, the public API, advanced reporting and dynamic pricing sit on Advanced and above, and custom roles are Premium-only; the App Marketplace and Zapier are available on all tiers, and debt collections is marked Beta across all three. So the honest like-for-like is usually against the tier that carries the API, not against the entry price.
What does Stora charge to process payments?
Stora publishes its payment rates alongside its subscription: cards from 1.5% + 30p, EU and international cards 3.5% + 30p, and Direct Debit at 1% with a 30p minimum and a £5 cap. This is the line most buyers forget to compare, because it is charged on every licence fee from every unit, every month — at scale it can exceed the subscription itself. StoreBay passes Stripe and GoCardless rates through at cost with no margin added.
Does Stora charge per site?
Stora’s UK plan copy describes a per-site scope, but we have not verified an additional-site figure on a rendered page, so we do not state one. If you run more than one location, ask them for it in writing before you compare — StoreBay charges nothing for extra sites, so the bill depends only on your total unit count.
Stora figures as published on stora.co/pricing, captured 2026-07-18. Stora prices are set by a unit slider, so check the current figure for your own unit count on their pricing page. Stora is a trade mark of its owner; named here for identification only.
05 / Where Stora wins
When Stora is the better choice
A fair comparison says so. Stora is a genuinely good platform, and for some operators it is the right one.
06 / Migrating from Stora
A guided move, not a rebuild
Most of your data moves cleanly; a guided import and concierge support handle the rest.
Moving from Stora?
Units, customers and live agreements migrate as structured exports; every import is dry-run and previewed before anything is written, and concierge support handles the field mapping with you. Our guide to switching storage software walks through exactly what to expect.
See how migration works →Comparison based on Stora’s publicly available information as of 2026-07-18. Stora is a trademark of its respective owner; StoreBay is not affiliated with or endorsed by Stora.
07 / FAQ
Common questions
Open · dependable · transparent
Ready to see StoreBay next to your own Stora bill?
No obligation · UK-based support · guided migration with concierge support.