Collabstr is a creator marketplace with 1.2 million listed creators, a free tier that adds a 10% hiring fee to every order, and paid plans from $249 a month on annual billing. It suits a brand that wants content. A Canadian café, salon or shop that wants customers through the door should compare what each alternative measures, not only what it charges. Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on October 6, 2026.
In short
- Collabstr: free to search and hire with a 10% fee per order; Pro $249 a month and Premium $333 a month on annual billing; creators pay a separate 15% on their payout.
- Onlure: free to browse with one message per creator; Plus at C$29 a month; zero commission; walk-in tracking per creator. Built in Toronto for local businesses.
- Shopify Collabs: creators earn commissions on tracked online sales, with a 2.9% processing fee on each automatic commission payment. For online stores.
- Insense, Upfluence and #paid are built for larger content and ad programs, with marketplace fees, custom quotes or demos.
What does Collabstr charge?
Collabstr's pricing page lists four plans. Free ($0) gives search across 1.2 million creators, direct hire from profiles, escrow, and a 10% hiring fee on every order. Pro ($249 a month, billed annually) adds one campaign a month, chat before hiring, live analytics for five posts at a time and 20 audience reports. Premium ($333 a month, billed annually) adds unlimited campaigns, 15 tracked posts, 50 reports, priority support and cuts the hiring fee to 5%. Enterprise starts at $1,000 a month on an annual contract. The FAQ on the same page says creators pay a separate 15% fee on their payout, and that each tracked post is tracked for up to three weeks.
It measures reach and engagement on the posts it tracks. It does not measure whether anyone came into your shop.
The alternatives
Onlure. A Toronto marketplace for local businesses and local creators. The pricing page lists a Free plan (browse and send one message per creator) and Onlure Plus at C$29 a month with unlimited messaging, an AI matcher, escrow, a Toronto-based account manager and a 100% refund guarantee on bookings, with "zero commission, always". The measurement is the difference. A business books local creators for a campaign and sees the walk-ins each creator sends, which is what the World Soccer Party and Simi African Foods case studies report. Best for a business whose goal is a customer at the counter. Prices are in Canadian dollars.
Shopify Collabs. Free to install for Shopify merchants. Creators are paid a commission on online sales tracked through their links; Shopify's help centre says "there's a 2.9% processing fee applied to every automatic commission payment", handled in US dollars. Best for an online store on Shopify. It counts orders, not visits, so a café gains little from it.
Insense. A UGC and influencer platform with self-serve plans: a Trial at $650 for the first month, Brand at $500 a month (billed quarterly) and Agency at $800 a month, plus a marketplace fee on creator payments of 20% on Trial and Brand and 7% on Agency. Best for brands that need content for paid ads at volume.
Upfluence. Pricing is "custom-quoted based on the modules you select", with a fixed platform fee rather than a percentage and a 12-month minimum on annual plans. Best for teams running large programs.
#paid. No public pricing; the site asks you to book a demo. A managed service for brands with budgets to match.
How do you choose?
Ask four questions.
- Content or customers? If the deliverable is videos for your ads, Collabstr and Insense are built for it. If the deliverable is people in the shop, you need a platform that counts them.
- Online or in store? Shopify Collabs tracks online orders well and store visits not at all.
- What does it take from the creator? A 15% creator fee on Collabstr or a 20% marketplace fee on Insense comes out of the same budget one way or another; creators price it in.
- Can it count a visit? None of the general marketplaces do. The seven ways to measure store visits explains why that is the hard part, and the cost per visit explainer shows how to compare channels once you have a count.
For rates by creator size, the Toronto micro-creator pay guide has current numbers. The brands page explains how an Onlure campaign is set up.
Frequently asked questions
Is Collabstr free?
Searching and hiring are free, with a 10% hiring fee added to each order on the free plan and a separate 15% fee paid by the creator. Campaigns, chat before hiring and post analytics require Pro ($249 a month) or Premium ($333 a month) on annual billing.
What is the cheapest Collabstr alternative for a small business in Canada?
Onlure's Free plan costs nothing and its Plus plan is C$29 a month with zero commission on bookings. Shopify Collabs is free to install for Shopify merchants, with a 2.9% processing fee on commission payments, but it tracks online sales rather than store visits.
Which platform can track store visits from creators?
Of the platforms compared here, only Onlure reports walk-ins per creator. Collabstr, Insense, Upfluence and #paid report content performance; Shopify Collabs reports online orders.
