When starting an online business, a digital download is often one of the first things you'll create. It's quick to make, infinitely scalable, and a great way to start generating revenue. And with so many platforms available to host, sell, and deliver your downloads, getting set up has never been easier.
The timing is good, too: Goldman Sachs Research projects the creator economy will roughly double to $480 billion by 2027, and digital products are one of the most direct ways for creators to claim their share.
But here's the thing: selling a digital download isn't just about uploading a file and watching sales roll in. To build a sustainable business, you'll also need tools for marketing, building an email list, and expanding your revenue streams.
The good news? You don’t need a huge audience to make it work. In The Tilt’s Content Entrepreneur Benchmark Research, the average expert creator built their business with an audience of only about 4,000 followers — small and loyal beats big and passive.
That's why choosing the right platform from the start matters. The best digital download platforms don't just help you sell. They help you build a real business around your work, one that can grow with you as you add new products, bring in a community, and deepen the value you offer your audience.
In this guide, we'll cover:
- What you really need to successfully sell digital downloads
- The three best platforms for selling digital downloads
- Six more alternatives for different niches
By the end, you'll know exactly where to build your digital download business so you can start earning fast and scale for the future.
(And if you’re short on time, we recommend you check out Podia. You can sell digital downloads and build your whole business in one place, with community, courses, coaching, and email marketing all connected. Try Podia free for 30 days.)
What do you really need to successfully sell digital downloads?
There's no shortage of tools that let you upload and sell digital files. But if you're serious about turning your downloads into a business, you'll need more than just a file uploader and a checkout page.
Think about where you want to be six months or a year from now. Will you still be selling just one or two downloads, or will you want to expand? If you start with a platform that only does the bare minimum, you'll eventually need to switch. And that's a frustrating, time-consuming process.
Instead, choose a platform that supports your growth from day one. That means looking for features like:
- Flexible pricing options so you can sell products as one-time purchases, subscriptions, or payment plans, or give them away free as lead magnets to grow your email list
- Multiple product types so you can combine downloads with courses, coaching, community access, or memberships to create more valuable offers
- Community tools so your audience has a place to connect, ask questions, and stay engaged beyond just buying a product
- Built-in email marketing and automations to nurture your audience and drive repeat sales
- A website and customizable sales pages to present your products professionally
- Marketing and business tools like upsells, coupons, affiliate programs, tax handling, and invoices — the infrastructure that makes running a real business a lot less complicated
When you have the right tools from the start, you can spend less time worrying about tech and more time creating, connecting with your audience, and growing.
Speaking of the right tools, here are our top three recommendations for selling digital downloads online.
Top 3 platforms for selling digital downloads: Podia, Sellfy, Gumroad
These three tools make the top of our list because they have strong options for selling digital downloads and several of the features above.
Podia is the best all-in-one platform for building a business around what you know. You can sell downloads alongside courses, community, coaching, events, and memberships, all from the same place as your website and email marketing.
Sellfy is a good fit if you want to sell physical products, print-on-demand items, and digital downloads together in one store.
Gumroad works if you need a simple tool just for selling digital files, and you don't mind paying transaction fees on every sale.
And now, onward to the details.
#1 Podia: Best all-in-one platform for digital product creators
Podia is an all-in-one platform for creators building online businesses, and it's designed with community at the heart. You can sell digital downloads, online courses, coaching, in-person and virtual events, and memberships, and your community lives right alongside all of it, so your audience stays connected to your work and to each other.
Creating digital downloads in Podia is straightforward. In about three clicks, you can set up a digital download product, add as many files as you like, and organize them with sections if you have a lot of content to share.
Each product gets a fully customizable sales page through the Podia website builder. You can adjust layouts, colors, fonts, and sections using pre-made templates so your pages always feel on-brand, whether you want something simple and clean or more polished and detailed.
What makes Podia different is how much you can do with a single digital product. You can:
- Offer it free as a lead magnet. Your visitor gets the download delivered straight to their inbox, and you get a new email subscriber.
- Package it with community access, so buyers can join a space where they connect with others working through the same material
- Include it in a membership and build out a resource library your members can return to again and again
- Bundle it with a course, coaching, or an event to create a more complete offer
To give you an idea of how Podia customers use this, here are a few examples:
Bex Irvine helps beauty professionals grow their businesses, and one of her digital download products is a client conversation template with text scripts and a video walkthrough for handling each topic.
Margaret Bourne from Confident Blogger sells a media kit and rate card template bloggers and influencers, with a detailed description and video demo right on her sales page.
On the pricing side, you also have flexibility. Products can be free, paid, or set up as one-time purchases, subscriptions, or payment plans. You can add upsells, create coupons, set access limits or seat limits, manage waitlists, and handle tax and invoices.
For marketing, Podia includes built-in email marketing on all plans, with automations, newsletters, email templates, segmentation, tagging, and campaigns. You also get built-in blogging on all plans, and an affiliate program on the Shaker and Earthquaker plans to expand your reach.
If you use affiliates, you can customize the attribution window, commission rate, and which products are included. And if you use Podia Email, messaging your affiliates takes just a few seconds with built-in audience filters.
Podia has a 30-day free trial that lets you test everything before committing to a paid plan. All paid plans include your website, digital products, community, and unlimited members and sales.
- Mover: $49/month (or $42/month paid annually), 5% transaction fee: Includes your community, website builder, blog, landing pages, digital products, and courses, with 50 products and 25 community spaces. Email marketing includes up to 100 subscribers.
- Shaker: $99/month (or $84/month paid annually), 0% transaction fee: Everything in Mover, plus affiliate marketing, upsells, 1 assistant seat, and integrations with PayPal, Zoom, and Zapier. Includes 150 products and 100 community spaces. Email marketing includes up to 500 subscribers.
- Earthquaker: $179/month (or $150/month paid annually), 0% transaction fee: Everything in Shaker, with unlimited products, unlimited assistant seats, unlimited video storage, and unlimited community spaces. Email marketing includes up to 1,000 subscribers.
All plans let you add more email subscribers as your list grows. Podia also includes a free migration service on all paid plans where the team will move your products and customers from another platform, so you can get set up faster without doing it all yourself.
Pros: Podia supports unlimited digital downloads on Earthquaker (and up to 50 or 150 products on other plans). You can also build courses, coaching, live events, community, and memberships, with everything connected to your website, email, and store.
- Sell digital downloads, courses, and coaching as standalone offers or bundled with community access
- Create free and paid communities with different pricing tiers
- Host live, virtual, and in-person events
- Build your website, blog, and sales pages all in one place
- Run email marketing, newsletters, and automations
- Create an affiliate program
- Free migrations are included on all paid plans
Cons: Podia is built for digital products, so if selling physical goods is central to your business, you'll need a separate tool for that.
#2 Sellfy: Sell digital and physical products in one store
Sellfy is an online shop platform where you can sell digital downloads, physical products, and print-on-demand items. It supports videos, images, audio, ebooks, and other digital file types, alongside physical goods, streaming, and subscriptions, so it will work if you want to combine digital and physical in one store.
You can build a storefront with your own logo and colors, and on the marketing side, Sellfy includes coupons on all plans. Upsells, cart abandonment, and affiliate marketing are available on Business and Premium plans.
Email marketing is built in too, and Sellfy gives you a set number of email credits per plan. The Starter plan includes 2,000 credits per month, the Business plan includes 10,000, and the Premium plan includes 50,000.
Each email you send to a subscriber uses one credit, so if you have a list of 1,000 people, you can only send two emails per month on the Starter plan. This covers both broadcasts and any automations you have running, and if you need more credits, you can purchase extra as your list grows.
The other thing to know about Sellfy is that all plans have annual sales volume caps. The Starter plan limits you to $10,000 in sales per year. If you reach that threshold, you'll need to upgrade to the next plan or pay an overage fee. For some creators, this won't be a concern early on, but it's worth having on your radar as you scale.
Sellfy pricing
- Starter: $29/month (or $22/month paid annually): Up to $10k in annual sales, unlimited products, digital products, subscriptions, print-on-demand, 2,000 email credits, 10GB file size limit
- Business: $79/month (or $59/month paid annually): Up to $50k in annual sales, unlimited products, upsells, cart abandonment, affiliates, custom fields, 10,000 email credits, 15GB file size limit
- Premium: $159/month (or $119/month paid annually): Up to $200k in annual sales, unlimited products, all features plus product and design migration, priority support, 50,000 email credits, 20GB file size limit
Pros: Sellfy covers a wide range of product types, from digital downloads and subscriptions to physical products and print-on-demand. You can send emails through the platform, build your storefront, and access upsells and affiliates on higher plans.
Cons: Sellfy doesn't have a blogging feature or community tools, so you'll need a separate tool to get these elements. The email credit limits can be restrictive as your list grows, and the annual sales caps mean you'll need to plan for upgrades as your revenue increases.
#3 Gumroad: Free place to sell digital downloads
Gumroad lets you sell digital downloads and services, and you can also accept tips, donations, and pay-what-you-want pricing. There's no monthly fee to use the platform, but you will pay 10% + $0.50 in transaction fees on every sale you make.
Setting up a product is straightforward. You fill in some details, upload the file, set your price, and you're ready to sell. You can build a simple Gumroad storefront with your logo, a description, and a gallery of your products. Customization is limited, though. You can make a few adjustments, but all Gumroad stores follow the same basic template.
Gumroad does have a built-in email feature, but there's a catch: you can't use it until you've earned $100 after fees and received your first payout. That means email marketing won't be available when you're just getting started and trying to build momentum.
Once you do unlock it, you can send broadcasts to customers, followers, or affiliates, and set up basic automated messages for purchases and subscriptions. It works for simple outreach, but it's not a full email marketing platform.
On the upside, Gumroad has a Discover marketplace where potential customers can browse and find your products organically. That kind of built-in discoverability is useful for new creators. Just know that any sales made through the marketplace come with a 30% transaction fee instead of the standard 10%.
Gumroad pricing
Gumroad has no monthly fee, but charges on every sale:
- 10% + $0.50 transaction fee on all sales you generate
- 30% transaction fee on sales that come through the Gumroad marketplace
Those fees never decrease as your revenue grows, so they can add up significantly over time. To put it in perspective: if you're selling 100 products at $10 each in a month, you'd pay $150 in fees. At 300 sales, that's $450 a month — every month, with no way to reduce it by upgrading.
Pros: It’s quick to set up a simple storefront, no monthly fee to get started, and you can accept donations and pay-what-you-want pricing. The Discover marketplace gives your products a chance to be found organically.
Cons: Transaction fees are unavoidable and never go away, including a 30% fee on marketplace sales. You can't use email marketing until you've hit $100 in earnings, making it hard to build early momentum. Gumroad has no blogging, no courses, no community, no website builder, and only basic email, so you'll need separate tools as your business grows.
6 more digital download platforms for other niches and business types
After working with over 15,000 entrepreneurs and creators, we know that every business is unique. You might be on the lookout for something a bit different for selling your digital downloads, and if that’s the case, here are six more tools that can help you earn money with your work.
Shopify: An ecommerce platform with digital products
Shopify is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms in the game, and it has your website, email marketing, and tons of apps and tools you can connect to give your shop more functionality. With Shopify, you can build your own website with hosting, blogging, and themes/templates, and you can set up your shop to sell online or in person.
Shopify is primarily made for selling physical products, so you’ll need to install the Shopify Digital Downloads app to enable file delivery. The maximum file size is 5 GB, and you can add multiple files to a single product.
This tool is very powerful and has a lot of features (some of which come with extra fees), but it’s probably more than you need if you’re just selling digital downloads. That said, if you have physical products or a storefront, Shopify is a good option for adding digital products to your other work.
Shopify pricing
Each Shopify plan has the same core online store features, but as you upgrade, you pay lower payment processing fees, unlock more team seats, and get higher checkout capacity.
- Basic: $39/month (or $29/month paid annually): No staff accounts, 10 inventory locations
- Grow: $105/month (or $79/month paid annually): 5 staff accounts, 10 inventory locations
- Advanced: $399/month (or $299/month paid annually): 15 staff accounts, 10 inventory locations
- Plus: From $2300/month: Unlimited staff accounts, 200 inventory locations
Etsy: A marketplace for artists and makers
Etsy is a marketplace where creators, artists, and other makers can sell physical and digital goods. Etsy bills itself as a place to sell original items made by real people, and products must meet their creativity standards to be approved.
A marketplace like Etsy is nice because people go there to browse and might discover you organically. Customers can leave reviews of your products and create accounts for repeat purchases, and you can sell digital and physical goods all in one place.
You can upload and sell files, but Etsy doesn’t work for courses, coaching, or selling video or audio-based content.
The catch is that you won’t have as much control over your listings as you would if you used a platform you owned. While you do get a shop page, you don’t have a full website or blog. All product listings use the same template, so you can’t create custom landing pages either.
You can message customers using Etsy’s built-in messaging feature, but there isn’t a way to build your email list or send newsletters. To build an email list around your work, you would need another tool.
Etsy pricing
While you won’t pay a flat monthly fee to use Etsy, there are some startup costs and transaction fees to be aware of.
- One-time fee of $15 to open your shop
- Sellers pay a listing fee of 0.20 USD for each item that you list
- 6.5% transaction fee
- 15% offsite ads fee
- 2.5% currency conversion fee
Payhip: Simple digital product selling tool
Payhip is a digital download software where you can sell unlimited products on all plans, including the free plan. You can sell downloads, courses, and physical products, and all plans have the same features. You just upgrade to remote transaction fees as you grow.
Payhip also lets you build a simple storefront and blog, and you can collect email addresses directly on your store page. But you’ll need to use an email integration to do any advanced email marketing or automations with Payhip.
While email blasts to customers are supported, you must connect (and potentially pay for) an extra tool if you want to run automated campaigns or send customized newsletters to your audience.
Payhip pricing
- Free Plan: $0/month: Access to all features, unlimited products, unlimited revenue. 5% transaction fee.
- Plus Plan: $29/month: Access to all features, unlimited products, unlimited revenue. 2% transaction fee.
- Pro Plan $99/month: Access to all features, unlimited products, unlimited revenue. No transaction fees.
Easy Digital Downloads: WordPress plugin for selling downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a digital download plugin for WordPress. You can sell PDFs, audio files, videos, ebooks, and subscriptions, all from your existing WordPress website.
Easy Digital Downloads also has a shopping cart feature, detailed reporting, order management, and integrations with other email marketing and affiliate management tools. This is a good option if you already use and enjoy WordPress, since you can easily add digital products to your existing business.
Easy Digital Downloads pricing
Easy Digital Downloads must be used along with a WordPress website, so you’ll likely have to pay for hosting, your domain, website themes, and other plugins too.
- Personal: $199/year: Use on one website with unlimited products and transactions
- Extended: $399/year: Use on one website, make subscriptions, lead magnets, bundles, and reviews, no transaction fees
- Professional: $599/year: Use on two websites, sell physical products, build your own marketplace, create software license keys
- All Access: $999/year: Use on three websites, customer rewards, customer messaging, improved store management, and advanced accounting features
SendOwl: Flexible digital product delivery and checkout
SendOwl is a digital commerce platform built around product delivery and checkout flexibility. You can sell digital downloads, subscriptions, bundles, courses with drip content, software license keys, streaming audio and video, and physical products.
There are many ways you can sell, like shareable payment links, an embeddable shopping cart, modal checkout overlays, and a branded storefront. This makes SendOwl a practical option if you want to sell from an existing website or social media presence rather than building a new one.
Every plan comes with the full feature set, which includes upsells, cart abandonment recovery, affiliate programs, coupon codes, PDF stamping and document locking, and detailed reporting on revenue, subscriptions, upsells, and affiliates.
That said, there is no built-in email marketing, so you would need to connect a separate tool to send newsletters or campaigns to your audience. Also, each plan has caps on annual orders and revenue, so as your business grows, you may find yourself needing to upgrade to stay within the limits.
SendOwl pricing
All plans include every feature. The difference between plans is order and sales volume.
- Launch: $39/month (or $32.50/month paid annually): 5,000 orders per year, $10,000 in sales per year, 10GB bandwidth per month, unlimited products and storage
- Grow: $87/month (or $72.50/month paid annually): 25,000 orders per year, $36,000 in sales per year, 20GB bandwidth per month, unlimited products and storage
- Scale: $159/month (or $132.50/month paid annually): 50,000 orders per year, $100,000 in sales per year, 50GB bandwidth per month, unlimited products and storage
Creative Market: A marketplace for creative assets
Creative Market is a marketplace tool where you can sell digital downloads to an existing audience of buyers. There are over 10 million members on the platform, and sellers can set their own prices and make unlimited products. Creative Market handles payment processing and file delivery.
To prevent people from underselling, they have price minimums for each product category (like website templates, ebook templates, fonts, etc.). You can’t offer free products or lead magnets to build an audience, and people who make an account to buy your products are technically signing up with Creative Market, not your business.
To set up a shop on Creative Market, you need to apply and share your portfolio of work to be approved. After you’re approved, you can list products that fall into their accepted categories on the marketplace. Overall, this tool is good for selling fonts, themes, vector images, graphics, illustrations, and other assets that fellow creators can use.
Creative Market pricing
It’s free to set up your shop on Creative Market. Creative Market has a revenue split model, and commissions vary based on the shop and product.
- The default is that sellers keep 50% of the sale price of their product.
What software should I use for selling digital downloads?
No matter what type of digital download you’re selling today — a simple PDF, a spreadsheet, a bundle of templates, a video training masterclass, a collection of audio affirmations — the right platform will make it easier to grow without hitting roadblocks.
If you’re looking for a tool with simplicity, flexibility, or room to scale, where you can sell your digital downloads alongside your courses, coaching, email, affiliates, and everything, Podia has you covered.
Start your 30-day free trial today to see what you can make.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best platform for selling digital downloads?
Podia is the best all-in-one option: you can set up a digital download in about three clicks, get a fully customizable sales page for every product, and sell downloads alongside courses, coaching, events, memberships, and community. The Mover plan is $49/month ($42/month paid annually) with a 5% transaction fee, and the Shaker plan is $99/month ($84/month paid annually) with no transaction fees — plus there's a 30-day free trial.
Sellfy is a good pick if you sell digital and physical products (including print-on-demand) in one store, and Gumroad is the simplest free way to start.
Is Gumroad good for selling digital downloads?
Gumroad is genuinely easy: no monthly fee, simple setup, and support for tips and pay-what-you-want pricing. But you'll pay 10% + $0.50 in transaction fees on every sale (and 30% on sales made through Gumroad's marketplace), and you can't use its email feature until you've earned $100 after fees.
Those fees scale with you: selling 100 products at $10 each in a month means $150 in fees, and at 300 sales it's $450 a month — every month, with no way to reduce it by upgrading.
What is the cheapest way to sell digital downloads?
Payhip's free plan lets you sell unlimited products with all features included — you only upgrade to remove transaction fees. Gumroad is also free to start but takes 10% + $0.50 per sale, and Sellfy's Starter plan is $29/month ($22/month paid annually) with a $10,000 annual sales cap.
If you want predictable flat pricing as you grow, Podia's Mover plan is $49/month ($42/month paid annually), and the Shaker plan drops transaction fees to 0%.
