Whether you’re a creative or an entrepreneur or thinking about becoming one, you need a place from which to sell your digital/physical products or subscriptions. The good news is there are hundreds of eCommerce websites out there like Payhip and Gumroad where you can list and promote your offerings.
However, the tricky part is choosing amongst them and figuring out which platform is best suited to your needs or preferences. If you’re thinking about creating and managing your first online store, you cannot go wrong with Gumroad or Payhip as they are two of the best online selling platforms available today.
Although both sites function in a similar fashion, they possess unique features that set them apart and might make one or the other a better fit for you. In this post, I’m going to compare Payhip and Gumroad, explore their various features and differences, and highlight their pros and cons.
By the end, you’ll have a full understanding of what both platforms have to offer and be able to choose the one that’s more beneficial to you.
Let’s get started.
What is Payhip?
Payhip is an eCommerce and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform founded in 2012 that helps creators sell their products to customers directly.
You can choose to list your products on your social media pages or website and integrate it with Payhip so people can shop, checkout, and process their payment right away without having to leave the page.
Alternatively, Payhip lets you create a landing page or storefront on the platform, where people can go to browse your products and purchase what they want. You can sell memberships and subscriptions or digital products like music, ebooks, videos, images, design assets, printables, software, and more.
Payhip is currently being used by over 130,000 sellers across the globe, so it’s a well-known platform with lots of real user reviews that you can check out.
What is Gumroad?
Launched in 2011, Gumroad is an online selling and store-building platform that enables entrepreneurs and creators to market their products easily, without hassles. It provides a suite of tools to help sellers launch their creations, promote them effectively, and process payments in an instant.
Gumroad allows you to sell photographs, videos, ebooks, software, memberships, rentals, and other types of digital products. It also supports the selling of physical goods like books, mugs, t-shirts, and more. With Gumroad, you can get your products in front of people, drive traffic to your site, and build a thriving business from the ground up.
So far, Gumroad has helped over 102,689 creators from all walks of life take in more than $565 million in sales. It’s the perfect place for established sellers and beginners to showcase their crafts and make some money from their work.
Payhip vs Gumroad – Ease of onboarding
How easy is it to sign up, create an account, and start selling on Payhip and Gumroad? Which one offers the simplest and least complicated setup process?
Payhip
Payhip has a pretty simple onboarding process. To start using the platform, you need to simply visit the website and click Get Started then enter your email address, select a password, and click on create an account.
After that, you can go about setting up your store, payment options, shipping policy, and listing the items you want to sell. Easy peasy.
Gumroad
One of the reasons Gumroad is beloved by creators who want to start their eCommerce journey is because of its smooth and speedy onboarding process. In a matter of minutes, you can register an account for free and start marketing your digital or physical products to potential customers.
To get started with Gumroad, all you have to do is head over to the website and click on the Start Selling button, then proceed to submit your email and password to create your account. Alternatively, you can sign up for Gumroad using your Facebook or Twitter accounts and go on to set up other details like store name and landing page design.
Verdict
Both platforms are on par in this regard because it takes pretty much the same amount of time and effort to create an account on Payhip or Gumroad, although the latter offers more sign-up options. Getting started only takes a few minutes on both sites.
Gumroad vs Payhip – User experience
You want a platform that helps you sell your products as easily as possible, not one that’s difficult for you and potential buyers to navigate. This is why user experience is a key factor to consider when choosing an eCommerce site for your business.
So how do Gumroad and Payhip fair on this front?
Gumroad
Gumroad features a minimalist and modern design that makes it easy to use for professionals. However, beginners who have never used an online selling platform before may have a harder time figuring out the ropes.
Since many of Gumroad’s functions don’t come with explanations and guides to help you understand how they work, eCommerce novices might not be able to use them effectively right away. But they will certainly be able to learn the ropes and properly utilize the platform after a while or the more time they spend with it.
If you’re integrating Gumroad with your website or creating a storefront on the platform that visitors can browse through and buy if they find something they like, the process is very straightforward. With the widgets feature, you can easily create shopping buttons and integrate them anywhere.
You can even use CSS to customize your story’s landing page further if you have some technical experience.
Payhip
Whether you’re a first-time seller or a professional with years of eCommerce experience, you’re going to find the process of using Payhip to be very simple and easy to master. Once you set up your account, you’ll be guided on how to fill up other important details you’re going to need to get your shop up and running.
The procedure for listing the products you want to sell, uploading your payment process, sharing links to your products online, and adding buttons to your website directing people to your products is extremely straightforward and self-explanatory.
Payhip also integrates seamlessly with other channels and the buying process is hitch-free for customers too. Thanks to Payhip’s simplistic design, they can easily navigate from product to product, read descriptions, and add to cart or buy right away without experiencing any difficulties.
Once their payment clears, buyers will be able to download and access the items they bought in the case of digital products.
Verdict
Payhip offers more flexibility and simplicity than Gumroad. Its interface also looks more modern and functional, and many of its features are accompanied by prompts and descriptions, making Payhip more user-friendly than Gumroad.
Payhip vs Gumroad – Products you can sell
When picking an eCommerce platform, you want to go with the option that provides a lot more variety with regards to what you can sell. The website you choose has to align with your particular creative or entrepreneurial needs.
Here’s how both platforms compare on this point.
Payhip
Whether you’re using a paid or free Payhip account, you can sell all kinds of digital products, as well as physical items, and memberships where you charge subscribers/members on a recurring basis.
With digital offerings like software, ebooks, and videos, your customers will be able to download the files from your page once they finalize their purchase.
Payhip also emails a link to the download page to the buyer’s address so they can easily access it whenever they want.
Gumroad
Ebooks, software, podcasts, videos, music, games, applications, illustrations, and images are just a few of the digital products you can sell on Gumroad. The platform also supports the selling of physical goods like t-shirts, mugs, crafts, sneakers, and more.
In addition, you can sell products on a pre-order basis, so customers can buy items before they’re publicly available and you minimize the chances of stocking more items than you end up selling.
Gumroad also allows you to sell subscriptions or rent videos for up to 72 hours to customers.
Verdict
All kinds of creatives from painters, to woodworkers, artists, writers, designers, bloggers, craftspeople, and so on are welcome to sell their digital and physical merchandise on Payhip and Gumroad. However, if you’re looking to sell pre-orders, this service is only available on Gumroad and gives it an edge over Payhip.
Gumroad vs Payhip – Storefront design and customization
What kind of customization and design features do Gumroad and Payhip offer, and which one gives you the most bang for your bucks?
Payhip
Payhip is a hosted eCommerce platform, which means that you don’t have to host the store-building software by yourself. Payhip handles the task of hosting your online shop for you on its servers.
Although it provides a professionally designed storefront, Payhip also gives you the option of customizing it to some degree. However, you have to work with the themes that are already available on the platform as it doesn’t support the usage of custom themes.
You can tweak the logo and color of your site, add a profile image, change the background color for your shop, include a bio and media links to market yourself, and help customers find your products. Payhip also lets you customize your email templates and sales messages.
If you require more advanced customizations for your Payhip store, you can hire someone with CSS skills to work some magic for you.
Gumroad
With Gumroad’s free plan, you won’t get a lot of freedom when it comes to the design of your storefront. You’ll only be able to customize the logo, color, bio information, email logo, and background image.
Opting for a paid plan will unlock more features to help you customize your domain, but there will still be a limit on what you can do because it’s not a self-hosted site. Like Payhip, Gumroad doesn’t support custom apps or plugins so you can’t use them to customize your store or increase its functionality.
Unless you’re experienced with CSS, you won’t be able to carry out comprehensive customizations on your Gumroad storefront, product pages, and checkout pages design. However, Gumroad enables you to connect a custom domain to your eCommerce shop.
Verdict
Although both platforms have restrictive customization functions, I have to give the win to Gumroad here because it lets you use a custom domain with your store on its premium plan, which increases your branding power.
Payhip vs Gumroad- Payment processing
Aside from sharing your work with the world, the main point of creating an online shop is to make money. So it makes sense to pick a platform that makes it easy and convenient for customers to pay you and for you to receive your earnings.
Payhip
The eCommerce website supports both Stripe, PayPal, and card payment options for customers and it doesn’t have a payout threshold so you can withdraw whatever amount you have in your Payhip sales account. Payhip also offers instant payments and you can receive payouts on any day of the week to your PayPal or Stripe account.
Another useful payment feature that Payhip provides is the pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing option, which enables your customers to choose and pay the price they want or think is best for the product. You can even set a minimum payment so people know the least acceptable amount to pay or contribute in the case of a donation.
Gumroad
Your customers can make payments using most major credit cards including American Express, Mastercard, Visa, and Verve. It also processes payments from PayPal, opening up an avenue of possible payment options.
Unfortunately, Gumroad does not accept payments from Stripe, Skrill, Payoneer, Braintree, Google Pay, Authorize.net, Apple Pay. It also doesn’t support cryptocurrency payments.
Gumroad also allows you to create pay-as-you-want products and set suggested fees or prices to give your customers a range of possible values they can use to measure the worth of the product or what you’re willing to accept for it.
When it comes to payouts, Gumroad has a baseline of $10, which means you won’t be able to receive payments for the items you sold until you’ve made up to $10. The platform processes payouts every Friday, so you can’t access your money on any other day of the week.
For sellers living in the UK, USA, Canada, or Australia, payments can only be received in your bank account. If you live anywhere else in the world, you need to have a PayPal account to receive payouts.
Verdict
Even though Gumroad supports a variety of payment solutions, Payhip wins this round hands down because it processes payments instantaneously, doesn’t place thresholds on payouts, and also supports Stripe as a payment option.
Gumroad vs Payhip – Marketing and promotion
The best online selling sites provide ample tools and features to help you get your products in front of prospective customers and increase your sales. Let’s see which platform offers more in terms of marketing and promotion.
Payhip
One of the easiest ways to spread the word about your store and get people interested in what you’re selling is to offer discounts and Payhip allows you to create discount coupons that customers can take advantage of.
You can build an email marketing list by collecting the addresses of your subscribers, followers, and customers and sending targeted messages to get them to patronize you.
Payhip integrates shamelessly with email marketing software such as Mailerlite, ConvertKit MailChimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, and more. However, you can’t automatically add users to a mailing list, they have to opt in to receive email communications from you.
You can also take advantage of Payhip’s affiliate marketing program or leverage social media to market your offerings using the social boost feature on Payhip that allows customers to earn discounts when they like or post about your product on social networks.
Gumroad
Integrating Gumroad with your preferred email marketing tool is one of the ways you can promote your products and target potential and existing customers.
Gumroad lets you embed checkout pages on your websites and social media pages, which can help increase brand awareness and reach for your store and generate additional sales.
Unlike Payhip, Gumroad enables you to add people to mailing lists automatically without them having to opt in. This comes in handy when you want to send transactional emails like receipts, follow-ups, and more.
Additionally, you can create discount coupons and set up an affiliate program to drum up traffic and sales for your store. Your customers can register as affiliates and earn commissions every time someone makes a purchase using their referral links.
Verdict
Although most of the promotional tools available on Payhip and Gumroad are similar, the social boost feature that Payhip offers gives it a win over Gumroad.
Payhip vs Gumroad – Pricing and fees
Both platforms use wildly different pricing structures. Here’s how they work.
Payhip
Payhip offers three pricing tiers: the Free Forever plan, the Plus plan, and the Pro plan. The great thing is that no matter which of the plans you choose, Payhip still gives you access to all its features alongside the ability to list unlimited products and earn unlimited revenue.
The only key difference between the three plans other than their prices is the fee that accompanies each transaction. Under the Free Forever plan, you don’t have to pay a dime to use Payhip from month to month, but you will be charged a 5% fee on transactions, not including the fees charged by the payment option you’re using
Payhip’s Plus Plan costs $29/month and comes with only 2% fee charges on each transaction. If you opt for the Pro plan costing $99 per month, Payhip will not charge any fees on your transactions.
Feel free to check out Payhip’s pricing page for updated pricing information.
Gumroad
Instead of charging monthly subscription fees, Gumroad takes a unique approach by taking a cut out of every sale you make. And the more sales you make, the smaller the percentage it charges you for transactions.
For instance, if you make $0 to $999 selling on Gumroad, the company will charge a 9% fee on transactions. Sales from $1000 and above will attract 7%, $10,000 and above will bring you down to 5%, $100,000 and above incurs a 3% fee, and $1,000,000+ means you’ll be charged 2.9% in fees.
For up-to-date information about the prices of its offerings, feel free to consult Gumroad’s pricing page.
Verdict
While Gumroad and Payhip let you set up and manage your eCommerce store for free, they go about charging you differently and one might work better for you than the other. However, I have to say that Payhip’s pricing strategy is more transparent and straightforward, so I’m giving it the win.
Gumroad vs Payhip – Customer support
You might encounter some issues when using either Payhip or Gumroad and it’s nice to know that there’s a strong customer support network waiting to step in and help if needed? Right?
Let’s find out.
Payhip
If you experience problems with your account, payment processes, or any other feature when using Payhip, you have the option of reaching out to the support team via their email address.
However, you might have to put up with delays as they don’t always respond to messages speedily. Alternatively, you can contact the Payhip team via their Twitter profile.
Gumroad
Although Gumroad does not provide customer support via phone calls, you can contact and speak to a member of the support staff through the company’s email address and have them answer any questions or resolve any obstacles you might have.
The platform also has a comprehensive knowledge base, covering a wide range of issues that has to do wait using Gumroad that you can consult anytime, anywhere.
Verdict
I have to declare a draw on this point as both platforms don’t offer extensive customer support and their current processes can be slow-moving.
Similarities and Differences
Similarities
- Both allow you to sell various kinds of digital and physical products including memberships and subcontractors.
- Both support integrating your store into an eCommerce platform.
- You can create custom checkout pages and integrate them with various sites on Gumroad and Payhip.
- Both have a pay-what-you-want feature and allow you to set a minimal price to go with it.
- Both offer email and affiliate marketing tools to boost your promotional efforts.
- You can register, create a store, and begin selling your products on both platforms for free.
Differences
- Payhip uses Stripe and PayPal for payouts to sellers, while Gumroad uses bank transfers and PayPal.
- Gumroad only charges customers in USD, but Payhip also allows you to charge in GBP.
- The payment systems employed by Payhip and Gumroad are different. The former has monthly subscriptions and pays instantly, while the other charges fees based on how much you sell and only pays out on Fridays.
- Your customers cannot pre-order items on Payhip, but this feature is readily available on Gumroad.
- Payhip offers more opportunities for brand marketing and promotion via social media than Gumroad.
- Gumroad lets you use a custom domain on your storefront when you upgrade your plan, but Payhip only supports sub-domains.
Pros and Cons
Payhip
Pros
- It offers a free plan with no restrictions
- You can list unlimited products
- No payment threshold or special days for payouts
- Built-in affiliate program and email marketing features
- Extremely user friendly with a minimal learning curve
Cons
- It has limited customization features
- The support staff can be slow to respond
- The transaction fees are higher when you go for the free plan
- No custom domains
Gumroad
Pros
- You can sell products on pre-order
- You have the option of customizing your domain
- It offered multiple payment options for a convenient checkout experience
- It allows you to set up your account and sell for free
- The user interface is fairly easy to master
Cons
- Payouts can only be made when you reach or cross the $10 threshold
- Doesn’t support Stripe payments
- Customizations features don’t give you a lot to work with
Payhip vs Gumroad – Final Verdict
Both Gumroad and Payhip are great options if you’re looking for an online selling solution that’s easy to use and lets you get started for free. They come with a bunch of built-in tools and features to help you make the most of the platforms and maximize sales.
However, if I had to pick the superior platform (and I do), I’ll be handing the keys to Payhip because it’s easier to use and provides more flexible payment options and processes. Its pricing structure is also simpler to understand and cheaper if you’re just starting out.
