Why Payhip Is Still the Best Gumroad Alternative 2026
In my opinion, tested side by side
My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.
I am Gumroad* guy. Love the platform. Been there for years. Have no real complaints. For me, Gumroad works.
But Gumroad is not ideal for all creators. And for those, Payhip* might be the perfect substitute. It’s good at exactly the things Gumroad’s not great at.
If Gumroad’s not for you, keep reading.
Side by side
I test ran Payhip and Gumroad in parallel for more than six months a while back.
Two storefronts, same products, same audience, same expectations.
That was a great experiment. Fees, sales volume, branding control, email quirks, GDPR stuff, customer complaints. All of it added up, and eventually a pattern showed up.
Before getting into the verdict, let’s quickly anchor what these platforms actually are, because they sound similar but behave differently once we start building something.
What’s Gumroad
Gumroad is the simplest way to sell digital products online.
Upload a file, write a description, publish, done. E-books, templates, icons, small software tools, design assets.
The whole setup is dead simple. Gumroad also has great email automation baked right in, a segmentation feature, a marketplace called Discover, an affiliate system, and automatic VAT handling.
The catch is the price.
Gumroad takes a 10 percent + 50 cents on each sale + payment processor fees.
And the storefront design is extremely limited. If we want anything beyond “Here’s a file, buy it”, we hit a wall pretty fast.
What’s Payhip
Payhip is also a creator platform for selling digital products.
Same basics. But it goes further. It supports physical products (which Gumroad dropped support for a while ago), custom pages, themes, and full storefront branding.
You can turn Payhip into a real, custom-designed website, not just a checkout link.
The fee starts at 5 percent, with paid plans that bring it down even further, all the way to zero on Pro.
VAT for EU/UK is handled automatically. Cookie banner included. Upsells and cross-sells built in. Custom checkout fields. It’s flexible and creator-friendly, especially when the goal is long-term growth.
Direct Comparison
I published the same products in both stores and waited. Different behavior showed up almost immediately.
Sales on Gumroad were consistent, but the fees cut deeply once volume grew. There were also quite a few moments where I wished I could tweak the storefront design. But Gumroad has only one theme: Gumroad.
The best you can do is pick from a handful of fonts, and shuffle some products around.
Payhip feels more like a website you own. You can redesign the homepage. Add pages. Move blocks around. Test different flows. And the fee difference became more obvious every month.
Gumroad: Pros and Cons
Pros
Simple yet powerful email automation with workflows
Customer segmentation
Discover marketplace
Affiliate program
VAT handling
Cons
High fee (10% + 50c + plus payment fees)
Storefront design is extremely limited
Not ideal if branding matters
Payhip: Pros and Cons
Pros
Customizable storefront, themes, pages, branding
5 percent fee, or lower with paid plans
VAT handling for EU & UK
Custom checkout forms
Works for physical goods
Integration for popular email marketing tools like Kit, MailerLite, EmailOctopus, etc.
Cons
No proper native email functionality and automation
Affiliate program is limited and payouts are manual
A bit old school backend design
The “real” difference
Gumroad
Gumroad’s biggest strength is its simplicity.
It’s perfect when we don’t want to think, don’t want to design, don’t want to manage anything.
And the email automation is a huge bonus for small creators who don’t want another tool like ConvertKit or EmailOctopus (that can become quite costly).
For beginners or low-volume sellers, Gumroad makes total sense.
Payhip
Payhip’s biggest strength is control.
It gives us the ability to build a storefront that actually feels like our brand. Add pages, tweak layouts, test marketing ideas, run upsells, build bundles, offer different formats of the same product. Everything feels more serious and long-term.
And the lower fees change matter a lot with high-volume sellers. Even modest sales numbers look better on Payhip.
For a $20 product sold 1,000 times, Gumroad + Stripe fees cost about $3,100, while Payhip + Stripe fees cost $1,600 — leaving you $1,500 more with Payhip.
If we care about growth and margin, Payhip wins. If we just want to upload a file and not think too much, Gumroad wins.
The Bottom Line
Gumroad is great for creators who want quick setup, and solid email workflows, and don’t mind the higher fee because their revenue is still small.
Payhip* is the better choice once we want more control, lower fees, proper customization, and a storefront that feels like part of a brand instead of a generic checkout page.
And if neither fits your personality or business model, there are a gazillion other options out there, like Lemon Squeezy, Podia, Sellfy, Stan.store…
What I look for in a good alternative is:
ease of use
design
VAT handling (very underrated and often overlooked)
fees
Payhip* offers all that. Most competitors don’t.
*this is an affiliate or SparkLoop* partner link. I’ll get a commission if you decide to sign up.