The short version: Farmigo charges 2% of delivery revenue with a $150 a month minimum, only in months you deliver. Local Line charges a flat subscription every month of the year, and for a CSA you need Premium at $159 a month billed annually, or $1,920 a year, because subscriptions and recurring orders are not on the $79 Core tier. For a farm delivering eight months a year, Farmigo's floor is $1,200 against Local Line's $1,920. The crossover sits at roughly $12,000 a month in delivery revenue: below that Farmigo is cheaper, above it Local Line's flat fee wins. Local Line also publishes its processing rates, including ACH at 0.8% on Premium, and Farmigo does not.
All figures came off each company's own pricing page in July 2026. Local Line now lives at localline.co; the older locallineapp.com domain no longer resolves.
Both run CSAs. They are shaped for different kinds of farm around that.
Farmigo is CSA-first. Its own description is farm management software for CSAs, herdshares, and food hubs, built with farmers since 2009. Everything about the pricing assumes a delivery season: it charges as a share of delivery revenue and nothing at all in months you are not delivering.
Local Line is multi-channel-first. Its tiers are gated on price lists and vendor seats, which points at a farm selling direct and wholesale simultaneously, or a hub aggregating several producers. Subscriptions are a capability it has rather than the thing it is organized around, which is why they sit at Premium rather than Core.
That difference shows up everywhere:
The trial asymmetry decides how you should even evaluate these two: one you can test tonight, one you price on a call. Our Local Line alternative guide covers who each tier is really for.
Same four disclosures on both. Note that the Local Line column that matters for a CSA is Premium, not Core.
| Farmigo | Local Line Core | Local Line Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | 2% of delivery revenue, $150/month minimum, charged only in delivery months | $79/mo billed annually ($950/yr), $99/mo monthly | $159/mo billed annually ($1,920/yr) |
| Free trial | Not published | 7 days, no credit card required | 7 days, no credit card required |
| Platform fee | The 2% is the fee. No setup fee, no per-member charges, no annual contract | $0, no commissions, no setup fees | $0 |
| Card processing | Not published, though Farmigo states no hidden processing markups | 2.9% + $0.30, ACH 1.0% | 2.7% + $0.30, ACH 0.8% |
Core does not include subscriptions. That is the single most important line in this comparison and it is easy to miss. If you run a CSA, Local Line's real price is $1,920 a year, not $950. Comparing Farmigo's $150 minimum against Core's $79 is comparing against a tier that cannot do the job.
Two things drive it: your monthly delivery revenue, and how many months you deliver.
Farmigo costs `max($150, 2% of delivery revenue) x delivery months`. Local Line Premium costs $1,920 regardless.
For an eight-month delivery season:
For a twelve-month operation, the crossover drops to $8,000 a month, because Farmigo's seasonal exemption stops helping you.
So the shape of the answer is: Farmigo is cheaper for seasonal CSAs at modest volume, and Local Line is cheaper for year-round operations at higher volume. The pivot is roughly $12,000 a month across an eight-month season.
This is where Local Line has a genuine, quantifiable advantage that the subscription comparison hides.
Local Line publishes ACH at 0.8% on Premium against a card rate of 2.7% plus $0.30. CSA payments are exactly the shape where that matters: a member paying $600 for a season share by bank transfer costs $4.80 in ACH against $16.50 on a card.
At 60 members paying $600 each, so $36,000 a season:
That $700 is larger than the subscription gap at most volumes, and it is a saving Farmigo cannot be compared against because it does not publish a processing rate at all. If a meaningful share of your members would pay by bank transfer, ask Farmigo what its ACH rate is before you compare anything else.
There is a practical wrinkle worth knowing about ACH in a CSA context: members have to choose it. An ACH rate is only worth what your members actually use, and most people default to whatever card is saved in their browser unless you give them a reason not to. Farms that get real value from a low ACH rate usually do one of two things: they make bank transfer the default option at checkout, or they offer a small differential so the member sees a reason to pick it. If you are choosing a platform partly for its ACH rate, plan how you will drive adoption at the same time, because a 0.8% rate that 10% of members use saves you 10% of $700.
This is the part of a CSA decision that software pricing interacts with and nobody discusses.
Neither approach is better in the abstract. A farm that banks its share revenue and draws it down through the season will barely notice twelve monthly charges. A farm running close to the line in February will notice them a great deal. Look at your own bank balance across a year before deciding which pricing shape suits you, and if you are still working out whether a CSA is the right model at all, our guide to starting a CSA covers the economics underneath the software question. You can also test a simpler ordering setup for a week if you are not yet sure you need membership machinery.
Our fuller look at Farmigo for small CSA programs covers where it fits, and our Farmigo against CSAware comparison is the relevant one if you are weighing the two CSA-native options.
Our fuller look at Local Line for small vendors covers where its floor starts to bite.
If wholesale price lists or restaurant accounts are anywhere in your plan, Local Line is the only one of these two built for them. That single requirement outweighs every row above.
Both require some homework, in different places.
Ask Farmigo:
Ask Local Line, or check yourself:
Question one on the Farmigo list is the one that could change the whole answer. On a $36,000 season, a one-point difference in processing is $360, which is half the subscription gap at typical volumes.
Question three is worth pressing on too, because the definition determines your bill. Farmigo charges on delivery revenue, and a CSA's revenue is rarely one clean number: there are shares, add-ons like eggs or bread, herdshare billing, and sometimes a farm-stand line that may or may not count. A farm that assumes only share revenue counts and then finds add-ons included has a bill 20% higher than it modeled. Get the definition in writing before you sign anything, and rerun your own arithmetic against it rather than against the assumption you started with.
Worth checking honestly, because both have floors that assume a real membership program.
Farmigo's minimum means $1,200 a year at eight delivery months and $1,800 at twelve. Local Line Premium is $1,920. On a CSA doing $36,000 a season, those are 3.3% and 5.3% of revenue, which is defensible for software that runs your entire membership: sign-ups, holds, skips, box customization, drop sites, and balances.
On a farm that sells at a market and takes some pickup orders, both are enormous for a problem that does not exist. The distinction is not size, it is shape: if you do not have recurring members, none of this machinery does anything.
Seasonal income also has a tax dimension worth planning for, since a CSA collects most of its revenue in a short window. The IRS's guidance on estimated taxes covers the quarterly payment obligation that catches out farms with lumpy revenue, and the SBA's local assistance directory will find you a nearby advisor who has seen the pattern before.
If your operation is simpler than a CSA, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing published up front, handling pickup at each place you sell, local delivery with a radius and a route, and sales tax filed and remitted in all 50 states. The honest bound: it does not do subscriptions or CSA boxes, which is the entire purpose of both platforms here. If you run a CSA, it is not a substitute. If you are not sure whether you run a CSA or just have loyal regulars, you can test a straightforward storefront in a week and find out cheaply. Our comparison of e-commerce platforms for farmers covers the wider field.
2% of delivery revenue with a $150 a month minimum, charged only in months you are actively delivering. There is no setup fee, no per-member or per-seat charge, and no annual contract. Volume discounts are offered as delivery volume grows.
Premium at $159 a month billed annually, which is $1,920 a year, because subscriptions and recurring orders are not included on the $79 Core tier. Ultimate is $319 a month. All tiers include a 7-day free trial with no credit card.
Farmigo, for a seasonal CSA under about $12,000 a month in delivery revenue across an eight-month season. Above that, or if you deliver year-round at over $8,000 a month, Local Line Premium's flat $1,920 becomes cheaper.
No. Subscriptions and recurring orders start at Premium. This is the most common mistake in comparing these two, because Core's $79 looks competitive with Farmigo's $150 minimum and cannot actually run a CSA.
Local Line publishes its rates: 2.7% plus $0.30 on cards and 0.8% on ACH at Premium. On a $36,000 season, taking payment by ACH rather than card saves roughly $700. Farmigo does not publish a processing rate, so ask before comparing.
No. It states it charges only in months you are actively delivering, which for a six or eight month season is a substantial difference against any flat annual subscription.
Local Line offers a 7-day free trial with no credit card on every tier. Farmigo does not publish a trial, so ask on the call whether one is available.
The comparison people run is Farmigo's $150 minimum against Local Line's $79 Core, and it is the wrong comparison, because Core cannot run a CSA. The real question is Farmigo's seasonal 2% against Local Line Premium at $1,920 a year.
On that basis: seasonal CSAs under roughly $12,000 a month in delivery revenue should look at Farmigo, where the off-season exemption is worth real money. Year-round operations, larger programs, and anyone with wholesale accounts or ACH-paying members should look at Local Line, where the published rates and the 0.8% ACH can outweigh the subscription difference entirely.
Whichever way you lean, get Farmigo's processing rate before you decide, because it is the one number in this comparison that nobody has published and it could be worth more than everything else on the page.
