Selling Digital Products Online: The Best Ways to Sell Digital Goods-Tools &Tricks

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After researching for weeks and selecting the top 10 solutions, we've tested them in the last 5 days and here are our findings: We believe that Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) continues to be the best tool for people interested in selling digital goods online. This is followed closely by SendOwl and Gumroad, both of which stand strong for selling products online, particularly in the digital goods sector.

edBlogs and online stores often require the functionality to sell digital goods online. This demands an entirely different software that's simpler and accommodating for sending links to customers with the digital content downloads.

Compared to physical products, these digital items aren't tangible in nature; therefore, you'll host them on your site and then notify the customer with some sort of file.

For example, some commonly sold digital goods include:

  • eBooks
  • Music tracks
  • Photographs
  • Exclusive podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Video training courses
  • Software
  • Web services
  • Templates for things like emails and websites
  • Web graphics and vectors

This decision comes from the fact that EDD remains free (besides any extensions and payment provider fees,) you can integrate it with just about any site, the reports deliver spot-on metrics for evaluating the health of your store, and the user interface makes things simple for both you and the user (products show up clean on your site, and the customer receives an instant email with a link after they purchase your digital product).

As for the other digital selling solutions, they range in purpose. For example, some of them integrate with current websites, while others are more pre-built solutions where you must pay a monthly fee for a complete online store system.

Some of the plugins and software provide support for physical items, while others don't. One of the main attributes we looked at was flexibility, AKA the overall ability to expand your site, sell on other platforms, customize your own website.

One of the main attributes we looked at was flexibility, AKA the overall ability to expand your site, sell on other platforms, customize your own website.

A Great Example: One of our recommendations is called Sellfy.

As neither our first or second recommendation, it begs the question: Why not? Sellfy serves people who don't want to spend much time with design. It's wonderful for beginners who would rather spend more time on developing new items to sell rather than working on web design. Here's our in-depth review of Sellfy.

However, Sellfy constricts you to its own community, taking full control away from you, since the sites are templates that all look similar and run through Sellfy. (Like making a storefront on Amazon).

Runner-up SendOwl opens up all sorts of possibilities in terms of selling digital goods on any CMS or website building platform. It costs more than EDD, but the pricing plans depend entirely on the number of products on your site and the amount of download storage space. Therefore, you're not going to ever spend more than you need to.

SendOwl is one of the easiest ways to sell your digital products. Itโ€™s primarily designed for selling digital items, so they give you simple buttons to put anywhere and you can upload a wide variety of product files. The no-popup, no-installation shopping cart appears tidy and minimal. You also get some powerful tools such as discount management, shipping and tax calculations, simple payment processors, variable product options and more.

As for why it's in second place, the interface for EDD beats out that of SendOwl, and EDD has a wonderful extension library. Although SendOwl has a massive set of built-in features, you're stuck with whatever they give you. Therefore, minimal integrations. Furthermore, EDD is free (without any extensions).

Table of Contents

Why You Should Trust Us

I started my career in marketing and web design, but as time went on, I started doing reviews, roundups, and tutorials for Ecommerce Platforms, giving me an inside look into the industry. At that point, I had published and sold mainly digital products online (such as marketing webinars and instructional eBooks for freelance writers). Therefore, my research led me to test out solutions like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads and Shopify.

The majority of my digital books and video sales went through a WordPress site, but that was mainly because I had attached the store onto my blog after starting the blog about three years prior.

Selling my own services and digital goods online got me started in the business, but Ecommerce Platforms has launched me into a world where I'm thinking about selling online all the time.

For example, I have meticulously tested the top ecommerce platforms online for two weeks and compared them for things like pricing, payment gateways, templates, support and marketing tools. I understand the intricacies of payment processors and what merchants should look for to keep costs low.

Not only that, but I've learned the skills to construct online marketplaces and more complex online stores where thousands of merchants sell products.

Overall, the folks at Ecommerce Platforms and I have a lot of experience when it comes to ecommerce website design, payment gateway versatility, app integrations, customer support quality and shopping cart ease of use. Since the Ecommerce Platforms site receives thousands of views and comments per month, we're blessed with user feedback on all of our reviews. Therefore, many of the opinions are formed based on what other people have to say.

Finally, I've been known to put together comprehensive comparisons of platforms for selling both physical and digital goods, like my comparison of the top ten ecommerce platforms of all time. These comparisons take lots of time, effort and money–things that most people don't want to spend when looking for a single platform. Therefore, I've done the work and digested the information for presenting it in easy to read formats for my readers.

Who is This For?

Everyone could potentially sell digital products online at some point. A hardware store could put together a video training program for how to maintain a new home after buying. A web design blogger could put together a stunning eBook for selling to developers and designers all over the world. A physical goods ecommerce store could realize that they could make more money by selling digital add-ons (Like a clothing shop that sells style guides or videos for reselling your own clothes).

A web design blogger could put together a stunning eBook for selling to developers and designers all over the world. A physical goods ecommerce store could realize that they could make more money by selling digital add-ons (Like a clothing shop that sells style guides or videos for reselling your own clothes).

Keep in mind that digital selling platforms also do the trick when you're trying to give away digital items. Let's take that hypothetical clothing shop, for example. A fall style guide might work better as an incentive for people to buy from your shop. Therefore, you can give it away for free when someone purchases a shirt or pair of pants. With tools like EDD and SendOwl, you can automatically send the files to customers without

A fall style guide might work better as an incentive for people to buy from your shop. Therefore, you can give it away for free when someone purchases a shirt or pair of pants. With tools like EDD and SendOwl, you can automatically send the files to customers without charging.

We also recommend this guide to folks who want to break a window whenever they see a bill from their current digital selling platform. The same goes for those who think their user interface is too hard to work with.

Our recommendations take into consideration both user experience and cost. That's why EDD is way at the top with no cost at all, and SendOwl suits those who would rather a monthly fee rate instead of some percentage or transaction fee.

If you're new to the digital selling game, this article is your guide to finding the ideal product. If you currently have a way to peddle your digital goods, and you're satisfied with the design tools and the pricing you pay, you're better off sticking with what you have instead of going through a transition process.

How I Chose and Tested Ways to Sell Digital Goods Online

Now that I've discussed the reasons for choosing a digital selling platform, along with who should consider one of these systems, we can look at the top ten tools for doing so:

When evaluating all of the tools above, I put all of them on an even playing field from the start. No bias was had towards any of them, so I began looking at the features I feel are most important in a platform that helps with selling digital products.

Although these are the more obvious tools, I decided on three must-have features to start narrowing down the field. I also looked at the user-friendliness of the features from each platform, therefore eliminating a few for the top recommendation from the start.

The three must-have features are:

  • Powerful digital storage and delivery – This is an interesting one because many tools don't provide an unlimited amount of storage for your digital files. When discussing powerful file delivery, it's more about automation and simplicity. The goal here is that the system automatically sends out an email with a link right after the user makes a purchase. In addition, we want some customization tools for those emails or download pages. The main area that's going to separate candidates is how easy it is to store files, since you may end up running out of space with a self-hosted platform.
  • A clean shopping cart – I understand that this is somewhat subjective, but I figure that most people can click through the shopping cart and reasonably decide whether or not they feel it delivers a clear, short path to making a purchase. This includes a minimal amount of steps in the checkout process, seeing as how no one wants to click five buttons just to make a purchase. In addition, I don't want any type of branding (besides my own store) in the checkout lane. I also like the idea of having no popups, minimal distractions, plenty of white space and forms that clearly describe what needs to be filled in. Along with that, it's nice to have a guest checkout option and shopping cart/checkout that remains on your website instead of being redirected somewhere else.
  • Integrations with the top payment gateways – Although a digital selling platform that connects with only Stripe or PayPal should do the trick, some companies don't want to use those options because of pricing or geographical restrictions. Therefore, I find it important for the tools to support all of the most popular payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Authorize.net and more. This provides more options for selling and puts research power in the hands of the merchant.

So, after looking at these three must-have features, which of the systems are still in the running?

  • Easy Digital Downloads
  • SendOwl
  • WooCommerce
  • E-Junkie
  • Shopify and the Digital Downloads App
  • DPD
  • FetchApp

Dropped out:

  • Sellfy – The payment gateway options are limited. You only have access to PayPal Standard, PayPal Express, and Stripe. In addition, the PayPal checkout is far from ideal, giving Sellfy a few dings right off the bat. Keep in mind, however, that Sellfy is one of the best options for inserting the shopping cart on all types of websites. Most of the features covered below are included with Sellfy, so it's most definitely not the least impressive of the bunch.
  • Gumroad – Although the checkout looks beautiful and the storage stands strong, Gumroad only offers PayPal for accepting credit cards. That said, we'll talk about which niche merchants should consider Gumroad a little lower in the article.

Now that we've looked at the core features, it's time to evaluate which of them really shine in terms of add-ons, marketing potential and interesting little tools that make the systems work for just about any website.

The following features focus on flexibility and control, seeing as how I would prefer being able to expand my website as I please, and it would be nice to have complete control instead of being stuck on a platform that's limited in terms of design and functionality.

Some of the following features have more importance over others, but overall, I looked into each one, saw if the tool or feature was offered through each platform, then made a final decision as to which has the most promising arsenal for all types of digital online sellers.

Therefore, the other features I checked out include:

  • The ability to integrate with any website – The ability to take a digital selling tool and implement it on any existing site comes in huge for the number of merchants who can use a platform. If you need to signup for a completely new account, it hinders those who already have pre-existing websites they would like to turn into online stores.
  • A store for add-ons or extensions – Additional apps come in all shapes and sizes, but the main objective is to have an extra area to expand the power of your online store. This way you aren't stuck with a website that doesn't accept commissions or more obscure payment processors. For example, you may want to integrate with MailChimp or sell some of your digital goods for free. These tasks often come easy with the help of add-ons, apps, and extensions.
  • Advanced user capabilities (wishlists, saving a cart, making a profile) – You'll notice the power of an app store as we walk through these features since many of these features can be included with the help of an add-on. That said, just because you're making a simple digital goods site doesn't mean your customer shouldn't have complete control over a profile. In fact, it's quite the opposite, because your buyers may need to download their files later on. Therefore, it's essential to provide a profile they can login to for finding their recently previously purchased files. Wishlists, cart savings and other things of this nature are bonuses.
  • Simple and intuitive customer management – Can you see which of your customers have come to your site and recently purchased items? If not, you're going to have trouble with target marketing and handling complaints. Let's say someone contacts you to say that they got charged too much money for their purchase. If you can't go back to see how much they spent, you're basically forced to reimburse them without any knowledge on your end. More importantly, understanding which customers are buying molds your future marketing and sales strategies.
  • Discount codes and promotions – Discounts come in all shapes and sizes in the ecommerce world. With digital selling, it's not very different. Chances are you'll want to market promotions throughout the year, especially when the holidays roll around. Since you've most likely paid for all the costs of a digital product during the creation process, discounts are essential for drumming up the business without putting yourself in the red. Some promotional tools include discounts with defined conditions, rules for how many discounts one person can use, digital discount codes to punch in, and timed promotions that expire after a certain amount of time.
  • Advanced reporting – Reports strengthen your knowledge of what's going on with your store, but they also need to be simple and intuitive. My favorite reports and analytics come from Easy Digital Downloads, so that serves as the benchmark when comparing other platforms. Some things to look for include your total earnings based on date range and categories. You also want filters on your reports, taxes, exportable data, and graphs that monitor the number of downloads and sales.
  • API access – Providing access to an API is huge for some users. However, others won't ever think about it. I didn't put much weight on an available API, but I realize that more advanced users are going to at least understand which of the options are open for integrating and developing external apps.
  • File access control – Maintaining control of your downloads prevents stealing and sharing, while also prompting users to come back to your store for new digital downloads. Overall, file access control lets you configure expiration dates for downloads that people buy, along with download limits so that each user can't download the file multiple times and share with friends. Essentially, the file access control prevents unauthorized access of your digital content.
  • Marketing tools (like email marketing and affiliates) – Most of the time you can find apps online for filling in the gaps with marketing tools (like adding MailChimp to your website). However, most people would agree that integrated marketing options make life easier for the online business person. For example, a promising marketing tactic involves social media sharing buttons and a store on your Facebook page.
  • Calculators for Shipping and Taxes – Calculators reinforce trust between you and the buyer since users are known to abandon carts if you fail to reveal shipping or tax costs towards the beginning of the checkout process.
  • Variable product options – Most vendors only think of product variants when selling physical items. Nevertheless, digital products may have some variants as well. For example, you may be selling multiple packages for your online video training course. If that's the case, you can implement product variables for quick dropdowns and choosing.
  • Sell Subscriptions and Memberships – Subscriptions and memberships collect recurring payments. Not all digital selling platforms are created equal in this realm. In fact, some of the systems are mainly suitable if you're having a membership or subscription site. This includes content dripping as well, or the slow distribution of your content to users who pay for a membership. For example, you might not want to reveal all of the content up front from an online course. Therefore, the content drip only gives people some of the course material until they complete each section.

Our Pick for Selling Digital Goods: Easy Digital Downloads

edd

After evaluating each of the features above, Easy Digital Downloads came out above all the rest. That's not to say that others aren't useful for different situations, but overall, EDD has the best features, cleanest frontend interface, an onslaught of cool features and just about any type of business can use it for selling digital content.

It's also prudent to take a look at the pricing, which serves as another reason for our choice of EDD. This is the way I see it: EDD can be downloaded for free, but webmasters often end up spending money on the add-ons, many of which are pretty much required for a complete ecommerce store.

For example, the Stripe Payment Gateway is $49 and MailChimp goes for $29. Overall, you're not required to spend money for the basic selling of digital goods. In fact, most simple stores will only end up paying for hosting and installing both WordPress and EDD for free. But keep in mind that additional costs may loom depending on how advanced you would like to make your site.

Continue reading to view how EDD held up with each of my more important features:

  • The ability to integrate with any website – EDD has one of the most intuitive interfaces, especially when it comes to installing on your website. One of the primary reasons you might skip EDD is because it only integrates with WordPress. For many people, this is a good thing (WordPress is pretty easy to learn, and many people already use it). But others may not want to go through this training, or their current site may not be located on WordPress.
  • A store for add-ons or extensions – EDD offers an impressive store, but you'll have to pay for the advanced tools. That said, you gain access to options for subscriptions, frontend submissions, payment gateways, bookings, reviews, commissions and more.
  • Advanced user capabilities (wishlists, saving a cart, making a profile) – Both user and guest checkouts come along with EDD, and users can save their carts while shopping. They can also make simple profiles for saving their carts and coming back later. Overall, the profiles are basic, with nothing too confusing for the user. From my testing, a user can't generate a wishlist, and there's no extension to make this happen.

edd-product-page

  • Simple and intuitive customer management – Keep track of all your customers separately. You can go in there and download a full list, or click through to see what John Doe has been up to on your site. Editing and deleting customers is allowed, and you can generate a report for customer lifetime value, allowing you to put more focus on the people who spend more money.
  • Discount codes and promotions – Discount codes are built right into the system, so it allows for flat rate or percentage based discounts. Some products can be excluded, and the start and end dates are managed on the dashboard. EDD even has a module for specifying a minimum required cart total for a discount code to work. For example, you might offer a little discount after someone puts $100 worth of digital downloads in their cart.

edd-discount

  • Advanced reporting – Reporting has its own tab under the Digital Downloads area of WordPress. I've come to appreciate these simplistic reports, with the main area focusing on earning for a certain time period. All the essentials are included with the reports, such as exporting data, monitoring downloads, tax tracking and some filters for making your own reports based on specific products.

edd-reporting

  • API access – Sales and product information is given in JSON or XML format. Developers have complete API access for expanding on the EDD platform, while also integrating with certain applications.
  • File access control – It seems like everyone steals digital content, from music to eBooks. You can't do much about it, but there are some ways to block it as best you can. EDD has file access control activated by default, so the only people who can download the files are the people who bought the files. In addition, you can set a file download limit to prevent an insane number of downloads from one person.
  • Marketing tools (like email marketing and affiliates) – Connecting your favorite email marketing tool requires an extension. As for affiliates, you pretty much have one choice: Affiliate WP. This works right out of the box, but you can also try out some other affiliate WordPress plugins if you'd rather not pay a fee.
  • Calculators for Shipping and Taxes – Both of these are calculated if needed. I figure you'll mainly be selling digital products that don't need shipping, but the Simple Shipping extension supports the shipping of smaller, basic packages.
  • Variable product options and prices – The Variable Pricing Switcher serves as the main extension for this. Judging by my research there's no solution built-into the product.

edd-variations

  • Sell Subscriptions and Memberships – It took me a moment to realize that membership and subscription functionality is in EDD, but I eventually located it under the extensions. Therefore, you'll have to pay for Recurring Payments, and potentially the Restrict Content Pro Member Discounts extension. I would recommend combining the two if you're thinking about hiding some of your content (like a video course) while also collecting monthly or weekly payments.

The Runner-up: SendOwl

sendowl

I like SendOwl as a more minimal option, seeing as how you don't need to know anything about WordPress, yet it still provides powerful tools for getting your digital products online and selling them to customers. In fact, the main reason I enjoy SendOwl is that it's a solution for complete beginners.

Let's see what kept SendOwl from the top spot (along with some of its advantages):

  • The ability to integrate with any website – Here's one of the main reasons SendOwl stands out compared to the other competitors. It's also why it's a nice alternative to EDD. SendOwl works on the majority of websites, so you can either have an existing site or create a new one. For example, you might want to implement it on a WordPress or Shopify site. It's mainly about installing a bit of code, so you shouldn't have problems with most content management systems or ecommerce platforms.
  • A store for add-ons or extensions – SendOwl lacks an app store, but it seems like the company tries to include most of the needed features in the actual platform.
  • Advanced user capabilities (wishlists, saving a cart, making a profile) – Along with a beautiful responsive checkout, SendOwl offers options for saving carts and for customers to come back to check out. It's mainly managed without the user knowing, so I was a little confused since I couldn't find a shopping cart icon with a product count. There's not really a wishlist, but if you add a product to the cart, then add another one, they will both be sitting there when you checkout.
  • Simple and intuitive customer management – Customer management is a little watered down compared to that of EDD, but you still get to maintain a list of people who purchase from you. The true customer management comes into play when you implement the membership feature.
  • Discount codes and promotions – The discount codes can be limited to a certain time period, product or amount spent, and you can go in there and track which of the codes are doing well. My favorite part is that the discount codes can be used to target individuals or groups of customers depending on how they shop.
  • Advanced reporting – There's not much to say about the reporting, except that it gives you the numbers you need. The reports are fairly advanced, so you can test which products sell and which do not. In addition, you get some metrics for your affiliate program.
  • API access – All developers have access to the API for integrating with different systems and potentially making the backend more powerful for your organization.
  • File access control – This is where SendOwl truly stands out. File access tools range from limited download counts to content restrictions for memberships and subscriptions.
  • Marketing tools (like email marketing and affiliates) – The affiliate program is built-in, so there's no need to go out and find a plugin. The administrative tasks, reporting, and commissions are all handled by SendOwl, so your main objective is to find new affiliates. Oh yeah, and you can integrate with services like MailChimp.
  • Calculators for Shipping and Taxes – Physical products are allowed, but the shipping options are a little weak. A tax calculator is provided for automatically showing taxes for the customer.
  • Variable product options and prices – This is all run through custom checkout fields. Basically, you can add an additional field that asks what version of the product they would like.
  • Sell Subscriptions and Memberships – Along with impressive subscriptions and membership, SendOwl has drip functionality to share some of your content for free and giving a little bit more as people pay or progress through a program. As an example, you may want to deliver extra courses as someone moves through a training program.

sendowl-subscribe

How the Competitors Compare

Let's take another look at our list of digital selling solutions:

The Top Pick

We've found that Easy Digital Downloads is the most useful in terms of setting up and scaling up after you'd made progress with your store.

Our Pick for Simplicity and People Who Don't Want/Like WordPress

sendowl-file-download

SendOwl has most of the required features, but it lacks some items like more powerful variable product controls and shipping calculators. However, I would recommend it for a company that skips EDD because it doesn't have a site on WordPress, or the new webmaster is not fond of WordPress.

E-Junkie is also a nice way to get a digital store on your website without the need to work with WordPress. I'm not all that fond of the backend interface (it looks outdated and clunky,) but the pricing is right and you get tools for subscriptions, marketing and much more.

Our Pick for Creatives Like Artists and Writers

gumroad

Gumroad is a service built around the idea that creatives should be spending more time generating new content like books and art. Keep in mind that since Gumroad takes over most of the work for you, it will cost you per product sold. The pricing starts at $10 per month, but then you also must pay 3.5% + 30ยข per sale. That's a large portion, especially if your products aren't priced that high. But the whole point is to help out those who don't want to spend much time on development and selling.

Sellfy is an alternative to Gumroad, but it functions as more of a marketplace like Etsy. Therefore, you construct a site through Sellfy (it's insanely easy,) but the pages all have similar branding, taking away from your own control. (Update: The Sellfy team now offers the ability to customize stores with a WYSIWYG editor. Users can now redesign their stores and make them match their existing brands). The transaction fees start high at 5% for the basic plan and decreases as you choose the Prop and Pro Plus plans. You can work up zero transactions fee if you'd rather pay $99 per month.

Our Pick for No Transaction Fees

pulley-checkout

In terms of pricing and saving money on transaction fees, the Pulley solution stands out. You don't have to pay any transaction fees, except for what PayPal charges, and it's a simple option for artists of all shapes and sizes. The plans start at $6 per month (selling 25 products). The backend tools are more watered down than Sellfy and Gumroad, but sometimes that's all you need. For example, you still get things like buttons for selling on social media, automated delivery, download history, customizable emails and an integration with BigCartel.

Our Pick for Those With Lots of Physical Products to Sell

Sometimes you're going to have a store with both physical and digital goods. For most smaller stores, you can go with EDD or SendOwl. If you plan on having a more significant selection of physical goods alongside your digital products, WooCommerce (or Shopify and the Digital Downloads App) offer better support. Not only are these platforms more suitable for getting a site launched quickly with shipping tools and physical product variants, but both of them are primarily used for physical products.

For example, Shopify has hundreds of themes for you to choose from, where you can then hook up a payment gateway, adjust your settings and shipping, and start selling your physical items. After that, installing the Digital Downloads app allows for whatever digital goods you'd like to have on your store. In the screenshot, you can see a site that sells both physical and digital pieces of artwork.

shopify-selling-art

Our Pick For Selling on Multiple Stores

DPD doesn't have transaction fees either. So, that's a huge plus. However, the standout feature revolves around the individual dashboard for multiple stores. Therefore, if you'd like to have a music selling site, and also sell a few eBooks on another website, it all gets managed on one DPD dashboard.

The pricing seems reasonable, starting at $10 per month; and you receive some interesting tools such as physical product support, built-in shipping and tax calculations, API support, multi-lingual checkout and an upsell feature. The subscriptions are handled beautifully, and it also supports PDF stamping, which prevents people from sharing your content.

Oh yeah, and you can integrate DPD with just about any platform you can imagine. They offer customizable product widgets and buttons. This is generally easy to do, but I understand that some creative entrepreneurs would rather spend as little time with coding as possible. Therefore, it might seem somewhat intimidating for absolute beginners.

Our Pick for the Most Flexible Pricing Plan

Some of the digital selling platforms we've outlined above aren't going to cost you a dime. For example, Easy Digital Downloads is completely free. However, it's somewhat silly to assume that you're not going to spend money at all. On the other hand, the majority of the systems either take a monthly fee or they tap into the transaction fees.

FetchApp is one of those that avoids transaction fees, instead giving you a wide range of pricing plans for more flexibility while growing your store. For instance, the lowest plan is completely free, but you only gain access to 5MB of storage space. This might work out just fine for smaller stores, but many people will want to expand past that.

fetch-pricing

They have plans set at $5, $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, $150, $200, $300 and $500 per month. Each time you move up a plan you unlock a little more storage space. Therefore, you can have all the products you want, and take advantage of all of the features, while only paying more money when those products take up too much storage.

Some Final Thoughts and Things to Remember

As you can see, choosing the best way to sell digital goods online is a little less simple than one might assume. My primary recommendation is to check out Easy Digital Downloads first. You don't have to pay to download it, and it works just fine on a free WordPress site. I also like recommending solutions with free plans, like FetchApp. You're generally not going to get the expansive set of features you would find in EDD or SendOwl, but you at least get to save a little bit of money during the testing process.

The moral of the story: You can sell digital goods online with various different platforms in any niche. I would make a list of the features that mean most to you and go through the list that we covered above. This way, you might uncover that you'd like to skip the WordPress route, eliminating EDD. Or maybe you're not interested in selling any physical products (making Shopify and WooCommerce a little too complex to mess with.)

Overall, I wish you luck in selling your digital products online. It can be a rather rewarding experience, and in general, digital products take more time than money to produce. Therefore, you can spend more time developing new products as opposed to worrying about the costs of goods and things like that.

If you have any questions about the best ways to sell digital goods online, let us know in the comments section below.

Joe Warnimont

Joe Warnimont is a Chicago-based writer who focuses on eCommerce tools, WordPress, and social media. When not fishing or practicing yoga, he's collecting stamps at national parks (even though that's mainly for children). Check out Joe's portfolio to contact him and view past work.

Comments 156 Responses

  1. Peter Hardy says:

    Hi Bogdan!
    Thanks for writing this article. I will develop an ecommerce site with downloadable videos. Is there a limit for file size?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Peter, can you tell us what platform you would like to use?

  2. Eric Brown says:

    I apologize if this question has already been answered. I’m looking to sell various digital streaming services on my proposed website ie Premium IPTV. Should I go ahead and build my own site or look at one of your alternatives in this article? I also would like to have an article and blogging features as well.
    I thank you in advance for your time and answers.

  3. Clinton says:

    Hello Admin
    Gumroad and Sellfy which is more affordable? Which do you suggest for me?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Clinton,

      In most cases Gumroad would be more affordable.


      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  4. Sandra says:

    Thanks for sharing, I relly love Sellfy.

  5. Ljubica says:

    Hi Bogdan,
    I apologize in advance if my question is already answered. I’m still in shock.
    I’m selling art – digital posters on etsy. I have that shop for a year now and I haven’t done anything to violate their terms of use. But just couple hours ago I’ve received a message that my account had been suspended because my account has some inconsistencies… They deleted more than 450 artworks I’ve been creating and uploading for a year – for good. Even if I proove I haven’t done anything wrong I’ll be forced to do all that data entry work again. It would take months to do all that again…
    What is the best way to never find myself in such situation again? To let someone else have all rights and control over my business. In other words, how should I create my online store and be completely independent with controlling my business?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Ljubica,

      Iโ€™m sorry to hear about that.

      The best thing is to build your own website. This way you will have total control over your content. I hope you will be able to solve your problem with Etsy bu you should consider creating your own online shop and using other marketplaces like Etsy just as another marketing tool. Shopify and Big Cartel are Some of the most popular platforms for selling art.


      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  6. caroline elliott says:

    Hi,
    I’ve developed a snow safety education package for English speaking children. This consists of a 7 minute film embedded into a power point presentation amounting to 55 slides. I would like to sell it to schools and travel companies specialised in childen’s winter holidays. I dont wish my product to be downloaded, (and possibly copied and shared) I would like it to be just available on streaming for a fee. I am also starting up therefore I cant afford to pay the large fees that say Vimeo demand. Could you please advise which product would be suitable for this?
    Kind Regards
    Caroline Elliott

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Caroline,

      You can use Easy Digital Downloads to sell aaccess to content with the Content Restriction feature.

      Best,

      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  7. Keesh says:

    Rather than an instant download, what about platforms that will notify you of a sale and you then prepare a customized download for each customer to download?
    Are there any programs such as this?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello,

      With some minor customization you can do this using WordPress with Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce.


      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  8. Tiff Bryan says:

    Hi. An almost perfect article but nowhere can I find the solution to my problem.
    I want to sell very large video file downloads for moduled courses from my WordPress site but for obvious reason don’t want to store the huge files on my WordPress host.
    My question is, where would the downloads be stored if I went for say Easy Digital Downloads or Woocommerce?
    I need a solution that offers unlimited storage capacity (or at least a huge storage capacity and bandwidth) to be linked to my own website.

    Thanks in advance for your advise.

    Tiff

    1. Virginia says:

      Can you use Amazon Website Services? It works with EDD.

  9. Nadine says:

    Great article thank you so much…I’m so bad at technology so can’t get my hear round most of it. I have a life coaching digital download program but it’s been made in separate files for each lesson in a mix of pdf and png… I got told to put them in a zip file to sell (don’t even have a website yet lol) … can the files be sold as one package without zipping them so I can get a pdf stamper on them? …hope I made sense…was just going to add the sale links to social media
    Thank you

  10. Vijay says:

    Hi. Not tech savvy. Have a website on SquareSpace and planning to sell monthly/annual memberships for telehealth programs with specialists. What platform would you recommend? Looked like SendOwl was one option. But then I saw MemberMouse that is WordPress option. Do I need both? And if I don’t have a WordPress website can I even use MemberMouse? Need your advice and thanks in advance!!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      As far I know you can use use Squarespace to sell services (including meberships). You can read more on their support section here.

      Best,
      โ€“
      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  11. Heiress says:

    Hi Bogdan! I am about to develop an ecommerce site with downloadable contents something like getty. What do u recommend for this? Also with regards to storing files like big files. Hope you can help thank you!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello,

      I would recommend using Shopify and the Digital Downloads app. The Basic Shopify plan ($29/mo) has all the features you need and you get unlimited storage space and unlimited products. The Downloads app it’s free, you can install it directly from the Shopify app store.

      You can read our full Shopify review here.

      Hope this helps.

      Cheers!

  12. Theresa Griffith says:

    My business has used Payloadz for many years and I’ve always felt I was being ripped off
    and now after doing a research on Payloadz I’m ready to move to another company asap!
    My site doesn’t use WordPress and we have a LOT of product so can you suggest one?
    SendOwl? We’re a non-profit, so we want to save money anywhere we can. We also accept Donations
    and don’t like not getting 100% of our donations due to fees.

    Thanks for all your research. Much appreciated.
    Theresa Griffith, Pres. Someone Believes In You

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Theresa,

      If you have lots of products then you might consider using one of the platforms from this list: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/best-ecommerce-platforms

      SendOwl is a great option but is suitable for you if you wish to sell only digital products.

      PayPal offers discounted transaction rates for charities and has low rates for all other nonprofits. You should consider using PayPal for receiving donations.

      Hope this helps,
      โ€“
      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  13. Jay says:

    Is there a course you can recommend that will help someone with just ideas go from start to finish in how to not only create, but setup your platform, market and deliver digital products? Something a complete newbie can follow?

    Thanks,
    Jay

  14. Peter N says:

    I really like FetchApp, as it doesn’t use my hosting resources and there is a free plan until you get profitable. Is there a way though to somehow add affiliate management? I looked around and couldn’t find anything. Also, I wanted to let you know that this is the only useful post I found that actually gives a good selection of different methods.

  15. Raluca Marmureanu says:

    Great article Joe!
    I’d like to propose Avangate as well to this list. http://www.avangate.com
    As a SaaS company with an international customer base of over 4,000 SaaS and digital products companies, Avangate has helped businesses like yours sell more digital products and services and increase the lifetime value of their customers quickly and easily all over the world.

  16. Cyndy says:

    Great Article! Best one I have found on the internet! I am thinking of going with Send Owl since I don’t want to deal with WordPress, and already designed my website with Webstudio 5. I will be selling a lot of digital audio products (like “How To” stuff as well as ebooks and lectures) . Do you thing send owl will work well for that? Thanks for any help

  17. Bob Staples says:

    Thank you so much for helping me with getting closer. I’m a one man operation with over 35 years of experience as a canine behavior consultant and drive to my clients homes to help with their dog training needs, but I need to transition towards sell my video lessons on my website. Bob

  18. Analia says:

    Hi, I found this excellent post while searching for the best option for what Iยดd like to do. I see you recommend EDD for digital downloads, but do you know if there is an option for free downloads? I need to create a site where people can download files for free BUT limit the amount of downloads per product. I was going to use Woocommerce with the option for External/Affiliate option but this doesnยดt let me keep an inventory or set the amount of downloads permitted. Can this be done with EDD? Thanks.

  19. John Wu says:

    I prefer to use Easy Digital Downloads + WordPress to build a self-hosted online shop to sell my digital products, just as I did. Because it’s flexible, however, it requires web and marketing knowledges, you have to drive the traffic by yourself, so maybe sell the goods both on some third-party platform and self-hosted online shop is the best option.

  20. David says:

    Hi Joe,

    I originally posed this question to Catalin, but I will pose it to you as well since this post seems to be a variation of Catalin’s post on “The Best Free WordPress Ecommerce Plug-ins (January 2017)”.

    So, to reiterate my questions to either you and/or Catalin, here they are again:

    Catalin noted in his post/article that Easy Digital Download (EDD) holds the crown for digital products. I am specifically concerned with selling non-physical goods (i.e., I want to sell a digital eBook on my website). If this is the case, then all I have to do is install the EDD plugin and upload the items to my WP dashboard, and Iโ€™m off to the races. Also, you feel that EDD is the top solution for digital goods because of file access control by being able to specify how many people can download a file (in my case an eBook) and I can make the file inaccessible after a certain period of time. This is all good.

    However, my biggest problem is my website in WordPress is built using the Divi theme by Elegant Themes. As you know, many of the Divi modules are limited and sometimes flawed, i.e. they do not function as they supposed to function like in the Elegant Theme Divi tutorials. Divi has a Shop Module, which is pretty basic https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/documentation/

    The Divi Shop Module is also focused more on selling โ€œphysical productsโ€ in a storefront rather than selling โ€œdigital contentโ€ like an eBook, which is my objective. The Divi theme Shop Module also limits you to only being able to install WooCommerce as the eCommerce plug-in in lieu of other eCommerce plugins, like EDD, which is what I would like to use after reading your post and recommendation, especially in your โ€œSome Final Thoughts and Things to Rememberโ€ that โ€œEasy Digital Downloads is the obvious choice for non-physical goodsโ€.

    So thatโ€™s my dilemma! Divi is a pain in the a$$ to use because of itโ€™s limitations for certain plugins. I am also stuck since I am not a website developer who is an expert in programming and/or using CSS code, etc. Therefore, where do I go from here? I am committed to using Divi, since my website has been built with Divi, and I also became a Elegant Themes Life Member thinking this would provide me with better technical support from Elegant Themes. Not!

    All I would like to do is to sell an eBook on my website. Is using WooCommerce going to provide me with what I want, or is EDD a better plugin to use? If EDD is the best for what I want to do, please provide your thoughts on how I make this work with Divi.

    Thank you!

    David

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi David,

      Even tough EDD is free, you will still have to pay around $89.00/year for a PayPal or Stripe extension that will allow you to accept payments. Because you want to sell only one book, I would go with WooCommerce since a the platform and PayPal extension are free.

      Cheers!
      โ€“
      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  21. Anthony Le says:

    Thanks for your awesome article! But I got a problem with EDD: proof of delivery. Last time, I lost both the money and my photo with a PayPal dispute case. EDD download report is so simple, just a CVS file with IP and the time of download. So, is there any platforms that have “strong” proof of delivery that match PayPal requirements when we get into a dispute case? Or do you have any ideas about dispute problems?
    Thanks in advance!
    Anthony

  22. alex lavis says:

    hello, i would like to sell ” therapy sleep ” downloads on line and be paid through PayPal, i have no idea how to start , what to look for, what equipment i need , what software i need, please can you give me some advice where to start,

    thanks in advance

    alex

  23. Pejman says:

    Hello Joe,

    Your post is great but i still didn’t find my option.
    I want to withdraw payouts to our PayPal account instead of Bank account but none of this payment processors or merchant account providers offer such this features.
    Can you introduce other one that supports this option?

    Thanks,
    Regards

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Pejman,

      Although all services have support for PayPal, I would go with Easy Digital Downloads. They offer a gateway add-on which allows you to accept payments through PayPal.

      Best,
      โ€“
      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  24. Isabella says:

    Hi. I’m new to all this and decided to go with Easy Digital Download. However the issue I have is that when I test drive my digital MP3s to download through my mobile phone and save it to my Home Screen, after a few hours it no longer plays my MP3. In this age of mobiles I want a digital download service that one can download it straight into one’s cell phone. Do you have any suggestions? Many thanks, Isabella

  25. Ane says:

    The low costs plan is that use WordPress + Easy Digital Downloads plugin + DGWork Theme to build a self-hosted online shop.

  26. Don says:

    I volunteer for a medium size youth organization. We have a good amount of families that want to buy our game day video’s. SO, were not looking to get rich BUT it would be nice to have an easier platform to work with then burning hundreds of dvd’s. Is there a platform that you can recommend?

  27. Tim Romero says:

    Thank you so much for putting this resource together!

    I have a question for you. I run a podcast and WordPress site and will soon offer in-depth research reports ad PDFs. Iโ€™ll be selling this both as a subscription and as one-off digital downloads. Subscribers receive new reports and can also access the archives as well. Iโ€™m expecting only 10โ€™s of transactions per month.

    In the future, Iโ€™m thinking of enabling the subscribers to participate in some kind of community. I donโ€™t know what form that will take, but I wanted to be sure that such integration would be possible.

    I’m based in Japan, so something that supports Yen/Japanese would be ideal, but my main target is the US market.

    What packages do you suggest I look at?

    Thanks in advance for any help and advice you can give, and keep up the good work

  28. Marjorie says:

    Hi Martin,
    great review on all these platforms. I tested out a couple of them but none give me the option to sell an audio file and show a small player with a preview. Have you seen anything like that in your travels?
    Thank you,
    Marjorie

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Marjorie,

      You can sell audio tracks with SendOwl quite easy.

      Check out our full SendOwl review below, for more info:

      The Ultimate SendOwl Ecommerce Review 2016

      Best,
      โ€“
      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  29. Martin says:

    I have five PDF files I want to sell on a website. There is no sense to buy all at once. I have created a static web page with a buy button for each file/pdf. I want the user to download the file once payment is received. My pdf is cheap and therefore I want to keep the costs down, no fee per month but a small fee per purchase is ok.

    As I said, I have a static website now but can convert it to a WordPress theme if it makes it cheaper and easier. Using a full shopping cart seems unnecessary (because you can only buy one of the 5 files). What do you recommend?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Martin,

      FetchApp is free if your files are not larger than 5MB and there are no commissions.

      If your total files size exceeds 5MB, go with Gumroad, they have no monthly fee and they take 5 percent + 25 cents per transaction.

      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  30. Jess says:

    Hello,
    Great article! What would you choose if your idea was to be somewhat of a middle man for a variety of digital downloads. These downloads would need to be sorted into categories for easy of finding the products. In essence, I want to host a website that actually sells other creators products but also collect a small portion of every sale for being the host. Thank you!

    1. Jess says:

      Sorry for my typos.

  31. Annie says:

    Great article! You saved me so much time. I went with FetchApp because I only have a few items so for me it is FREE! Woot! I would have never found FetchApp but for this article. Thanks a bunch!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      We’re glad we could help Annie!

      Bogdan โ€“ Editor at ecommerce-platforms.com

  32. Kris says:

    Unfortunately lot of them now only accept monthly payment, not charge per transaction. It’s hard for people who want to test the market first without loosing all money for a year contract.

    I was accidentally removed my bookmarks, I’ve a long list of sites like this.
    There’s one site (big site) that only charge per success transaction, no monthly fee, I forgot the site name, the site background is pastel yellow, if anyone know it, please tell me.

    I tried to find it and got nothing.

    Thanks.

  33. khan says:

    I need sell my videos -related to engineering professionals course. I can generate orders for it. But My only concern, How can I prevent my videos not to be copied. (preventing from resell again by someone).Please share solution for it

  34. Andro Davis says:

    Great article, Thanks for that. I need an expert advice, I am publishing great learning & educational paid apps on Google play & iTunes However the revenue is very low. I invest a lot of time to build great apps, but now I know the marketing is my great weakness. do you think that using eCommerce platforms will help me marketing my app products, and which platform is the best.
    many thanks for your assistance.

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Andro, having your own dedicated eCommerce website for selling your products will definitely improve your sales if managed correctly. Best of luck!

  35. mohammad.irfan says:

    hi daer, i am living in pakistan and i dont have pay pal accout. i have tried gumroad , it is simple and easy to use but problem is when you go to payment withdraw/payout its ask for pay pal account. It is requested that please let me which gateway i shoud use so that that i can withdraw cash from pakistan .
    best regards.

  36. Erika says:

    Hi,
    This is a great article thank you! I’m looking to sell downloadable health programs from my wordpress site that’s run with Thrive lead pages. With multiple plugins I’m trying to easily integrate a selling system that doesn’t leave my pages and integrates with mailchimp ahs my booking systems so add on appointments and upgrades work together.
    I understand this is a tall order! My designer recommends 1shopping cart, but I can’t justify the $168 monthly fee while I’m starting out. Any ideas?
    Thank you again.
    Warmest regards, Erika

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Erika, you could start with a simple WordPress website and sell the ebook via GumRoad. If the number of sales increase you can switch from Gumroad to EDD. Best of Luck!

  37. Tony G. says:

    Dear Forum, I would like to ask for your expert advice. I would like to create a simple website that will feature musical scores (about 50 selections, PDF format probably) for sale by download. With each musical score there will be an audio file (maybe 30 sec to 1 min) to be embedded for the potential buyer to be able to listen to. Also included will be some images and text describing each song/score, plus an introduction area of the composer (photo plus text). So probably not more than 1 page needed. Should buyer want to purchase the score, the idea is they would use a credit card to pay then be able to download the score to their computer. Ideally the PDF would not be able to be shared with others (i.e. DRM). Of the many DIY website builders, which do you feel would be best as far as ease of creation, ability to support requirements, and most cost effective? Thank you in advance for your advice.

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi Tony, in you case I would go with Sellfy. If you already own a WordPress website then Easy Digital Downloads would be a great option.

  38. Ivan says:

    Hi there.
    I’m going to organize a little “audio jungle” for selling my own sound effects. What platform could be the best choice to organize a shop like Envato’s audio jungle?

    1. Ivan says:

      Hello again.
      A little update after some search and understanding of what i want to sell.
      What i really need from platform is categories and the best possibilites to sell a lot of small audio files.
      What can you recommend for me?

      Thank you.

      1. Bogdan Rancea says:

        Hi Ivan,
        I would go with Easy Digital Downloads if you already have a website built on WordPress. If you are planning on building a website from scratch you should definitely try out Gumroad. Cheers!

  39. flex says:

    Very nice article. Got so many things about online marketing as a beginner. Thanks for sharing.

  40. Christina Carlton says:

    Looking to sell downloadable fitness videos and would be utilizing FB, Tmblr, Pinterest, Twitter & Instagram to advertise the products and my business. Just starting out so money is definitely tight. Is there one platform that you would recommend over another for it’s ease of use and expense?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      In your case SendOwl would be a great option, they have small monthly fees and the coolest part is that SendOwl doesnโ€™t take a cut of your sales. Cheers

  41. John M says:

    Hi, really great post.
    I recently set up an online video production company (I create animated explainer videos and other videos for businesses).

    I’ve set up my site but I’m having problems with receiving payments.
    I can’t use PayPal even though I would have loved to (I’m in a country where I can’t access Paypal for receiving payments- Nigeria).

    I’m looking for a payment processing company that would allow me receive BOTH Paypal and credit/debit card payments from anywhere in the world, without needing me to have a paypal account, and open to sellers all over the world including my country Nigeria (like 2checkout).

    Do you know any one like that apart from 2CO?

    (PS: Wanted to use 2checkout but it looks like they’ve grown too big for their own comfort….emailed them 3 times via 3 different contact points and they’ve not replied in over a week….thats a big red flag to me
    Also, 2checkout says on their site that they delay payments till they’ve verified clients have finally received the product, meanwhile I would need some of the client’s funds to execute the video project)

    So in summary, I’m looking for a company like 2checkout that accepts BOTH paypal and credit cards, open to Nigerians, and I can access my funds immediately it is paid, to use in executing the video project.

    Any ideas?
    Thanks.

    1. Steph says:

      Try Gumroad. I live in Nigeria and it works for me!

      1. Victor says:

        How do you do it. PayPal doesn’t let you receive money from Nigeria. I’ve been researching a workaround for so long.

  42. Imad says:

    I think Etsy is one of the best sites to sell everything .

  43. Bassam says:

    I was hoping to see more practical information about how you can setup your e-commerce website, how to find the right server to store and protect your digital products, how to setup your payment and shopping cart. I think this would be more independent and away from 3rd party services. At the end of the day, all the above-mentioned services are providing e-commerce solutions because others don’t want to dig deep and find out how they can be an independent seller.
    If hope that you have an article showing people how to be an independent e-commerce seller.

    Thank you

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hi there,

      A website developer could definitely help you with a custom build.

      As for hosting we have some tips here, to help you when deciding on the right hosting company for you.

      You may take a look at this post, where we have reviewed 5 of the best hosting companies for ecommerce.

  44. Tony says:

    Hi Catalin,

    I am on a managed wordpress platform and have been using gumroad to sell digital products and digital/physical bundles to a US audience.

    I need a but more functionality for physical products than gumroad offers so I am switching over to shopify (using buy buttons off my site) and was going to use their sendowl app because I send free updates of my digital guides.

    Does this sound like a good platform move…or is fetch a better option?

    Thanks, Tony

  45. Rachel says:

    Do you know which of these is compatible with braintree?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      You should be able to use Braintree with Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce and SendOwnl, Gumroad, E-Junkie, DPD, will work via Zapier. Cheers!

  46. Marlene Veltre says:

    Hi Catalin,

    I’d like to sell an ebook. Do any of these download directly to kindle and other amazon reading devices?

    thank you!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      In your case DPD might be a good option, for $10/month you can sell up to 20 products, without any transaction fees.

  47. Jimmy Livefjord says:

    I am using Gumroad to sell Hand Painted textures & assets + some Blender addons. here are my experience so far.

    POSSITIVE
    * Clean UI
    * statistics are great
    * Easy to add products

    NEGATIVE
    * Menus lack logical structure some things are spread out in a wierd way.
    * Paypal – This is far the worst part by using Paypal. When i first started to use Gumroad it was free but after a while the option to pay with Paypal during the checkout disappeared. I contacted support and was recommended to upgrade by account, so then i started to pay 10$ / month. I am sorry to say that the problem still remains from now and then and it is really frustrating.

    * the fact that you can not link to other peoples product on your gumroad page without having to pay Gumroad some % of the amount.

    * You can not have any categories which makes your listing page look really messy. Also the lack of custom options in the UI is a huge drawback.

    * the fact that Gumroad takes 50 cent on a 1$ sale says it all. If you are selling things that cost 50$ Gumroad will work great but not for small sales.

    Let me end by saying that i do enjoy using Gumroad but in all honesty i am starting to loose my patience.

  48. Douglas says:

    I am developing a website where my members pay for their membership and by doing so they earn points as a bonus.

    They can accumulate the points or use them as they earn them.
    The points are used to purchase digital products that will be available to them through our site.

    What I am looking for is a means of delivering a selection of digital products to the members based on the exchange of x number of points that they have stored in their account at any given time.

    I have all the point tracking and accumulation under control, but am looking for a plugin possibly or a service that I can connect with, that would provide a selection and checkout system based on their points as opposed to dollars paid through a payment processor.

    Does this sound like something that would be readily available, or should I plan on developing that portion of the system as well…?

    Thanks in advance
    Douglas

  49. Bugzy says:

    Very nice articles. I am looking for an ecommerce payment site where i can easily sell my software and customers would be able to download it.
    Please i neee your advise
    Thank you

  50. Vineet says:

    Hi,

    We want to build a website that partners with other companies to sell their digital or physical products to our target customers. This would require a lot of focus on product categorization and user search. Which platform is better to build such a marketplace?

  51. Heidi says:

    Wondering what’s best to use if we’d just like to be able to sell workout videos from either a link in an email or on our website. Website is only set up with a simple shopping cart like tool that was created by our webdesign company so clients can pay for classes. So we don’t want to get Shopify or the likes….

  52. san says:

    I have used Gumroad what they do is they let you use their service for a while then suddenly they close your account and any balance you have with them WELL BASICALLY THEY STEAL IT without notice, it happened to many people, they come up with exact the same reason for everyone, they copy paste for each account they close down, and the reason does not make any sense some hard coded lawyer type of text. I do not recommend Gumroad, the others are fine, AVOID Gumroad.

    1. moh says:

      he is right
      they close my account as well

  53. Deputat says:

    Hi,

    I need to send one file per customer of the same product, each product file is unique. It looks like most of the services you mention allow you to sell the same file only. So if I have 1 product with quantity of 10 and I need to send file #1 to customer #1, file #2 to customer #2. If customer #3 buys 2 items – then he should receive file #3 and 4. Which service can do that?

    1. Debra says:

      I am looking for something like this as well. I have an inventory that is the same product but with different activation codes. I don’t want to have to create an inventory of 1 for each code.

    2. seb says:

      I am also looking for something similar.
      We need our customers to send us a file at checkout and then we edit the file and send it back to them. So we have one product but each delivery has a different file.
      any help is appreciated

  54. Hari says:

    Hi Catalin, thank a lot for this excellent review.

    which platform would you recommend for selling thousands (around 10K) of large data files (1G to 10Gb each) stored on AWS S3 (also need excellent product search) ?

    Best

    1. Tiff says:

      My question too nobody seems to be mentioning the solution for.
      I have very large video courses I want to sell from my own website. I need the storage location to be unlimited, secure, and with a big bandwidth. Can’t find solution though!

      1. brandon says:

        Use an FTP Client Server. Add files to your Cpanel and create Username for your clients…

  55. mike says:

    First off, great article! My question: I am tasked with getting hundreds of 5-30 second stock footage clips online and ready to sell. I would like to render one video file and upload it. I would like to have a watermark to protect it overlayed onto the video by the hosting site (zenfolio.com currently is doing this for me… not a good solution tho). I would like to have the watermarked version to be able to be downloaded so that editors can try it out or use it for a sales meeting. Once the client approves the stock video, they would be able to buy the video without the watermark. It is really important to me that I would only have to render out one version of the video (not a separate version with the watermark “baked” in). Do any of the above recommendations offer this? Which would be the best choice? is this even possible?

  56. Ed Troxell Creative says:

    Wow! What a great resource! This was perfect! Thank you for doing the research and sharing with us.

  57. Susan says:

    Hi everyone! I am pianist and I have made easy arrangements from famous music , can I sell arrangements or do I need permission from the authors?, and I want to sell the PDF files I have a Pay Pal account, but the other questions is that I want to encrypt my arrangements in PDF files so that people do not send them by email over and over. please help, thanks
    Susan

    1. Mary Oakes says:

      You definitely need permission from the artists. You cannot take someone else’s music, rearrange it and then sell it as your own. That is a huge copyright violation!

  58. Jewel says:

    Hi, your article/Blog is very appreciated. I would like to know which would you most recommend for digital downloads of mp3’s, e-books, and possibly memberships from a website and integrates with sound cloud and youtube? Also, would strip be better than pay pal when it comes to digital downloads? By the way,I am not into word press it is not user friendly for me . That’s why I would rather do from a website.

  59. nta says:

    Please I need my customers to be able to preview the music tracks and videos for few seconds before buying.
    which one do you recommend?

    1. Marc says:

      HI NTA
      ..did you ever find a site to do the preview of audio and video before buying. I am desperately looking for the same thing./ Can anyone please help or recommend? Thank you.

      Mrac

  60. Amy says:

    Hello,

    I am wanting to sell my ebook through my website and then use one of the above for the client to download the product by automatically having an email sent to them. Which one do you recommend?

    Thank you

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Amy, I would use EDD.

  61. H says:

    This is all new to me, so thanks for narrowing it down. I want to sell teaching/homeschool resources (pdf files). I don’t want to pay a monthly fee because I am still building my products and won’t be making that much. I am not worried about advertising help, just a way to sell my resources. What would you suggest? Gumroad? I don’t currently have a website, but if I build one it will be through WordPress.
    Thanks!

  62. Melanie says:

    I have a wordpress website already, and am working on adding a shop for both physical (rubber stamps) and digital (downloadable crafting papers, images etc). I have woocommerce for the shop. What do you recommend for the downloadable products? All transactions are to go through woo commerce, so the download service is for storing and giving access to the files once purchased.

  63. Lynn says:

    I would like to sell machine embroidery designs that would be downloadable. What would you recommend?

  64. Srinivas Balla says:

    Hi Mr. Catalin!
    I would like to sell plain text lessons in PDF format of DIFFERENT CATEGORIES. Kindly suggest me the best. Cost no issue.

    Also, i am confused that why are you suggesting Shopify + Fetch? My question is, why to combine 2 different platforms?

    BTW, you are doing a good job. If you want to do better, please write your blog posts in such a way that people like us will not trouble you asking many questions after reading. I mean to say, after reading your review, we all should be clear on how to go about and should not bother you with many doubts!!

    Thank you.

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Srinivas, thanks for your comment. Yes Shopify + Fetch is a great option. Fetch si an addon, not a separate platform. All the best!

  65. Ann says:

    Catalin, All I can say is Thank You!!! Thank You. You take alot of the legwork out of it for many of us.

    We still have decisions to make that must be suited to our own individual needs/desired results but you’ve provided the roadmap.
    Again, Thanks!

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Glad to be of service Ann ๐Ÿ™‚

  66. Diligence E says:

    Hi, I wonder if it’s compulsory to have a website to sell an ebook, or these online shops would do? I know having a specific website for the product is cool, but am wondering if it’s OK to sell without them?

    Great piece, by the way.

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      You can do without a website with some of them, but it doesn’t mean you should’n create one though. I strongly advice everyone to build their own website! Cheers

  67. Mark S says:

    Hi, great info, I have the same question as someone above but it was not answered. Can you give answer. Thanks.
    SASH
    December 1, 2015 / 9:14 pm
    Hi! Thank you for this article! I am interested in selling an e-book digital download but I want to have a pre-sale, where the customer will purchase in advance and the downloadable link wonโ€™t be sent to the customer until a specific date. Would anyone know which of these platforms allow you to do so?

    1. Raj @ www.ThePrimalDesire.com says:

      What’d you end up finding?

  68. JP says:

    This has been very helpful in my research. Thank you! Can you offer any thoughts on mycommerce.com or avangate.com

  69. Lisa says:

    Thank you so much for that comparison!!
    I now have a bit of an idea, still I’m not sure.
    My online courses are rather big so d I need cheap hosting for large files and also to include documents. Does anyone have an option where I can create a “bundle of items download”.
    Thank you so much for providing this place of awesome info!

  70. My Pham says:

    Thanks for the great post. Its very informative and useful. I and my friend are trying to sell digital self help video/audio, pls suggest what platforms we should use. Also, have you written review on Clickbank? What do you think about it?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi there, not a big fan of ClickBank. I would go with Shopify + Fetch. Cheers

  71. caroline says:

    Hi, Well researched and good set of lists to gothrough. Thanks. I liked gumroad and e-junkie both seems to be easy one.

  72. Mark says:

    Hi Catilin
    We want to sell e books, stock pictures, and monthly memberships to people in Japan, and was wondering what platform could support this plus the yen conversion. Maybe shopify and fetch?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Yup that’s it Mark!

  73. caroline murray says:

    I am trying to set up three platforms to sell the digital download of my film.
    The 3 I chose are Gumroad, Sellfy and Reelhouse.

    I seem to be having concerns with all 3 of these platforms.

    Gumroad dont seem to reply to my emails. Although they did at first, and now I cant get a reply from them.
    Sellfy want me to pay a monthly fee for a paypal app. I dont see why I have to do this.
    Why cant I just use my paypal account with Sellfy and not have to pay for a monthly app?
    So sellfy suggest I use stripe instead, but I dont want to set up a stripe account when I already have a payal account. that just means more complications.

    Reelhouse seem ok but they keep asking me to verify my paypal account, and cant seem to set it up with reelhouse.

    Are there any good digital platforms out there who do not ask for a monthly fee, which is simple and easy to use?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      I would go with Sellfy + Stripe. Stripe takes 3 minutes to setup and it’s a lot more flexible and with a better UX for your potential clients. Hope it helps

  74. SASH says:

    Hi! Thank you for this article! I am interested in selling an e-book digital download but I want to have a pre-sale, where the customer will purchase in advance and the downloadable link won’t be sent to the customer until a specific date. Would anyone know which of these platforms allow you to do so?

    1. LO says:

      Gumroad allows you to do pre-orders.

  75. Prachi Dutt says:

    Thanks for sharing this post. I want to sell some digital products, which would be much better Easy digital download or woocommerce?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      I would def go with EDD!

  76. Rinalds says:

    We at TopicFruit use Easy Digital Downloads. Great plugin.
    Next I would suggest WooCommerce.

    To question Davide asked – Easy Digital Download offer you to divide payments to many users. ( if I understood your question right ).

  77. Davide Barranca says:

    Hi Catalin,
    thanks for the post. Do you happen to know what service among the ones you’ve reviewed offers automatic split shares management (i.e. you sell a product and, say, 50% automatically goes to me and 50% to you). I know that Fastspring has this feature, for instance. Thanks!
    – Davide
    (BTW I’ve heard that Gumroad has recently left home almost all of its employees)

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Davide, that’s a good question. I know PayPal used to have something called “chained payments” that did just this. The payment gateway should take care of this not the CMS though.

      Thanks for the Gumroad mention, I’m actually writing about this as we speak ๐Ÿ™‚

  78. Lynn says:

    This was an exceptional find, thank you for taking the time to share your insight! I am looking to offer a downloadable folder that contains multiple document template files in different formats (excel, word, ppt, pdf). Super simple and straight forward, no current website or blog, starting from scratch…which would you suggest as best option ( for both ease of use and cost?)

  79. Fiona says:

    Hi, I want to start selling music arrangements as small pdf files, and eventually many of them. I live in Australia but want to be able to sell worldwide so interested in a shop that caters to different currencies. Also want to be able to order files into categories which looks like Gumroad does not.
    thanks so much for your excellent reviews on all those platforms! but I’m still confused ๐Ÿ™‚ Which platform would you recommend?
    Thanks so much
    Fiona

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Fiona, if you want more functionality than Gumroad, I would suggest Shopify + Fetch, as you can see described in this post. Cheers!

  80. Gillian says:

    Is there anything specific I need to do to prepare my PDF for digital download? It is a cook book with pics and formating

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Gillian, not really, just do your best to create something you would find lots of value in as a customer ๐Ÿ™‚

  81. donatella says:

    Hi Catalin!
    I’m totally new in this digital world. I mean I never published anything but I have a great product in self development niche. What is the best platform to sell my e-book?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Donatella, I would start with a simple website done in WordPress and sell the ebook via GumRoad. Best of Luck!

  82. Mark says:

    Hey bud !
    Thanks for this blog.
    I wanted to know which site to use for a video product that I have…………. to be more specific its a fitness training video product that I have made and I am looking for some help.

    if you can please suggest something that would be great.

    Thanks

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Mark, keep an eye out for a blog post on this specific topic. I’m working on it and hope to publish it mid next week. Cheers

  83. Jennifer williamson says:

    Glad I came across this article. I teach video production and we are looking for a site to house our videos we record of concerts and selling them to parents. Do you think one of these sites would be better than others for this purpose?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Jennifer, I am writing a post about this specific type of online shop. Hope to publish it by mid next week. Stay tuned!

  84. konradt says:

    Thanx for the article, Thou i am still lost. I am an industrial designer that design and manufacture furniture and i’m looking for a website where i can sell my cnc laser cut and router files. this calls for a more specific website, and i cant seem to find an existing site that has acceptable traffic volume… any ideas?

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi there, this is a very specific niche, challenging but interesting! Are you looking to sell them in a marketplace or on your own shop though?

  85. Andy says:

    Nice write up, well researched. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Thanks Andy, glad you like it!

  86. Adrian says:

    Hi Catalin!

    Thanks for writing this article. Im planning to sell some digital graphic design products ( fonts, logos, vector, etc ) at SELLFY. Do you think sellfy have a great pageviews and really worth it to sell items in there?

    Cheers

    Ardian

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Ardian, yes Sellfy is great for this but you will have to bring the traffic yourself ๐Ÿ™‚ (ie marketing etc)

      1. Rahma Kushtana says:

        Hi Catalin, I enjoyed your article and advices also. You mention bringing the traffic yourself ๐Ÿ™‚ Have you created an article about this also. I would be very interested in your research on this topic. Thanks for your time. Warmest wishes, Rahma

  87. Maureen Frank says:

    I’ve been using GUMROAD and like it…would give it an 8 on a scale from 1-10. One of the drawbacks is the inability to have categories. If you have a lot of items you want to sell, it just becomes one very long page.

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Thanks a lot for the feedback Maureen! What are you selling btw?

  88. Bren Murphy says:

    Hi Catalin,
    I’m tending to wards Gumroad or E-Junkie although I am tempted by Paddle – it is a bit newer – perhaps add this to your review?
    Thanks for putting the time in,
    Thanks
    Bren Murphy

    1. Catalin Zorzini says:

      Hi Bren,

      We actually reviewed Paddle in a separate post but we’ll add it to this roundup too, good point.

      Cheers

  89. Paul LeBlanc says:

    Nicely done man. Thanks for doing the research. You saved me some time. Nicely written as well.

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