Selling comes first. Scaling can come later.
Everything else built for this asks you to start a business before you make a sale. A store to design. An LLC. A domain. A site. A storefront to keep stocked. Eventually somebody to build it for you.
That’s scaling equipment, and it’s the right answer to a question you may not have yet. Today you have one thing somebody wants and no clean way to take their money. We’re a login and a way to get paid. That’s the whole product, and it’s the whole answer.
Plenty of people here are growing, and if anything they need this more. Answering every buyer by hand — send the price, wait, check if they paid, dig up the file, send it — is the part that breaks first when it starts working. Three of those a week is fine. Thirty is a second job you didn’t ask for.
A link does that whether you’re there or not. And if you do eventually want the store, go build it — the link keeps working alongside it, and nothing of yours was ever locked in here.
An honest comparison with the three things people actually do instead — including when you shouldn’t use us.
What most people do now
This works, and it’s free. It also means you have to be awake. Someone asks at 11pm, you send your handle, you wait, you check whether they paid, then you dig up the file and send it. Every single time.
It also puts you in the awkward position of asking. A link with a price on it does the asking for you — nobody has to negotiate, and nobody has to be trusted to pay afterward, because they can’t get in until they have.
Use Venmo instead when: it’s one person you know, once. Ours only earns its 8% when it’s repeated or with strangers.
Storefront platforms
These are real products and they do more than we do: hosted files, storefronts, email lists, coupons, affiliates, analytics. If you’re building a catalogue, use one of them. Payhip in particular is cheaper than us at 5%.
The cost is setup. An account, a profile, a payout method, a product page — before you can charge anyone anything. That’s worth it if selling is your business. It’s absurd overhead if you just want $5 for a file you already have sitting in Drive.
Use them instead when: you have more than a handful of things to sell, or you want a store people can browse.
The closest technical cousin
Free, and from the company that processes our payments. Two differences: you need a Stripe account first — which means identity verification before your first dollar — and a Payment Link just takes money. It doesn’t hand anything over afterward.
We do the part after payment: the buyer lands on your URL automatically. And you don’t meet Stripe until you’ve earned $20 and want it in your bank.
Use them instead when: you already have a Stripe account and you’re happy to send the thing manually.
Free to try · we take 8% only when you get paid