If you are looking for a Gumroad alternative to create an online store, then you have several great options.
Gumroad is popular for selling digital products, online courses, and membership content. However, it lacks flexibility and recently increased its fees significantly.
We’ve worked with a few different Gumroad alternatives, including MemberPress for our video site and Easy Digital Downloads for selling our software. We’ve also researched many other options for other types of online store needs.
In this article, we will share the best Gumroad competitors. These platforms will help you sell digital products and make money online without the high costs.
If you are in a hurry, you can see our top picks in the table below:
Rank | Platform | Best For | Pricing |
---|---|---|---|
🥇 | MemberPress | Membership sites and online courses | $179.50/yr |
🥈 | Easy Digital Downloads | Selling digital products | $99.50/yr |
🥉 | WP Simple Pay | Accepting online payments without a cart | $49.50/yr |
🏅 | WooCommerce | Creating customizable online stores | Free |
🎖 | WPForms | Building payment forms | $199.50/yr |
Why Do You Need an Alternative to Gumroad?
Gumroad is a hosted eCommerce platform where you can upload your products and start selling. To sell digital goods, you don’t need a hosting service, a payment service, or an online store.
While it is beginner-friendly, there are several drawbacks to using Gumroad.
For starters, the platform now charges a flat 10% fee for every sale in addition to the transaction fee.
Previously, the percentage decreased as revenue grew. However, the new pricing change takes a significant amount of your income.
For creators, this means that in addition to your local government taxes, you’ll now be paying a Gumroad tax, which simply isn’t acceptable.
Besides that, Gumroad offers little flexibility compared to other eCommerce solutions. This became even more obvious when we compared it to the alternatives listed below.
For instance, you don’t get features for cross-selling or upselling products to boost sales. If you’re selling online courses, Gumroad is at a disadvantage as it doesn’t include a learning management system (LMS).
Other alternatives to Gumroad provide more features for personalizing your online store and providing a better customer experience.
That said, let’s look at some of the best alternatives to Gumroad.
1. MemberPress
MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin that lets you sell subscription-based digital products and online courses.
It’s a great alternative to Gumroad, as the plugin is user-friendly. You can easily create a membership site, set up multiple subscription levels, and control who can access content and products.
MemberPress also offers a built-in drag-and-drop course builder functionality to create and sell online courses. It includes a virtual classroom feature, which produces an immersive learning experience.
Another feature offered by MemberPress that you won’t find in Gumroad is automatic drip content. The plugin allows you to release paid content to subscribers over time or once they’ve cleared a particular module.
MemberPress also integrates with other popular WordPress plugins.
For instance, you can track your site’s performance by combining it with MonsterInsights or create your affiliate marketing program by connecting it with AffiliateWP.
Pricing: MemberPress’s basic plan starts at $179.50 per year. The Pro plan offers more features, such as quizzes and premium integrations.
Related: See our complete MemberPress review for more details.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is another Gumroad alternative you can use to sell digital products like ebooks, plugins, software, PDF files, and more.
The plugin is best for bloggers, developers, marketers, artists, designers, and other creators to sell products online. It offers powerful features and allows you to create beautiful digital goods stores.
You can start with EDD for free with SiteGround EDD hosting or just try the free version from their website.
We use Easy Digital Downloads ourselves to sell our MonsterInsights and WPForms software, which shows just how powerful the plugin is. Plus, there are managed hosting services that come with EDD pre-installed.
Other than that, Easy Digital Downloads offers multiple extensions. You can easily integrate different payment services, email marketing tools, messaging services, and more.
The best part about using EDD is its software licensing feature. This feature allows you to sell SaaS products, apps, and other tools with proper digital rights.
Pricing: Easy Digital Downloads premium pricing plans start from $99.50 per year. However, you can also use the free version of EDD to get started and start selling online.
3. WP Simple Pay
WP Simple Pay is the best Stripe payment plugin for WordPress, and you can use it to accept online payments without setting up a shopping cart.
It’s a great alternative to Gumroad, as you can sell digital products by simply adding a payment form using the plugin.
The best part is that WP Simple Pay offers a free version. You can accept one-time or recurring payments directly from your WordPress site.
With WP Simple Pay, you get 13 payment methods in 135+ currencies spread across 45+ countries. Some popular methods include credit card payments, ACH debit payments, Google Pay, Apple Pay services, and more.
You can also offer to buy now, pay later payment plans using WP Simple Pay. The plugin supports Klarna and Afterpay/Clearpay, which allow customers to pay in installments. This is great if you’re selling high-value or luxury products.
Pricing: The WP Simple Pay premium plan starts at $49.50 per year with the Personal plan. If you want to add recurring payments or buy now pay later options, you’ll need the Pro license. You can also use a free WP Simple Pay Lite version to get started.
4. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It is an open-source platform for creating any kind of digital store.
It lets you sell physical products online, set up membership plans, offer digital downloads and affiliate products, create dropshipping stores, and more.
The best part is that there are many themes designed for WooCommerce. This allows you to fully customize and control the design of your eCommerce store.
Another advantage of using WooCommerce over Gumroad is that you can use built-in options or third-party plugins to upsell and cross-sell products, recover cart abandonments, offer discount codes, free shipping, and more by using powerful tools like FunnelKit.
One of WooCommerce’s biggest strengths is that it supports many lesser-known payment gateways from different regions. That’s a big win for creators in developing countries who may not have access to PayPal or Stripe.
It easily integrates with different payment services and third-party plugins. For example, the free Stripe Payment Gateway for WooCommerce plugin allows you to quickly start accepting credit and debit card payments online.
WooCommerce also offers premium extensions. These allow you to easily optimize your store for SEO and boost search engine rankings to attract more visitors.
To create a WooCommerce store, you’ll need WordPress hosting and a domain name.
However, many hosting companies like Bluehost come with WooCommerce pre-installed.
Pricing: WooCommerce is a free eCommerce platform you can use as a Gumroad alternative. While the plugin is free, you’ll still need to pay for website hosting. Please see our guide on how much an eCommerce store costs for more details.
5. WPForms
WPForms is the best drag-and-drop online form builder, and it can be an excellent alternative to Gumroad if you want a simple way to accept credit card payments.
It lets you easily build payment forms and accept credit card payments using Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and Square payment gateways.
Aside from that, WPForms also integrates with hundreds of email marketing services, so you can automatically add your customers to your marketing automation drip campaigns.
WPForms allows you to accept one-time and recurring payments, and it doesn’t charge additional transactional fees.
Pricing: WPForms Pro costs $199.50 per year to accept payments via Stripe, Square, PayPal, and Authorize.net with no additional transaction fees. The free version of WPForms lets you accept Stripe payments, but there’s a 3% transaction fee.
6. MemberMouse
MemberMouse is a powerful and scalable WordPress membership plugin. It’s a great Gumroad alternative that lets you sell membership subscriptions, premium content, products, and more.
MemberMouse also allows you to build and sell online courses. Using the drag-and-drop visual builder, you can create lessons, quizzes, and certificates that your subscribers will love.
MemberMouse comes with many features to help you grow your revenue. You can accept one-time or recurring payments, offer free or paid trials, add one-click upsells, enable gifting functionality, and even offer payment plans.
Plus, MemberMouse offers advanced automation features to help you manage your membership site more efficiently. This includes push notifications, email purchase receipts, overdue payment notifications, my account self-service, and more.
Pricing: MemberMouse starts at $199.50 per year, which comes with Stripe payments, drip content scheduling, online course builder, email marketing integrations, and more.
7. WishList Member
WishList Member is another user-friendly, all-in-one membership plugin for WordPress. It comes with powerful features to protect and sell members-only content.
It offers easy one-click content protection for pages and posts. To set your content to members-only, simply click the ‘Protect’ button right inside the WordPress editor.
With WishList Member, you can create unlimited membership levels. You can also quickly connect to your preferred payment processor to collect one-time and recurring payments.
In addition, it comes with a built-in course builder, automatic drip content, partial display snippets, an admin dashboard, 50+ integrations, and much more.
Pricing: WishList Member starts at $149.50 per year for one website.
Related: To learn more, check out our detailed WishList Member review.
8. AccessAlly
AccessAlly is a super flexible membership and LMS plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily scale an online business through memberships, online courses, and group coaching.
You can create unlimited membership levels and use tag-based permission to control access to your content. You can sell all-access memberships, membership cohorts that start on a specific date, and evergreen memberships.
With the drag-and-drop course builder, you can quickly create engaging courses with video and audio lessons, quizzes, progress tracking, homework submissions, and autogenerated certificates.
It also comes with a ton of upselling and cross-selling features like 1-click upsells, order bumps, bulk course enrollment, cross-selling members dashboard, abandoned cart follow-up, and more.
Pricing: AccessAlly starts at $82 per month for unlimited courses and members.
9. LearnDash
LearnDash is one of the best LMS plugins for WordPress and allows you to run online courses. The plugin offers powerful features to manage your courses, add quizzes, run surveys, and easily accept online payments.
Since Gumroad doesn’t offer a learning management system, LearnDash is an excellent alternative for anyone looking to sell professional online courses.
With LearnDash, you get a drag-and-drop course builder and multimedia support to run webinars, videos, and tutorials. The plugin also lets you add badges and rewards using different gamification tools. This helps make your lessons engaging.
Pricing: LearnDash premium plans start from $199 per year for one website.
Related: To learn more, check out our detailed LearnDash review.
10. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a popular email marketing and eCommerce platform built specifically for creators. They allow you to easily sell digital products, run paid newsletters, sell recurring subscriptions, and even set up tip jars.
The best part is that you get an integrated eCommerce and marketing platform, so when someone becomes a customer, you can send them automated email sequences, targeted marketing, and other subscriber-engaging content.
ConvertKit is a hosted platform, so it comes with a landing page builder and custom form templates, and it allows you to get unlimited traffic.
Pricing: ConvertKit is free to use for up to 300 subscribers, but your pricing will increase based on the number of subscribers you have. To access the CreatorPro tools, you will need to upgrade to the $25 per month plan.
11. Teachable
Teachable is another popular course-building platform that lets you create and sell online courses. You can use it as an alternative to Gumroad to market and promote your online courses.
It is similar to LearnDash and provides a complete solution for creating courses. What makes Teachable different is that it is a hosted platform, so you don’t have to worry about managing any additional software or installing updates.
Teachable is beginner-friendly and offers a drag-and-drop course builder. It also takes care of online payments and offers multiple payment options. Other features provided by the service include integration with third-party marketing and analytics tools.
Pricing: You can get started on Teachable for free, but it will charge a $1 to 10% transaction fee. There are also premium pricing plans starting from $29 per month.
12. Thinkific
Thinkific is similar to Teachable and is also a self-hosted platform for selling online courses. It is easy to use and is a fitting Gumroad alternative to creating courses.
It offers a drag-and-drop course builder that is very easy to use. Plus, you get different themes and templates to get started quickly. Thinkific also allows you to create subscription-based programs, landing pages, and a membership community.
It also easily integrates with 40+ different tools and platforms, such as MailChimp, Shopify, Google Analytics, and Salesforce.
Pricing: Thinkific offers a 6-month premium plan for $196.
13. Payhip
Payhip is another Gumroad alternative that you can use as an eCommerce platform. It lets you sell digital downloads, online courses, memberships, coaching, and physical products.
Besides that, it offers a lot of customization, which isn’t available in Gumroad. For instance, you can use the store builder to create a beautiful and professional online business site within minutes.
If your customers are from Europe or the United Kingdom, then the platform will take full responsibility for complying with the value-added tax (VAT) laws. It will automatically detect their location and apply the correct sales tax or VAT amount to their transaction.
Other features offered by Payhip include different marketing tools to boost conversion rates. For example, it lets you add coupons, cross-sell or upsell products, order bumps, add referrals and affiliates, and show customer reviews to add social proof.
Pricing: Payhip offers a free plan that you can use to get started. However, Stripe and PayPal will charge a 5% transaction fee in the free plan. There are also premium plans starting from $29 per month.
Bonus: Sellfy
Sellfy is the next Gumroad alternative on our list. It helps you create a storefront for selling digital and physical products and promote your products anywhere online. Simply embed the Sellfy checkout process on your website and market your digital goods.
You can also launch a print-on-demand merchandise store using Sellfy. Simply design, create, and sell using different storefront themes. You can also sell digital downloads and subscriptions using Sellfy.
What makes Sellfy different from Gumroad is that it includes built-in marketing features like upselling, email marketing, and discount codes. Plus, it offers more customization features than Gumroad.
Pricing: Sellfy offers premium pricing plans starting from $22 per month (billed annually), and you get a 14-day free trial.
Bonus: BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a popular eCommerce platform, and you can use it as a Gumroad alternative.
It is a fully hosted eCommerce service that easily integrates with WordPress. You can use it to sell all kinds of digital and physical products.
The service automatically creates different pages for your store, including a shopping cart, sign-in page, account area, sales page, and more.
What makes BigCommerce different is that it lets you sell products across various channels, such as Amazon and social media platforms like Instagram. Plus, the eCommerce solution doesn’t charge any transaction fees and lets you choose from multiple payment gateways.
Pricing: BigCommerce pricing plans start from $29.99 per month, and you get a 15-day free trial.
Bonus: Shopify
Shopify is the last Gumroad alternative on our list. It is an all-in-one eCommerce solution that you can use to create an online store. It offers more customization options and third-party integrations compared to Gumroad.
With Shopify, you don’t have to worry about web hosting, security, backups, updates, and caching. It does this for you so you can focus on uploading products to the site and promoting them.
Shopify offers pre-built themes for setting up a store. It also makes it easy to manage inventory and accept online payments from a single platform. You can even use Shopify with WordPress to sell products online.
Pricing: Shopify pricing starts from $1 per month with the Basic plan. However, if you want low transaction costs and advanced features, then there is an Advanced plan costing you $299 per month.
Which Gumroad Alternative Should You Use?
After comparing different eCommerce solutions, we believe MemberPress is the best Gumroad alternative. It is a paid WordPress plugin that helps create subscriptions, sell digital products to premium members, and set up online courses without any extra fees.
If you’re looking for a free alternative to Gumroad, then we highly recommend Easy Digital Downloads. You can use its free version to get started and start selling digital products like ebooks, PDFs, spreadsheets, videos, digital art, apps, plugins, and more.
If you’re looking for a simple solution that lets you accept online payments without the complexity of creating a shopping cart, then WP Simple Pay is your best option.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to create an online store from scratch and have full control over it, then WooCommerce is the best option. Compared to Gumroad, you get more customization options, online store management features, and integrations.
We hope this article helped you find the best Gumroad alternative. You may also want to read our guide on how much it costs to build a WordPress website and must have WordPress plugins for business sites.
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Syed Balkhi says
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Moinuddin Waheed says
Another beautiful list of alternatives more affordable and flexible than Gumroad for creating and restricting content based on access rules.
I am using memberpress and I found it amazing in terms of ease of making restricted contents.
I have heard a lot about teachable and learn dash as well but I think memberpress is way more affordable and good than the rivals.
Moreen Jordan says
Hello Syed,
I just wanted to send you an letter to let you know how much I appreciate your newsletters with all the amazing information for WP Beginners. I have learned so much, I look forward to receiving your emails to see what else I can learn.
Again, thank you.
Moreen Jordan
Editorial Staff says
Thank you Moreen
Admin
Chukwuezugo Aronu says
You wrote that gumroad is a “self-hosted” eCommerce platform. I think it is actually “hosted” as they handle the hosting for you.
Editorial Staff says
Thank you just fixed this error
Admin