Podia vs Gumroad – Differences That Matter In 2024

After the recent changes in Payhip, Gumroad, and Podia – we now recommend Payhip to all our readers for selling any digital products (including online courses). You can now run an online store using a custom domain even as a free tier user of Payhip!

Earlier, we had reviewed both Podia and Gumroad on this website. In this present article, we will compare these two platforms and find out their differences.

These two eCommerce platforms have several unique capabilities that can cater to a different set of users base. So, it is useful to compare Podia and Gumroad to find out the right fit for you.

So, let us now dive deep into the differences.

Differences between Podia and Gumroad

• Key Differences
• Onboarding
• What you can sell
• Customization
• Payout Processing
• Marketing Tools
• Pricing and Fees
• Extra Features
• Integrations
• Summary

Key Differences Between Podia and Gumroad

Differences in Onboarding Between Podia and Gumroad

Creating an account is the first step towards using any platform. In this section, we will compare the relative ease of onboarding in Gumroad against creating an account in Podia.

Onboarding in Gumroad

Getting started with Gumroad is easy and fast. The onboarding process is smooth. 

1. Head over to Gumroad and click on the button Start Selling. 
2. You can sign up with your email. If you prefer, you can also sign up with your existing Facebook or Google account. 

After you create your free account, you must provide some basic information on your store.

For example, you must provide 

1. The name of your Gumroad store. 
2. An optional bio of your store.
3. Your country. 
4. The type of store or the Gumroad community.
5. You must also select an appropriate user name.

If you opt for the Gumroad free plan, your store will exist as gumroad.com/user-name. 

After you provide all these basic details, you can add your first product. 

Creating an Account with Podia

Getting started with Podia is an equally fast process.

1. Head over to Podia.
2. You will notice a button saying Start free Trial. Click on it to start your 14 days trial.
3. Podia needs only your name, email, and password to complete your onboarding.

You must note that Podia does not have any free plans. You get 14 days to test the platform for free. 

If you wish to continue the platform beyond your trial period, you must upgrade to one of the paid plans of Podia.

Podia does not need your credit card details when you sign up.

After signing up as a user, you need to activate your account. As an active Podia user, you can access your dashboard to customize the storefront, sell products, set up marketing campaigns, and perform various other admin tasks.

Verdict – Both these platforms let you create an account with the same ease. The onboarding experience is simple, smooth, and fast. So, it is a tie between Podia and Gumroad.

Differences in Products You Can Sell With Podia and Gumroad

After you create an account in a hosted eCommerce platform, you start selling products. In this section, we will discuss the type of products you can sell using Podia and Gumroad.

Selling with Gumroad

Using Gumroad, you can sell ready-to-ship goods as well as preorders. You can sell both digital goods and physical products.

For example, you can sell eBooks, pdfs, movies, courses, music, and so on. You are even free to sell many versions of the same digital product. For example, you can sell PDF, ePub, Mobi versions of your eBook. For physical goods, you can define different product variants.

Gumroad can handle license keys for you if you plan to sell software. You can even sell memberships and regularly charge your customers. If you are selling PDF downloads, you can stamp your pdf files with the buyer’s details and reduce the chance of illegal sharing of downloaded files.

You can even use Gumroad to rent your videos and offer your video for rent at a lower price. Your customers will have 72 hours to watch it within 30 days.

Gumroad lets you manage the shipping of physical goods. You are also free to restrict shipment to specific countries. The platform lets you charge shipping fees to your customers. It also supports sales tax handling to some extent.

One of the key features I liked in Gumroad is its ability to sell preorders on your online store. You can set a release date in the future and accept preorders. But, remember that you cannot sell services using Gumroad.

Selling with Podia

Podia is more famous as a platform to sell digital courses. But, what is often overlooked is its ability to serve as an eCommerce platform to sell digital products.

Podia lets you sell digital courses. It also lets you drip your course content over time. If you are using videos for your courses, you do not need another service like Vimeo. Podia takes care of hosting your videos and offers unlimited bandwidth.

However, there are certain limitations of Podia that you must be aware of. For example, Podia does not have an in-built mechanism for issuing certificates or badges. If you need this feature, you must integrate your Podia store with a third-party application using Zapier.

You can use Podia to build your own subscription-based business and earn recurring revenue. The platform allows you to create multiple plans or tiers for your membership business. You can even set up a free tier for your customers to generate leads.

 Podia allows you to create member-exclusive content. You can restrict your premium content, posts, or info products to paid or free members.

Podia is well suited to sell your digital products. For example, you can sell eBooks, printable files, music files, etc. 

If you have multiple digital products in your store, you can make use of Podia’s intelligent upselling tool to recommend related products and boost your sales.

In short, if you are selling digital products or e-courses – Podia is a very powerful and capable platform.

Verdict – I will keep Gumroad a little ahead here because it supports physical products as well. But if you are interested in choosing the better platform to sell digital goods – Podia seems more capable than Gumroad.

Differences In Store Customization Between Podia and Gumroad

Branding is a unique need of every online shop. So, when you choose an online platform – it is necessary to understand the level of customization offered by the platform.

Customizing a Gumroad storefront

Gumroad gives you access to a hosted storefront. But when it comes to customizing your storefront, Gumroad lets you tweak your webshop only to a limited extent.

For example,

1. You can only select one of the few themes.
2. You can customize only the background and colors of buttons. 
3. You can personalize your store with a custom background and a profile photo. 
4. Gumroad also lets you connect your store to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

If you have more than nine products in your store, you will find filters appearing on the left side by default. The filters help your customers browse your products easily. They can sort and filter the products in your shop. 

If you do not want these filters for your customers, you can disable them as well.

If you know CSS, you can customize your store a little bit further. 

But the bottom line is, you cannot have a completely unique look for your Gumroad store with a custom theme, etc.

Customizing a Podia storefront

Podia, on the other hand, gives access to the admin dashboard to every active admin user. With this access, you can navigate to the Storefront Editor and start customizing your storefront.

Podia’s Editor lets you customize the product pages by adding text, images, videos, themes, and colors. You can even modify your storefront by adding widgets with text, images, links, and testimonials. Podia also lets you apply a custom theme to your store.

Podia allows you to use your own domain for free. But if you prefer, you can even host your storefront as a subdomain of podia.com.

But note that Podia’s storefront customizer is not that versatile as standalone platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce. If you are looking for a uniquely customized storefront, you should probably look at platforms like Shopify.

Verdict – Both Podia and Gumroad cannot completely customize your storefront. However, the capabilities of Podia are a little advanced than Gumroad as far as store customization is concerned. In our judgment, Podia scores a little extra. 

Difference in Payout Processing Between Podia and Gumroad

An online storefront software is just that. It equips you with all necessary to run an online shop. But, at the end of the day, you must receive the post sales money in your account. In this section, we will discuss how Podia and Gumroad processes your payouts.

Payout Processing in Podia

As an eCommerce platform, Podia does not directly collect any money. If you use Podia for selling, all payments are processed by the payment processor you choose to connect with.

This brings us to the question regarding the supported payment processors. You can connect your Podia account with your Stripe or (and) PayPal account to receive the payments. These payment processors process the payment and deposit the money directly into your bank account.

In other words, the time and threshold needed to complete this process depend on the payment gateway and typically takes around two business days to complete.

You must use Stripe to accept recurring payments and to sell memberships. PayPal has technical limitations to accept recurring payments and cannot be used.

The takeaway here is, Podia does not hold your money. Your payment processor, PayPal or Stripe, will determine the necessary settlement time and fees involved.

How Gumroad processes the payout

Processing payments is a little different with Gumroad.

If you live in the USA, UK, Australia, or Canada, you must receive payments in your bank account. If you live elsewhere, you can only receive payment via PayPal.

Gumroad does not support any other payment modes for payout. In other words, you cannot use Gumroad if you cannot use Paypal.

Moreover, Gumroad will pay you via Direct Deposit or PayPal only if your minimum payable reaches $10. Also, the payouts happen only on Fridays.

In other words, you can not have instant withdrawals if your account balance does not reach the minimum threshold and it is not a Friday!

Verdict – Podia is a clear winner as far as payout processing is concerned. Support of the popular Stripe platform in addition to the instant payout processing based on user-selected payout processor is a definite plus for using Podia over Gumroad.

Gumroad vs Podia – Marketing Tool

While running an online business, you will need different features and services to meet your needs. These tools enable you to promote your business. In this section, we will discuss the types of features and utilities offered by Podia and Gumroad to help you promote your store.

Podia Utilities

Podia has several efficient eCommerce tools built right into the system. It means you do not need any external applications or extensions to add many advanced functionalities to your store.

In this section, we will discuss a few of those.

Email Marketing with Podia

Email marketing is built right into Podia. You can use the built-in functionality to send regular newsletters to your customers. You can even create drip campaigns using Podia’s in-built email marketing tool.

A significant limitation of the in-built tool is the absence of an ability to personalize emails. In other words, you can not send personalized newsletters at present. If you are looking for a complete eMail automation solution specially tailored for eCommerce, we strongly recommend Omnisend.

Although Podia is not a complete replacement for powerful email marketing platforms, it is an effective and self-sufficient platform. In case you need more capabilities, you can integrate with any of the supported email marketing platforms.

Affiliate Programs For Your Podia Store

Affiliate programs can give a tremendous boost to your sales. With an affiliate program, you pay a commission to all referrers generating sales in your store. Typically, the affiliate programs are hosted by third-party applications and you pay a recurring subscription fee for using the services.

Podia has an in-built system to create an affiliate program for your store. You get most features of an external application but for no additional price.

Upselling In Podia

Upselling refers to recommending related products to your customers. Upselling can result in better sales.

If you have multiple courses or digital products in your store, you can upsell the related products to your customers. Podia has in-built features to support upselling.

But, note that Podia does not support upselling free products.

Product Bundles With Podia

Bundling products is an effective strategy to sell multiple related products, often at a discounted price. The reduced price often triggers the buying impulse in your customers. 

Podia has in-built features to promote your products by creating product bundles. You can even define offers for these product bundles.

Selling Pre-Orders With Podia

If your product is still not ready for shipping, you can still go ahead and accept orders. In eCommerce terms, this is known as pre-orders. 

As a seller, pre-orders help to understand the demand for an upcoming product. Podia lets you book pre-launch orders. 

If you plan to judge the demand for an unfinished product, Podia can be your perfect companion.

Marketing Tools in Gumroad

Gumroad also has several features which you can utilize to promote your store.

Pre-Orders

Unlike its closest competitor Payhip, Gumroad lets you sell pre-orders. Just as with Podia, you can use Gumroad to analyze the demand of your upcoming product.

Discount Codes

Gumroad allows you to create discount codes for your store. You can create a discount code manually or accept an auto-generated one.

Discounts in Gumroad can be by percentage or amount. 

You can enable the coupon for a specific product, or all products in your store.

Affiliate Program

Gumroad also lets you create your own affiliate program to offer commissions to your referrers. The steps are easy and intuitive. Note that you can offer a commission between 1% to 90% of the total sale amount.

eMail Marketing

Gumroad also gives you a basic mechanism to connect easily with your customers and followers.

You can use email marketing tools to connect with your customers and followers. Gumroad lets you create and embed a subscribe or follow form on your store and website. 

If you want to use email marketing with your followers you can use software like Mailchimp. Zapier integrations can connect Mailchimp and Gumroad.

Verdict – Overall, the features offered by Podia in this arena are more polished and complete. While Gumroad also offers similar features, they are more basic. For me, Podia wins here. 

Difference in Pricing and Fees Between Podia and Gumroad

When you choose a hosted online shop builder, you usually pay recurring subscription fees to avail the premium features. In short, we are talking about the platform cost of running an online business. In this section, we will elaborate on the different pricing plans available to the Gumroad and Podia users.

Gumroad pricing

Gumroad offers two pricing plans that you can choose as a customer.

Gumroad Free Plan

By default, all new customers get subscribed to the Free Plan and can start selling on Gumroad for free. This is a perpetual free tier with no monthly fee. However, you have to pay a 5% transaction fee in the free Gumroad plan. 

Gumroad Free plan has the following features:

• You can add unlimited products
• You get basic yet solid analytics of your store.
• You can have limited posts and workflows
• SD streaming 
• Customer management 

Gumroad Creator Plan

The Gumroad Creator Plan starts from a monthly fee of $10 for up to 1000 customers. You get a discount if you pay upfront for the whole year.

The creator plan has different tiers depending on the number of distinct customers you have within a year. The tiers and fees get adjusted automatically as your customer count changes. 

Note that there is no transaction fee in the Gumroad creator plan. 

In the paid Gumroad plan, in addition to the free plan features:

• You can use your custom domain.
• You can have unlimited posts and workflow.
• You can have unlimited HD streaming.
• You can remove the Gumroad branding.
• You can have custom Delivery products.
• You can add your own CSS.

Note that Gumroad does not charge you for any free products. Also, you need to pay the payment gateway fees in both these plans.

Podia Pricing

Podia, in contrast, does not have any free plans. But it gives you fourteen days to try the platform for free.

You can test every feature of the fully functional platform for free without any need for a credit card. But if you want to continue using Podia beyond the trial period, you must upgrade to one of the two paid plans.

Interestingly, the two premium plans are known as Mover and Shaker.

Podia’s Mover Plan

The Mover plan is the cheaper of the two paid plans of Podia. It comes at a monthly subscription price of $39 per month. If you pay for the whole year upfront, you get a discount of $78. 

When you choose the Mover plan of Podia, you get access to the following features:

• You can sell downloadable digital products and online courses.
• You can host free or paid webinars for your customers. You can offer both scheduled and live webinars from your Podia storefront.
• You can use Podia’s email marketing tools to build your own list.
• You can connect to your customers using the in-built live chat tool.
• You can use Podia to sell unlimited products to any number of customers. There is no restriction on the number of products, customers, emails sent, sales, and files hosted.
• Moreover, there is no transaction fee in Podia.
• You will have access to Podia’s 7-days-a-week support using live chat, email, or video calls.
• If you want to migrate your existing store to Podia, you can avail yourself of Podia’s Free Migration support. Note that this is available only with the annual plan.

In short, Podia’s Mover plan is perfect for creators launching their first digital products.

Podia’s Shaker Plan

The Shaker plan is a superset of the Mover plan. In other words, if you choose this plan, you get many more extra features than its cheaper counterpart.

Of course, the Shaker plan is more expensive and is available for $79 per month. Users opting for the annual plan get a discount of $158.

A Shaker plan user can access every Mover plan feature. Besides that, you also get access to the following functionalities. 

• You can earn recurring revenue by offering a monthly or yearly membership subscription to your customers. You can even create a free membership to generate leads.
• You can sell live coaching classes using Zoom integrations.
• You can run your own blog to publish articles and drive traffic to your store.
• You can have your own affiliate program and drive referral sales to your store. 
• You can embed offsite buy buttons on any website, blog, or landing page. Your customers can purchase your products right on your own website with the help of these offsite embeds.
• You can install any third-party code snippets like Facebook Pixel, Sumo, Olark, and more.

The Shaker Plan is meant for creators ready to grow their businesses.

We encourage you to visit the Podia website and check the latest pricing plans.

Verdict – If you need a perpetual free platform, Gumroad wins over Podia. However, if you are ready to pay for the platform – Podia is less expensive than Gumroad. Moreover, the pricing plans are simpler and straightforward than Gumroad. This essentially means your cost of running the business will always be predictable with Podia. 

Podia vs Gumroad – Extra Features

In this section, we will discuss the extra features offered by Gumroad and Podia. 

When we talk about Gumroad, we must mention Gumroad Discover. It is an interesting but paid Gumroad feature that you must be aware of.

When you opt for this, Gumroad recommends your products to people who browse the Gumroad Discover portal. It often leads to an increase in conversions.

If a product is sold using Gumroad Discover, you must pay an additional transaction fee of 10% to Gumroad.

Podia does not have any such comparable feature. 

Verdict – Gumroad scores more in this parameter. If you are looking for a paid option to generate extra leads, Gumroad Discover can surely help. 

Difference in Integrations

When you use a hosted eCommerce platform, you do not need to maintain the software yourself. However, you may need to integrate your store with third party external services to avail of extra features. In this section, we will find out the type of out-of-the-box integrations supported by Podia and Gumroad.

Gumroad Integrations

Using Gumroad, you can sell your products on your Gumroad store. 

Moreover, you can also sell these products on your own website using Gumroad overlay and Gumroad embed. 

Gumroad Overlay lets you place a button or link on your website. Gumroad embed allows you to embed your product on your web page. 

If you have an SSL certificate set up, the buying process happens right on your website. If your site is not secured with HTTPS, you can redirect customers to the payment form in a new and secured tab.

In addition, Gumroad has seamless integrations with the following site builders:

• Weebly
• Squarespace
• Tumblr
• WordPress

Podia Integrations

On the other hand, Podia has several in-built integrations with various third-party apps that you may need to run your business.

For example, you can integrate your store with multiple email services providers, analytics platforms, and advertising systems. We encourage you to visit the Podia website to check the most recent list of official integrations.

Moreover, you can use Zapier integrations to connect your Podia storefront to several external tools like Google Sheets, Trello, LeadPages, and so on.

The bottom line is Podia can integrate with most eCommerce platforms that support Zapier.

It is necessary to note that as a platform, Podia has several powerful functionalities in-built in it. For example, you do not need to use a third-party service to host your videos. You also get an effective email and affiliate marketing tools present right in the system.

The bottom line is if you need a third-party service for a feature that is not available on the platform – Podia has you covered.

Verdict – Podia is the clear winner here. The integrations it offers are far more diverse and complete in nature. The nature of out-of-the-box integrations is far from impressive. 

Differences Between Podia and Gumroad – Conclusion

Overall, we found Podia is a better and more competent eCommerce platform with a straightforward pricing plan. The presence of several powerful eCommerce functionalities in the out-of-the-box solution makes it easy to run an online business. The number of supported integrations also lets you use third-party applications easily.

On the flip side, you can not customize your storefront using Podia.

If you are looking for a hosted eCommerce platform that gives you the ability of complete and complex customization, choose Shopify.

Gumroad, on the other hand, has a perpetual free tier. It may be a good option if you are looking for a free eCommerce platform. However, I found Payhip as a better free alternative to Gumroad. You can read our comparison between Payhip and Gumroad to know why Payhip is better.

But, as long as the paid platforms are compared, I recommend Podia over Gumroad.