Sellfy vs Gumroad – Which One Should You Go For?

E-Commerce platforms such as Sellfy and Gumroad can be great avenues to sell online courses and increase your reach. 

However, it can get tricky to choose between them as they offer different things at varying price points. 

In this post, we’ll look at both Sellfy and Gumroad in detail in order to determine which platform is the best for online course creators.

Features	Sellfy	Gumroad
Pricing	4 stars	3 stars
Ease of Use	4 stars	4 stars
Customization Options	3 and a half stars	4 and a half stars
Payout Process	3 stars	4 stars
Customer Support	3 and a half stars	2 and a half stars

Now that you’ve had a quick overview of each eCommerce platform, let’s delve deeper to get a better understanding of what they have to offer:

Sellfy Review – User-Friendly and Secure

For online course creators that have a finished product and are ready to set up their online store, Sellfy can definitely be an option to consider.

It’s a huge online marketplace that is used by individuals to sell both digital as well as physical products. 

Moreover. it allows you to create your own personalized online store or you can even port your existing website onto Sellfy if you’d like. 

In this way, you could use Sellfy’s sophisticated tools to add further functionality to your own website that was already there. 

The fact that you have both these options with Sellfy makes it a great, flexible solution to host your online course. 

Sellfy has a lot of functionality when it comes to setting up your online store which includes a storefront builder, upsells, and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that is great for beginners and veterans alike. 

Pros	Cons
• Secure • Neat and intuitive interface • Websites made with Sellfy are SEO-friendly and mobile-responsive • Full integration with third-party analytics tools  • Free 14-day trial period	• Sellfy supports just two payment processors (Paypal and Stripe) • Requires you to go for the Business plan to remove Sellfy branding

Benefits of Sellfy

The pricing for Sellfy starts from as little as $19 per month. This is great because if your sales are within $10k per year (which they most likely will be when you first start), the Starter plan will work perfectly for you. 

Transaction fees are something that is common among most of Sellfy’s competing eCommerce platforms. 

While Sellfy is used to sell both digital as well as physical products online, you can easily use it to market, host, and sell your online course(s). 

If you already have an existing website, you can port it over to Sellfy’s ecosystem and use their tools to make it the best you can according to your needs. 

On the other hand, you can create your own website from scratch with Sellfy’s WYSIWYG editor. This editor is perfect for both beginners and veterans since its visual nature does not require you to have coding knowledge or technical expertise in web development. 

Another benefit of Sellfy is that it is incredibly secure and you’ll have no issues receiving the money sent to you by your customers. 

Sellfy combines SSL encryption along with PCI DSS compliance which ensures that your transactions are as safe as they can possibly be. 

Furthermore, Sellfy also incorporates download tracking which is highly effective against unauthorized downloads of digital products you sell including online courses. 

It works by sending a special download link to the original buyer and then restricting the maximum number of downloads to five. Any attempt after five downloads is automatically blocked by the platform. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Sellfy

Pricing

Sellfy offers three plans: Starter, Business, and Premium. 

While the Starter plan is fairly cheap and definitely has pretty much all you’d need to set up an online store to sell online courses, there’s a slight problem: 

With the Starter plan, you’ll have to deal with forced Sellfy branding on your website. 

This can be off-putting to potential customers and can make your website look cheaply built. 

In order to remove Sellfy branding, you’d have to go for the Business plan which costs $39 per month. 

$39 per month is much more expensive than most of Sellfy’s competitors which typically cost below $15 per month. 

We’ve talked about the bad, now let’s talk about the good: Sellfy does not charge transaction fees on your sales. 

This is highly important because most eCommerce platforms usually do have a transaction fee involved. 

A transaction fee on every sale you make would mean that the more sales you make, the more money you’d have to pay to the eCommerce platform. 

This isn’t the case with Sellfy as you only pay the flat, monthly fee. 

Ease of Use

In terms of user-friendliness, Sellfy is one of the best we’ve had the pleasure of testing. 

Even though it has tons of features such as upselling, download tracking, analytics, etc., they’ve done a great job of keeping the interface neat and easy to navigate. 

You’ll have little to no trouble finding exactly what you need within your first session on the eCommerce platform. 

Furthermore, it also comes with templates for different types of pages such as checkout, shopping cart, landing pages, etc. that you can utilize. 

Customization Options

Sellfy provides great customization features and functionality so that you can make your storefront exactly the way you want so it fits your personal brand’s aesthetic.

Furthermore, Sellfy offers full integration with several third-party analytics as well as marketing tools such as Google Analytics, Zapier, etc. 

You can use these third-party tools alongside Sellfy to increase your reach and make changes to your storefront as needed.

Payout Process

One downside of Sellfy is that it only has options to conduct transactions through just two payment processors: Paypal and Stripe. 

Both payment processors are fairly popular so it’s not too bad but we still feel that when you look at its competitors such as Gumroad which offers credit card payments, Sellfy falls a little short here. 

Customer Support

When it comes to customer support, Sellfy is hit-and-miss. 

On one hand, they have an extensive knowledge base with self-help articles that can help you out with the most common issues that you may face. 

On the other hand, if you want hands-on support, you can only get it through email and their response time is average, at best. 

There’s no live chat customer support and if you run into an issue that needs to be solved quickly, it can definitely cause problems that may be costly. 

What Do the Customers Think?

People love Sellfy as it allows them to create a storefront to sell digital products online in very little time. 

Its editor is very simple to use and allows you to create elegant websites with zero knowledge of web development or web design. 

Furthermore, people also love the fact that they offer a free 14-day trial which allows them to test it out and see whether it’s the tool for them or not. 

Here are some reviews we found online: 

Best User-Friendly e-Commerce Solution to Create an Online Store

The best user-friendly e-commerce solution to create an online Store is Sellfy since it has an easy-to-use editor with multiple options to create a storefront from scratch or to customize an existing site with added functionality from the platform. It also has zero transaction fees.

Gumroad Review – Flexible with Extensive Customization Features

Gumroad is a great option to create an elegant storefront to sell digital products (including online courses) even if you have no knowledge of web design. 

Moreover, Gumroad gives you the option to start from pre-built designs or start from scratch. If you have an existing site, you can port it over to Gumroad’s servers as well and use its tools to further enhance it. 

Gumroad has several features that online course creators may find useful. 

For example, if you’d like to sell your online courses based on a membership or subscription system, Gumroad provides you with the framework to do that.

Furthermore, there are also great features to generate coupons or discounts that you can use to promote your online courses. 

Payment processing is much easier and more convenient on Gumroad because not only does it support Paypal but it also supports debit and credit card payments. 

All of these features give you great flexibility that you’ll definitely need to be able to sell digital products effectively. 

Pros	Cons
• Accept credit, debit, and Paypal payments • Great customization features to suit your personal brand • Free plan available • Easy features for coupon and discount code creation • Intuitive, modern interface	• Limited knowledge base • Has a 3.5% transaction fee on all sales

Benefits of Gumroad

The very first thing you’ll notice about Gumroad is its sleek and neat interface. 

The interface keeps all of Gumroad’s features neatly organized. You’ll never find yourself “getting lost” within the interface even if it’s your first time.

Even the advanced features with detailed metrics and functionalities don’t end up cluttering the interface. Everything remains organized and easy to understand. 

As mentioned earlier, Gumroad has great options for creating coupons and discount codes that can play a huge role in reaching more audiences and gathering customers as an online course creator. 

Its customization features are also great with an editor that’s very easy to get the hang of. 

You can choose from pre-built designs and customize them exactly the way you want so that they suit your personal brand. 

Gumroad also provides you with your own custom domain as part of its package. 

There is a free plan available for Gumroad as well that you can check out.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Gumroad

Pricing

As mentioned above, Gumroad offers a free plan but in order to make use of everything Gumroad has to offer, it’s a good idea to go for their standard Creator plan which costs $10 per month.

$10 per month is extremely cheap for an eCommerce platform but you have to consider the transaction fees as well. 

The transaction fee for Gumroad is 3.5% of the transaction plus 30 cents per charge.

This means that along with paying the flat, monthly fee, you will also pay 3.5% of every sale you make. This can add up to a huge number once your business starts to gain traction and you start to sell products at a higher pace. 

Thus, it’s important to think about this before you opt for Gumroad.

Ease of Use

When it comes to user-friendliness, Gumroad is right on the money. It has a sleek and intuitive interface that is approachable for novices and veterans alike. 

There’s zero clutter and all of the different features are neatly organized so that every tool is one or two clicks away. 

Customization Options

When it comes to customization, Gumroad provides you with the best options to create an engaging website to sell stuff online. 

Their paid plan which costs $10 per month allows you to add custom CSS so you can really adjust the look of your website to suit your needs. 

Gumroad even has the option to create an affiliate program. This is something you may be able to dabble in once your online business is stable and you are able in a sizable amount of revenue. 

Payout Process

As we mentioned earlier, Gumroad trumps Sellfy due to the fact that it offers transactions through credit and debit card payments as well as Paypal. 

This is something that will be convenient for both you as well as your customers. 

That being said, another thing you have to consider is that you don’t instantly receive the money every time a sale is made. 

Instead, Gumroad offers you the payout every Friday. This means you’ll have to wait the whole week to receive the sum you’ve made from the sales that week. 

Customer Support

Gumroad’s customer support is lackluster at best. 

We’ve read reviews online where people lament that they’ve had terrible experiences with Gumroad’s support team. With slow response times and sometimes no response at all, customer support is an area that Gumroad really needs to improve upon. 

Their knowledge base is also fairly small and there’s a high chance you will need hands-on support even for common issues you face. 

This is highly important to consider because you may run into an issue that may cause you to lose potential customers. In this case, you would want the issue resolved as quickly as possible and that might be something that Gumroad’s team is not able to provide. 

What Do the Customers Think?

When it comes to selling online, Gumroad definitely provides you with a great framework to do so and its customers are very happy with it. 

People love its interface and how easy to navigate it is. Furthermore, features for affiliate programs, discount codes, and coupons are something that its users also highly appreciate. 

Here’s what the reviews we came across online had to say: 

Best eCommerce Platform to Scale Your Online Business

The best eCommerce platform to scale your online business is Gumroad because it has tons of features that can help you extend your reach and gather more customers. The use of affiliate programs, discount coupons along integration with marketing tools make it the best platform if you aim to scale your online course business upwards. 

Selling Digital Products Through an eCommerce Platform – Buyers’ Guide

When you choose an eCommerce platform for digital downloads and to sell digital products in general, things can be pretty overwhelming. 

This is because there are many factors you have to take into account and you don’t want to be stuck with the wrong platform. 

Here are some of the factors you should keep in mind when you choose an eCommerce platform:

Pricing

With any service, you have to look at the pricing but as an online course creator that has not sold any online courses yet, you especially have to be conservative with how much money you spend. 

We recommend that you don’t go above $20 per month on an eCommerce platform. 

Furthermore, try not to choose a platform that charges transaction fees on your sales. This is because the more popular your business will get, the more you’ll pay in transaction fees. 

Ease of Use

Naturally, you want a platform that you can get the hang of as quickly as possible. 

This is because you don’t want to waste any time or effort learning a platform as that time could be used to refine your online course. 

Furthermore, if the interface of the platform is unclear or confusing, you may never be able to build the website according to the way you want. 

Customization Options

You may have created a personal brand to support your online course business. 

In that case, you will want your website to reflect those same values and aesthetics. 

If the customization options of your platform are limited, you will definitely not be able to do so. 

Hence, opt for a platform that provides you with extensive customization features that you can utilize in order to create your website exactly the way you want. 

Payout Process

When you sell digital goods, it’s important to take note of the payment methods that a platform offers. 

Paypal and Stripe are the usual payment processors but we would recommend that you opt for a platform that offers debit and credit card payments as well. 

Also, try to go for a platform that offers instant payouts to you rather than weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly payouts. 

Customer Support

Good and responsive customer support is highly critical when you sell digital goods. 

Once you start to sell online, your customers will be dependent upon you to deliver the online courses. 

If you run into an issue that prevents you from doing that, you will lose money and potential customers until that issue is resolved. 

Hence, you need customer support that is responsive and helpful so you can get your issues resolved as quickly as possible so that you lose as little money as possible. 

Sellfy vs Gumroad – Final Verdict

Sellfy and Gumroad both offer great features that can help you start selling online today. 

That being said, we have to go with Sellfy as our winner for today. 

It provides a great interface with an editor that’s easy to use and its integrations with third-party analytics and marketing tools make it great to scale your business as well. 

Furthermore, Sellfy does not charge a transaction fee which means you won’t have to pay more money once your business starts to gain traction and you start to make more sales. 

Which platform do you think is better? Let us know in the comments below.