Compare
Roots HQ vs. Palmstreet
A live-shopping marketplace (plants, collectibles). Commission on every sale; Palmstreet owns the audience.
Live-selling marketplace · Last reviewed 2026-07-25 · help.palmstreet.app fees
What each one actually is
Not the same kind of product.
- Roots HQ
- Connected business headquarters — inventory, customers, events, and money in one system, across every channel you sell on.
- Palmstreet
- Niche live-shopping marketplace (plants, collectibles) — buyers discover and buy inside Palmstreet’s own app.
A fair read
Where Palmstreet is genuinely strong — and where it isn't.
Derived directly from the sourced comparison matrix below, not written separately.
Where Palmstreet is stronger
- Built-in marketplace audience & buyer discoveryA live-shopping marketplace by design — buyers browse and discover sellers inside Palmstreet’s own app.
- Marketplace checkout (buyer pays inside the platform's own app)Purchases complete inside Palmstreet’s own in-app checkout.
- Live-stream scheduling
- Live product spotlight
- Live-only promotions & drops
- Auctions
- Claims & holds
- Just-sold ticker
- Product reviews
Where Roots HQ is stronger
- In-person card payments (POS, keyed card entry)
- Your own hosted storefrontSelling happens inside Palmstreet’s own app — there is no independent hosted storefront to own.
- You own the customer listPalmstreet retains the buyer relationship — sellers do not get a portable customer list.
- Sell on your OWN site (not a marketplace)By definition — Palmstreet is a marketplace app, not an independent site the seller controls.
- Stream sales attribution to your CRMPalmstreet ships no CRM/contact-record feature to attribute a sale into.
- Contact records & tagsPalmstreet’s own seller policy explicitly prohibits collecting buyers’ personal information outside the app.
- Data export (contacts + consolidated sales)Nothing of the seller’s own to export — see “You own the customer list” above.
- Custom domainsNo independent site exists to point a domain at while selling inside Palmstreet’s app.
- SegmentationPalmstreet’s own policy prohibits collecting buyer contact data outside the app.
- Email campaignsNo email/CRM channel exists to campaign into — see “Contact records & tags”.
- SMS campaignsNo SMS/CRM channel exists to campaign into — see “Contact records & tags”.
- CMS pages & blogNo independent site/blog surface exists inside a marketplace app.
- Built-in AI business assistant
Fees
What Palmstreet actually charges.
- Monthly
- $0 — no subscription
- Commission
- 6.9% standard selling fee
- Processing
- 2.9%+30¢ (Stripe standard); Affirm/Afterpay 6%, Klarna 5.99%, PayPal 3.49%+49¢ are higher
- Per order
- Included in processing
- Category exceptions
- None published
- Promo exceptions
- Small reductions via referrals/subscribers
Last verified 2026-07-25 against help.palmstreet.app fees.
Feature by feature
Every sourced row that mentions Palmstreet.
Selling & discovery
Built-in marketplace audience & buyer discovery
Roots HQ
Not applicable
Roots HQ is a storefront and operations platform, not a marketplace — it has no built-in buyer audience of its own. Bringing buyers is on the seller; in exchange, the seller keeps the customer relationship (see Business ownership).
Palmstreet
Native
A live-shopping marketplace by design — buyers browse and discover sellers inside Palmstreet’s own app.
Marketplace checkout (buyer pays inside the platform's own app)
Roots HQ
Not applicable
Buyers check out on the seller’s own branded checkout — Roots HQ does not operate a marketplace checkout of its own.
Palmstreet
Native
Purchases complete inside Palmstreet’s own in-app checkout.
In-person card payments (POS, keyed card entry)
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Not available
Not offered by this product today, as far as we could confirm from its own documentation.
Live-stream scheduling
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Live product spotlight
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Live-only promotions & drops
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Auctions
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Claims & holds
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
OBS overlays & QR to buy
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Just-sold ticker
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Security & access control
Brute-force protection
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Not applicable
Sellers use Palmstreet’s own app account — there is no separate seller admin surface of their own for this to apply to.
IP allow / deny
Roots HQ
Native
Both halves are real and enforced: a global IP deny/blocklist (checked on every request) plus a per-tenant IP allow-list (checked at login and on every authenticated admin request) with CIDR range support. The allow-list only starts restricting access once a tenant adds at least one entry — an empty list means no restriction, not "deny everyone."
Palmstreet
Not applicable
No separate seller admin surface of their own to restrict by IP.
GeoIP controls
Roots HQ
Native
Enforced at login: sign-in is refused with a 403 when the resolved country is on the blocked list, or (if an allow-list is configured) not on it — a real access-control gate, not just reporting.
Palmstreet
Not applicable
No separate seller admin surface of their own to gate by country.
Per-device payment tokens (lost phone ≠ compromised merchant account)
Roots HQ
Native
Each Tap-to-Pay device gets its own short-lived (24-hour) access token minted from a server-held refresh token — never the merchant’s main credential — and that one device’s token can be revoked individually without affecting any other device.
Palmstreet
Not applicable
Sellers don’t run their own POS device integration on a marketplace.
Automated TLS certificate provisioning for custom domains
Roots HQ
Native
Issuing and renewing the HTTPS certificate for a connected custom domain is fully automated (Let’s Encrypt via certbot), with safety checks before every nginx reload and automatic rollback if anything fails.
Palmstreet
Not applicable
No independent domain exists to provision a certificate for while selling inside Palmstreet’s app.
Multi-factor authentication
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Not applicable
Palmstreet account security (including any MFA) is Palmstreet’s own account, not a seller admin surface Roots HQ or the seller configures.
Business ownership
Your own hosted storefront
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
Selling happens inside Palmstreet’s own app — there is no independent hosted storefront to own.
You own the customer list
Roots HQ
Native
Scoped to the customer contact list specifically (see “Data export” below for the exportable proof of this) — not a claim that every business record is exportable.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
Palmstreet retains the buyer relationship — sellers do not get a portable customer list.
Sell on your OWN site (not a marketplace)
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
By definition — Palmstreet is a marketplace app, not an independent site the seller controls.
Stream sales attribution to your CRM
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
Palmstreet ships no CRM/contact-record feature to attribute a sale into.
Contact records & tags
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
Palmstreet’s own seller policy explicitly prohibits collecting buyers’ personal information outside the app.
Data export (contacts + consolidated sales)
Roots HQ
Native
Admin-only, audit-logged CSV export of the contact list and consolidated multi-channel sales — api/src/routes/export.ts. This is not a full-account export or backup: no such feature exists, and tenant deletion is platform-owner-only with no pre-deletion self-export step.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
Nothing of the seller’s own to export — see “You own the customer list” above.
Product reviews
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Custom domains
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
No independent site exists to point a domain at while selling inside Palmstreet’s app.
Operations
Product catalog & inventory
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Product types + collections (filter by kind)
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Shipping with live carrier rates + labels
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Order-status workflow
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Labels, tracking & status notifications
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Growth
Categories & discounts
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Segmentation
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
Palmstreet’s own policy prohibits collecting buyer contact data outside the app.
Email campaigns
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
No email/CRM channel exists to campaign into — see “Contact records & tags”.
SMS campaigns
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
No SMS/CRM channel exists to campaign into — see “Contact records & tags”.
QR codes & printable market flyers
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
CMS pages & blog
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
No independent site/blog surface exists inside a marketplace app.
SEO metadata & structured data
Roots HQ
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Palmstreet
Marketplace-dependent
No independently indexable seller site exists inside a marketplace app.
Business intelligence
Built-in AI business assistant
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Not available
Not offered by this product today, as far as we could confirm from its own documentation.
Unified sales dashboard (all channels)
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Sales-tax & payout reporting (operational)
Roots HQ
Native
Built in at no extra cost and no separate app — this is how the product ships out of the box.
Palmstreet
Limited
Real and shipped, but narrower than the feature name suggests. See the note on this cell for the specific boundary.
Bottom line
Should you use Roots HQ instead of Palmstreet?
Palmstreet is a good place to find plant and collectible buyers who are already there to shop live — that reach isn’t something Roots HQ tries to replace. What Palmstreet doesn’t do is remember that buyer once the stream ends, tell you whether a market pop-up was profitable, or connect a Palmstreet sale to the same customer record as a Whatnot show or your own site. Most sellers running Palmstreet use it alongside an operations platform, not instead of one — that’s the role Roots HQ plays.
See how they compare against your real numbers.
Bring your current stack — we will map it honestly.