Read their terms. Then read ours.
Polsia is the best-known product in this category, and the most instructive. Everything below is quoted from their published Terms of Service with the section number, so you can check it yourself.
Their terms as published, last updated 19 June 2026. If they change them, tell us and we will update this page.
Start with the arithmetic
Take a business earning $10,000 a month that spends $3,000 a month on ads — a modest, real small business. We are not the free option; we are the one that does not sit on your money and does not skim your media budget.
| Polsia | First Employee | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $20 | $24 |
| Share of $10,000 revenue | $2,000 (20%) | $1,500 (15%, or $0 self-managed) |
| Fee on a $3,000 ad budget | $600 (taken out of it) | $450 (added on top) |
| Advertising actually delivered | $2,400 | $3,000 |
| Total fees that month | $2,620 | $1,974 |
| …and you may withdraw | $500 | all of it — it never left your account |
Two things to sit with. Their $600 comes out of the budget, so $3,000 buys $2,400 of advertising; our $450 goes on top, so $3,000 buys $3,000. And their $2,000 revenue share arrives in a balance they hold, which is what produces the $500 monthly withdrawal cap — ours settles at the transaction and never leaves your account.
Clause by clause
§4.D — a $500 monthly withdrawal cap
"Withdrawals are subject to a minimum amount (currently $50 USD) and a monthly cap (currently $500 USD per calendar month)."
A business earning $5,000 a month can take out $500 a month. Getting one month of revenue out takes ten months. Note "currently" — the number is theirs to change.
§4.C — 20% of every customer payment, held 14 days
"A $100 customer payment results in $80 credited to Your Organization's balance and $20 retained by Polsia."
§3.F.iii — the ad fee comes out of your budget
"A $100 daily advertising budget results in $80 allocated to advertising spend, and $20 allocated to Polsia's platform fee."
We charge for advertising too — 15% of the spend we manage on the managed plan, which is the going rate for the job. The difference is that ours goes on top: your $100 budget delivers $100 of advertising and costs $115. Theirs comes out of the middle, so you pay $100 and receive $80 of media. Per dollar of real advertising that is $1.15 against $1.25, and you can check it against any agency quote.
§3.D.ii — the ad account is theirs, not yours
"Advertising campaigns run through a Services-managed platform advertising account, not your personal advertising account."
So you never own the pixel, the audiences or the optimisation history, you cannot take campaigns with you, and one policy violation by any customer can restrict the shared account for everyone on it.
§4.F — a refund costs you their fee too
"The full gross amount will be deducted from Your Organization's balance, including any platform fee already retained."
§5.B — an irrevocable licence to train on your business
"…royalty free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide and irrevocable… including to train and improve the AI models."
§1.C — public by default, revocable at will
"Public dashboards are enabled by default and may be indexed by search engines." And: "We reserve the right to remove any of these subdomains at any time, and for any reason."
§11 — arbitration and a class-action waiver
Binding individual arbitration, with class actions waived. The clauses most likely to produce a class action are the two above it.
In fairness to them
Most of this is not greed — it is the consequence of one architectural choice. They collect your customers' payments into a balance they control, which puts them close to being a money transmitter, so they need the agent-of-payee language in §4.B. And a platform that mints a storefront with a live payment link in ninety seconds is an obvious target for card-testing and laundering, so a hold, KYC and a monthly cap are a blunt but effective brake. If we had built it their way, we would need something like their rules.
We avoid the cap by avoiding the architecture. Stripe connects to your account; money goes from your customer to your bank and never lands in a balance we hold. We could not cap your withdrawals if we wanted to, because we never have your money.
What our choice costs you
Honestly: some friction they removed. You have to complete Stripe's own verification before you can take a payment, and you need your own ad account before you can run ads. Their one-tap "set up payments" is genuinely easier on night one. We think that trade is obvious the moment you have real revenue, and we would rather say so than pretend it does not exist.
What we commit to instead
- A self-managed plan at 0% of everything, always available, switchable in one click. Rates change only with 90 days' notice and a right to cancel.
- We are never your payment collection agent. No balance, so no hold and no withdrawal cap.
- Your ad account, your pixel, your audiences, credentials you can revoke — and the whole budget reaches the platform.
- No training on your business, and feedback stays yours.
- Public pages are opt-in and noindex until you say otherwise.
- Your subdomain is yours, plus one-click export to your own domain — we will register it for you at cost.
- Every dollar receipted before it is spent, against a ceiling you set.
- No arbitration clause and no class-action waiver.