Podia vs. Gumroad: What’s right for me?
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, subscriptions, and payment plans.
But that's about where the similarities end.
Gumroad is primarily a digital download platform where you can sell files and set up a basic online store. There's also a Discover Marketplace where you can list your products for people to find.
Podia is one platform that replaces many tools for your business, including your online community, website builder, email marketing software, online course platform, live chat plugin, and much more. You can run a vibrant community that's connected to your products, grow your email list with free lead magnets, create email campaigns that point people to your latest course, and anything else you want to do to grow the work you love.
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 by adding multiple video files into a single product listing, this option is pretty basic. Gumroad does not have a native course builder so 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, and you can also offer a variety of product types like full-scale online courses, virtual and in-person events, coaching, and an interactive online community.
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. You can also enable student commenting, create discussion areas for course participants inside your community, and bundle several courses together to give your buyers more value.
For all digital products, you can set them to free or paid, create payment plans, charge subscription pricing, and make a waitlist to gauge interest before you build. Plus, you can limit course seats, set access durations, or select a future start date. This is a great way to build hype around your launch and offer real-time cohort courses.
You can even offer upsells at checkout to improve your bottom line, create coupons and special promotions, and manage your sales taxes, all in one spot.
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 sales pages and a full blog.
With just a few clicks, you can create an “About” page to share your story, a “Testimonials” page to highlight positive reviews, a “Portfolio” page to get more client work, or a “Link in bio” style page to share on your social media accounts.
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.
With Gumroad, 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 in 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, segmentation, and tagging
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.
With Gumroad, 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.
But there’s a catch. You cannot send emails until you've earned $100 after fees and received a payout, which means you won’t be able to use email marketing to get those first few sales. This limitation makes it hard to grow your list and build trust with your email audience early on.
Podia, on the other hand, has email marketing tools built in that help you grow your following and bring those fans into your paid products.
All people get the following features:
- Use professionally designed email templates or make your own
- Email newsletters with unlimited sends
- 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
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. You can also add beautiful email opt-in forms to your website, landing pages, blog posts, and website footer
Each plan comes with a set number of email subscribers for free, and you can add on more subscribers when your list grows.
Podia vs. Gumroad Pricing
A big difference between Gumroad and Podia is the pricing structure.
Podia offers three paid 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:
Podia has three plans: Mover, Shaker, and Earthquaker. All Podia plans come with your website, digital products, community, and unlimited members and sales. You can try all features for free with a 30-day free trial.
- Mover: $49/month and 5% transaction fee ($42/month when paid annually): Includes your community, website builder, blog, landing pages, digital products and courses, customer messaging, and third-party code, with 50 products and 25 community spaces.
- Shaker: $99/month and 0% transaction fee ($84/month when paid annually): Includes everything in Mover, plus affiliate marketing, upsells, and integrations with PayPal, Zoom, and Zapier, with 150 products and 100 community spaces.
- Earthquaker: $179/month and 0% transaction fee ($150/month when paid annually): Includes everything in Shaker, with unlimited products, video storage, and community spaces.
All Podia plans include email marketing features like automations, newsletters, email templates, segmentation, tagging, and campaigns. Mover includes up to 100 subscribers, Shaker includes up to 500 subscribers, and Earthquaker includes up to 1,000 subscribers. You can also pay for more subscribers on any plan as your list grows.
Podia also includes a free migration service on paid plans. The team will move your products and customers over from another platform so you can get set up faster without extra work. Learn more about how migrations work here.
Gumroad pricing plans
Gumroad doesn't charge a monthly price, but there's a 10% + $0.50 transaction fee for all creators, no matter how much you sell on their platform.
They also charge a 30% transation fee on sales made through their Discover marketplace. While the built-in marketing can be nice, it's worth knowing upfront that it does cost a big chunk of change if someone finds you that way and makes a purchase.
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 could shake out in real life
Let's say you're a new creator who wants to test the waters of online entrepreneurship.
If you pick Podia’s Shaker plan, you won’t pay any transaction fees. With Gumroad, you'll pay a flat 10% + $0.50 fee on any sales you make.
If you sold 100 products and earned $1,000 in a month, you'd pay:
$150 ($1,000 x 10% = $100, plus 100 x $0.50 = $50) in transaction fees with Gumroad
$99/month flat rate with Podia on the Shaker plan if you pay monthly, or $84/month paid annually (no transaction fees and way more features)
Now let's fast forward. Your business is happily growing, and you're consistently selling 300 products, earning $3,000 per month. Great job!
If you were using Gumroad, you'd pay $300 + $150 = $450 a month in transaction fees.
On the Shaker plan, you'd still only pay a flat rate of $99/month — or $84/month on annual billing.
Which means that even on Podia's paid Shaker plan, you'd save over $350/month compared to Gumroad's "free" plan.
Best of all, you won't pay more as your income grows.
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.
Build your community, sell digital products, and run events in the same place as your website, blog, landing pages, affiliate program, and email marketing.
We can’t wait to see what you dream up next. Start your 30 day free trial today.