In 2023, many people are actively seeking alternatives to Gumroad.

Why?

Well, despite its undeniable benefits, Gumroad comes with its set of drawbacks.

One major one is its transaction pricing.

Gumroad slaps a 10% flat fee on every sale.

And guess what? This doesn’t even include credit card processing or PayPal fees

That’s too much, nah?

For many creators, especially those just starting out or selling high-volume, this is a hefty sum!

Now, when you compare this against other platforms offering lower fees on transactions or even tiered pricing structures (based on sales volume), it’s clear why people’s search for Gumroad alternatives is on the rise.

Let me suggest you some alternatives to Gumroad that are wallet-friendly!

Upfront bottomline:

  • LemonSqueezy is the closest alternative to Gumroad without the high transaction fees. It comes with a flat 5% transaction fee, which is more affordable even when you’re scaling your sales. Additionally, it offers various tax automation capabilities (like tax collection and remittance) that eliminate hassles and justify the fee.
  • You can consider Payhip if you want a more all-in-one alternative that includes online courses, memberships, and the ability to send digital downloads. Unlike Gumroad, it charges only a 5% transaction fee. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a platform that charges 0% transaction fee, you may want to go with Podia, which is also an all-in-one platform.
  • If you want a more feature-rich digital selling platform, then Thrivecart would be the best option. It is a specialist when it comes to selling digital products and shopping cart functionalities. It comes with advanced features like upsells, order bumps, various checkout templates, and behavioral conditions to automate the selling process.

Lemon Squeezy – Closest alternative

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LemonSqueezy is considered a really good alternative to Gumroad, especially after Gumroad increased its transaction fee to 10%.

👉 Some creators, even after trying many other options that I have outlined in this blog post, finally went with Lemon Squeezy and are loving the experience so far.

For example, Thomas Frank, who earns over $100,000 per month by creating Notion templates, moved from Gumroad to LemonSqueezy. He tested dozens of platforms, including Surecard, WooCommerce, Thrivecart, SamCart, Paddle, and even Shopify.

In the end, he chose LemonSqueezy for one big reason: tax compliance.

Some people have reported double or even triple the conversion rates with LemonSqueezy’s UI/UX compared to Gumroad’s.

Key features:

  • Digital product versatility: Sell a wide array of digital products, from eBooks, templates, and audio files to software license keys and even services.
  • Subscription models: Offer a variety of payment plans, be it one-time, pay-what-you-want, or recurring weekly, monthly, or annual payments.
  • Tax compliance: Acts as the Merchant of Record, handling sales tax, EU VAT, and financial records.
  • Global payment infrastructure: Supports payouts in over 270 countries, with a mix of bank payouts via Wise and others through PayPal.
  • Marketing and engagement tools: While still in development, plans include offering discount codes, lead magnets, bundles, upsells, and an affiliate marketing platform.
Lemon Squeezy pricing

Lemon Squeezy’s pricing is straightforward:

  • Ecommerce: A free tier where you only pay for transaction costs (5% + 50c per transaction).
  • Email marketing: Pricing is based on subscriber count, with it being free for up to 500 subscribers.

Pros 👍:

  • Competitive pricing: With a 5% + $0.50 per transaction fee, it offers a more affordable rate compared to Gumroad’s 10%.
  • Financial automation: Automated sales tax, EU VAT calculations, and invoice generation simplify the financial aspect for sellers.
  • Global reach: Extensive support for payouts across numerous countries ensures a broader audience reach.
  • Unlimited offerings: No restrictions on the number of products you can sell or the file storage.
  • SaaS subscription support: LemonSqueezy also supports subscription-based products. With this, you can even sell your SaaS products.

Cons 👎:

  • In development: Many features, especially in the marketing suite, are still under development.
  • Limited current integrations: As of now, integrations are limited to MailChimp and ConvertKit, with Shopify and WordPress integrations planned for the future.

Bottomline: LemonSqueezy is a promising alternative to Gumroad that comes at a much lower transaction fee, better tax compliance, and also the ability to sell software products with easy management of license keys. However, there’s still a long way to go. For example, LemonSqueezy is not as popular as Gumroad so you don’t get much organic sales that you’d be getting with Gumroad’s Discover feature.

Explore Lemon Squeezy

Payhip

Payhip overview

Payhip is an online platform designed for selling digital and physical products, memberships, courses, and coachings.

Key features:

  • Diverse product options: Payhip supports the sale of digital goods, courses, memberships, physical products, coaching services, and even bundles.
  • Membership site creation: Unlike Gumroad, Payhip offers a comprehensive membership site setup, allowing creators to design curriculums, manage members, and set pricing levels.
  • Customizable storefront: Payhip provides you with a high degree of customization for their online store, including themes, layouts, and even button designs.
  • Marketing tools: From traditional coupon codes to social discounts and affiliate marketing, Payhip offers a suite of tools to help creators promote their products.
  • Email marketing integrations: Payhip integrates with various email marketing platforms and supports automations via Zapier.
Payhip pricing

Payhip offers all of its features in all of its plans. The free plan costs a 5% transaction fee.

However, if you would like to lower the transaction fee, you may need to choose the Plus or Pro plans, which cost $29 or $99 per month, respectively.

Pros 👍:

  • Lower fees: Payhip charges a 5% transaction fee, which is half of Gumroad’s 10% fee.
  • Advanced membership features: Payhip’s membership site features are more advanced, allowing for a structured curriculum and media embedding.
  • Greater store customization: Payhip offers more flexibility in customizing the store, including themes and layouts.
  • Marketing options: Payhip provides a dedicated marketing page with features like cross-selling, referrals, upsells, and more.
  • Simple user experience: The platform is user-friendly, making product setup and management straightforward. Well refined UX.

Cons 👎:

  • No marketplace: Unlike Gumroad, which has a marketplace feature (Gumroad Discover), Payhip doesn’t offer a similar feature.

Bottomline: Payhip is a strong contender to Gumroad, especially with its lower fees and advanced courses and membership features. For those wanting more product support, prioritizing store customization and a comprehensive set of marketing tools, Payhip is the way to go.

Explore Payhip

ThriveCart – Advanced platform

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ThriveCart is an online shopping cart platform best to sell digital/physical products, courses, and services. It comes with a one-time fee, so you can pay once and use it for a lifetime.

It provides various types of checkout, like embeddable, single-step, multi-step, etc. It has a rich drag and drop editor with plenty of blocks to design your pages. For conversions, it provides guarantee badges, countdown timers, testimonials, etc.

ThriveCart comes with built-in funnels, where you can add up to five upsells and five downsells. ThriveCart provides behavioral marketing rules to automate main product and bump offer purchases, and also for affiliate tasks.

It has recently released Thrive Learn, an LMS tool to sell your courses. Thrive Learn offers powerful features to take your course creation to the next level.

Apart from these, ThriveCart comes with affiliate programs, dunning management, mobile payments, sales tax calculations, split testing, etc.

Thrivecart lifetime deal

When it comes to pricing, ThriveCart has a lifetime plan at $495. This is one of the best deals you can purchase to use for a lifetime.

⚙️ In 2023, Thrivecart raised $35M to improve their speed of feature implementation. They added LMS support to the platform with ThriveLearn and announced intelligent funnels that adapt based on visitors’ behavior in real time. This allows for dynamic offers based on visitors’ source and a more personalized funnel experience for returning customers.

Pros 👍

  • Comes with a funnel feature with 5 upsells and 5 downsells.
  • Has excellent marketing features like order bumps, coupons, affiliate center, mobile payments, etc.
  • Its Thrive Learn has powerful LMS features.

Cons 👎

  • There are no funnel templates available.
  • You need to purchase ThriveLearn to access additional LMS features.

Bottomline: For my Notion templates business, I personally use Thrivecart because I don’t rely on the organic sales that I get from Gumroad’s Discover feature, as most of my sales come from my YouTube videos. Additionally, the marketing flexibility that Thrivecart provides, such as upsells, order bumps, and the ability to set up affiliates, is unmatched.

Explore Thrivecart

Sellfy

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Sellfy is an e-commerce platform designed primarily for selling digital products, though it also supports physical items. It offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features to help creators monetize their content.

Key features:

  • Built-in print-on-demand: Sellfy offers a seamless print-on-demand service, allowing creators to sell custom clothing, home decor, and more without needing external integrations.
  • No transaction fees: Unlike some competitors, Sellfy doesn’t charge transaction fees, ensuring creators retain more of their earnings.
  • Customizable storefront: Users can personalize their store to match their brand, offering a unique shopping experience for customers.
  • Marketing tools: Sellfy provides tools like discount codes, email marketing, and social media tracking pixels to help creators promote their products effectively.
  • Embed options: Creators can embed “Buy Now” buttons, product links, or even their entire store on other websites or platforms.

Pros 👍:

  • Transparent pricing: With plans starting at $19 per month, Sellfy offers clear pricing without hidden fees.
  • Diverse product options: Sellfy supports the sale of digital goods, print-on-demand products, and subscriptions.
  • User-friendly: The platform is known for its neat, organized, and intuitive interface.
  • Native upselling: A built-in feature to help increase the average order value.
  • Mobile app: Available for both Android and iOS, allowing creators to manage their store on the go.

Cons 👎:

  • No free plan: Unlike some competitors, Sellfy doesn’t offer a free tier.
  • Limited integrations: The platform might not integrate with all third-party tools that you might use.
  • Best for digital products: While physical products can be sold, the platform is optimized for digital sales.

Bottomline: Unless you’re interested in printing customized t-shirts or print-on-demand products, I wouldn’t recommend using Sellfy as it would be too much for your needs.

Explore Sellfy

Sendowl

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SendOwl is an all-in-one digital checkout solution that enables users to sell digital products

It automates the process of delivering digital products to buyers, ensuring better security and instant access to purchases.

It connects with payment providers and integrates with mailing list providers like Mailchimp to automatically add buyers to mailing lists.

However, unlike Gumroad, it doesn’t allow you to build your own storefront, but rather it plugs in with your existing website and converts your website to an e-commerce storefront to sell your products.

Key features:

  1. Selling capabilities: SendOwl allows users to sell digital products on various platforms, including Linktree, Notion, Shopify, and even on social media. The platform also provides unique SendOwl Payment Links for easy sharing and selling on social platforms.
  2. Delivery system: SendOwl ensures fast, secure, and reliable delivery of digital products to customers. Whether you’re selling a single item or handling thousands of orders, SendOwl manages the delivery process efficiently.
  3. Marketing tools: SendOwl offers a range of marketing tools to help businesses grow. These include 1-click upsells, affiliate marketing, cart abandonment emails, and product update emails.
  4. Customization and security: Users can create custom checkout and email templates for a consistent branding experience. Additionally, SendOwl prioritizes the security of intellectual property and customer data.
  5. Analytics: SendOwl provides valuable data and insights to help businesses optimize their sales process and boost revenue.
  6. Integrations: The platform integrates with popular tools and platforms like Linktree, Notion (for link previews), MailChimp, Drip, Shopify, PayPal, and Stripe.
Sendowl pricing

All their pricing plans come with all the features, except for the fact that the starter plan comes at a limited storage of 10 GB. That may be enough for you depending upon your use cases.

Bottomline: If you’re looking for a payment and shopping cart solution that’s more affordable than Gumroad, but not a complete digital product selling platform, then Sendowl might be a good option for you. Their transaction fees are lower than Gumroad.

Explore Sendowl

Podia – All-in-one alternative

Podia is an all-in-one digital selling platform that includes digital downloads, online courses, webinars, coaching, and even communities.

It also has marketing automation features such as email marketing and affiliate management tools, making it a more comprehensive platform similar to Kajabi.

However, it has dedicated digital product selling capabilities.

Once you create a digital product, you can embed it on your website as a link, button, or even a card. I really like how Podia seamlessly integrates with your existing website to effortlessly sell your digital products.

To access unlimited downloads on your storefront, you need to at least subscribe to their Mover plan, which costs $39 per month.

podia pricing

However, none of their paid plans include a transaction fee. No matter how many sales you make, you won’t have to pay any transaction fees to Podia.

Bottomline: If you only plan to use Podia’s digital product selling capabilities and don’t anticipate using features like courses, memberships, email marketing, coaching, or communities, then Podia may be too much for your needs. However, depending on the volume of your sales, it may end up being cheaper than Gumroad, as it charges a flat monthly fee instead of a per-transaction fee.

Explore Podia

SamCart

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SamCart is an all-in-one platform for selling products, memberships, and courses. It offers a course feature, drag and drop page builder, and pre-designed landing page templates to start selling quickly.

Compared to Gumroad and Sellfy, SamCart stands out with its many features including UTM tracking, split testing, order bumps, SEO engine, and custom fields. Additionally, SamCart can handle tax and VAT calculations, partial refunds, and advanced subscriptions.

To boost sales, SamCart offers marketing features such as 1-click upsells, order bumps, coupons and discounts, Pay What You Want (Donations), and cart abandonment.

🎓 SamCart’s course feature allows you to create, market, and sell online courses directly from the platform. You can use pre-designed course sales page templates and add guarantee badges, countdown timers, cross-sales, testimonials, and FAQs to increase sales. It also supports progress tracking, task automation, and student importing.

samcart pricing

SamCart pricing starts at $49/mo; it comes with limited features. If you need features like upsells, UTM tracking, order bumps, and custom checkout fields, you need to go with their grow plan at $99/mo.

Pros

  • SamCart provides pre-built landing page templates.
  • Has UTM tracking feature to track the traffic sources.
  • It provides conversion-friendly elements to use in the checkout, like guarantee badges, countdown timers, and cross-sales.

Cons

  • It costs a lot. The lowest plan has very limited features.
  • Lacks course blueprints, unlike Kajabi.
  • No free plan is available.

Bottomline: If you need an all-in-one platform to sell your products, memberships, and courses with excellent marketing features, SamCart would be the best bet. It has conversion-friendly elements like guarantee badges, UTM tracking, cross-sells, and countdown timers.

PayKickStart

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PayKickStart is an affiliate management and subscription software best for course creators, product creators, agencies, and SaaS owners.

With this subscriptions management, you can track and manage all the subscriptions of your customers. You can offer them 1-click upsells, order bumps, and coupons/discounts so as to maximize the sales. You can also give your customers free/paid trials.

PayKickStart checkout templates

The best thing with PayKickStart is it provides a seamless checkout experience with its 50+ customizable, one-step, and multi-step checkout templates. It has built-in conversion enhancements like a money-back guarantee & security badges, testimonials, video, product images, legal disclaimers, autocomplete addresses, and more.

It comes with 60+ integrations with email softwares, CRM, membership services, payment gateways, etc.

paykickstart pricing

PayKickStart is not an affordable solution. Its lowest pricing plan costs $99/mo, and this is best for beginner users. Its growth plan costs $199/mo, and supports Apple Pay, affiliate center, API access, etc. If you are interested, look for its alternatives.

Pros

  • Has 50+ customizable, one-step, and multi-step checkout templates.
  • Has built-in popups to display custom messages and notifications.
  • Its subscription management helps you in getting more sales done.
  • Conversion-friendly checkout elements like … are available.

Cons

  • Pricing is not cheap.
  • Lacks free plan.

Bottomline: If you are more dependent on your affiliates to maximize your sales, choose PayKickStart. Using its subscription management you can always stay on top, following up with your customers and earning recurring revenue.

Paddle – Best for softwares

Paddle Logo 1

Paddle is a Merchant of Record (MOR) that provides all-in-one payment and billing tools for anyone selling software or digital products. It is especially suitable for software products because it has features such as handling sales tax remittance, subscription management, fighting fraud, and other software-related features.

In terms of fees, it is cheaper than Gumroad, charging only 5% plus 50 cents per transaction.

Shopify

Shopify logo

Shopify is a powerful e-commerce platform for selling digital products, but it may be too complex for some users. It’s best suited for businesses with large product catalogs and who need a complete website with integrations, themes, and unlimited selling options.

To enable Shopify to sell digital products like Gumroad, you can use various plugins and apps available in the Shopify App Store, such as Digital Downloads, SendOwl, EDP – Easy Digital Products, and Sky Pilot.

These apps help manage digital downloads, licensing, and other related features, allowing you to effectively sell digital products on your Shopify store and handle customer downloads and licensing requirements.

If you prefer a simpler platform, Shopify may not be the right choice for you. However, if you need advanced e-commerce features, Shopify is a great fit.

E-Junkie

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E-Junkie is one of the cheapest shopping cart solutions available today. Similar to Gumroad, it has its own product marketplace. You can sell your products on your blog, on social media, or in the marketplace.

The best thing is E-Junkie provides SEO-friendly product landing pages that are pre-integrated with Google and Facebook analytics, to track the conversions.

If you are selling physical products, it comes with built-in inventory management and Tax/VAT features.

To increase the sales, it has marketing features like pay what you want pricing, promotion freebies, shopping cart, coupons & discounts, etc.

e junkie pricing 1

E-Junkie pricing starts at $5/mo, it supports 10 products, 200MB of download storage. If you need support for unlimited products and storage, go with its highest plan at $40/mo. It gives a 30 days free trial.

If you are just starting your business and need the cheapest platform to sell your products and services, E-Junkie is the way to go. It supports unlimited sales and unlimited downloads.

Sello

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Sello.io is an eCommerce management platform that helps you sell your product to your target market by connecting with a variety of marketplaces.

Choose whether to sell all your products on the marketplace or only a few. It’s up to you. Its powerful filters help you to manage the inventory. The other features include order management, accounting, bulk product editing, multiple users, top sellers list, etc.

Etsy

Etsy logo

Etsy is an eCommerce company best to sell handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. To get started with selling, you just need to create your account and set your shop name, shop location, and currency. Then create a listing and set your billing method, and you are all set to share.

Etsy charges transaction fees. It charges $0.20 to publish your listing to the marketplace. Also, you need to pay a transaction fee of 6.5% on the sale price.

The best thing is Etsy comes with a mobile app, “Sell on Etsy” so that you can manage your business on the go.

Buymeacoffee

Buy me a coffee

Buymeacoffee is a platform for artists and creators to accept donations and memberships from their fans. Whether you are a Youtuber, musician, podcaster, writer, programmer, or have a nonprofit organization, etc, you can use Buymeacoffee and earn your living.

You can accept the payments from Credit Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, as well as local payment methods such as UPI. For you to get paid, there is no minimum payout. Payments are directly transferred to your Stripe or bank account.

Hyax

Hyax is an online platform to sell your digital & physical products, courses, and memberships. Hyax provides you with stunning landing pages and funnels. You can create multi-step funnels and add upsells, and order bumps to increase sales.

It also has a store builder to design your store, supports A/B split testing of pages, supports affiliates, etc. If you are selling physical products, you can add shipping rates, track the inventory, and set up custom taxes and VAT. Its pricing starts at $49/mo. It doesn’t charge any transaction fees.

Conclusion

Looking at the alternatives reviewed, Gumroad is not the best platform to grow your business. It lacks marketing features like upsells, order bumps, conversion elements, custom checkout fields, etc.

There are many good Gumroad alternatives available at an affordable price, and they offer plenty of advanced features that help take your business to the next level. Though Gumroad is a free solution, it has limitations.

To sum up,

  • Lemon Squeezy is our best Gumroad alternative. It has good versatility in selling a wide range of digital products, flexibility in payment plans, tax compliance, and global payment infrastructure. Additionally, it offers a competitive transaction fee of 5% plus $0.50 per transaction, making it a more affordable option.
  • Our second pick is Payhip (closest to Gumroad). It has a forever-free plan and supports unlimited products. It has recently introduced course features. It has good LMS features and supports discussions, quizzes, surveys, etc.
  • ThriveCart is our third pick. You can create sales funnels to maximize sales. It provides conversion-optimized checkout pages, marketing features like upsells/downsells/order bumps, cart abandonment, and much more. You can purchase ThriveCart for a lifetime at $495. Pay once, use it forever.

FAQs on Gumroad alternatives

What is better than Gumroad?

There are many better Gumroad alternatives available today. We have listed our top 10 alternatives. Make sure you read it completely.

What is similar to Gumroad?

Sellfy is very similar to Gumroad. Compared to Gumroad, Sellfy’s UI/UX is very modern, and it offers better features.

How do I market my Gumroad products?

For this, you can use Gumroad discover feature. It helps you find your customers who are ready to buy your products.

What can I sell on Gumroad?

You can sell any of the digital or physical products, like software, eBooks, videos, graphics, music, clothes, plans, and printables.