Ask HN: Which service do you use to sell downloads?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7772309

by renaars • 12 years ago

65 57 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

acangiano• 12 years ago

I no longer need them, but in the past I had positive experiences with FastSpring. eJunkie is also a popular option.

Cilvic• 12 years ago

our experience with fastspring is good as well!

MarkS12• 12 years ago

Is eJunkie is still flash based? SendOwl or GetDPD have been our two favourites the last few years

fbm• 12 years ago

We also use Fastspring and they're great

garrettdimon• 12 years ago

Plasso (formerly Spacebox) I've been incredibly happy with both the service and the support.

http://plasso.co

maxx6• 12 years ago

Sellfy (https://sellfy.com) works great for me. I especially like the feature to use PayPal and Stripe together.

quaffapint2• 12 years ago

I plan on using wordpress and the free paid membership pro plugin (http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/) for my upcoming release.

Let's me sell a per year license with an optional reduced renewal fee at the end of the year, which most services don't seem to easily offer. Also then lets me ties into other things like support forum membership.

ivan_ah• 12 years ago

https://gumroad.com/ : nice design + very simple to use

colinismyname• 12 years ago

Seconded. They've added a lot of nice (and unobtrusive) features over the last year, too.

cannam• 12 years ago

SendOwl (http://www.sendowl.com), formerly known as Digital Delivery App. No particular complaints, but it's been a while since I've looked at the competition.

Georgio_19992• 12 years ago

Thanks for the thumbs up. George, founder of SendOwl

BrechtVds• 12 years ago

For WordPress plugins and themes I enjoy https://easydigitaldownloads.com It's not perfect, but has some nice plugins (licensing!).

jeremymcanally• 12 years ago

http://getdpd.com is the best option I've found. The interface makes sense, the pricing is super fair, and they allow you to send unlimited updates for free to your users (most other services charge more or, even worse, per update!).

EvaK_de2• 12 years ago

No PayPal payments accepted though, which is a showstopper for a lot of users.

From their website (http://getdpd.com/plans-and-pricing/): "What types of payment do you accept?

We accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. At this time we only accept payments online so we will not be able to accept a P.O., invoice you, or take an order over the phone."

renaars• 12 years ago

http://sellfy.com accepts PayPal

luxpir• 12 years ago

WooCommerce on Wordpress for an ebook/digital package. Free, barring Paypal fees (grmmble - I could use a different gateway, or even BTC, but in the real world PP is my best bet), and user-friendly enough. Has been very reliable over the years.

antidaily• 12 years ago

Bonus if the service is flat monthly fee.

quaffapint2• 12 years ago

More of a bonus if they let you choose. When you're first starting out a monthly fee could likely cost you more.

felipe_cabrera2• 12 years ago

how is that even possible when credit card processing is always a percentage?

patio11• 12 years ago

I may well be e-junkie's oldest surviving customer, although I eventually transitioned everything off their app into my app with the exception of Paypal IPN processing. They've got almost $500 of LTV from me, $5 a month at a time.

If I were making the choice again today, it would be Gumroad by a country mile. Regardless of whether you end up using them, look up Ryan Delk's presentations regarding the habits of successful sellers (multi-tier products; X 2.2X 5X pricing; email marketing). They'll make you much more successful than the typical person who just throws a $FOO onto the Internet.

joshcanhelp• 12 years ago

I use e-junkie as well. Their UI is horrendous and there are a few features that are not listed in the admin section (support will clue you in) but they are generally reliable and just do the job (for very cheap).

That said, I'm moving off of them to a WP + WooCommerce shop this month to have better control over the process and offer something besides PayPal (several countries are blocked from PayPal).

mynameispaul• 12 years ago

wait, PayPal doesn't sell downloads? I'm sure they do. I don't know why people use a 2nd service, that charge 1-2% on TOP of Paypal's 2.99%. why? you're still using paypal...

singer7• 12 years ago

People use a second service because PayPal does not offer such a feature.

infruset• 12 years ago

Haven't used it, but I think this deserves a mention as it accepts bitcoin: http://coinlock.com/

Georgio_19992• 12 years ago

SendOwl also accepts BitCoins

jevin• 12 years ago

You can have a look at http://www.fastspring.com/ too. I use them to sell my plugins online. Their support is fantastic.

wehadfun• 12 years ago

I used them aswell

programminggeek2• 12 years ago

I would use gumroad or whatever is easiest/fastest to get it out there. Don't worry about fees and junk right away. Get your product available to sell and focus on selling it. Don't spend a lot of time on how you are going to process money and deliver the product. Focus on the sales. When you have $10,000 in sales and 1% margin starts being worth $100, you can spend a few hours maybe worrying about if gum road is the right choice. Even then, it's probably not worth worrying about.

Just sell things, enough things that it actually matters who you are using for processing. But, with 0 sales, you are doing 0 order processing so it doesn't matter.

porter• 12 years ago

Gumroad is great for getting started. The only annoying thing I don't like about gumroad is that they don't give you many options for removing the header image or default call to action text on payment pages. Otherwise, it's a fast and clean way to accept payments without hassling with SSL, stripe, etc.

programminggeek2• 12 years ago

Yeah, but something that removes the friction of going from 0 sales and 0% conversion rate and a handful of sales at 1% conversion rate is huge. Most people never even get far enough that changing the logo would be meaningful.

bhouston• 12 years ago

We wrote our own integration into Shopify.com that does RLM-based licensing (a standard in the visual effects software industry.)

graeme• 12 years ago

I use woocommerce on Wordpress. I have a large number of products, and their cart process works pretty well. Checkout is smooth. Plentiful extensions.

joshdance• 12 years ago

I've sold about a thousand dollars thru Gumroad. http://gumroad.com

I like the design. I like the simplicity. People can just use their CC like normal. They take a percentage of your sales, but so far found it worth it.

I wish it had order tracking (just a box I could tick when I shipped something would be nice) but that is irrelevant for downloads.

winslow• 12 years ago

Might just be me, but gumrouad's website offers me no help in trying to make a decision. I'd like to see the actual checkout process and what it looks like but it keeps giving me a signup page.

the82nddoctor• 12 years ago

I think Paystr is the way to go. They are new, but they offer a bunch more. Yes, they take a bigger cut than gumroad, but they offer a ton of services for your digital downloads, like support to your customers, if they have an issue, they call Paystr and they will resolve it, you do nothing. Also, if you sell enough, you can get paid THE NEXT DAY. Check them out at https://www.paystr.com. If you want to see them in action, go to http://www.joshuasring.com and try to buy the book, that's the checkout process. I love how the customer never leaves the site.

singer7• 12 years ago

Snappy Checkout has an icon to mark an item as shipped. Check it out here:

https://www.snappycheckout.com/images/itemshipped.png

bthomas• 12 years ago

Do any of these services have a good workflow for pay what you want downloads?

hngiszmo• 12 years ago

A friend earned quite a bit with his music on CoinDL: https://www.coindl.com/page/author/139

It's bitcoin only though but I like the preview for music and the no-bullshit easy handling.

singer7• 12 years ago

My service (https://snappycheckout.com) offers a Stripe Checkout like experience and allows you to sell files from Dropbox. It costs 2% or $0.50 (whichever is less) per sale (plus the usual Stripe/PayPal fees).

weisser4• 12 years ago

Do you have tiered pricing? Say I wanted to offer a couple versions of a product with a few different levels of features?

singer7• 12 years ago

You can do that in Snappy Checkout by creating separate products. Here's an example of where I do that with one of my products:

https://www.SingersCreations.com/WeatherWatcherLive/Pricing

fookyong• 12 years ago

I use e-junkie for growthhackinghandbook.com

Flat monthly fee. Their admin UI is clunky, their checkout pages are basic but functional, but they solve a number of problems* without asking for a percentage cut of sales.

I think for basic stuff they work just fine. I'm just selling one ebook and I just wasn't comfortable with having a cut of my sales taken AND my funds being withheld by a third party before some weekly or monthly remittance. With e-junkie the funds go straight to my PayPal account where I can use the money immediately (I constantly pay for things via PayPal).

*obfuscating download path, handling coupons, handling multiple downloads etc

greenwalls• 12 years ago

I have had good luck with Cleverbridge http://www.cleverbridge.com.

nelstrom• 12 years ago

I'm pretty impressed with SendOwl. I like the flat monthly fee and generous bandwidth allowance. So far, I've not done a great volume of sales, but my customers have already remarked on how quickly the 0.8GB video file downloaded. So the core functionality seems sound. I'm looking forward to using their affiliates feature to help market my future products.

bizifyme• 12 years ago

Our service https://www.bizify.me offers a complete package. Credit card processing is included and also payment by mobile phone (SMS) for many countries. There is also a WordPress plugin and you can install our App on your phone to easily follow your sales. No setup fees, no monthly fees, no fixed transaction fees and the price for a digital product can be as low as 0.1 EUR.

samreh• 12 years ago

If you like/use shopify, check out: https://skypilotapp.com

felipe_cabrera2• 12 years ago

I use Avangate - and I love it. They act as Merchant of Record, take care of all sales tax headache, and with just one integration, I can accept payments in every country I have customers in, including the "difficult ones" like Brazil, India or China. Good service, too. Granted their API documentation and general user experience is a but sucky but if you start working with them, you will see why they are successful. If they were a public company I would buy their stock!

sr-frogs2• 12 years ago

yeah, I use them too and am very happy. perfect for downloads or subscriptions.

sr-frogs2• 12 years ago

If you are selling internationally, use Avangate.com. It's a platform built for selling downloads online and give you instant access to every major country with local payment methods, etc. I've been selling for 3 years with them and am very happy. make sure to reach out and ask for discounts - their published pricing is not final.

Ask HN: Which service do you use to sell downloads?

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