Salla or Zid: Choose Your Store Platform by Sales Path, Not Plan Price

Put the Salla and Zid pricing pages side by side and the paid plans line up almost to the riyal: the equivalent of SAR 99 a month for the first paid tier on both, SAR 299 for the second. So "pick the cheaper one" settles nothing, and "they're the same, just pick one" holds for about a month. What decides it is your sales path over the next 18 to 24 months: the route an order takes from the first ad a customer sees to the money reaching your account.

Both are Saudi hosted store platforms: you pay a subscription and the platform runs the servers, the theme, and the payment and shipping connections. I've worked on both platforms, as well as Magento and OpenCart, and neither Salla nor Zid is the right answer for every store. What I can give you is a way to choose and a 10-question sheet to fill in before you pay. Correct as of 14 October 2026: every platform figure here comes from the platform's own page as it stood that day, and prices change.

Is the cheaper platform the right choice?

No. There's almost nothing between them on subscription, and the costs that matter aren't on the plans page.

Salla's plans page lists four plans. Salla Basic is free. Salla Plus is SAR 990 a year and Salla Pro SAR 2,990 a year after an annual-billing discount; the struck-through full prices beside them, SAR 1,188 and SAR 3,588, work out to SAR 99 and SAR 299 a month. Salla Special has no published price.

Zid's pricing page lists Starter "Free forever", Rise at SAR 99 a month, Growth at SAR 299 a month, and Professional with no published price.

Neither pricing page says whether VAT is included. Zid's payments page says, under its Growth-plan transaction fees, that "all fees exclude VAT"; I found no VAT note for the subscription prices themselves. I couldn't find Zid's annual prices published either. Ask both platforms before you compare one number with another.

My view is that a free plan is for trying a platform, not launching a brand. Salla itself pitches Basic at beginners and people trying the platform. Zid's comparison table shows Starter without a custom domain or advanced payment methods: bank transfer and cash on delivery only. On Salla, a custom domain appears under Plus, so check what Basic includes. Without your own domain, the address you verify in Search Console, Merchant Center and Meta is one you'll leave when you upgrade, so start on your own domain.

Are Salla and Zid really the same?

On the surface, yes: an Arabic storefront, a dashboard, a free plan and two paid plans at about the same price. Where money moves, no: their pages differ on payment fees, installment providers, wholesale and shipping, and the decision sheet below sets that out row by row.

What costs don't show in the plan price?

Transaction fees first, then commission, payout timing, apps, shipping and the price of leaving one day. A transaction fee is what the payment gateway keeps from each payment, usually a percentage plus a fixed amount.

Zid's Help Center says Zid Pay has no setup or monthly fee and charges a percentage that varies by card network and plan, plus a fixed operating fee, plus VAT. For mada, Saudi Arabia's national debit card network, on the Growth plan, that's 1% + SAR 1. Zid's payments page also lists 2.3% + SAR 1 and 3.3% + SAR 1 on Growth without saying which networks they apply to, and no rates for Rise or Professional.

A hypothetical example with round numbers: a store on Zid's Growth plan takes 600 orders a month at an average of SAR 120, all paid by mada. Each order costs SAR 2.20 before VAT (SAR 1.20 plus SAR 1), so fees come to SAR 1,320 a month and SAR 15,840 a year, or SAR 18,216 with 15% VAT. Zid Pay's SAR 3 deposit fee, three deposits a week, adds SAR 468 a year unless you bank with Riyad Bank. Twelve months of the plan at the monthly price is SAR 3,588. The fees are more than four times the subscription.

Any gateway charges fees, so the number to compare is the gap between the two platforms. This store sells SAR 864,000 a year: every 0.1 percentage point of difference in the rate is SAR 864 a year, and every 10 halalas of difference in the fixed fee is SAR 720 across its 7,200 orders. All-mada is also the cheapest case: the two other rates listed on Zid's payments page, 2.3% and 3.3% plus SAR 1, are both higher than mada's.

The fixed part weighs most on small baskets. At the same rate, a hypothetical SAR 50 order pays SAR 1.50, or 3%; a SAR 300 order pays SAR 4, about 1.3%. If you sell cheap products in volume, watch the fixed fee more than the percentage.

If you sell on installments, add that line too. Salla says in a blog post on payment methods that Tabby's fees are set by the contract the merchant signs with Tabby, and Tamara's by the type of product, its value and other factors. Ask Tabby and Tamara for your rate directly; in a store where many customers pay in installments, it can be the largest fee in the total.

Commission on orders is a separate question. Zid says on its page for switching merchants that you pay no commission on orders. Zid's pricing page asks "Is there a commission on sales?" without a published answer. Salla's Special plan page says there is no platform commission on your sales; I found no such statement for its other plans.

When the money arrives is a cost too, especially if you pay for stock up front. Zid's Help Center says Zid Pay pays Saudi merchants on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, with a SAR 100 minimum. Salla's homepage says payments are collected "after 24 hours".

Apps add up one at a time, and some carry their own monthly fee. List the connections you'll need in year one (shipping, e-invoicing, WhatsApp, installments, ad channels) and price each in the platform's app store.

Compare shipping by the price of your parcel, not the number of carriers. Zid publishes rates on its shipping page, all excluding VAT. Its branch-delivery section lists Sabl at SAR 20 and Aramex and SMSA at SAR 23 for the first 10 kg, and Aramex GCC at SAR 34 for the first half kilo; its shipping-tiers table shows other prices (SAR 21, 25 and 35). Zid also says returns cost nothing beyond the base shipping price.

Two numbers Zid publishes that I couldn't find on Salla's public pages: its payment-fee table and its shipping rates. The Salla Special page mentions flexible payment-gateway fees without a figure, and Salla's carrier connections come "without contracts" but without published rates. That doesn't make Salla more expensive; it means you can't compare until you've asked for both and run the example above on your own orders.

Why choose for year two, not launch day?

Because the fees in the example above barely show in month one, and by year two they're a budget line. My view: the platform decision matters less than people think in month one, and more than they think in year two.

In month one you handle dozens of orders, and you cover gaps by hand with a WhatsApp message or a typed invoice. In year two, if the store works, every manual step becomes someone's job, and the platform now holds your customers, their order history and the product URLs Google knows. Leaving is a project with a price.

So I read the sales sheet before the features page, as I read it before the ad report. The path I work along runs from market and offer through ad, lead and follow-up to sale and revenue. The platform works at the end, but you choose it from the start: which market you'll be in two years from now, and which channel will bring the order. A store planning to enter Kuwait next year has different questions from one opening a wholesale line in Riyadh.

A channel you'll add next year belongs in today's decision. For Argan Package in Saudi Arabia, I managed listing the company's products on Amazon.sa and built the plan to make it a real sales channel; it added revenue equal to 22% for the company within the channel's first two months. That result belongs to the Amazon channel alone, but it's enough to show one channel outside the store can change a year's arithmetic. So ask now whether the platform connects your catalog to the marketplace you plan to enter, and at what cost.

What I ignore: theme counts, the app, carrier and merchant counts both platforms advertise, and time-limited switching offers. Offers end. Fees stay.

How does your store's sales path decide the platform?

Not in one go. Each part of the path tips one row of the decision, and three need more than a cell in the sheet: cash on delivery, Zid's gateway lock and where your company is registered.

Cash on delivery: the question is which courier collects the cash. Zid's shipping page says it collects cash on delivery for all its shipping companies, yet its branch-delivery table marks it available with Aramex and SMSA, not with Sabl or Aramex GCC. Read the table for your delivery type, not the headline. In that same table the cheapest rate, Sabl at SAR 20, is one of the two without cash on delivery. Whatever neither platform publishes, ask in one message: what the courier charges per cash-on-delivery parcel, how many days the cash takes to reach you, and how Salla handles cash on delivery at all.

Gateways: according to Zid's Help Center, no other payment gateway can run alongside Zid Pay except Tabby and Tamara, and switching it on disables the other gateway automatically. The page doesn't say what happens to cash on delivery, bank transfer, MIS Pay or Madfu, so ask Zid which of these stay on before you activate it.

Country of registration: Zid lists Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria as its countries. Jordan isn't among them, and I found no mention of Jordan on Salla's pages; Salla lists Saudi Arabia and the UAE as the countries it supports. A Jordan-registered company has two separate questions: will the platform accept it as a merchant, and will the store ship to Jordan? The first decides whether you can open the store at all, so put it to both platforms before you compare anything else. In the same message, ask which documents they need (commercial registration, bank account and its country) and which account and currency your payouts go to. What else changes for a Jordanian company selling to Saudi customers is in entering the Saudi market.

One rule holds whichever you choose: fire each pixel from one route, the built-in connection or an app, never both, or every purchase counts twice and the ad platform learns from inflated numbers.

The decision sheet: Salla or Zid in 10 questions

Fill in "Your answer" with your store's numbers for the next 18 to 24 months; the last column says which way each answer tips. "Ask the platform" marks something I couldn't find published.

#	Question about your store	Your answer	Salla	Zid	Which way it tips
1	How many orders a month in 18 months, at what average basket?		Payment fees per network: ask the platform; no platform commission stated on Salla Special	mada on Growth: 1% + SAR 1 before VAT; other networks and plans: ask the platform	The lower year of fees on your own orders, installment fees included
2	What share of orders is cash on delivery?		Collecting couriers and terms: ask the platform	From Starter; branch-delivery table shows it with Aramex and SMSA	The platform that collects with the courier serving your cities
3	Do you sell on installments, and with whom?		Tabby, Tamara, Spotii, Cashew	Tabby, Tamara, Emkan, MIS Pay, Madfu; only Tabby and Tamara are confirmed to run alongside Zid Pay; ask which of the others, and cash on delivery, stay on with Zid Pay	Where your provider works with the gateway you'll use
4	Do you need stc pay or PayPal?		Both listed on the payments page	stc pay through Zid Pay: ask the platform	Salla if they're essential, unless Zid confirms otherwise
5	What does your usual parcel cost to your cities?		Rates: ask the platform	Branch-delivery section: Sabl SAR 20, Aramex SAR 23, SMSA SAR 23 for the first 10 kg, excluding VAT; other shipping tiers priced differently	The lower cost for your parcel with the payment method your customers use, after returns
6	Will you sell wholesale or B2B within two years?		Listed on Salla Special, no published price	Not found on public pages: ask the platform	Get a price for Salla Special, and ask both about a wholesale app on a lower plan and about B2B invoices that meet ZATCA's e-invoicing (Fatoora) rules
7	Is your company registered outside Saudi Arabia, or will you sell abroad?		Saudi Arabia and the UAE listed; Jordan: ask the platform	Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria; Zid Pay for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait	The platform that accepts your country of registration and serves your customer's
8	Which channel will bring most orders, and does it need a product catalog?		Snapchat and TikTok (pixel, Conversions API, daily catalog) free on all plans; built-in Meta pixel on paid plans	Facebook Pixel, Conversions API and Google Merchant Center via the App Market; Help Center articles for Snapchat and TikTok; Amazon, Trendyol, Jahez, Mazeed	The platform that connects your main channel, with its catalog, without a paid app
9	How many people in the dashboard, and do you have branches?		Staff accounts on Salla Pro; branches and warehouses on Salla Special	1, 1, 5 or 20 team members, Starter to Professional	The tier that covers your team, priced on both
10	What do you take with you if you leave?		Export of orders, products and customers: ask the platform	Orders, products and customers export from the dashboard	The platform that confirms in writing what moves

Don't give the questions equal weight. Question 7 comes first: if a platform won't accept you as a merchant, nothing else on the sheet matters there. Then question 1, because that cost recurs every month. After those, questions 3 and 6 tip it if installments or wholesale are in your plan. That's my order, not the platforms'.

When is switching platforms worth it?

When the platform stands in the way of your plan, not when the design annoys you: a channel, payment method or country you need that it doesn't serve, or an annual fee gap, worked out as above, bigger than the cost of moving and the disruption after it.

Both platforms advertise help moving stores to them. Salla's plans page lists "Can I move my store from another platform to Salla?" among its FAQs, and its Zid comparison page offers a migration and design service with Plus and Pro. Zid's switchers page offers free migration of the entire store. Neither offer has a stated end date, so either can change without notice; don't decide on them. Neither platform says publicly exactly what moves. Before you sign, get it in writing: whether products move with their images and options, whether customers and order history move, and whether old product URLs redirect to the new ones.

Redirects matter most if Google sends you sales: an old URL that doesn't redirect returns an error page, and its Google ranking and traffic go with it. Check whether you can upload your own list of permanent (301) redirects. How to confirm in Search Console that they work after the move is in technical SEO for online stores. And keep three things unchanged: your domain, your pixel and Conversions API IDs, and the product IDs in your Merchant Center feed. A new domain has to be verified again with Google and Meta; new product IDs make every product look new to both.

Export your own data first. A Zid Help Center article from October 2024 explains exporting orders, products and customers, and says the full product export link is valid for one week, so save the file when it arrives. And don't move in the weeks before White Friday, Ramadan or Saudi National Day. If you're reading this in October, that means after White Friday and before the run-up to Ramadan.

Where to start this week

Fill in the sheet, send every "ask the platform" as a written question to both platforms on the same day, keep the replies with the sheet, and decide when both are in.

Once you've chosen, the work moves from the platform to the store: traffic, conversion, order value and repeat purchases. That's laid out in growing online store sales before you raise ad spend.

If you'd like me to go through your sheet with you before you pay for a year's subscription, that's part of my work in e-commerce growth. Request a consultation and send the completed sheet with your sales sheet.

Want your team trained on this? Corporate training programs.