Sell with Spark

You can sell subscriptions or one-time purchases through your Spark site. Describe what you’re selling to Spark, including the price and what the customer should receive.

Add a monthly membership for $20 that gives customers access to our full lesson library. Visitors should be able to read the lesson descriptions before joining.

Connect Stripe

Open Account settings → Stripe to connect your Stripe account. The connection is shared across the projects in your organization.

Follow the connection steps and provide the information Stripe requests. If it needs more information or is still reviewing the account, complete those steps before taking payments. You can return to the Stripe section to check the connection.

You’ll also need a paid Spark plan to take payments. Plans and credits explains Spark billing.

Set up what customers buy

Open Payments in your project’s navigation. The Pricing section lists subscriptions and one-time purchases; Features describes the access those purchases grant.

Use the setup actions there, or open Spark and explain your offer. Include the price, whether it repeats, and what should happen after someone buys. Prices are set in US dollars.

Spark can connect the offer to your site’s pages and paid features. Review the pricing and the site preview before opening sales.

For a store, explain what products you sell and how customers receive them. Ask Spark to build the catalog and the tools you need to manage it. Provide real product details and review any delivery steps.

Sell physical products

Tell Spark when a product ships, such as a printed book, a poster, or a box of cookies. Any checkout that includes it asks the buyer for a shipping address on Stripe’s payment page. A checkout with only digital products, memberships, tickets, or deposits has no address form.

Sell our ceramic mugs for $28 each. They ship. Standard shipping is $6 and arrives in 3 to 5 business days, and express is $15 for 1 to 2 business days.

Shipping rates

Your project can have up to five shipping rates, and every product that ships uses the same ones. Each rate has a name, a price, and, if you want, a delivery estimate in business days. A rate can be free. The buyer chooses a rate at checkout. Stripe selects the first one to start with, so Spark puts the cheapest first unless you ask for another order.

A rate is charged once per order. It doesn’t depend on how many items are in the order or what they weigh.

If you don’t set any rates, checkout still asks for the address and charges nothing for shipping. That suits a product whose price already includes delivery.

Payments marks each product that ships with Ships and lists your rates under Shipping rates. If your project’s Payments page doesn’t show them, ask Spark to list your rates.

Orders and addresses

When Spark builds checkout for a physical product, your site saves each order with the buyer’s name, shipping address, and the rate they picked. Ask Spark for an internal tool to see what to send and where:

Build me an orders page that lists every order with the buyer’s address, newest first, and lets me mark an order as shipped with a tracking number. Email the buyer when I do.

The address is your customer’s personal information. Your internal tools can show it, and so can the customer’s own order history if your site has one. Keep it to the people who pack and send your orders.

What shipping doesn’t cover

• Shipping is to US addresses only.
• Checkout doesn’t add sales tax.
• A subscription can’t ship, so a box that ships every month isn’t supported.
• Rates are flat. Spark doesn’t calculate shipping by weight or distance, and doesn’t buy postage or print labels.

Prices before Stripe approves your account

You can set up prices before you connect Stripe, or while Stripe is still reviewing your account. Spark creates them and builds the pricing page, checkout, and paid areas around them.

Until Stripe approves the account, those prices aren’t on sale. A visitor who tries to buy sees a page saying payments aren’t available right now, and isn’t charged. Anything only those prices unlock stays open to every visitor. Preview as still shows the paywall, so you can check what a paying customer will see.

Once Stripe approves your account, the prices go on sale on their own. You don’t need to ask Spark again.

Check the customer experience

Review the pricing page, sign-in, checkout entry points, and access after purchase. Where Preview as is available, use it to check the experience of a visitor, a free customer, and a paying customer without making a purchase.

Customer accounts use email codes to sign in. Your own Spark account is separate from those customer accounts.

Changes to offers and pricing can affect sales directly; they don’t wait for a public-site publish. Public-site edits still need to be published.

Manage payments and fees

Use your Stripe dashboard to manage payments, refunds, and payouts. Spark’s fee on sales is added to your Spark invoice, separately from Stripe’s payment processing fees. The fee includes what buyers pay for shipping.

If your Spark plan ends, your site stays published but payments are disabled, and your customers’ subscriptions pause while they keep access. Starting a paid plan again turns payments back on, and paused subscriptions bill again at their next renewal. A failed payment gives you about two weeks first, during which customers can still buy. Plans and credits has the full account.

You can build and publish a site without selling anything. Connect Stripe when you’re ready to take payments; your prices can be ready before then.