When this fits
Network under fifty distributors. Commission cycle is weekly or monthly. The founder is still doing the bookkeeping personally and finding it manageable. Brand consistency matters more than feature breadth, which is almost always the case at this scale.
The stack
Stripe Connect Express. Distributors register as Connect accounts during onboarding. Payments to distributors flow through Stripe's payout infrastructure rather than a separate wallet system. KYC and tax-form generation (1099 in the US, equivalents elsewhere) handled by Stripe automatically.
A Google Sheet (or Airtable, or Notion DB). One row per commission, calculated by formula. The spreadsheet should have version history enabled, formula audit logs enabled, and a separate read-only tab that distributors can view; never share write access to the calculation tab.
Mailchimp or ConvertKit. Distributor communications. Welcome sequences, weekly newsletters, milestone notifications. Whatever fits the brand voice; both work fine for this scale.
Squarespace, Webflow, or a simple Next.js site. The marketing surface and any product storefront. Stripe Checkout integrates cleanly with all three.
Cost
Around $50 to $80 per month all-in. Compare to $290+ per month for the lowest real SaaS MLM. The savings ($2,500 to $3,000 per year) usually go better in brand investment (photography, content, distributor education) than in platform tier upgrades that distributors won't perceive at this scale.
When to graduate
Three signals tell you the manual stack has run its course. Manual reconciliation taking more than two hours per week. A commission error that affected distributor trust. The spreadsheet has more than three tabs that all need to stay in sync. At any of those, the leverage of real SaaS starts to compound.
ARM MLM Cloud at the white-label tier is the most common destination from this stack. CloudMLM Software's entry tier ($290 per month) is the alternative when the network is climbing toward 200+ distributors and the API surface starts to matter for integrations.