Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover digital products & storefronts. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Sell digital products with almost no setup
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
Gumroad | WooCommerce | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Usage-based | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export |
Sell digital products with almost no setup
Gumroad is the fastest way to put a file behind a payment link. No store to build, no plan to choose, and a flat 10 percent on every sale. That rate is high once you are doing real volume, which is when people usually leave.
Our note
Start here, and do the arithmetic every quarter. The moment 10 percent is more than a competitor's monthly fee plus a lower rate, move. Until then nothing is simpler.
Only on this side
A free store plugin that takes no cut at all
WooCommerce turns a WordPress site into a shop and states plainly that it charges no platform fee and takes no share of sales. The software is free and open source; the money goes on hosting and on whichever extensions a shop actually needs. That makes the total cost a range rather than a number, and the range depends on traffic more than on features. Running it means owning the hosting, the updates and the security, which is the trade against a platform that does all three and bills monthly.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut (they differ) | 10% of what you earn | None |
|---|
| Runs on | Not stated | Web |
|---|
| Covers | Digital Products & Storefronts, Monetization & Payments | Digital Products & Storefronts, Website Builders |
|---|
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
|---|
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
|---|
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
|---|
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
|---|
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Our note
This wins on arithmetic once sales are large enough that a percentage hurts, and loses on every hour you spend patching it. Price your hosting honestly before comparing, because the $25 end of that range will not carry a shop that is actually busy.
Only on this side