What is Gumroad? [You’ll find everything you want to know]
- What is Gumroad and how does it work?
- What is Gumroad used for?
- What can you sell on Gumroad?
- What is the Gumroad app?
- What are Gumroad’s pros and cons?
- What is Gumroad pricing?
- Is Gumroad right for you?
- What is similar to Gumroad?
- FAQ
- What is Gumroad all about?
- Is Gumroad a good place to sell?
- What is Gumroad commission?
- Is Gumroad safe?
- What is an alternative to Gumroad?
Gumroad is an e-commerce platform designed for selling digital products.
The platform allows you to upload your digital items, create a landing page to sell them from, and set up payment options to receive money.
Gumroad provides basic analytics to track your business performance. It also offers marketing tools such as automated emails and promo codes.
Gumroad is used by digital artists, designers, writers, and all kinds of creators. They set up their own Gumroad store and use it to sell their creations.
This platform is better suited for independent creators rather than agencies or sizable teams. For example, it offers limited branding options or overly simple workflows, which may not be enough for large businesses.
You can sell any type of digital product on Gumroad. For example:
- Digital downloads.
- eBooks.
- Courses.
- Video lessons.
- Tutorials.
- Guides.
- Templates.
Gumroad also supports recurring payments, for example, for memberships.
You can sell products for a set price or offer them for free in exchange for visitors’ email addresses. However, keep in mind that Gumroad charges a fee on every paid sale, which we’ll cover below.
Gumroad has its fullest set of features in the gumroad.com web version. But you can also download this tool as an app for iOS and Android, although its features are minimal.
For sellers, the Gumroad app only offers stats tracking like the number of visits, purchases, and total earnings. That’s it. In contrast to the web version, you can’t add new products or edit your Gumroad store at all.
For digital product sellers, Gumroad offers many advantages:
- ✅ Quick store setup: Adding products and setting up payments takes just a few minutes.
- ✅ No monthly subscription fee: Gumroad makes money from a cut of your sales. We’ll discuss pricing and fees in the next section.
- ✅ Marketing and promotional tools: Discount codes and email marketing tools will help you boost your sales.
- ✅ Purchasing power parity: You can adjust product pricing based on the cost of living in different countries.
But Gumroad also has quite a few downsides:
- ❌ Minimal page customization: As you’ve seen from the examples above, every product page looks almost the same. You can only change the font and background color.
- ❌ Only card or PayPal payments: By having just two payment options, you may lose customers who aren’t able to use them. Especially if you’re selling worldwide.
- ❌ English-only interface: Gumroad doesn’t support languages other than English, which makes it harder for non-English speakers to use.
- ❌ High transaction fees: The fee on your sales can reach as high as 30%, depending on a few conditions. We’re explaining them next.
You can use Gumroad without paying for a monthly subscription. Instead, the tool charges a fee on each of your sales, except for products you offer for free.
Gumroad’s fees vary. They depend on where a customer purchases your product: either on your own page or on the Discover page.
When the customer purchases your product on your landing page, the fee is 10% + $0.50 per sale.
If the purchase happens on the Discover page, you pay the highest fee, which is 30% of your product’s price.
Gumroad would work well for you if:
- You don’t mind having a generic design of your product page and you don’t need to stand out through branding among competitors.
- You have a small sales volume and don’t require a lot of marketing or management tools for running a large business.
- You’re testing ideas or digital products just to gauge demand and get feedback from customers.
Otherwise, Gumroad might not be the right choice for you. Then, you may want to look at an alternative solution, which we’ll cover below.
A tool for selling digital products similar to Gumroad is Taplink. Taplink is not an e-commerce platform, but a micro-landing page builder that also lets you sell digital products.
Taplink is the right choice if you’d like to:
- ✅ Get a unique page design: Adjust the background, fonts, button animations, as well as element sizes and layout.
- ✅ Use a lot of content formats: Add videos, price lists, pricing plans, an FAQ section, or a countdown timer to increase sales in addition to the products themselves and their descriptions.
- ✅ Get access to 60+ payment processors: Sell worldwide and reach more customers by allowing them to pay using both international and local payment processors.
- ✅ Pay 0% seller fees: Unlike Gumroad, Taplink charges 0% fee on sales, no matter what. Instead, you buy a pricing plan, the highest cost of which is only $8 / month. And you can easily cover it with just a few sales.
Taplink is used by individual creators as well as teams with large sales volumes. That’s why it’s suitable for any scale of business.
Other features you’ll get with Taplink:
- AI-powered page creation: Describe your business, and in 10 seconds, you’ll get a ready-made page for your business.
- 60+ templates: Or use a pre-designed template where you only need to replace details to fit your business.
- Custom domain: Connect your own domain for complete page branding.
- Built-in analytics: Track page views, clicks on individual links, and conversions.
- 20+ integrations: Connect add-ons for advanced analytics, marketing, or advertising.
- Multi-language interface: Select one of the 15 interface languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, and others.
To start using Taplink, create an account. You can begin with the free plan to test the tool. Then create a page for your digital products using:
We also have a detailed guide on creating a Taplink page for selling digital goods. You can learn more about advanced product settings and technical details here.
Gumroad is an e-commerce platform that allows creators to sell digital products or memberships. With it, you can create a landing page, add your products to it, and set up payments. You can also use a few marketing tools and track your sales performance.
Gumroad may work well for you if you’re a solo creator, have relatively small sales, and don’t need a branded store with a unique design. Otherwise, you’d better consider alternative tools.
Gumroad charges a commission on each of your sales. Usually, the commission is 10% + $0.50 per transaction. However, if your product is purchased on Gumroad’s marketplace via the Discover page, you’ll need to pay the highest fee, which is 30%.
Yes, Gumroad is overall a secure platform for both sellers and buyers. It employs protections like PDF stamping, IP tracking, HTTPS, and SSL data encryption.
Taplink can be an effective alternative to Gumroad for those looking to:
- Have a unique page for selling products.
- Add videos, price lists, pricing plans, or a countdown timer to the page.
- Receive more payments through 60+ payment processors.
- Pay 0% seller fee.