
Ask HN: Best Digital Product Seller Like Gumroad or SendOwl? - deadcoder0904
I want to sell some digital products like apps. So Gumroad makes it easy but it takes a lot of money when I make a lot. I want to sell 10 products till next month &amp; there after the products will increase from 10 to 50 to 100.<p>1. So I want to ask will it be worth it to use Gumroad or SendOwl. It seems Gumroad takes a large chunk of money when u make a lot.<p>2. When Gumroad &amp; similar services take 3.5% of my money, do Paypal&#x2F;Stripe also take a chunk out of my remaining money ?<p>3. Am I better off building my own custom Paypal&#x2F;Stripe Checkout form ?
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wnm
I would say, don't build anything custom until you know you can sell how much
you think you can sell. Gumroad is perfect for testing your product market
fit, since you don't waste a lot of time seting up a billing system. you sign
up, create a product, and get a link (or some js to embed). easy.

gumroad is 3,5% + 0,3$ vs. stripe 2,9% + 0,3$

that is not enough of a price increase to justify wasting a lot of time on
setting up a custom checkout form, imo.

~~~
deadcoder0904
Thank you, that clears up a lot of things. but when my product gain a lot of
traction, then should i still keep using Gumroad or then move to custom ?

~~~
wnm
Personally, I wouldn't move. I value the time and hassle saved, more then the
money. For my business ([https://presskithero.com](https://presskithero.com))
I use [https://paddle.com](https://paddle.com), which is even more expensive
then gumroad (5% + 0,5%). But they handle VAT (value added tax) for me, which
otherwise would be a huge hassle and time sink.

~~~
seanwilson
Doesn't Gumroad handle EU VAT?
[https://help.gumroad.com/11164-payments/dealing-with-
vat](https://help.gumroad.com/11164-payments/dealing-with-vat)

~~~
wnm
They do. The reason I went with Paddle is that Gumroad only pays out via
Paypal (to customers in Germany). I had problems with Paypal in the past, and
don't trust them. Also, they charge about 3% in hidden fees when you convert
USD to EUR, which I'd have to do to get the money to my bank account.

~~~
deadcoder0904
Woah. I have problems with Stripe since I am from India & it is not supported
in India so I have to go PayPal way. Also, can u tell me how much hidden fees
they will charge me to convert from USD to INR ?

~~~
wnm
The hidden fees come in the form of bad exchange rates. In my experience it
was always around 3% less, then what Google Currency Converter told me it
should be.

Edit: to be fair, Stripe also doesn't give you _excactly_ the same rate as
Google Currency Converter would show you, but at least they are transparent
about it:

> As currency prices constantly vary, it’s not possible to know in advance the
> FX rate you’ll pay. The rate displayed online at various sites such as Open
> Exchange Rates or Google’s Currency Converter is the mid-market rate: the
> average between the prices at which people are buying and selling the
> currency. The actual exchange rate includes markups from financial
> institutions. When Stripe performs a currency conversion, funds are usually
> converted at 1% above the daily mid-market rate for users in the United
> States.

[https://stripe.com/docs/currencies/conversions#calculating-f...](https://stripe.com/docs/currencies/conversions#calculating-
foreign-exchange-rates)

~~~
deadcoder0904
Thank you so much, you've been such a great help

------
itamarst
The problem is taxes. You need to pay VAT on EU sales ("MOSS VAT"), sales
taxes in many countries... even if you are not resident of those countries.
Even as an American if I sell to someone in EU I need to collect VAT.

Options:

1\. Don't pay taxes. I am not comfortable with this.

2\. Pay taxes yourself. I do not want to figure this out.

3\. Have service pay taxes for you. This is what I chose.

AFAICT only two companies actually cover all tax jurisdictions, FastSpring and
Paddle. Gumroad only does some.

With Paddle it's trivial for someone to download content without paying, and
when I complained they said "oh yeah we should write some docs warning about
that".

So if you care about taxes there's just FastSpring. FastSpring is pretty
decent, so I'm OK with that.

~~~
ezekg
You could potentially get around the distribution issue using a licensing
service like Keygen
([https://keygen.sh/distribution](https://keygen.sh/distribution))
(disclaimer: I’m the founder). You could use it alongside a payment provider
like Paddle or FastSpring to ensure only licensed users are allowed to
download your product.

~~~
itamarst
Or I could just use FastSpring :)

~~~
ezekg
You’re right, FastSpring was probably a bad example seeing as they offer their
own licensed distribution system (albeit a little basic functionality-wise for
software), but payment providers like Stripe, PayPal and Paddle do not (well,
Paddle _kind of_ does but like you said—-not really, and you have to host your
own files).

------
bufferoverflow
When it comes to accepting credit cards, you can do a bit better, but you will
have to deal with fraud yourself.

I'd look at the cryptocurrencies with low fees. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash,
Litecoin, etc. Building your own solution for something like this could be a
lot of fun.

~~~
deadcoder0904
Seriously I would love to use something like that but it feels like Rocket
Science to me till now. I am going to learn & understand it when I am done
with my ongoing project & thank you for telling me there is a credit card
frauds too bcz I didn't knew about it. But I still don't understand how can
they fraud with Stripe/Paypal? Basically I am not getting Credit Card fraud in
Online Banking.

------
vram22
How does Gumroad take a lot? AFAIK they have a fixed rate (percentage + a
fixed cents amount) for each sale, at least on the free tier. So how do they
take larger (except proportionally) when you make a lot?

~~~
deadcoder0904
Yep that's what I meant. Read it again I said "When u make a lot, it takes a
lot" which is synonymous to "Proportional". Also, I can save a shit ton of
money if I make my own Gumroad.

