So what are the alternatives to gumroad? I’d been thinking of using them to sell the PDF version of a book, but after reading about the doge thing, I feel like I need to look elsewhere.
The main options are Gumroad - high fees and ugly design, solid system never had issues does most what I need.
Lemon Squeezy - it was very popular until being acquired by stripe. Full of serious bugs, bad support. Lovely design, slightly better fees than Gumroad, but many hidden. Would still use over Gumroad just cause the Gumroad checkout design is so bad it loses sales imo.
Paddle - haven’t used it but I think it’s probably as good as Gumroad or Lemon.
Polar.sh - the trendy new option, most creators abandoning Lemon Squeezy are moving there. Has lots of innovation in features beyond payments such as selling private GitHub access.
All of these platforms are MOR as far as I know, all provide the checkout UI etc. all handle digital asset file delivery. They are perfect for creators selling digital products that want a turn key solution and don’t want to do any development work.
Stripe supports paypal only in Europe, Switzerland, United Kingdom
Curious to read the acquisition made it less popular. Is it due to the concern of Stripe buying it solely as an "extinguish" strategy? Or is it unrelated to the acquisition and just because of the bugs and poor support?
Itch has no mandatory cut at all.
Theirs an argument that taking any payment at all is more trouble than it’s worth.
Say you sell 15 copies of the book per month for 10$ each. After taxes and merchant fees , and the occasional chargeback, you’ll be lucky to net half.
Is 75$ a month really worth the stress ?
This is a part of why I’m going FOSS for my side projects. Even trying to collect a single legit dollar gives people a right to complain.
Of course you can complain on GitHub anyway when it doesn’t work right, but it’s MIT, fork , send a PR or leave me alone.
including EU VAT, last I checked.
(TL;DR: DOGE is the name of a new US government agency devoted to gutting other government agencies, and the founder of Gumroad is giving it pro-bono help.)
:)
after the /s, thanks for your answer. the /s is dedicated to the HN people I mention below, not to you.
actually by the "doge thing", I meant sahil's interaction with it, which I knew would be in the article, or in a linked one, but was a bit lazy to read.
and I continue to marvel at the brilliance of the knee jerk, trigger happy HN downvoters who can't even imagine that there can be a different interpretation of a phrase like "the doge thing" from what they can think of or know.
DOGE is the right place for those jokers.
"maddeningly vague", hell yes, but only for 'hotshot' HN dumbasses (of which there are many here) who don't look before they leap, aka, in this case, don't read (the comment context) before they yap.
proof: here is the comment to which I was replying above, when I asked "what is the doge thing":
>So what are the alternatives to gumroad? I’d been thinking of using them to sell the PDF version of a book, but after reading about the doge thing, I feel like I need to look elsewhere.
See the overall comment, as well as the part I highlighted.
from the context, as shown above, it is clear (to anyone with common sense) that I was asking what they meant by their reference to doge, in the context of gumroad, and was not asking about doge itself, which I could, obviously, have easily googled for.
so, is it now clear to you, dear sir, andybak, that my question was not vague at all, and in fact, it was your comment that was maddeningly idiotic and unjustified? even more idiotic in view of the fact that Frump, Tusk, and their shenanigans like doge and tariffs have been making news headlines all around the world for the past few weeks? in view of that, isn't it likely that I would know what doge meant?
jfc.
in future, look before you leap, or you're likely to land up in a pile of dog(e) shit (of your own making).