Where to Sell Digital Products Online: Platforms and Fees Compared
The platform question comes down to one thing: does the platform bring you buyers, or do you bring your own? Marketplaces supply traffic and charge for it. Storefronts charge less but leave discovery entirely to you. Everything else is detail. Fees below are approximate and change regularly, so confirm current rates on each provider before committing.
The one distinction that matters
Etsy is a marketplace. People arrive there already shopping, and Etsy shows them products including possibly yours. You pay for that traffic through fees and you accept that the customer is partly Etsy's.
Stan Store, Beacons, Gumroad and Payhip are storefronts. They handle the checkout, the file delivery, and the receipts, but nobody browses them looking for something to buy. Every visitor comes from a link you shared.
Choosing between them is therefore a question about your traffic, not about features. If you have no audience, a storefront alone will feel like the product is failing when the truth is that nobody has seen it. If you have an audience, marketplace fees are money spent on traffic you did not need.
Stan Store
Stan Store is built for creators sending traffic from short-form video. It is a link-in-bio page and a checkout in one, deliberately narrow and quick to set up.
The model is a monthly subscription, commonly around 29 dollars per month, with no commission on sales beyond the payment processor's cut of roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents.
That structure rewards volume. If you sell steadily, a flat monthly fee is much cheaper than a percentage. If you sell occasionally, you are paying the subscription in months where you earn nothing.
It suits people whose traffic already comes from Instagram or TikTok. It is a poor fit if you want a browsable catalogue or search visibility, because it is not designed to be either.
Beacons
Beacons occupies similar territory: a link-in-bio hub with a store, plus various creator tools bundled in.
Pricing is tiered. The free tier typically takes a percentage of sales, historically around 9 percent, while paid plans in the region of 10 dollars per month reduce the platform fee to zero. Payment processing is charged on top in both cases.
The free tier is genuinely usable, which makes Beacons a reasonable place to start when you do not yet know whether you will sell anything. Once monthly sales exceed roughly a hundred dollars, the paid plan is usually cheaper than the percentage.
The trade-off is the same as Stan Store: no discovery. It is a place to send people, not a place to be found.
Gumroad
Gumroad is the long-standing default for independent digital sellers, and it is the simplest to start with because there is no subscription at all.
It charges a flat percentage of each sale, commonly around 10 percent, with payment processing included in that figure rather than added to it. Nothing is owed in months when nothing sells.
Ten percent is high relative to a subscription model once you are selling regularly, so many sellers start on Gumroad and migrate later. It also has a modest amount of internal discovery, though not enough to plan around.
It is the most sensible default for a first product: zero fixed cost, minimal setup, and a checkout buyers recognise.
Etsy
Etsy is the only genuine marketplace in this comparison, and the only one where a listing can produce sales without you sending a single visitor.
The fee stack is layered and worth adding up properly: a listing fee of around 20 cents per item, a transaction fee of roughly 6.5 percent, payment processing of approximately 3 percent plus a fixed amount that varies by country, and, if you are enrolled in offsite advertising, an additional 12 to 15 percent on attributed sales. Enrolment is mandatory for sellers above a revenue threshold.
Realistically, budget for somewhere in the region of 10 percent, rising to over 20 percent on offsite-ad sales. That is expensive until you remember you are buying traffic.
Etsy suits visual, browsable products: printables, planners, templates, digital art. It suits technical or professional products less well, and the buyer relationship stays largely with Etsy.
Payhip
Payhip is the underrated option for people who care mainly about keeping the money. It is a storefront with EU VAT handling built in, which matters more than it sounds if you sell to Europe.
The free plan typically takes around 5 percent, a plan around 29 dollars per month reduces that to about 2 percent, and a higher plan removes the platform fee entirely. Payment processing is separate.
Even the free tier is half of Gumroad's rate, which makes it a strong choice for anyone selling with reasonable consistency but not enough volume to justify a large subscription. The trade-off is that it is less well known to buyers and the storefront is plainer.
How to actually choose
If you have no audience and your product is visual, start on Etsy and accept the fees as the cost of borrowed traffic.
If you have no audience and your product is professional or technical, start on Gumroad or Payhip and get traffic from search and communities instead, because Etsy shoppers are not looking for that kind of thing.
If your traffic comes from short-form video, Stan Store or Beacons will convert better because they are built for a single tap from a bio link.
If you are selling consistently, do the arithmetic. A 10 percent fee on a thousand dollars a month is a hundred dollars, which buys a subscription plan several times over. Most sellers leave money on the table by staying on percentage pricing far longer than they should.
Running two is normal and often correct: a marketplace for discovery, and your own storefront for repeat buyers who already know you.
Frequently asked questions
Which platform has the lowest fees for digital products?
On a percentage basis, Payhip's paid plans and Stan Store's subscription model are the cheapest at volume, because you pay a flat monthly amount rather than a share of each sale. At low volume, Payhip's free tier at around 5 percent is usually the cheapest option with no fixed cost. Verify current rates before deciding, since all of these change.
Is Etsy worth the fees for digital downloads?
It can be, because Etsy is the only one of these that brings its own buyers. Expect roughly 10 percent in combined fees, and over 20 percent on sales attributed to offsite ads. If you have no other traffic source, paying that for genuine discovery is often a better deal than keeping 95 percent of nothing.
Can I sell on more than one platform at once?
Yes, and many sellers do. A common arrangement is a marketplace such as Etsy for discovery alongside your own storefront for repeat customers and higher margins. Keep the product file and pricing consistent, and mind any minimum-price or exclusivity terms in the platforms you use.
Do I need my own website to sell digital products?
No. Every platform here provides a hosted checkout and file delivery, which is all that is strictly required. A website becomes worthwhile once you are generating search traffic or want full control of the buyer relationship, but it is not a starting requirement.
Which platform is best if my traffic comes from TikTok or Instagram?
Stan Store and Beacons are both designed for exactly that path, with a bio link leading to a single tappable store. Stan Store uses a flat monthly subscription; Beacons offers a free tier that takes a percentage instead. Choose based on whether your sales are steady enough to justify a subscription.