Great question! We obviously think we’re pretty great, but here’s an honest answer:

Both platforms allow you to sell digital products. Both give you email tools, affiliate marketing, and helpful selling features like coupons and payment plans.

But that’s about where the similarities stop.

Gumroad is primarily a digital download platform where you can sell files and set up a basic online store.

Podia is an all-in-one platform that replaces many tools for your business, including your website builder, email marketing software, online course platform, live chat plugin, and much more.

Let’s dive into the details to help you decide which platform is best for you.

Podia and Gumroad both have digital downloads. Gumroad also has physical products, while Podia has courses and more digital product types.

One big difference between Podia vs. Gumroad is the type of products you can sell.

As mentioned above, Gumroad is an ecommerce platform primarily designed for selling digital downloads. It’s possible to sell physical products too, but files are their bread and butter.

With Gumroad, you can create license keys for software and sell multiple formats of the same product.

It’s technically possible to sell courses with Gumroad, but this option is pretty basic. Gumroad does not have a native course builder, but you can:

• Attach multiple videos and PDF files to a single product listing for the customer to download

• Create a dripped email course using automations and Gumroad’s basic “workflows” feature

You can’t include interactive elements, and it’s not possible to sell cohort courses. Gumroad also doesn’t have a way to sell coaching, services, or online communities.

With Podia, selling digital downloads is a breeze. It’s easy to upload and build a sales page for your digital product, and customers can access all the content they’ve purchased from you in one beautiful dashboard.

But that’s just the beginning. Podia also allows you to go beyond digital downloads and offer a variety of product types like full-scale online courses, webinars, coaching, and community integrations.

If you sell online courses, you can include quizzes, videos, images, audio files, embeds, file downloads, and as many lessons and modules as you like.

To increase participation, you can enable student commenting and integrate your course with a private Discord community for your students to connect.

You can make your course free or paid, and you can also set up a waitlist for your program to gauge interest before you build.

Plus, you can easily manage course availability by pre-launching, pre-selling, limiting course seats, setting access durations, or selecting a future start date. This is a great way to build hype around your launch and offer real-time cohort courses.

Podia also makes it easy to sell coaching and webinars. Offer live or pre-recorded webinars, sell webinar recordings, add coaching sessions within your online courses, and bundle products together to give customers a deal.

You can even offer upsells at checkout to improve your bottom line.

When it comes to getting paid, both Podia and Gumroad let you select your preferred currency and connect with Stripe and PayPal for payment processing.

Podia has a full website builder. Gumroad has a simple storefront.

A well-designed website is a great way to showcase your work.

With Gumroad, you can make a simple storefront with a profile image, description text, email capture button, and gallery of your products.

You can also make a listing for each item with a written description, product details, pictures, and videos. However, you can’t customize much beyond that, and you can only make one listing per product.

In contrast, Podia allows you to build an entire website for your business, complete with unlimited pages.

With just a few clicks, you can create an “About” page to share your story, a testimonials page to highlight positive reviews, or a “link in bio” style page to share on your social media accounts.

For example, creator Emily Mills from Sketch Academy uses her Podia website to promote a wide range of product offerings, share testimonials, and encourage new visitors to join her email list.

You can also use Podia to make unlimited landing pages and sales pages for each item you sell, or set up a beautiful landing page to promote your email newsletter.

Rather than using a standard product listing template for all your products, you can add banner sections, images, testimonials, feature grids, CTAs, FAQs, and more on your Podia product pages.

Compared to Podia’s customizable website builder, Gumroad’s storefront tool is pretty bare bones. You might need to use a third-party website tool to get all the features you need.

Podia has blogging. Gumroad does not.

In addition to your website and landing pages, Podia has blogging. Blogging is included on all plans and you can share as many blog posts as you like.

You can customize the layout and style of your blog posts, and add SEO settings to help your work get discovered in search.

You can turn on comments, add promos for your products, and add email opt-in forms – all using the same easy website builder so you don’t need to learn any new tools.

And because your Podia blog is automatically connected to Podia Email, you can also pull in blog post content to your email newsletter to share it with your list.

Gumroad doesn’t have blogging functionality, so you’ll need to use an additional platform if you want to start a blog.

Podia and Gumroad let you email customers, but Podia’s email marketing tool has automations, segmenting and tagging options, and newsletter templates.

Both Podia and Gumroad make it possible to email your customers and followers, but Gumroad’s email option is more basic while Podia has the features of a full email marketing platform.

Gumroad’s email feature is called Workflows. Using Workflows, you can send simple email messages with file attachments to sections of your audience. You can also set up automated messages and sequences to go out after someone makes a purchase.

Podia comes with built-in email marketing tools including:

• Drag-and-drop email designer

• Use professionally designed email templates or make your own

• View your emails in browser

• Email automations and campaigns

• Campaign entrance and exit conditions

• Segmentation and tagging

• Send emails to people who do or don’t have a specific product

• Filter your audience based on total amount spent, time since last active, and other customer data

• See how much money was generated from a particular email

• Add email opt-in forms to your website, landing pages, blog posts, and website footer

• Tag people who subscribe through a specific email opt-in form

• Send unlimited emails on all plans

With Podia’s email features, you can offer free lead magnets to grow your list, send newsletter broadcasts to your fans, and build automated sales campaigns to increase conversions.

All Podia Email features are free for your first 100 subscribers, and you can upgrade as your list grows.

Podia includes a live chat messaging tool

If you want more ways to get in touch with your audience, Podia also includes a live chat messaging tool that you can enable on your website. If a potential buyer visits your website and has a question, they can easily send you a message to connect with you.

Likewise, if an existing customer needs to get in touch, they can send you a note directly from the platform. This feature is built in with all Podia plans.

Podia has more customer support options

Entrepreneurship is challenging. Don’t let tech issues add unnecessary stress.

Podia is known for having best-in-class customer service, so you never feel stuck for long.

Simply email or chat with one of our friendly support team members, and they’ll help you quickly troubleshoot any issues that arise. You can also get help from other entrepreneurs in the Podia Community, or browse our extensive library of help docs, video tutorials, and blog posts.

If you need help with your Gumroad account, you can reach out to their support email address or check out their help docs. There’s no chat support.

Podia vs. Gumroad Pricing

A big difference between Gumroad and Podia is the pricing structure.

Podia offers two plans with the option to remove transaction fees. Gumroad doesn’t charge a monthly fee, but you’ll pay transaction fees on every sale you make on the platform.

Podia pricing plans:

• 30-day free trial

• Mover: $39/month or $33/month when paid annually (5% transaction fee)

• Shaker: $89/month or $75/month when paid annually (no transaction fees)

See what’s included with each Podia pricing plan here.

Gumroad pricing plans:

Gumroad charges a 10% transaction fee for all creators, no matter how much you sell on their platform.

While a free platform might be tempting, transaction fees can add up quickly and may cost you more money in the long run.

Here’s how this shakes out in real life:

Let’s say you’re a new creator who wants to test the waters of online entrepreneurship.

With Podia, you could choose between the Mover plan with 5% transaction fees or the Shaker plan with no transaction fees. With Gumroad, you'll pay a flat 10% fee on any sales you make.

If you earned $1000 in a month, you’d pay

• $100 ($1000 x 10%) in transaction fees with Gumroad

• $89 per month flat rate with Podia on the Shaker plan if you paid monthly, or $75 per month paid annually (no transaction fees and way more features)

Now let’s fast forward. Your business is happily growing, and you’re earning a consistent $3,000 per month from your digital products. Great job!

If you were using Gumroad, you’d pay $300 a month in transaction fees.

On the Shaker Plan, you’d still only pay a flat rate of $89/month.

On Podia’s Shaker plan, you’d save over $200/month compared to Gumroad’s “free” plan.

Best of all, you won’t pay more as your income grows.

Podia: The best platform for building your online business

If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that makes it simple to run your online business, has world-class customer service, and won’t charge you an arm and a leg in transaction fees, we built Podia just for you.

Get unlimited products, courses, coaching, and webinars, as well as your website, blog, landing pages, an affiliate program, and email marketing all in one place – we can’t wait to see what you dream up next. Start your 30 day free trial today.