--- title: "The Marketplace Finds You New Customers. Stop Paying It 25% to Keep the Old Ones." description: "A $30 delivery order costs you $7.50 on DoorDash's most popular plan and about $1.17 through DoorDash's own first-party ordering. The gap is real, the data behind the direct-ordering pitch is shakier than the vendors admit, and the fix is a 60-day plan for the customers you already have." canonical_url: https://ovenscars.com/articles/online-ordering-first-party-vs-marketplace/ author: "Oven Scars Editorial" publisher: "Oven Scars" section: "Technology" date_published: 2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z tags: ["online-ordering", "third-party-delivery", "margin", "retention"] word_count: 989 reading_time_minutes: 7 license: "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — cite as \"Oven Scars\" and link the canonical URL" --- # The Marketplace Finds You New Customers. Stop Paying It 25% to Keep the Old Ones. *A $30 delivery order costs you $7.50 on DoorDash's most popular plan and about $1.17 through DoorDash's own first-party ordering. The gap is real, the data behind the direct-ordering pitch is shakier than the vendors admit, and the fix is a 60-day plan for the customers you already have.* **Operator takeaway:** This week, switch on a first-party ordering page, make pickup the default, and put the link on your Google profile, your website and every in-house receipt. Write down last month's order count by channel. In 60 days, count again: if your own channel's share hasn't grown, fix the ordering page before you blame the customer. DoorDash's Plus plan takes [25% of every delivery order](https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/pricing). The same company will also run ordering on your own website for [no commission and no monthly fee](https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/products/online-ordering), paying [2.9% plus 30 cents on every payment](https://help.doordash.com/en-us/legal/article/mx-storefront-addendum). On a $30 order, that's $7.50 against about $1.17. Same company, more than $6 apart. The difference is who found the customer. That's the whole argument for first-party ordering, and the whole argument against going all in on it. ## The marketplace's real product is the stranger Domino's is candid about this. CFO Sandeep Reddy told investors in July that the chain is ["acquiring more customers that we wouldn't have been able to acquire otherwise by being on the aggregator channel."](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/dominos-order-count-growth-up-q2-aggregators/825688/) Domino's also keeps [aggregator pricing at a premium so the channel can be profit-neutral for franchisees](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/dominos-order-count-growth-up-q2-aggregators/825688/), and its annual report warns that marketplace orders [may not have the same level of store-level profitability as orders through its owned channels](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1286681/000119312526062321/dpz-20251228.htm). This is a chain that gets [more than 85% of its U.S. retail sales from digital channels](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1286681/000119312526062321/dpz-20251228.htm), and it still prices the marketplace to break even and talks about it as a way to reach customers it couldn't get otherwise. That's the frame for an independent. Commission is a fair price for a customer you'd never have met. It's a bad price for the family that's ordered from you every other Friday since 2019. ## What your own channel actually costs Here's the published pricing, as the vendors state it. **DoorDash Marketplace:** [15% (Basic), 25% (Plus), 30% (Premier) on delivery; 6% on pickup](https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/pricing) · **DoorDash Online Ordering (your site):** [no commission or monthly fee](https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/products/online-ordering); [2.9% + $0.30 per payment](https://help.doordash.com/en-us/legal/article/mx-storefront-addendum), with customer delivery fees [set by DoorDash and changeable at any time](https://help.doordash.com/en-us/legal/article/mx-storefront-addendum) · **Slice:** [$39/month plus $3.00 per card order, or $99/month plus $2.00 per online or phone order with a $1,000 implementation fee; card processing 2.90% + $0.30; month-to-month](https://slice.com/pricing) · **Owner.com:** [$249/month plus 5% per order, or $499/month flat; guests pay a 5% order support fee on both](https://www.owner.com/pricing-com) Run the $30 order through it. DoorDash Plus: $7.50. DoorDash's first-party ordering: $1.17. Slice's online-only plan: $3.00 plus $1.17 in processing, or $4.17, if you're the one carrying the per-order fee. Slice's pricing page doesn't say who does, so ask. Owner's $499 flat plan pays for itself against Plus commission at about 67 delivery orders a month, before [card processing](/articles/what-a-fair-pos-contract-looks-like/), which the page doesn't price. That's our arithmetic on published rates. [Your tier, your ticket and your contract](/pizzeria-playbook/delivery-breakeven/) will move it. We ran the full channel comparison, including your own drivers, in [the delivery math nobody does](/articles/the-delivery-math-nobody-does/). One catch: on first-party delivery, the cost doesn't vanish. Some of it moves to your customer. DoorDash's terms say it charges the customer [delivery fees from its rate card, at its discretion, changeable at any time](https://help.doordash.com/en-us/legal/article/mx-storefront-addendum), and the same terms list [extra per-order regulatory fees in California, New York City and Seattle](https://help.doordash.com/en-us/legal/article/mx-storefront-addendum). Some customers will balk at seeing those on your site. Pickup has no driver to pay for, which makes it the easier first move. ## The best data on direct customers comes from companies that sell direct ordering Paytronix, which sells loyalty and online-ordering software, found first-party customers [reordered every 33 days versus 43.1 days for repeat third-party customers, and tipped $4.44 versus $1.89](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/paytronix-first-party-customers-tip-better-order-more-versus-third-party-aggregators/651565/). Its next report found guests ordering direct put [35% more items on each check](https://thepaypers.com/payments/news/paytronix-report-first-party-ordering-spurs-revenue-growth) than marketplace guests. NCR Voyix's consumer survey found [58% of customers prefer a restaurant's own app or website for delivery](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/most-customers-prefer-ordering-delivery-direct-restaurant-ncr-voyix/738397/). Discount all of it. Paytronix and NCR Voyix sell first-party technology. DoorDash's own survey, as reported by Restaurant Business in 2022, found [37% of consumers preferred third-party apps, up 10 points in a year, and 24% said their first step is to open an app like DoorDash](https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/premise-diners-continue-fall-third-party-apps). Each source found roughly what its business would predict. Where they overlap is the useful part: a big group of customers will order direct if direct is easy, and a big group won't. Pay the marketplace to find you strangers. Stop paying it rent on your regulars. ## The 60-day plan for the customers you already have **Week one: build the door.** Switch on first-party ordering with the full menu and make pickup the default. Put the order link on [your Google Business Profile](/articles/your-google-profile-is-your-real-storefront/) and at the top of your website. A link three clicks deep doesn't exist. **Weeks two through four: point every regular at it.** Every phone order hears the URL once. Every counter receipt and every box you hand over in person carries it. Before you put anything in a marketplace bag, read your marketplace agreement. Fund a reason to switch out of the commission you'd stop paying. On a $30 order you'd keep about $6.33 versus Plus, so a few dollars off the next direct order still leaves you ahead. A [loyalty program](/articles/loyalty-for-shops-that-arent-dominos/) you already pay for does the same job. **Weeks five through eight: count.** Each week, write down orders by channel. Direct pickup should be climbing. If it isn't, test your own site on a phone before you blame the customer. Then decide whether the marketplace still needs the Plus tier, or whether Basic covers the strangers. We priced [this year's tier changes](/articles/delivery-fees-what-changed-in-2026/) separately. This week, switch on a first-party ordering page, make pickup the default, and put the link on your Google profile, your website and every in-house receipt. Write down last month's order count by channel. In 60 days, count again: if your own channel's share hasn't grown, fix the ordering page before you blame the customer. The honest limitation: nobody has published independent data on how many marketplace regulars actually switch when a shop asks them to. The first-party numbers above compare customers who chose to order direct with customers who didn't. That's not proof a customer you move will start tipping like one. The consumer surveys are dated and come from interested parties. Your own 60-day count is the only number here that's about your shop. ## Sources cited - https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/pricing - https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/products/online-ordering - https://help.doordash.com/en-us/legal/article/mx-storefront-addendum - https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/dominos-order-count-growth-up-q2-aggregators/825688/ - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1286681/000119312526062321/dpz-20251228.htm - https://slice.com/pricing - https://www.owner.com/pricing-com - https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/paytronix-first-party-customers-tip-better-order-more-versus-third-party-aggregators/651565/ - https://thepaypers.com/payments/news/paytronix-report-first-party-ordering-spurs-revenue-growth - https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/most-customers-prefer-ordering-delivery-direct-restaurant-ncr-voyix/738397/ - https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/premise-diners-continue-fall-third-party-apps --- Published by [Oven Scars](https://ovenscars.com/), news and ideas for pizzeria owners. Editorial standards: https://ovenscars.com/editorial-standards/.