After the recent changes in Payhip, Gumroad, and SendOwl – 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!
Comparing SendOwl with Gumroad is not an exact apple to apple comparison. This is because there is a big difference in the way they function.
In this comparison between SendOwl and Gumroad, we will explain how they differ. If you wish to read a more comprehensive review of these two platforms, please read our detailed reviews of Gumroad and SendOwl.
SendOwl vs Gumroad
- How to sell
- What can you sell
- Customization
- Integrations
- Payout processing
- Promoting your store
- Pricing
- Extra features
- Key differences
- Summary
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Differences In the Way You Sell Products
Let us first check how you can start selling with SendOwl or Gumroad.
How to sell with Gumroad
Gumroad is a hosted eCommerce platform. You can add your products and start selling right after creating an account in Gumroad.
If you opt for a paid plan, you can even add a custom domain to your Gumroad store.
In simple words, Gumroad hosts your online storefront on its own server.
How to sell with SendOwl
Unlike Gumroad, SendOwl does not host your online shop. Instead, it serves as a powerful eCommerce back-office for your website.
With SendOwl you can convert any static website into an eCommerce store in no time.
In short, you must have some sort of web presence to sell your products using SendOwl. In other words, SendOwl can turn even a basic blogging platform like Blogger or a static website built with Jekyll into an online shop.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Products you can sell
Both SendOwl and Gumroad primarily target store owners selling digital goods. But, you can sell much more with both these platforms.
In this section, we are going to look into what you can sell using Gumroad and SendOwl.
Selling with Gumroad
With Gumroad you can sell:
- Ready to ship goods as well as pre-orders.
- You can sell digital goods as well as physical products.
- You can sell memberships with recurring payment processing.
But remember that you cannot sell services with Gumroad.
Selling with SendOwl
With SendOwl you can sell:
- Digital Product
- Physical Goods
- Subscription and Memberships
- Services
SendOwl also supports Drip functionality. This enables you to release your digital product over a period of time instead of releasing it all at once.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Differences In Store Customization
It is a basic need for every store owner to customize the store for branding purposes. In this section, we will see how far you can customize your store with SendOwl and Gumroad.
Store Customization with SendOwl
As we saw earlier, SendOwl can convert any existing website into a powerful eCommerce store. This means you have an unlimited scope to customize your store.
If you want to know what you can do with the SendOwl platform itself, then here is the answer.
- You can design optimized checkouts in SendOwl.
- You can match your brand for checkouts and email templates.
- You can add custom fields to capture extra information during checkout. For example, you can store the shape and size of an ordered product.
- You can even choose to enable or disable the default checkout fields selectively.
Gumroad Customization
On the other hand, Gumroad hosts your storefront on its own server. To customize a Gumroad store, you can select any of the pre-built themes and only tweak it within its limits.
For example:
- You can customize the background and button colors.
- You can use a custom background and a profile photo.
- You can connect your store to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
- If you know CSS, you can customize your store further but only within the Gumroad limits.
Another key thing to note is you cannot use a custom domain in the free plan of Gumroad.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Differences In Supported Integrations
This section is important for you if you already have an established website and wish to add eCommerce capabilities to your existing website.
Here, we will look at how you can integrate your existing website with SendOwl or Gumroad.
Gumroad Integrations
Gumroad is a hosted eCommerce platform. In simple words, Gumroad hosts your online storefront.
You have several options to integrate your Gumroad storefront with your existing website.
If you can tweak the HTML of your website, you can use Gumroad overlay and Gumroad embed features for integration.
Gumroad Overlay allows you to put a button or link on your website. When a customer clicks on the button a payment window opens up. You can customize these buttons to match the look and feel of your shop.
Gumroad embed lets you embed your product on your web page. If you have an SSL certificate set up, the buying process can happen on your website. If you are not using SSL, you can redirect customers to Gumroad.
Moreover, Gumroad has seamless integrations with the following site builders:
- Weebly
- Squarespace
- Tumblr
- WordPress
SendOwl Integrations
In contrast, SendOwl serves as a powerful back-office for your online store. Unlike Gumroad, it does not list your products on a storefront hosted on its servers.
It connects with your payment processor and delivers digital products to your customers after successful payment.
You can use SendOwl if you have some web presence. For example:
- You can use your social media accounts or email list to sell your products.
- You can add the SendOwl buy buttons on your own website. Even free website builders like blogger or WordPress are enough to use SendOwl.
- SendOwl integrates with eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify if you prefer so. But, I find this approach to be overkill.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Differences In Payout Processing
This is an important difference between SendOwl and Gumroad. There is a major difference in the way the two platforms process your payouts. Let us explain.
Payout Processing in Gumroad
Gumroad processes payouts with Direct deposits or PayPal.
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.
At present Gumroad does not support any other payment modes.
Moreover, Gumroad has a threshold of $10. It means Gumroad will not pay you unless your account balance reaches $10.
Not only that, Gumroad will hold your money until Friday. It releases payments only on Fridays.
Payout Processing in SendOwl
Unlike Gumroad, SendOwl does not process your payments itself. Instead, your payment gateway. e.g. Stripe or Paypal processes your payment.
SendOwl does not have any threshold of payment or any cutoff date for payout processing. If your payment gateway supports immediate processing, you will receive your payouts immediately.
SendOwl supports several payment methods. These include PayPal, Stripe, BitPay, Apple Pay, Alipay, iDeal, and credit card payments. The default checkout includes PayPal, Stripe, and BitPay.
Moreover, SendOwl does not charge any transaction fees. Your payment gateways may charge fees though.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Promoting your Store
Store promotion is necessary for a successful online business. In this section, we will see which is having better promotional tools between SendOwl and Gumroad.
Store Promotion with SendOwl
SendOwl offers you several features to promote your shop. For example,
- You can create coupon codes to increase your conversion.
- You can create an affiliate program for your store.
- It is also easy to encourage your customers to gift a product to a friend or family. They can include a personalized message. Your customers can even specify a delivery date for their gifts.
- SendOwl lets you manage mailing lists to support customer management. You can use software like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and many others.
Store Promotion with Gumroad
Gumroad also lets you create affiliate programs for your store. It has features to offer discount coupons as well.
You can create and embed a subscribe or follow form on your Gumroad store. You can integrate the Gumroad store with MailChimp using Zapier for email marketing.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Differences in Pricing
Let us look into the pricing plans of the two eCommerce software.
Gumroad Pricing
Gumroad has two pricing plans for its customers.
Gumroad Free
When you sign up in Gumroad, you get subscribed to the Free Plan by default. This means you can start selling for free with Gumroad.
There is no monthly fee in this tier. But, Gumroad will charge you a 5% transaction fee for every transaction. This is over and above the payment processing charges of 3.5% + $0.30 per sale.
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
The Gumroad Creator Plan starts from a monthly price of $10 for up to 1000 distinct customers within a year. If you pay upfront for the whole year, you can avail yourself of a discount.
The creator plan comes in different tiers. Your fees depend on your distinct customers within a year. In the creator plan, the tier gets adjusted based on your customers.
Of course, you are free to cancel the plan anytime.
In the creator plan, you do not pay any transaction fee. But, you still have to pay the transaction fees of 3.5% + $0.30.
In Gumroad creator:
- 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.
In both plans, Gumroad will not charge you for any free product.
SendOwl Pricing
It is important to note that SendOwl does not have any free tier.
You can try the platform for a thirty-day trial window. But you must choose one of the three paid plans after your trial ends.
SendOwl Standard
The SendOwl standard plan starts at $15 per month and is $39 per month in its highest tiers. The pricing plan is based on the number of products you want to sell.
SendOwl Self Hosted
With the SendOwl Self Hosted plan, you must host your products and point to the URL where you store the products. These plans are cheaper as you do not pay for the bandwidth.
SendOwl Subscription
The SendOwl Subscription plan starts at $49/month and lets you have many users.
One important thing to note is, SendOwl does not charge you any transaction fee. So, in the long run, it will be cheaper to go with SendOwl.
Moreover, unlike Gumroad, you pay a flat monthly fee to use the SendOwl platform. SendOwl pricing is transparent and does not depend on the number of your customers.
SendOwl vs Gumroad – Differences In Extra Features
Gumroad Discover is a small yet powerful feature that you must be aware of.
If you opt for Gumroad discover, Gumroad will recommend your products to people browsing the Gumroad Discover. You can think of this as an advertisement for your product.
Gumroad Discover is a paid feature. If you sell any product with Gumroad Discover, you must pay an extra transaction fee of 10%.
SendOwl, in comparison, also has several tools that can help you to:
- upsell
- cross-sell
- recover abandoned carts
Key Differences between SendOwl and Gumroad
As you can understand, we do not have a clear winner here. This is because of the way these two platforms function.
Let us summarize the differences between SendOwl and Gumroad.
| Feature | SendOwl | Gumroad |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | No | Yes |
| Paid Plan | Flat, Monthly | Variable |
| Transaction Fees | NIL | Yes |
| Hosted Storefront | No | Yes |
| Can sell Services | Yes | No |
| Payment Gateways | Many | Limited |
| Payment Threshold | NIL | $10 |
| Payout | Instant | Fridays Only |
| Branding, Customization | Unlimited | Limited |
| Visit SendOwl | Visit Gumroad |
You can choose Gumroad if:
- You need a free plan. Though, we found Payhip as a better option.
- You need a hosted storefront.
- You do not have any other web presence.
- You do not need complete customization of your storefront to reflect your brand.
You can choose SendOwl if:
- You will sell services.
- You prefer instant payout with no threshold.
- You have an existing website or social media following.
- You need complete customization for your store.
Final Thoughts On This SendOwl vs Gumroad comparison
Both SendOwl and Gumroad are powerful eCommerce platforms. But, they differ in the way their way of operation.
Gumroad lets you create a store for free. SendOwl converts your existing website to an online store.
SendOwl has flat and transparent pricing. Gumroad pricing is complex and depends on the number of your customers.
I am not fond of the Gumroad paid plan because the monthly charges can really become unreasonable as you scale up.
If you have to choose between SendOwl and Gumroad:
- Choose SendOwl if pricing is not the barrier. A zero transaction fee along with flat monthly charges is a definite plus from the long term perspective.
- Choose Gumroad only if you want to run your shop for free. I do not recommend Gumroad’s paid plan.
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