Starting an online business has never been easier! eCommerce, with its massive power, enables you to sell not only physical commodities but also a wide range of digital products and services, such as digital downloads, subscriptions, and more.
People nowadays, however, are spoiled for choice when it comes to online selling in light of a stack of eCommerce platforms and marketplaces in the industry.
In this article, LitExtension – #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert will identify the top 10+ best platforms to sell digital products to help you choose a suitable solution for your business.
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Shopify
- Magento
- Gumroad
- SendOwl
- SureCart
- Payhip
- Teachable
- Learndash
- Sellfy
- Big Cartel
Plus, if you are considering a move from your current eCommerce platform to a more robust one, LitExtension can give you a helping hand. With 200,000+ stores migrated and 100,000+ customers worldwide, LitExtension will offer you a seamless, quick and safe data migration.
Without further ado, let’s get the ball rolling!
Need Help To Migrate Your Store?
LitExtension provides a well-optimized Cart to Cart migration service that will help you transfer all your data accurately, painlessly with utmost security.
10+ Best Platforms to Sell Digital Products in 2023
#1. Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
First off, EDD is considered the best website for selling digital products. In essence, EDD is a CRM within your WordPress dashboard that allows you to sell through your WordPress blog. With this plugin, you can easily add the “Buy now” and “Add to cart” buttons directly to your WordPress site.
Customers can build an account page on EDD, which allows them to have a more personalized buying experience. Besides, the customers also have full access to the shopping cart system to purchase multiple ranges of downloads at once.
Pricing:
There are four annual pricing plans to select from, starting at $99.50 for the Personal Pass. The Extended Pass, Professional Pass, and All-Access Pass charge you $199.50, $299.50, and $499.50, respectively. If you want to further extend the power of EDD, you can also acquire official EDD extensions or 3rd-party extensions for a fee.
EDD accepts credit card payments using Stripe as well as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal. Besides, you can also set up recurring payments or additional payment gateways.
EDD Outstanding Features:
- Discount codes for your customers
- In-depth analytics to track and monitor the activities of the customers
- Affiliate system with AffiliateWP
- Seamless integration with your favorite tools (Dropbox, Stripe, MailChimp, and more)
- Restrictions and authorizations for the customers
- No limitations to distributing digital products
#2. Shopify
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As a front-runner in the eCommerce game, Shopify is a full-fledged option enabling merchants to sell everything, from physical products to digital goods and services. Offering a powerful range of eCommerce features, Shopify simplifies eCommerce, powering approximately 3.500.000 live websites. Without a doubt, Shopify is the best eCommerce platform to sell digital products to your customers.
Since Shopify is a hosted solution, you can roll out a merchandise store quickly without the need to undergo the tedious task of coding. Besides, Shopify also offers users useful sales tools & features, such as multi-channel integration, inventory management, abandoned cart recovery as well as dropshipping.
Having difficulties building a Shopify store? This tutorial video will show you how to create a Shopify website from scratch:
Shopify Pricing:
With Shopify, everything can begin with a 3-day free trial. Then, Shopify offers 5 different pricing plans:
- Shopify Starter: $5 per month
- Basic Shopify: $39 per month
- Shopify: $105 per month
- Advanced Shopify: $399 per month
- Shopify Plus: custom pricing
Besides, if you don’t use Shopify Payments, Shopify will charge you an additional transaction fee depending on which pricing plan you opt for.
Shopify Outstanding Features:
- Good selection of website templates, both free Shopify themes and premium ones
- Mobile commerce support
- Subscription and membership creation
- Digital download delivery
- A variety of advanced plugins and extensions are available
- Extensive payment options, including Shop Pay – a checkout method developed by Shopify
- Stand-out design functionality and flexibility
- Thorough, round-the-clock customer support
- Multi-currency selling
Are you ready to start a new adventure with Shopify? Check out our Shopify resources now to learn everything you need to know about this eCommerce platform:
#3. Magento
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Magento is an open-source platform owned by Adobe, empowering thousands of retailers and brands worldwide. Magento offers users two versions to fit the requirements of their eCommerce business: Magento OpenSource and Magento Commerce.
As one of the most innovative and flexible platforms, Magento supports selling not only physical items but also digital and downloadable products or services. Thus, it is also the best website for selling digital products.
Owing to its open-source nature, Magento gains a reputation for strong scalability and high customizability. This platform also comes with a slew of strong built-in capabilities, particularly for eCommerce, such as inventory management, sales channels, shipping & tax, and analysis.
Pricing:
Magento Open Source is available for download and installation at no cost. However, it’s not free to implement because you will have to pay for web hosting, domain names, add-ons, an SSL certificate…, which can cost you around $15,000.
Magento Commerce (Adobe Commerce), on the other hand, is ideally suited for large businesses, with pricing depending on annual average gross sales income. For example, if your sales reach more than $1million, Magento charges you $22,000 per year.
Magento Outstanding Features:
- Highly scalable
- Extensive payment gateway integration options
- Built-in multilingual support
- Mobiles and tablets optimization
- Built-in SEO features
- An active global user community
Discover more about Magento (Adobe Commerce):
#4. Sellfy
Sellfy is a popular and affordable solution, which is best suited for selling digital downloads and subscriptions. This platform enables you to offer all sorts of digital content, such as e-books & PDFs, online events & promotions, digital art, or online memberships.
Without much hassle, you can easily create an online store in minutes to sell digital goods and services or sell from your existing websites using an embedded “Buy now” button.
Pricing:
To get started with Sellfy, you’ll have a 14-day free trial or you can opt for a free plan. You can also choose from different paid packages, starting at $29 per month and $264 per year.
Sellfy Outstanding Features:
- Highly customizable
- Multiple payment options
- Optimized for mobile devices
- Shopping cart support
- In-depth analytics
- Multiple store languages
- No transactions fees
#5. Gumroad
If you are browsing for an online platform to sell digital products, Gumroad is one of the most prominent names. It is essentially an All-in-One solution for all types of creators from artists, writers, to educators, podcasters, and more. Thanks to its simplicity, ease of use, and security, Gumroad lets everything unfold naturally. You can create your own site or integrate Gumroad into your own website utilizing the embeddable Gumroad widget.
What’s more, Gumroad allows you to sell multiple versions of a product, and generate license keys for your software. With integrations with things like Google Analytics, you can get access to powerful data and universal analytics.
Pricing:
The great thing about Gumroad is that it charges you no monthly or yearly fee but a small cut on each transaction made online. For instance, if your sales reach $10.000, you’ll have to pay 5% of your revenue for Gumroad.
Gumroad Outstanding Features:
- A simple yet effective landing page form
- Email list integration with Gumroad
- Powerful analytics
- Simple and clean checkout pages
- Make subscription plans available for memberships
#6. SureCart
SureCart is new to the scene but is already making waves. It’s a new eCommerce platform able to sell digital products from your website or eCommerce store. It’s also more than capable of selling physical products, subscriptions, memberships, or a combination of all of them.
SureCart is a headless eCommerce platform. The front end store is hosted by you in the same way as WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads. The magic happens on the SureCart servers. Rather than slow your web host down with transactions, your store sends the data to the SureCart server and everything is handled there.
You won’t overload your web host or need to buy more expensive hosting when your store grows.
Pricing:
There’s a free version of SureCart and three premium plans. The free version can operate a fully working store and is more than enough to get you started.
Premium versions add more features such as advanced subscription support, advanced checkout forms, Zapier integration, cart abandonment recovery tools, upsells, cross-sells, support for multiple currencies and a whole lot more.
The good news is that the use of SureCart servers and features can cost as little as $99 per year with no extra to pay.
SureCart Outstanding Features:
- Headless eCommerce solution
- Very easy to use
- Supports multiple payment gateways and payment types
- Infinitely scalable and interoperable
- Fully responsive and SEO friendly
- 24/7 support from an expert team
#7. SendOwl
SendOwl is a platform specifically designed for selling digital goods, services, subscriptions, memberships, and more. With a clean and easy-to-use interface, it is an end-to-end solution that offers everything to start right away, from selling, delivering, marketing, to analytics.
SendOwl, like other systems, may be integrated with any website, such as Shopify and WordPress. As a result, if you already have an online presence, SendOwl is a good choice.
Pricing:
You can start your SendOwl experience with a free trial that lasts for 30 days. After that, the pricing plan starts at $9 per month for the Basic, $15 for the Standard package, $24 for the Premium option, and $39 for the Business one.
SendOwl Outstanding Features:
- Extensive marketplace for add-ons and extensions
- Discount codes and promotional offers for your end-users
- Advanced reporting and in-depth analytics
- Affiliate program metrics
- Modern & responsive checkout
- Multiple payment options (including Bitcoin)
- Multi-language & multi-currency
- Built-in marketing tools, such as email marketing integrations, or 1-click upsells
#8. Payhip
Trusted by over 130.000 sellers worldwide, Payhip is also a fantastic platform for selling digital downloads & memberships, which enables you to sell all types of digital products, such as your eBooks, or software.
Furthermore, many powerful marketing features are also included with your pricing package. Using Payhip makes it easy to grow your business in light of global affiliate systems, social discounts, mailing lists… In addition, it’s also incredibly easy to embed the checkout and shopping cart to sell on your own blog, website, or sell your digital downloads directly on social media.
If you want to sell memberships, Payhip allows you to sell multiple plans and have your site optimized for speed & conversion with no coding required.
Pricing:
Payhip is a free platform to sell digital products. With no credit card required, Payhip offers you a Free Forever plan which charges you only a 5% transaction fee. There’s also a Plus option for $29 per month and a 2% transaction fee.
If you don’t want to pay an additional fee per transaction, you can opt for the Pro pricing plan at $99 per month.
Payhip Outstanding Features:
- Discounts or coupons to your products
- Promotional campaigns
- License keys for software
- Responsive checkout pages
- Pay what you want pricing
- Marketing tools integration
- Built-in affiliate program
Need Help To Migrate Your Store?
LitExtension provides a well-optimized Cart to Cart migration service that will help you transfer all your data accurately, painlessly with utmost security.
#9. Teachable
Teachable is specifically catered to e-learning – the new education industry. Already, more than 100.000 creators use Teachable to create a powerful empire for online education, making it one of the most popular and accessible online selling platforms available on the market. As a one-stop-shop solution for selling online courses and learning subscriptions, Teachable offers you an utterly brandable teaching experience to promote and sell unlimited courses and coaching services.
Additionally, Teachable enables in-depth website customization options. This platform also allows you to easily integrate a wide range of tools and use a custom domain to easily link your existing website to Teachable. Besides, Teachable accepts payment in 130+ currencies, which is essential to extend your business internationally.
Pricing:
You can get started on Teachable with a Free plan, which charges you nothing but a $1 and 10% transaction fee. Besides, Teachable offers 2 paid options: monthly and annually.
With a yearly pricing plan, the Basic starts at $29, or you can upgrade to Pro at $99 per month or Business at $249 per month. If you opt for a monthly plan, the fee is slightly higher, starting from $39 per month. In addition, whether you pay monthly or yearly, the Basic will charge you a 5% transaction fee.
Teachable Outstanding features:
- Multiple types of teaching media support
- Quizzes and course completion certificates
- Student feedback and support integrations
- Built-in affiliate program
- Endless marketing integrations
- Analytics to track sales and student insights
- Different payment options for your students
#10. Learndash
Learndash is pre-configured for out-of-the-box use that focuses heavily on the benefits of e-learning. Although Learndash is far from the cheapest platform in the industry, it is one of the most powerful course-creation systems out there. However, digital downloads aren’t as easy to sell through Learndash.
With a drag & drop course builder and dynamic content delivery, you can easily create impressive online courses. It also supports all necessary functions of e-learning, such as badges & certificates, discussion forums, or leaderboards. It’s easy to bulk marketing & sales with one-time purchases, subscriptions, memberships, or course bundles. Learndash can be extended to a learning marketplace with the LearnDash frontend course builder with a Dashboard add-on which allows the creation of an instructor role.
Pricing:
Fortunately, Learndash is launching a back-to-school sale with the Basic package that starts at $159 per month. Normally, you have to pay $159 per year for the Basic, $189 for the Plus, and $329 for the Pro.
Learndash Outstanding Features:
- Detailed reports on enrollment, progress, and performance
- Group and assignment management
- Easily use any theme and page builder
- Highly customizable
- Multisite enabled
- Various types of media support, such as videos, audio, SWF files, HTML5, SCORM, xAPI
#11. Big Cartel
When it comes to the best online platform to sell digital products, it’ll be a mistake if not to mention Big Cartel. BigCartel is a web-based, fully-hosted eCommerce platform, which is currently home to over 80,000 live websites. It is a nifty and easy-to-use platform for artists and makers, such as painters, photographers, or crafters, who are looking for a way to sell individual items, including digital goods.
Big Cartel is the right fit for start-ups or small businesses. It gives you more control over your online store than Etsy but is less powerful in terms of eCommerce features than Shopify.
Pricing:
Actually, Big Cartel has three different pricing tiers depending on how many things you list. Just like other eCommerce platforms that offer free plan, Big Cartel offers paid options ranging from $9.99 to $19.99 each month.
Big Cartel Outstanding Features:
- Clean navigation and user-friendly prompts
- Inventory tracking
- Order management
- Mobile app
- Built with SEO in mind
- Free themes
What is the Best Platform to Sell Digital Products?
On the whole, EasyDigitalDownloads or Sellfy is a great option to sell digital products and services.
Meanwhile, if you are seeking a splendid platform to sell online courses, Learndash or Teachable could be just the thing that you need.
Or else, you can opt for an all-in-one platform like Shopify to save time or go with an open-source solution like Magento to get full control over your website.
How to Sell Digital Products: Things You Should Know!
What are digital products?
Simply put, digital goods and services are intangible products and services that exist in digital form. To put it another way, items or services which are purchased online but don’t have any physical existence could be considered digital goods and services.
Why sell digital products?
Here are some mind-blowing stats you shouldn’t ignore:
- The number of digital buyers worldwide in 2021 was over 2.14 billion people.
- The e-book market reached $18.13 billion in 2020 and is expected to value at $23.12 billion by 2026.
- The global photographic services market was valued at $32.92 billion in 2020.
- The market size of the Photography industry, measured by revenue, was $11.5 billion in 2021.
As can be seen, selling digital products and services could undoubtedly pay dividends. Therefore, if you are planning to open an online store to sell these kinds of items, hope that this article can help you easily choose the best platform to sell digital products.
What are the best digital products to sell in 2023?
- eBooks
- Podcasts & Audiobooks
- Video
- Design
- Art & Photography
- Software & Tech
- Online courses & E-learning materials
- Graphics & Illustrations
- Downloadable music
- Digital subscriptions
In fact, copyright infringement and taxation are two legal concerns that arise frequently in the realm of digital goods and services. The most difficult question to answer is how to protect your own assets from unauthorized copying and pasting. Besides, although digital goods and services, such as eBooks or e-learning, aren’t new technology, tax rules for them are in constant flux.
Despite the aforementioned reservations, digital products and services have many advantages that make them uniquely appealing to sell, such as low overhead costs, high-profit margins, and the potential to automate.
You might want to read more:
Platform to Sell Digital Products – FAQs
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Conclusion
If you’re on the fence about which is the best platform for digital products, you can choose a test-and-learn approach to find out the right answer before taking the plunge.
If you are already running an online store but want to migrate to another platform, LitExtension – #1 Shopping Cart Migration Solution is always at your service. At LitExtension, we offer an advanced automated tool that will transfer all your data securely and flawlessly from your current eCommerce platform to a more robust one. Up to now, we have successfully migrated 200,000+ stores with over 100,000 customers worldwide.
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Thank you for reading and good luck with your business!
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