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Gumroad vs Payhip: where to sell digital products
Both can have you selling within a day. The difference is fee structure and who carries the work: Gumroad is easier and pricier; Payhip is cheaper and leans on you — your payment account, your payout timing, your tax and chargeback responsibility.
Fees (official pricing)
| Item | Gumroad | Payhip |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | None | Free $0 / Plus $29 / Pro $99 |
| Platform cut | Direct 10% + $0.50 per sale; Discover sales 30% | Free 5% / Plus 2% / Pro 0% |
| Processing | Extra (cards ≈ 2.9% + $0.30) | Extra (standard Stripe / PayPal rates) |
| Getting paid | Platform collects, then pays out; China region: to PayPal once you accumulate $100 | Straight into your bound Stripe / PayPal (supported regions per official site; PayPal is the common route from China) |
| Setup effort | Lowest: upload file, set price, share link | Low: bind your own payment account first |
You-keep table: $10 / $29 / $99
Formula: net = price − platform fee − processing, processing approximated at 2.9% + $0.30 on both stores (on top of either platform fee). Gumroad column is direct sales via your own link; Payhip column is the Free plan. Rounded to cents.
| Price | Gumroad fees (10% + $0.50, + processing) | Gumroad net | Payhip fees (5%, + processing) | Payhip net | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $1.50 + $0.59 = $2.09 | $7.91 | $0.50 + $0.59 = $1.09 | $8.91 | $1.00 |
| $29 | $3.40 + $1.14 = $4.54 | $24.46 | $1.45 + $1.14 = $2.59 | $26.41 | $1.95 |
| $99 | $10.40 + $3.17 = $13.57 | $85.43 | $4.95 + $3.17 = $8.12 | $90.88 | $5.45 |
Read the gap column as "what Gumroad's convenience costs per sale". At low prices the fixed pieces dominate: on a $10 product, Gumroad's $0.50 alone is 5% of the price, and its total take is 20.9% — which is why very cheap products belong on the lowest-fixed-fee setup you can run. Also note what is NOT in this table: a Gumroad sale attributed to Discover costs 30% flat, so a $99 Discover sale leaves at most $69.30 before anything else. Never price assuming 100% direct traffic.
Which one, and when to switch plans
- First product, validating demand: Gumroad. Skip payment setup entirely; the first paid order teaches more than any fee saving.
- Selling steadily: stay on Payhip Free while volume is small. The paid plans are pure math: Plus ($29/mo, 2%) beats Free (5%) when 3% of monthly sales passes $29 — that is about $967/month in sales (29 ÷ 0.03). Pro ($99/mo, 0%) beats Plus when 2% of sales passes the $70 difference — about $3,500/month (70 ÷ 0.02). Below those lines, upgrading is just donating margin.
- Very low price (under $10): fixed fees rule everything; re-run the formula at your exact price before choosing anything.
Listing checklist: store live in one sitting
- ☐ Payment account bound and verified (Payhip) / payout account set (Gumroad) — before the product, not after the first sale
- ☐ Product file final-named and test-downloaded by you, as a buyer would
- ☐ Price set using the you-keep table at your price point, worst case (Discover) included
- ☐ Product page written with the structure below, no placeholder text anywhere
- ☐ Test purchase walked end to end in an incognito window: page → cart → checkout → payment options visible
- ☐ Delivery confirmed: the buyer actually receives the file/link automatically after paying
- ☐ One traffic source planned before launch day — a post, a community, a list — because the store brings none itself
Product page copy structure
- Headline = the outcome, not the artifact. "A 30-day content calendar template" loses to what it produces: who it is for and what they stop struggling with.
- Who this is for / who it is NOT for. Two short lines. The "not for" line raises conversion — buyers trust pages that filter.
- Exactly what is inside. Itemized contents: files, formats, counts, page lengths — concrete nouns, no adjectives doing the work of facts.
- How it is used. Three steps from purchase to result, so the buyer can picture the first ten minutes.
- Price with its anchor. State the price once, plainly, next to what the pieces would cost separately or what problem-hour it replaces — only with numbers you can stand behind.
- FAQ that removes the last hesitation. Format, delivery method, refund terms in your own words. Silence here becomes abandoned checkouts.
The cold-start truth
Neither store has built-in traffic worth counting on. Discover volume is unstable and carries the 30% rate. The only path that works is bringing your own: consistent presence on content platforms, communities and email, pointing at the product page. Our own digital product Life Admin OS (live on Gumroad, $29) runs exactly this way — its page is on Gumroad if you want to study a real pricing page as a template.