Most advice for charging for a newsletter assumes Stripe. If you are in India and you do not have a company, that assumption is the first thing that stops you. There is a cheaper path, and it runs through a platform that talks to Razorpay directly.
| piece | cost, as published | where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | $0 up to 2,000 contacts, 3 funnels, 15 page steps, 1 email campaign and 10,000 dollars of sales | our own free account, Settings then My plan |
| Payment gateway | 2% per transaction on Razorpay's headline rate, plus GST on the fee | razorpay.com/pricing, read 29 Oct 2026 |
| Domain | not included on free; your pages sit on a
yourname.systeme.io address | the free plan's own limits |
| Email sending | included, one campaign on the free plan | same |
That is 50,000 rupees a month in revenue. Razorpay takes 2% of it, which is 1,000 rupees, and GST is charged on that fee rather than on the whole amount, so the deduction is a little over 1,000. The platform takes nothing until you cross the sales cap. You have spent nothing to find out whether anyone will pay.
The cap is where the free plan ends. Ten thousand dollars of sales is a real number for a first product from India and an irrelevant one for a business, so treat the free tier as the test and budget the paid plan as the cost of the answer being yes. Paid plans start at Startup, which lifts the funnel and contact limits, and the price changes often enough that the pricing page is the only number worth trusting.
I have not onboarded a Razorpay account, so I cannot tell you what their verification asks for or how long it takes. I have not tested Stripe from India, and I am not saying it is impossible, only that it is the assumption most guides start from. Nothing here is tax advice: GST on the gateway fee is a cost, and how you register and file is a question for an accountant in your own state.