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Gumroad vs Shopify for digital products

Written by Eduard Fastovski

Aug 01, 2024

Gumroad is known as one of the best platforms for selling digital products. I’d say it’s best feature is how quick and simple it is to start selling.

Shopify on the other hand, is a great eCommerce platform, but it isn’t known for digital products specifically. You can use it that way, but should you?

In this article I’ll compare both based on my personal experience, and I’ll explain why I’ve decided to move from Gumroad to Shopify.

I am a Shopify developer so using Shopify has always been on my mind. However, it has some issues that pushed me towards Gumroad in the past.

My experience with Gumroad

I’ve spent almost 2 years selling on Gumroad, and honestly I’ve really enjoyed it. Here are some pros and cons.

“Just do it” philosophy that pushes you to launch

Gumroad is a very opinionated company. They encourage you to move fast and just start selling ASAP. They know once you make that first sale, it becomes addictive because you realize it’s actually possible to make money online.

The platform is built around this philosophy. Everything seems to be pushing you to publish, just go live, just do it!

Simplicity is encouraged

When creating a new product there are only a few fields to fill out. The title and description, images (optional), and the price. Upload your product files and hit publish.

It is very bare-bones, and you can see many successful Gumroad sellers with just a couple of sentences in their product descriptions.

A typical product page on Gumroad by successful seller Easlo

It’s normal to be very concise on Gumroad (even a bit half-assed I would say) and customers seem to have gotten used to it. It just seems to be the Gumroad way. Very different from the massive 5000 word sales pages used to sell courses for example.

Cheap to start

Another bonus is that there are no upfront costs. Gumroad makes it’s money with a simple 10% fee on any sales you make. You don’t need to sign up for a plan or anything.

Quick Checkout

To purchase a product you just enter your email and then pay by card or Paypal. You don’t need to enter a billing address - which is something that annoys me about Shopify.

In Shopify, there is no way to disable the billing address field, and I think it makes the checkout process longer and more difficult than it needs to be. It’s a barrier for small impulse purchases.

Easy Taxation

Another huge bonus for me is the taxes are handled for you.

There are so many confusing and vague laws around digital product taxation in different EU countries and US states. This is definitely not something you want to think about or invest time learning about as a beginner.

Gumroad acts as the ‘merchant of record’ and handles all that for you. Basically they are a middleman. People are buying from Gumroad, not you. You are paid by Gumroad, not your customers. This makes the taxes simple.

It’s not a website, not even a small one

The flipside of this philosophy is that there is very little flexibility. It’s nothing like having your own website.

If you wanted to combine your Gumroad store with a little bit of an “about me”, list some social profiles and maybe some services, then sorry but Gumroad isn’t for you.

You need to think of Gumroad as a marketplace like Etsy or Ebay. Just a place where you post stuff, but it won’t give you a little website as so many competitors do. Even your profile page won’t give you much of a chance for self-promotion.

In fact, the only social media link you can display is Twitter (X), which I think is a bit odd. I’m a YouTuber for example, and there is no proper way to feature my channel as a YouTube icon or anything.

These are all the profile settings you get:

You don’t own your SEO

If someone googles your product they will find your Gumroad page and that’s fine, right?

Well, not for me. As someone with a personal brand, I want all my content to be under my domain. I really wish there was a way to more closely integrate Gumroad and my website.

I want internal linking happening between my Gumroad and my blog posts. I want to feature my products everywhere in my site. And I want my product descriptions to contribute to my website content and be evergreen.

Why I’m moving to Shopify

I guess my online business has matured a bit. I certainly don’t regret starting on Gumroad, but when thinking long-term I realize Shopify is the better option.

A real website & SEO

Shopify has a powerful website builder built-in that allows you to customize hundreds of themes. It also has page builder apps so you can design a totally custom website.

It can be the home for your digital products, but also contain your brand, social media links, your blog, educational content, etc…

A blog is built-in, and you can feature your products below or in your posts.

There are plenty of integrations for every business tool you can imagine. Marketing tools, review apps, newsletter tools, accounting… You can use different payment methods depending on what suits you and your audience. Set up your business however you like, and automate everything.

It’s really almost ridiculous to compare. Gumroad is like a bicycle, and Shopify is anything from a car to a jumbo jet.

Lower fees

Shopify costs $39/month. Gumroad costs 10% of sales. So you can do the math - after you pass $400 a month in revenue, Shopify becomes the cheaper option.

Personally, I’m making around $2000 per month in digital product sales, so Gumroad is already costing me $200 a month.

I am grateful to Gumroad for helping me make this money, but as I scale up it’s just getting too expensive. I’m really hoping to make $5k a month one day, meaning I would be paying $500 a month to Gumroad. Quite pricey.

Youtube Shopping integration

This is a big one for me, as a Youtuber.

Youtube has a new feature called Youtube Shopping. It features products from your store directly below your video, right above the comments.

This could be huge for me. I’m pretty sure the majority of my viewers are unaware that I sell digital products. This could potentially double my sales. Or at least make another $500 a month.

I haven’t seen many creators using Youtube Shopping yet - it doesn’t integrate with many platforms. It’s just Shopify and a few others that mainly just do t-shirt printing. We have yet to see serious e-commerce being driven by Youtube Shopping, but I think it could be perfect for my type of content.

A personal reason - it’s my topic

This probably won’t relate to you, but I’m a Shopify developer and I make Shopify tutorials on Youtube.

I want to be closer to my audience, I want to share their problems and struggles so that I can make better videos featuring my solutions. So that’s a big reason for me personally to use Shopify.

Maybe for you it could be a desire to learn about Shopify and eCommerce if your career relates to that field?

Or perhaps you are a developer or designer and so you want a more customizable tool you can fully control.

So Gumroad or Shopify?

I think the bottom line is, how much complexity and power do you want?

If you’re just experimenting with selling digital products, I’d definitely say start with Gumroad. Unless you’re a seasoned entrepreneur in other things.

If you have a strong personal brand, and you need a full website where you can sell digital products (and maybe physical products in future), and you have the web design skills (or can pay for them) then Shopify might be the best solution for you.


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