GloriaFood was free, unlimited, and took no commission. That is a genuinely unusual combination, and if you are reading this you have probably discovered that “free ordering system” means something looser almost everywhere else.
This page is about telling the versions of free apart. We run one of these platforms, so read the last section knowing that — but the framework above it holds regardless of where you land.
First: what GloriaFood’s free plan actually was
Worth pinning down, because it is the benchmark you are matching. Its own pricing page advertised:
Unlimited orders, Unlimited locations, No commission per order, No monthly fee, No contracts, No credit card required, No setup fee, No hidden cost
Unlimited orders and unlimited locations, at zero, with no cut of revenue. Nothing else in the market is quite that generous, and it is worth knowing that going in rather than being disappointed four platforms deep. The full pricing breakdown is here.
The four kinds of “free”
1. Free tier, provider branding. The platform runs indefinitely at no cost, with a small mark on your ordering pages. You are paying in attribution. This is the closest thing to GloriaFood’s deal and it is what we offer.
2. Free tier, capped. Free up to a number of orders, menu items or locations. Fine if you are under the cap and know where it is. Check what happens the month you exceed it — some platforms stop taking orders, which is not a thing you want to discover on a Friday night.
3. Free platform, paid payments. No subscription, but card processing is locked to the provider’s account at a rate they set. This can be the most expensive option on this page. Compare the processing rate against what you pay today, on your real volume, before treating it as free.
4. Free trial. Not free. Thirty days, then a bill. Perfectly reasonable, but it is a different thing and some marketing pages work hard to blur the two.
The question that separates them
Ask each platform: “What is the commission or per-order fee on the free tier, and what does it become on the paid tier?”
The answer tells you almost everything. A platform charging 3% on $20,000 of monthly online orders takes $600 a month. Nearly every paid subscription in this market is cheaper than that. “Free” with a percentage attached is frequently the most expensive door in the building.
Then ask the second question: “Can I export my menu and my customer list, and how?”
You have just lived through the answer mattering. A platform that cannot tell you plainly how to leave is a platform you should be slower to join. Ours exports any time; ask ours the same question you ask the others.
What we would actually check before migrating a menu
- Commission and per-order fees, on both tiers. Get it in writing.
- Whose payment account the money lands in — yours, or theirs and then remitted to you.
- Export, and whether it covers the menu and the customer list.
- Your own domain, or a subdomain of theirs. This is usually the real difference between the free and paid tiers.
- What happens at the cap, if there is one.
- Card processing rate, compared against your current one on your real volume.
- Contract length. GloriaFood’s ordering plan had none. Do not accept two years now.
Where we fit
Ontabee has a free tier: $0/month, commission-free, with a small Ontabee mark on your ordering pages. Paid is $49/month for one location fully under your own brand, $99/month flat for 2–9 locations, and $29 per client location per month for agencies. Zero commission on every tier, including the free one. Everything exports whenever you ask.
The honest limits of our free tier: our mark is on your pages, and the branded mobile app and full white-labelling are paid features. If you were on GloriaFood’s free plan and want to stay at zero, that trade is the whole of it.
Migration from GloriaFood is done for you at any tier, free included — hand over your Fetch Menu key and the menu comes across without retyping.
If a different platform fits you better, take the checklist above and use it on them. The thing that matters is that you move before the queue forms, not that you move to us.
→ An honest comparison of the alternatives · Run your own numbers