Gumroad Is Nearly the Perfect Newsletter Platform
The simple feature that would kill most ESPs
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Gumroad is closer to a real newsletter platform than most people think.
I’ve been using Gumroad as an email marketing platform for years, and it’s only gotten stronger as time went by. But there’s one thing missing from perfection.
Gumroad already gives you a subscribe page, free for every creator, which is located at yourname.gumroad.com/subscribe. It’s a simple signup form. Nothing special, but it gets the job down.
Gumroad also offers embeddable forms, email broadcasts, and workflows in a way that’s stupidly simple for solo creators.
One feature is missing, though.
Why Gumroad Works Well
Gumroad is email marketing for dummies, basically.
While other ESPs like ConvertKit or MailerLite can get quite complex, Gumroad’s dead-simple.
It lets you spin up a newsletter by simply using your built‑in subscribe page, which anyone can join without buying a product.
Or you build a product (like a newsletter or membership or any digital asset) and people subscribe like that. Either way, you grow your Gumroad email/customer list.
You can also embed your subscribe form on your own website just by copying a small widget snippet into your site builder (WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, whatever). Pretty simple.
This is powerful!
The filtering is amazing. Just think about it. A FREE tool which let you send single emails or automated workflows to targeted groups, from customers, to email subscribers, to people who “have not bought X” yet. Truly powerful.
Most, if not all, ESP platforms put a hefty price tag on those features.
The Gumroad editor is basic, but supports links, files, and other standard formatting, which is usually enough for lean newsletters that don’t need fancy layouts.
Workflows Are Shockingly Good
As I said, Gumroad includes workflows, which are simple email sequences triggered when someone subscribes or buys, so new readers get a welcome series on autopilot.
So, email automation.
You pick the audience, define triggers like “joined as subscriber” or “bought a product,” add scheduling, then chain scheduled emails that go out relative to that event.
It does for me. But there’s one thing missing. And it’s a big deal.
The One Huge Missing Feature
Then comes the hard stop. Gumroad does NOT let you import existing subscribers or customers into your audience.
The help docs are explicit. There is no import for customers or subscribers, and the only workaround is to ask your current list to sign up again on your Gumroad subscribe page or via a 100% off product.
That’s why I haven’t turned completely to Gumroad for email marketing.
Why Import Would Change Everything
If Gumroad added a compliant, permission‑based subscriber import — even with strict rules— it would instantly become a serious competitor to many standalone email tools for creators who already sell there.
It would for me.
You’d have products, payments, affiliates, upsells, email broadcasts, and automated workflows in one place, with no need to duct‑tape half a stack together.
For solo creators already using Gumroad as their main storefront, being able to pull an existing list in and then run everything — launches, nurture sequences, and product updates — from this single dashboard would make 90% of other newsletter platforms unnecessary.
Until that happens, Gumroad remains a great “start from zero” newsletter tool, but not yet the top‑notch hub it could easily become.
Too bad. I haven’t given up hope, though. Maybe Gumroad is working on that import feature as we speak.
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