Starter Plan: Your Launchpad on The Hive NZ

Start your business journey with zero financial risk.

The Starter Plan is the perfect entry point for New Zealand entrepreneurs. Whether you offer a niche service or a unique product, we make it easy to test the market. Join our community of local businesses and connect with Kiwi shoppers today.

Simple, Fair, and Accessible

We believe everyone should have a chance to grow. That is why our Starter Plan has no monthly subscription costs. You only pay a commission when you make a successful sale.

It is a win-win for your growing brand.

What You Get With Starter

3 Active Listings: Focus on your core products or service offerings.
No Monthly Fees: Enjoy a professional storefront with $0 ongoing costs.
Full Dashboard Access: Manage your orders and view sales statistics easily.
Customer Communication: Talk directly to your customers through our secure portal.
Shipping Control: Use your own shipping rates and methods for every listing.
Social Integration: Link your Hive store directly to your social media profiles.

Unlock “Instant Go-Live” Features

We value quality across The Hive NZ. New vendors start with manual listing reviews to ensure everything looks great. However, you can unlock Pre-approval by creating a “Complete Store”.

How to get Pre-approval:

Brand Your Store: Add your logo and a custom banner.
Shipping: Add your shipping to your store settings.
Get Connected: Securely link your Stripe account for easy payments.
First Approval: List your first product or service.

Once our team approves your first listing, you get Pre-approval. This means your future edits and new listings go live instantly!

Community & Growth

Vendor List: Your business appears in our public “Vendor List” directory.
A-Z Directory: We add your business name to our searchable A-Z directory.
Vendor Café: Join our private Facebook group for NZ vendors only.
Shop Small NZ: Promote your business in our dedicated Facebook community, get pre-approval with your personal FB profile.

ECOMMERCE FEATURES WITH A FREE STORE ON THE HIVE NZ:

This plan is free to join, free to set up your store, free to add listings, free to add categories, free, free, free. It does comes with a success fee of 15% on your sales (sale EXCL shipping) as well as the fee charged by the payment portal used by the customer (Stripe).

As this is our introduction plan, you can use it to have a look at how it all works, it stays active as long as you want!

The more information you add to your settings of your vendor dashboard; the more tabs customers see on your Hive store page and you create your own mini website!

Add/write your ‘about’ section
Add your own banner,
Add your logo
Add your Terms & Conditions
Add your return policy
Add your shipping terms
Add your socials

Connect to your social media, this will then show on your Hive Store page with icons on your cover image which link to your socials of course. Making it super easy for your customers to follow you!

Within your dashboard you can set up shipping for your business’ products.

Choose to add shipping per weight, per product, per location… you can do it all. Adding free shipping, Flat Rate shipping, allowing Pick Up, it is all also available for you to add.

You have full control over your shipping settings National as well as INTERnational.

PLEASE NOTE: setting up shipping is VITAL, without shipping set up, customers cannot order from you.

Your vendor dashboard offers you many stats; most viewed products, top selling products, sales analytics and more.

List your 3 products AND edit them whenever you want for FREE. Your listings can be for products, digital downloads, services, auctions and can even be for donations (charities only).

With this plan, there’s maximum 3 listings allowed.

Once you have submitted your first listing, it will then go to ADMIN for approval. IF there’s something that needs fixing you will be notified and you can find the reason why within the listing, you can then resubmit the listing to admin.

This plan only allows simple products.

NO HIDDEN/EXTRA FEES: Unlike other platforms, we do not charge a listing fee and no extra fees to add categories (you can add up to 5 per product). There's also no fees for extra images and because your listing stays live for as long as YOU choose, there is no re-listing fee either.
UPSELLS/CROSS SELLS: Add ‘other products you might like' to your product listings as well as cross sells at cart level (think gift wrapping and or complimentary products)
AUCTION LISTINGS are a new feature to our free plan - all the expected auction features available.
ORDERS & PAYMENTS: Full control over the orders your business receives; the payments of orders go straight to your Stripe account* and you can communicate directly with your customer regarding the order from within your vendor dashboard.
VENDOR LIST: Once your set up is complete and your first listing is live, your business will be added to the ‘Vendor List’ on our website. This will link to your Hive Store page.
ALL WELCOME: We welcome any type of listing and any type of (legal) product on The Hive NZ. This means you can list services, digital products as well as physical products - with a limit of 3 simple listings (on this free plan) per store page. As long as your small business is located in New Zealand; you can list on The Hive NZ.
EXCEPTIONAL: Supporting small businesses is what we're all about and will share your product and business when you're super active and stand out.
EXPOSURE AND REACH: the kind you simply cannot create on your own, the power of a collective like The Hive NZ is unlimited and because we take our SEO (how we rank on search engines) very seriously, PLUS, there is so many of us optimising it; you really cannot beat our collective results!
VENDOR CAFÉ GROUP: Join our very own Hive Vendor Café group on Facebook - for vendors on The Hive ONLY - where you will hear all our new ideas, upgrades and practical tips FIRST - be in the know!
SHOP SMALL NEW ZEALAND GROUP: A great group on Facebook where you can promote your business and sell your products daily - as a Hiver (vendor on The Hive) you get pre-approval in the group with your personal FB profile so you can choose when your post goes live.

* unless you have not connected your Hive Store to your Stripe account, in which case, you will be paid to your bank account (minus admin fee)

ADDONS FOR YOUR STARTER PLAN

If you’re not (yet) in the position to upgrade to one of our PRO plans, you can buy some addons for your free Starter plan instead, perfect for when you need a little boost for your business!

Starting your Ecommerce journey with your small business has never been this easy.