Whatalo vs Tiendanube: the COD platform vs the general ecommerce platform with commission

Tiendanube has a free plan and you sell cash on delivery? There's a detail that doesn't appear on their pricing page: Tiendanube's free plan blocks COD. To accept cash on delivery you need at minimum the Basic plan, which in Mexico costs $99 MXN/month. And once you activate it, COD is still a multi-step checkout with no optimized form, no verification, and no native order bumps.

That's the starting point. What follows are the real numbers, as of May 2026, so you can make an informed decision.

The Core Difference: Specialized Tool vs. General Platform

Tiendanube (called Nuvemshop in Brazil) is a general ecommerce platform for Latin America. It has a presence in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. COD came to Tiendanube as an optional piece inside a product designed to sell with card payments and its own gateway.

Whatalo was built from the opposite direction. Cash on delivery isn't an option you toggle in settings — it's the center of the design. The one-step checkout, the optimized COD form, order bumps, quantity offers, and the drag-and-drop page builder are all included from the first plan, with zero commission per sale.

In one line: Tiendanube gives you a general ecommerce platform with COD added on. Whatalo gives you the exact cash on delivery tool, already built, starting on the free plan.

Real Pricing: What the Table Shows

Note: Tiendanube prices vary by country. Argentina uses ARS (shifts with inflation — no static figures published), Brazil uses BRL, Colombia uses COP, and Chile uses CLP. The MXN prices above apply to Mexico.

At first glance it looks balanced. Both have a free plan. But the price in the table is not what you end up paying when you sell cash on delivery. To understand that, you need to know how Tiendanube's commission structure works — it has two layers.

The Double Commission You Need to Understand

This is the most important point in the entire comparison.

Layer 1: The Platform Commission

When you use an external payment gateway (any gateway other than Pago Nube), Tiendanube charges a commission on every sale:

The only way to avoid this commission is to use Pago Nube, Tiendanube's own gateway. Which leads to the second layer.

Layer 2: The Pago Nube Processing Fee

Pago Nube isn't free. It charges its own processing fee on every transaction:

• Mexico: ~3.29%–3.99% + fixed amount + VAT (varies by plan and payment method)
• Argentina: ~5.5%–7.7% (significantly higher)

The real choice you're facing is:

• Use an external gateway → pay the platform commission (1%–2%) plus whatever that gateway charges.
• Use Pago Nube → skip the platform commission, but pay Pago Nube's processing fee (~3.29%–3.99% in Mexico, more in other countries).

With Whatalo, neither layer exists. You pay your plan's monthly fee and 0% commission per sale, regardless of which gateway you use.

The Free Plan That Won't Let You Sell COD

Tiendanube's free plan only allows Pago Nube as a payment method. COD is a manual payment method on the platform, and on the free plan that option is locked.

To accept COD on Tiendanube you need at minimum the Basic plan ($99 MXN/month in Mexico).

Whatalo's Despegue plan — free, no credit card required — includes COD from the first order. 15 products, 120 orders per month, no payment method restrictions.

If you're validating your first product with cash on delivery, the difference between "start with COD today" and "pay $99 MXN just to turn COD on" is the whole ballgame.

COD on Each Platform: Beyond Just Turning It On

Activating COD on Tiendanube (once you have a paid plan) means adding a manual payment method. The customer goes through the standard multi-step checkout, selects "cash on delivery," and the order sits as pending. No OTP verification, no single-step form, no automatic filter for fake orders.

There is a third-party app that adds a dedicated COD form, but it has a rating of 3.1 out of 5 in the Tiendanube app marketplace, doesn't support products with variants, and has repeated reports of loading issues. It's not a viable option for serious production use.

On Whatalo, the COD checkout is one step and built to minimize friction: name, phone number, and address. No extra pages, no cart, no intermediate steps.

Why this matters: in cash on delivery, every extra step is a lost order. The customer paying cash on delivery doesn't navigate three screens. A single-step form converts better than a multi-step checkout designed for card payments.

For a deep dive into how this sales model works, read the complete guide to cash on delivery for selling in LATAM.

Real Cost Scenario: 500 Orders per Month

Let's put numbers on it. A representative hypothetical: a store processing 500 orders per month with an average ticket of $400 MXN, adding up to roughly $200,000 MXN in monthly sales. Requirements: COD checkout, order bumps to raise the ticket, and an optimized landing page.

On Tiendanube (Basic plan at $99 MXN/month, using Pago Nube to avoid the platform commission):

On Whatalo (Emprendedor plan at $24/month ≈ $480 MXN/month):

Cost verdict (representative hypothetical): At 500 orders per month, the real cost of running cash on delivery on Tiendanube can be 16 to 20 times higher than on Whatalo. And the gap grows with every sale, because the processing fee scales with volume while Whatalo's monthly fee stays flat.

Key Feature Comparison

Order bumps and quantity offers are the levers that grow average ticket in a COD operation. On Whatalo you activate them at no extra cost. On Tiendanube each one adds to the third-party app bill.

When Tiendanube Makes Sense

That said, there are scenarios where Tiendanube is the right operational choice:

• Your primary sales model is card payments and COD is a low-volume secondary method. In that case, the processing fees hit less and you don't need a specialized COD checkout.
• You already have an active Tiendanube store with a built-out catalog, integrations, and a team trained on the platform, and the cost of migrating outweighs the commission savings at your current volume.
• You need specific regional integrations that Tiendanube has built over years of maturity: local ERPs, regional logistics providers, LATAM marketplaces.

Outside those three cases — if you're starting from scratch, selling primarily cash on delivery, or want to stop paying commission on every sale — you're paying extra to manually assemble what Whatalo already includes.

Visual Platform Comparison

For a broader look at how Whatalo compares against other platforms in the market, read Whatalo vs Shopify.

Signs Whatalo Is Right for You

This isn't a faith decision. If two or more of these apply to you, your current platform is eating into your margin:

• You have to upgrade to a paid plan just to turn COD on, before making a single sale.
• The Pago Nube processing fee (3.29%–3.99% in Mexico, more in other countries) adds up with every sale and already exceeds your monthly fee several times over.
• You're paying separate third-party apps for order bumps and a product landing page, with separate invoices.
• The third-party COD form failed or dropped orders during an active campaign.
• You're starting from scratch and don't want to pay before you've validated your product.
• You want one platform, one dashboard, and zero commission per sale — no juggling multiple vendors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Tiendanube charge a commission per sale? Yes, in two layers. If you use an external gateway, it charges between 1% and 2% per sale depending on your plan. If you use Pago Nube to avoid that commission, Pago Nube charges its own processing fee: ~3.29%–3.99% + a fixed amount + VAT in Mexico, and considerably more in Argentina. The only way to avoid both is the Advanced plan ($999 MXN/month) with Pago Nube. Whatalo charges zero commission per sale on any plan.

Can you sell cash on delivery on Tiendanube's free plan? No. Tiendanube's free plan only allows Pago Nube as a payment method. To activate COD as a manual payment method you need at minimum the Basic plan ($99 MXN/month in Mexico). Whatalo's Despegue plan is free and includes COD from the first order.

Does Tiendanube have an optimized COD checkout? Not natively. Tiendanube uses its standard multi-step checkout for COD as well. There is a third-party app that adds a dedicated COD form, but it has a 3.1/5 rating, doesn't support products with variants, and has reported loading issues. Whatalo includes a single-step checkout and an optimized COD form natively.

Is Whatalo cheaper than Tiendanube for selling COD? For cash on delivery as your primary model, yes — by a significant margin. Whatalo's Emprendedor plan costs $24/month with 0% commission and all COD tools included. On Tiendanube, the Pago Nube processing fee alone on a moderate sales volume can exceed Whatalo's monthly fee several times over, not counting the order bumps or page builder apps.

Can I use my own payment gateway on Whatalo? Yes. Whatalo doesn't lock you into any specific gateway and doesn't charge an additional commission for using an external one. The only processing fee you pay is what your gateway charges — nothing more.

Does Tiendanube have native order bumps? No. Order bumps and upsells on Tiendanube are implemented through paid third-party apps. On Whatalo, order bumps and quantity offers are native features included in all plans, including the free plan.

Can I migrate to Whatalo if I'm currently on Tiendanube? Yes. You recreate your catalog on Whatalo (with CSV import), build your landing pages with the included page builder, and redirect your traffic to the new domain. Since all the COD tools are already included, you stop paying for separate apps and the Pago Nube processing fee from day one.

Ready to open your store? Start free at whatalo.com