Replacing Carrd, Stan and EmailOctopus With systeme.io

Marius H., who runs an online media business, gave his reason for moving to systeme.io in a Capterra review from September 2025. He had switched from "too many memberships to track/pay with Carrd, Stan Store, EmailOctopus."

Each piece of that stack is cheap on its own. Carrd holds the site, Stan holds the shop behind the Instagram link, and EmailOctopus holds the list. The trouble is three logins, three renewals and three places where a price can change. A commenter in r/onlinecourses put the test well: "Price the whole first year, including transaction fees, email limits, and add-ons."

So this guide does that first, at list prices from each vendor's own page. Then it maps each job onto systeme.io's pricing table, and that's where the answer stops being about year one. Free already covers the basic stack for $0. What decides the move is where each setup sends its next bill. The stack bills for discount codes and for a list past 2,500, while systeme.io bills for a list past 2,000, a second code or a fourth funnel. Priced row by row, the stack is never the cheaper of the two, so the case for keeping it rests on the features systeme.io lacks, not on price.

What the stack costs for a year

Taking the cheapest plan that does each job:

Carrd's cheapest plan, Pro Lite at $9 a year, has no custom domain and no forms, so a site that collects emails needs Pro Standard. Stan's help center says it has no free plan at the moment, and Creator is $300 if you pay yearly or $29 a month. EmailOctopus costs nothing until the list passes 2,500 subscribers, with a monthly allowance of 10,000 emails and its branding on each one.

Two things push that total up, and both are common:

• Discount codes. Stan lists them under Creator Pro, $948 a year. With that plan the stack costs $967.
• A list past 2,500. EmailOctopus Pro for 2,501 to 5,000 subscribers is $31.50 a month in the USD prices on its page, so $378 a year. The stack becomes $697 on Stan Creator. My comparison of free email plans shows where each free list ends.

What each job becomes in systeme.io

systeme.io's link-in-bio article builds the bio page as a step: open a funnel, Add step, set the type to Link in bio, then pick a template. Its price plan article sets up the price plan on the order form, and it offers one-time payments, subscriptions with an optional trial, and payment plans. The coupon article creates the coupon under Assets, Coupons, then attaches it to the order form, with a fixed or percentage discount, an expiry date and a use limit.

On Free, then, the whole stack fits for $0: one bio page, one site on your domain, products on order forms, one coupon code, and 2,000 contacts. Monthly totals of emails sent aren't capped on any plan in the pricing table.

What you give up

This move isn't a clean swap, and three gaps are worth knowing first.

Free holds fewer contacts than EmailOctopus Free. It's 2,000 against 2,500. A list of 2,001 to 2,500 that costs nothing on EmailOctopus needs Startup on systeme.io.

Stan's social tools. Stan's Creator plan lists AutoDM for automated Instagram responses, and Creator Pro lists Afterpay, Klarna and pixel tracking. I didn't find an Instagram auto-reply in the systeme.io docs I read, and its payment rows list Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and others but not Afterpay or Klarna.

Codes on a store-style page. Monika H., who moved from Teachable, rated systeme.io 5.0 on Capterra but noted "no option to add a dicount code to a digital store". The coupon article documents coupons on an order form. I didn't find a help article that puts a code on a product listing page. If your buyers arrive from a bio link and go straight to a checkout, that's where the code field sits.

Moving it over

Three tools is a small move. systeme.io's pricing page lists "Free migration" among its perks, and the annual view repeats the label beside the yearly toggle. Marius wrote that he waited about a week to be migrated. Another Capterra reviewer, Teya B., rated systeme.io 1.0 in September 2025 and wrote: "I've been waiting already 9 months to migrate my content so that I can properly use the platform." Either way, keep the old tools paid until the new pages are live. The order I'd follow is the list first, then the bio page, then the products, then the domain. My guide to the migration service covers what systeme.io's team moves and how the contact import works.

Where the next bill comes from

Limits as systeme.io's pricing page showed them on October 9, 2026. The yearly figures were read from the annual view on October 8:

Free replaces the basic stack outright. Startup costs $149 a year less than the $319 stack and leaves room on every row the stack would make you upgrade. Set the two side by side as the business grows:

The narrowest row is a list between 2,001 and 2,500 with no codes, the one range where EmailOctopus Free holds a list systeme.io Free doesn't. Even there Startup comes in $149 under the stack. The widest is a growing list with codes: Stan Creator Pro and EmailOctopus Pro together take the stack to $1,345.

The documented reasons to choose Startup over Free:

• The list is past 2,000. Startup holds 5,000. That's the range where EmailOctopus would charge $378 a year.
• You run more than one code. Free has one coupon code. Stan puts codes on its $948 plan; Startup has 10.
• You need a second bio page or domain, for example a second brand or a podcast page.
• You need a fourth funnel. Each lead magnet, product launch or bio page takes a funnel or a step in one.
• Sales near $10,000. Free's lifetime sales stop there (the cap, explained).

If none of those is true, the free systeme.io account is the whole replacement: rebuild the bio page and one product, move the list, and keep the old tools paid until both work. If one already is, pick Startup on yearly billing, which costs less than Stan Creator alone. AutoDM, Afterpay and Klarna are the reasons to keep Stan, and none of them shows up in the price.

FAQ

Can systeme.io's link-in-bio page sell products directly? It's a page inside a funnel, built in the same editor, so its links can go to your order form pages. The price plan and any coupon sit on the order form, not on the bio page.

Is there a transaction fee on systeme.io sales? The pricing table lists 0% on all four plans, Free included, so a $300 Stan Creator plan isn't replaced by a cut of each sale. Stripe or PayPal still charge their own processing fees on every payment, as they would through Stan, and those don't appear in either year-one total above.

Does Carrd connect to systeme.io instead? Carrd's form integrations on its Pro page list EmailOctopus, Kit, MailerLite and others. I didn't see systeme.io in that list. Carrd's embeds can hold third-party code, but I haven't checked a systeme.io form inside one, so moving the site is the documented path.

Does systeme.io's free plan hold as many contacts as EmailOctopus Free? No. The free systeme.io plan stops at 2,000 contacts; EmailOctopus Free goes to 2,500 subscribers, so a list in between needs Startup.

Can I run more than one discount code on systeme.io Free? No. Free has one coupon code and Startup has 10. Each coupon can carry a fixed or percentage discount, an expiry date and a use limit, so one evergreen code plus one launch code is already two. Stan lists discount codes only on Creator Pro, at $948 a year, which makes the second code the costliest upgrade line on the stack side.

Does systeme.io offer Afterpay or Klarna like Stan Creator Pro? Not in the payment rows I read. They list Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and others, but not Afterpay or Klarna.