Selling digital downloads without Shopify: the 60-second alternative

If you are selling an ebook, a course, a template, a Notion doc, or any kind of digital download, every popular option charges you something painful. Shopify wants $39/mo whether or not you sell anything. Gumroad takes 10% of every sale. Stan.store charges $29/mo. None of these is wrong; all of them are overhead you can skip if you know what you actually need.

What you need: a product page, a checkout, an automatic delivery email. Maybe a custom domain if it gets serious. That is it.

The fee math, with a worked example

Pretend you have a $50 ebook. You sell 100 a month. Your only real cost is payment processing and whatever the platform charges.

• Gumroad: 10% off the top. On a $50 sale that is $5 to Gumroad, plus payment processing. Across 100 sales, ~$500/mo to Gumroad before processing.
• Stan.store: $29/mo flat. On 100 sales of $50 that is $0.29 per sale to Stan, plus Stripe processing. Reasonable but constant overhead.
• Shopify Basic: $39/mo + 2.9% + 30¢. On 100 sales of $50 that is $39 + ~$175 in processing = ~$214/mo. The $39 is constant; the rest is just Stripe.
• instxnt Free: $0/mo + 3% platform fee + Stripe (2.9% + 30¢). On 100 sales of $50 that is $150 (3%) + ~$175 (Stripe) = ~$325/mo total. Cheaper than Gumroad by ~$175/mo, no monthly subscription.
• instxnt Pro: $19/mo + 0% platform fee + Stripe only. On 100 sales of $50: $19 + ~$175 = ~$194/mo total. Cheaper than Shopify by $20/mo and cheaper than Gumroad by ~$300/mo. Pro pays for itself at any meaningful volume.

The Gumroad delta is the painful one. ~$300/mo is real money — that's a year of instxnt Pro and change. At $50 ASP and meaningful volume, Gumroad's 10% is hard to defend. The full Gumroad comparison walks through it.

If your numbers are different, run them through the product margin calculator—it shows net per-sale revenue across instxnt, Shopify, Etsy, Gumroad, and Beacons in one view.

What the lean setup looks like

1. Pick a single product per storefront. One PDF, one course, one template, one URL. You can run unlimited storefronts on the free plan—each is a focused page that converts harder than a multi-product hub.
2. Connect Stripe. instxnt uses Stripe Connect, so funds go directly to your Stripe account. We never hold customer money. Stripe integration details if you want the technical version.
3. Set the digital download. Upload your file. After Stripe confirms payment, instxnt emails the buyer an access-gated download link. No middleware needed.
4. Use AI to draft the product copy. Most digital creators hate writing their own marketing copy. The AI generator drafts a description, FAQ, and SEO metadata in ~30 seconds. Tweak from there instead of starting from a blank page.
5. Optionally: connect a custom domain. $19/mo Pro plan. Auto-SSL via Cloudflare. shop.yourname.com instead of a long subdomain. Pro also drops the 3% platform fee to 0% — usually pays for itself at meaningful volume.

Why one product per page

Single-product storefronts convert better than multi-product hubs for a specific reason: the buyer arrived because they want one thing, and showing them other options gives them a reason to leave. Marketplaces like Etsy and product hubs like Stan.store work for organic discovery. They work against you when traffic comes from your own ad campaign or your own email list.

If you have five different digital products, run five storefronts. Link them from a hub on your own site if you want a directory. But each ad and each email goes to the focused single-product page, not a list of five things.

What you give up

instxnt is not a marketplace. There is no Gumroad Discover surface where strangers find your product. There is no Stan.store-style creator hub with bookings, courses, and links all on one page. If your revenue model depends on that built-in distribution, those tools are better fits.

For most digital creators selling to their own audience—email list, social following, paid ad campaigns—the marketplace lift is small and the platform cuts are large. instxnt sits in that gap intentionally.

The migration path

If you are already on Gumroad or Stan.store, your customer data is yours: export your list, spin up an instxnt storefront for your highest-volume product, point your next email or next ad at the new URL. The buyers who convert there are pure profit you were leaving on the table.

See the digital creators landing for the full pitch and integration list, or jump straight to pricing to see what you would actually pay.