With the new Gumroad flat-rate fee, creators are starting to look for cheaper alternatives. Here are options that will handle EU VAT too.
Gumroad does several things for creators from assets delivery to affiliate programs, but if you are like me, you started with Gumroad because it act as a merchant of record and thus handles EU value-added tax (VAT). That’s why this post is only about competitors that can do the same for you (while perhaps having different set of features overall).
Lemon Squeeze
Lemon Squeeze is a fresh alternative to Gumroad that too is all about simple pricing without hidden fees. The flat rate is 5% + 50¢ payment processing fee per transaction is still worse than Gumroad’s original 3% for high volume sellers, but looks much more appealing now.
Features include:
- Per seat or per usage pricing
- Recurring billing
- License key management
- No-code checkout forms
- Discounts and coupons
- Bundles and upsells
- Sales tax and VAT collection
- Support for 16 payment collectors including PayPal
- Custom domains for your store
Lemon Squeeze also bundles email marketing functionality, but it’s charged separately. Free for first 500 addresses and starting at $10/m for over 1000 subscribers.
PayHip
PayHip is a dedicated platform for selling digital downloads, courses, and coaching. Pricing starts at 5% transaction fee (+ payment processor fees) for a free plan but can be lowered to 2% for $29/m or even completely eliminated for $99/m. A sweet deal for high volume sellers.
Freatures include:
- Digital downloads
- Online courses
- Coaching
- Memberships
- Physical products
- EU and UK VAT collection
- Store builder
- Marketing tools
PayHip’s email marketing is free and included in the price.
FastSpring
Paddle
Paddle is not your regular selling platform, but it’s a payment processor that acts as a merchant of record and handles EU VAT. With Paddle you can build your own Gumroad alternative the way you want.
If you know about other alternatives handeling VAT, please drop a DM on Twitter.
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