The Ultimate SendOwl Review (2023)

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Remember that time when you tried to sell digital products online, only to find that a chunk of your income got chipped away by hefty transaction fees? What about a situation where your ecommerce platform didn’t offer an on-site checkout? In this SendOwl review, we’ll uncover a platform that solves these problems.

For some reason, it’s tricky finding the right ecommerce platform for digital products. Big brands seem to have more of a focus on physical products, with some watered down digital offerings packed in there.

This is where SendOwl comes into the picture. SendOwl is an online platform where you can easily and inexpensively create a storefront and start selling digital products and services. SendOwl enables a rapid launch process, making it as close to “one click” as you can get.

SendOwl has a rapid launch process, and you can construct sites for digital items, memberships, subscriptions and drip-enabled content.

The good news is that SendOwl sticks to low, fixed monthly pricing, so you’re not slammed with fees for transactions or for being too successful. If this sounds interesting to you, keep reading to check out my full SendOwl review.

What is SendOwl and How Does it Work?

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If youโ€™re looking for a unique way to build your online store for digital products and subscriptions, SendOwl could be the solution. This British company, which is currently based in London, helps organizations specifically in selling digital products in the world of the web.

The company emerged in 2010 when the founder discovered that there werenโ€™t any truly effective ways to sell digital products straight from a website. George Palmer, the founder, created SendOwl in 2010 to transform the digital marketplace, and help companies to accomplish more online without spending a fortune or struggling with a difficult tutorial.

SendOwl is popular today because it does all of the boring bits that help people to sell digital products with speed. Not only does it integrate with your payment processor, but SendOwl also ensures excellent and secure product delivery for your customers, so you can maintain a good brand reputation. Thereโ€™s also ways to improve your revenue with a mobile-enhanced checkout system and one-click upsells.

The whole purpose of SendOwl is helping you to sell digital goods in the online world. Because the system connects with your payment provider, it can ensure that you get paid quickly, and it automatically delivers any files you might be selling to the buyer once your payment is complete. There are tons of reasons to use this software, but the biggest benefits are:

  • Offering better user experience by ensuring that your customers get access to their goods as quickly as possible when buying online.
  • Delivering great security for both your company and your customers, so you can offer peace of mind with every purchase.
  • Automating exhausting and laborious manually processes that would otherwise take up a lot of precious time.

Of course, thereโ€™s a lot more to SendOwl than we can cover in a single section, which is why weโ€™re going to guide you through exactly what you can do with this product here. One point to remember is that it can connect with your mailing list too, such as through Mailchimp, to automatically add your buyers to your list and help you nurture future conversions.

Additionally, thanks to affiliate schemes, you can get assistance from other professionals to increase your sales. The options are virtually endless when it comes to making money with digital sales through SendOwl.

SendOwl Pros and Cons

Whether youโ€™re looking for a payment gateway solution like Stripe PayPal, or youโ€™re selling digital products online, there are always pros and cons to consider. Itโ€™s important to think carefully about the kind of functionality you can get with each service, and whether it suits your needs.

SendOwl offers an alternative to tools like WordPress that would otherwise require plugins to deliver the same sort of subscription functionality. SendOwl offers support for a range of capabilities, including an affiliate program, flexible payment models, and custom checkouts. However, the customer support could do with some improvement, and this ecommerce solution offers limited support for cryptocurrency too. Letโ€™s examine the pros and cons.

Pros ๐Ÿ‘

  • Easy to use and reliable interface
  • Great for building your own affiliate program
  • Suitable for bloggers who want to sell premium content
  • Supports dozens of currencies for global selling
  • Flexible payment models and subscriptions available
  • Custom checkout template builder included
  • One-click upsells, and bump offers available
  • Lots of integrations with email marketing and other marketing tools
  • Predictable and reasonable monthly fee
  • Checkout builder included for your online store

Cons ๐Ÿ‘Ž

  • Limited design customization for marketers
  • Not much support for Cryptocurrency
  • No community groups
  • No emergency customer support
  • No real A/B testing for templates

Who is it for:

SendOwl is suitable for you if you wish to sell any of the following types of products

  • Software
  • Subscriptions
  • Ebooks
  • Videos
  • Video Games
  • Comics
  • Music
  • Magazines
  • Audio Tracks
  • License Keys

Also, though they primarily label themselves as a ‘digital goods’ selling platform, they do support the selling of tangible products too. Some of the SendOwl features, however, make it a very useful platform for selling digital goods, as described below.

Some of the SendOwl features make it a very useful platform for selling digital and physical goods in tandem. However, a big-seller of physical goods would not find SendOwl that powerful compared to other options. We’ll explore that below.

SendOwl Customer Experience

SendOwl allows you to offer an easy buying experience. The company has spent much of its development time and resources improving the digital delivery check out.

This checkout only takes a moment to configure, and it all comes together as a nice package after you’ve uploaded a few products. SendOwl then offers several options for sharing your product page with customers on social media or on your website.

SendOwl also has a nice Quick Sell link to send to customers you’ve already made the sale to. This allows you and your customer to surpass the whole shopping cart area, improving conversions and minimizing any frustration for the consumer.

SendOwl Features

Besides the conversion-optimized checkout module, SendOwl delivers an onslaught of marketing and sales tools for making more money.

For example, it has upsells you can attach to each product page, along with cart abandonment features for bringing people back to your website. The enhanced mailing list integrations are sure to keep your brand in customer minds. Not to mention, the payment options include ApplePay, Bitcoin, and Bancontact.

You should also keep an eye out for a new feature for selecting different checkout themes.

SendOwl dashboard

One of these features allows you to create product ‘bundles’ so that you can group related products together and encourage more sales. You can also easily create fully trackable discount codes, with total control over redemption based on time period, specific product/s or spend amounts. What many might find to be the most beneficial feature is SendOwl‘s inbuilt affiliate system.

This system allows you to enroll and manage people interested in selling your products for a commission. As anyone familiar with online affiliate marketing operations would know, it can get fairly complex and time-consuming to set up such an operation for a vendor. SendOwl’s affiliate system makes it very easy for you to offer this and enjoy the benefits of having a sales force without incurring any fixed costs.

SendOwl is all about helping business owners make an impact online. Whether youโ€™re an established business owner, or a growing company, SendOwl helps with all kinds of selling. The checkout is fully responsive on all devices, and customers automatically see the language thatโ€™s right for them on the checkout page too.

Thereโ€™s a variety of payment options available, including the option to pay with Apple Pay, PayPal, and even Bitcoin, and you can sell to customers through social media and email too. Some of the basic features you get from SendOwl include:

  • Support for affiliate selling with tracking, admin, and reporting
  • Upsell functionality to make more from each sale
  • Cart abandonment support to reduce lost sales
  • Discounts, coupons, and vouchers
  • Gifting for friends and family members
  • On-site checkout to keep customers in one place
  • Pay what you choose pricing
  • Modern checkout functionality

You can sell any digital products, from video to  MP3s, and drip them out to customers at a time and pace that suits you. Whatโ€™s more, SendOwl has the extra added benefit of being extremely secure, so you donโ€™t have to worry about your customerโ€™s details being at risk.

Everything scales seamlessly on the SendOwl platform, with options to edit your order emails, reinforce your branding, and build checkout fields that are custom to you. Plus, There are mailing lists to help you nurture new sales, free update functionality, and in-depth analytics so you can keep a closer eye on your sales and whatโ€™s working.

SendOwl Pricing

The free trial goes for 30 days, and it doesn’t require a credit card. The pricing is broken down into whether or not you’re self-hosting, going with the standard SendOwl system or selling subscriptions.

You can find all the pricing here, but let’s cover the standard rates since that’s what most users consider:

  • The Basics ($9 per month) – Support for 10 products, customization, and 1GB storage.The โ€œBasicsโ€ wonโ€™t give you much room to build a very successful website by itself, but it should help you to get started if youโ€™re limited in cash.
  • Standard ($15 per month) – Support for 30 products, PDF stamping, affiliates, customization and 3GB of storage.
  • Business ($24 per month) – Support for 100 products, one subscription, upsells, cart abandonments, video streaming, PDF stamping, affiliates, customization and 5GB of storage.
  • Premium – ($39 per month) – Support for 250 products, three subscriptions, upsells, cart abandonments, video streaming, PDF stamping, affiliates, multiple users, customization and 15GB of storage.

As you can see, the pricing is rather affordable. Combine that with no transaction fees and you’ve got a nice little program for selling digital products without any problems.

Those prices belong to the โ€œStandardโ€ category for SendOwlโ€™s packages, but thereโ€™s another option too. You can go self-hosted, which means that you find someone else to host your solution. SendOwl handles the buyer side of things and makes sure that you can deliver digital files to customers, but itโ€™s not responsible for hosting your website or services.

If you want to try self-hosted functionality, pricing starts at $19 per month for โ€œonly a few productsโ€. This solution supports up to 500 products, as well as giving you affiliate and customization options. Other options include:

  • $79 per month to sell up to 7,500 products, 10 subscriptions, upsells, cart abandonment solutions, affiliates, and multiple users. Customization is also included.
  • $59 per month for up to 5000 products, 5 subscriptions, upsells, affiliates, cart abandonment, multiple user support, and customization.
  • $39 per month for up to 2,500 products, 3 subscriptions, upsells, affiliates, cart abandonment, multiple users, and customization

The final selection of pricing options available from SendOwl falls under the โ€œsubscriptionโ€ tab. This is the solution that you can use for all kinds of subscription selling. The packages offer the same ease of use you would expect from SendOwl packages, and you wonโ€™t have to worry about any transaction fees, like you would with Shopify. Packages include:

  • $24 per month for up to 50 products, 10 subscriptions, upsells, video streaming, cart abandonment, PDF stamping, affiliates, Customization, and 1 GB of storage.
  • $99 per month for up to 500 products, 100 subscriptions, video streaming, cart abandonment, PDF stamping, multiple users, 10GB of storage, affiliates, and customization.
  • $74 per month for up to 250 products, 50 subscriptions, cart abandonments, upsells, video streaming, affiliates, PDF stamping, customization, multiple users and 5 GB of storage.
  • $49 per month for up to 125 products, 25 subscriptions, upsells, video streaming, multiple users, affiliates, PDF stamping, customization, and 2GB of storage.

For companies that donโ€™t get everything they need from one of the many SendOwl packages, thereโ€™s the option to request a custom solution by getting in touch with the brand.

SendOwl Storage and Distribution

All files (products) are stored securely and you can choose to release them to customers via either a timed link or a link with a preset number of download permissions. It would not be possible to download a file via a link once its time limit has expired or the number of permitted downloads are made. Videos can be configured to stream rather than download.

Strong support for software and/or other products requiring license keys is also provided, with the platform taking care of tasks like generation, safe storage, issuing and distribution of keys. Protection for PDF files is offered by automatically stamping them with the buyers’ names and email addresses. As you can readily imagine, buyers are less likely to share and spread stamped files.

How to Use SendOwl

SendOwl is a very simple solution for todayโ€™s business owners. You start by simply creating an account with your chosen pricing package. From there, you can choose whether you want to sell from your existing website or sell from social media accounts and email lists.

SendOwl offers a simple buy button that you can add to the code of existing pages on the web so you can start selling immediately. SendOwl integrates with various websites, although you canโ€™t build a site of your own through this solution.

Thereโ€™s a decent amount of documentation available online to show you how to do something. For instance, you can limit the number of times a product is available for download so people canโ€™t create copies or distribute your content without your permission.

If you want to use your affiliates to sell solutions, then you can give them individual URLs that they can use to drive sales your way. These will come pre-built with tracking functionality so you can keep an eye on whoโ€™s generating the most profit.

Best Sendowl Alternatives

While Sendowl is an excellent choice for conveniently selling digital products, it’s not the only option on the market. So below, we’ll look at a few other Sendowl alternatives, briefly listing their core features:

EDD

EDD (Easy Digital Downloads ) is a WordPress plugin that allows you to sell digital products and subscriptions from an existing WordPress site. They have documentation and support to guide you through the process, so you can start accepting payments quickly. You can contact their team Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 EST, via an online form.

You can sell unlimited digital products and enable customers to set up their own accounts with your brand. Among other things, this allows shoppers to save items for future purchases and for you to monitor users interacting with your site.

You also have access to advanced analytics and reports on sales, earnings, downloads, and payments. In addition, users can offer their customers different payment options, including Paypal, Stripe, Authotize.net, and several other payment gateways. EDD also integrates with MailChimp, Dropbox, Zapier, and many other popular services.

In addition, you can set limits on downloads, including expiration dates, and ensure only specific IP addresses can access your content. These masures go a long way to helping prevent fraudulent activity.

Pros

  • If you already have a WordPress site and want to start selling digital products, EDD is an excellent choice.
  • EDD integrates with many tools, so it should seamlessly merge with your existing tech stack.
  • You can offer your customers plenty of payment options
  • Access to advanced analytics and reporting features
  • You benefit from a high level of security with download limits, expiration dates, and IP address stamping

Cons

  • Subscriptions start at $99 a year, making EDD pretty pricey
  • Itโ€™s unsuitable for non-WordPress users

Sellfy

Sellfy is an excellent Sendowl alternative. Similarly, you can sell digital products quickly and securely. In addition, Sellfy enables you to create a fully hosted website from which you can sell videos, audio, eBooks, and graphic files. You can also permit customers to subscribe for ongoing digital product access and stream content demand.

Sellfy also enables you to limit downloads of your digital products to prevent fraudulent users from sharing your premium content. Sellfy also comes with PDF stamping, where the buyer’s email address is put on a document to make the content unique to them. Again, this helps to prevent the fraudulent sharing of your materials.

You can upload digital content in bulk and sell it across social media. You also benefit from unlimited bandwidth and high-level security encryption. Prices for selling digital products on Sellfy start at $29 a month, with the option of also selling Sellfy’s POD products and your own physical products.

Pros

  • You can upload digital files in bulk which is a huge time saver!
  • Users get access to built-in marketing and analytics tools
  • High level of security (PCI-DSS compliant, document stamping, and download limits)
  • You can sell digital, physical, and POD products
  • You can launch your own fully hosted, customizable website.

Cons

  • Sellfy doesnโ€™t offer many native integrations

Gumroad

Gumroad is the perfect choice for selling unique digital products online. You can sell everything from digital 3D models, textures, plugins, online courses, ebooks, and more. It’s designed to help digital creators generate passive income from their passions and level up their businesses.

Gumroad also caters to sellers working in the gig economy. You can sell pretty much anything you can do, from writing blog posts to creating new emojis.

Gumroad enables you to create a website. You then pick a monetization option, such as subscriptions, memberships, pay-as-you-go, etc., Then, youโ€™re free to sell multiple versions of your work with different format options and software licensing.

Gumroad even comes with built-in marketing tools, email automation, and analytics. But, best of all, there’s no joining fee. Gumroadโ€™s pricing is based on how much you earn. It takes a transaction fee from your sales, where the more you make, the less you pay. For instance, when you first start, your transaction fee is 9%, which drops every time your earnings meet certain milestones, i.e., $1000, $10,000, $100,000.

So, from the start, you get access to all of Gumroadโ€™s features.

Pros

  • Itโ€™s free to use – you just pay a transaction fee
  • You can launch your own hosted website
  • You can sell a wide range of digital products
  • If you don’t earn anything, you don’t pay
  • You get access to a vast community of fellow entrepreneurs and self-help resources to learn from

Cons

  • Transaction fees are high for new sellers (2.9 to 9% ).
  • Gumroadโ€™s website is full of graphics and is somewhat hard to navigate.

Conclusion

If you sell a large number of physical products, you would definitely be better off going with a traditional ecommerce platform, many of which are covered in my top 10 ecommerce platforms chart. For selling a smaller number of products, especially digital ones, SendOwl is certainly one of the best options! In fact, its growth in the marketing area makes us believe that it’s the best solution out there. You can start your free trial here.

Also, let us know in the comments section if you have any questions about this SendOwl review. Have you tried it out in the past?

Rebekah Carter

Rebekah Carter is an experienced content creator, news reporter, and blogger specializing in marketing, business development, and technology. Her expertise covers everything from artificial intelligence to email marketing software and extended reality devices. When sheโ€™s not writing, Rebekah spends most of her time reading, exploring the great outdoors, and gaming.

Comments 19 Responses

  1. Nancy says:

    Can I script/embed the send owl digital product into my site’s shop page to allow the gui to have a seamless integration or are their urls only used with social media as you wrote above? I host my own site. I want a digital platform to assist with files being shared. It seems like a lot of extra work if one needs to maintain a storefront on their site & a websire with an estore for tangible goods. Any suggestions for ebooks/artcles that would allow me to control file distribution if this isn’t for me?

  2. Tommaso says:

    Good evening I have been using Sendowl for a few months now and I see that it works very well. But a doubt arises … If I use the html link that is associated with the product where I receive a commission, and I send this link via SMS it is not counted as a commission because it is not associated with the affiliate email. Quite right?
    I hope I have explained myself well enough. Thanks

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Tommaso, it depends on how that link is generated, and if it depends on a browser cookie that can get lost when sending the link via SMS.

  3. Kamal says:

    I’m a digital dropshipper (I’m not the owner of products) can i use sendowl, no problem for that?!

    Thanks

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Sure, I don’t see why not.

  4. Erin says:

    Do you recommend using SendOwl if you have a website hosted by Wix? I’ve been having difficulties putting the SendOwl cart on my Wix hosted website.

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Erin, we haven’t got the chance to test SendOwl with Wix, but it should work. Do you have a Wix ecommerce site?

  5. Blair says:

    I bought an E-book from a less than “official” website. That being said I found some reddit reviews etc saying they purchased and were fine. As far as my credit card, I’m not too worried, worst case I dispute some claims. My main concern is downloading the PDF from sendowl. It auto downloaded into my google drive versus onto my computer hardrive. Does sendowl make sure the pdfs they are sending are safe/secure without viruses/malware ?
    Thank you in advance for your time !

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Blair,

      The documents are scanned for viruses, but there might be links in the eBook that lead to suspicious websites. So be careful about that.

  6. Ben says:

    hi, would you recommend Sendowl for selling a larger number of digital products, in this case 1000+ images? if not can you recommend anyone else?

    Thanks!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello, SendOwl should work just fine. You can find sone great alternatives here.

  7. Fancy says:

    If I want to sell a tangible product and a digital product that go together is sendowl all I will need?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Fancy,

      Unfortunately SendOwl will only allow you to sell digital products.

      You might consider using Shopify and the Digital Downloads App if you want to sell both physical and digital products.

  8. Bo says:

    I started to use Send92@, but why are they taking a cut of the income? I thought there were no transaction fees?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello,

      There are no transaction fees issued by SendOwl, just a flat monthly fee but your payment gateway will charge a transaction fee each time you receive a payment.

      Hope this helps,


      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  9. Angelina says:

    If I want to sell a software on-premise (download online), this platform is enought? I’m worried about the license key to protect the product. Thanks!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Angelina,

      SendOwl would be enough but no one can guarantee that your software won’t be pirated.


      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  10. Francesco says:

    To sell digital products only, would I use SendOwl or Shopify+SendOwl?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Francesco,

      If you want to sell from social media accounts or email lists SendOwl is all you need. If you want a full ecommerce site then, by combing Shopify and SendOwl, you have the capability to sell digital goods with an ecommerce backend.

      Best,

      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

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