Without sounding overly biased, I love Payhip. It wasn’t the first medium I used to sell my eBook, however, it’s the platform that I’ve had the most success with. I begin using Payhip back in 2015, and if you’re not sure what Payhip is, in a nutshell, it’s a simple and affordable solution for hosting and selling your eBooks online, but it’s much more than that. So, here’s my personal and honest Payhip review.
When it comes to selling digital downloads, you can explore many platforms and solutions. I’ve used quite a few of them in my time online. Some have produced good results, some not so much.
Over the years, I’ve used E-Junkie as well as Fiverr. Both of these online solutions are popular, even today, and very cost-effective.
As a matter of fact, in this blog post, I wrote a while back, I shared 9 popular platforms to sell your ebooks, so be sure to check it out if you’re looking to compare services.
One service I’ve not yet used is Amazon Kindle Publishing. I’ll be honest, I find the setup a little confusing. However, I hope to publish a book there in the future.
Anyway, in this post, I want to share my personal review of Payhip. This is the online selling platform I’ve been using for the last five years and the one that I’ve had the most success with.
Have you come across Payhip already?
In this Payhip review, we’ll take a look at the core features, and I’ll also share with you the incredible benefits that I’ve received from using Payhip to sell my eBooks over the years.
OK, let’s get to it.
What’s included in this Payhip review post?
What is Payhip?
OK, let’s start from the very beginning, shall we?
Payhip is an e-commerce service platform that provides simple tools for bloggers, authors, and entrepreneurs to sell digital downloads.
Their offerings include intelligent tools and features for hosting and selling all kinds of digital products directly. You can also sell physical products through Payhip, as well as create simple memberships for your business.
But it gets better.
You can now sell online courses, and coaching using Payhip.
The company was founded by Abs and Kahin Farah and is currently based in London, UK. Payhip is currently used by over 130,000 customers worldwide.
What do I love about Payhip?
What I love about Payhip is that there’s no waiting around to get paid!
Fabrizio Van Marciano
As a content creator, you don’t want to wait until the end of a certain period to get paid for your hard work, right? No one does.
With Payhip, you sell your digital download or your eBook, and the money is straight there in your PayPal account, instantly.
Other similar platforms will hold your money and make a payment to you every 30 days or so
What are the benefits of using Payhip?
Each online platform is different, and as I said, I’ve used a few of them in the past.
For me, user-friendliness is crucial, and Payhip is just that – user-friendly. Seriously, anyone can use the platform, start selling and make money.
For me, Payhip saves me a lot of time, and that’s because everything is hosted and configured on the Payhip website. I don’t need to use third-party services, or even configure my own website to use Payhip.
OK, so here’s a list of some of the benefits of using Payhip that I think you’ll love-
EU VAT is taken care of – This is a big plus for me as I don’t have the time or resources to figure out how and where to set up individual VAT for EU countries.
It’s cost-effective – The platform takes a very small fee of 5% per transaction for each eBook sale, and zero monthly fees (Basic account). PayPal and Stripe charge their own fees on top of that.
Built-in reporting tools – You get access to reporting tools such as daily views, daily sales, top visitor sources, and conversion rates.
Access to marketing tools and coupons – You have the option to create coupons and social discount codes to share with your leads.
Set up affiliates – With Payhip, you have the ability to signup, manage and reward your own affiliates, thus helping you to expand your marketing and increase sales of your digital products and services.
Product promotion tools – You can embed your product and Buy Now buttons right on your WordPress website.
Grow your list – You get access to tools to set up mailing lists so that your customers can subscribe and stay up to date with your digital products, and more.
Instant digital product delivery – Your customers are not waiting around for you to deliver their product. They can download it there and then.
Membership tools – Set up memberships for your products.
Sell physical and digital products – As well as selling eBooks and software, you can use Payhip to sell physical products. This is perfect if you’re a content creator, wanting to set a store for your merchandise.
Pay what you want pricing – Perfect if you’d like to let customers decide how much to pay for your products.
Store builder – Ideal if you have more than one product to sell, or would like to bundle products.
Blogging tools – For promoting your products!
Store Builder
A recent addition to Payhip is the store builder and blogging tools features. These are very simple but nevertheless powerful.
The store builder allows you to completely customize your storefront as well as add sections and products.
If you want to add a custom domain to your storefront, you can do that as well, and it’s completely free. You can add a domain or subdomain, complete with SSL.
Advanced options
Let’s get back to the focus of selling eBooks and digital products on Payhip.
When hosting a brand new product on Payhip, you have access to some advanced options. However, I think most of these are beneficial if you are selling software.
Here are some of these advanced features –
- Ability to make your products private.
- Add an ISBN (Internation Standard Book Number) for your eBook.
- Upload a few previews or sample pages.
- Add a limit number to how many copies of your product or eBook can be sold.
- Generate a unique license key for each of your product/software sales.
- Memorable URL to your Payhip shop for you to promote!
- PDF stamping to discourage customers from illegally sharing your products.
- Limit downloads, and more.
How much does it cost to use Payhip?
Payhip will cost you nothing to set up or even host your digital products and downloads. As I mentioned above, the website takes only a 5% commission per transaction fee for a Basic Account.
Other plans include –
A Plus Plan – $29 per month (Unlimited digital downloads, membership plans, and revenue. Plus 2% transaction fee. Stripe and PayPal have their own fees.)
A Pro Plan – $99 per month (Same as Standard plan but with zero transaction fees, however, Strip and PayPal have their own fees.)
Things I love and hate about using Payhip
Let’s start with the things that I love most about using Payhip –
- Easy to set up. Once you’re set, you can forget about it and let it do the work for you. All you have to do is market your products and make as many sales as you can!
- Easy to update files when you need to.
- Instant access to the product – Your customers are emailed a link to download their digital product/eBook instantly after purchase.
- Instant revenue – Earnings from sales are paid instantly and directly into your PayPal or Stripe account.
- Marketing suite – You have access to a bunch of helpful marketing tools.
- EU VAT is taken care of – Saving you an enormous amount of time and giving you peace of mind selling to EU customers.
- Add unlimited updates – You can update your customers with the latest revisions of my downloadable products if they choose to signup for email updates.
OK, so what about the things I dislike?
- Oh boy, I honestly can’t think of anything that I actually dislike about using Payhip. I’m so sorry if that sounds so biased. However, as a recommendation, maybe a dedicated WordPress plugin to enable custom buttons or membership features in a blog post or page would be useful. Perhaps a custom Gutenberg block would be cool.
So, where can you signup?
If you’re interested in signing up to Payhip to sell your eBooks or any other type of digital/physical product, you can signup by clicking this link. As I said, it’s completely free to signup.
How do I host my eBooks in Payhip?
At the time of updating this review, I’m now only hosting and selling a couple of eBooks using Payhip. You can check them out here if you like.
I actually use Payhip to host eBooks, and I know that you can create beautiful sales pages using Payhip, but the solution I use is to have a dedicated sales page on my personal website, where I then link the payment button to Payhip’s shopping cart.
What else can you do with Payhip?
You might have noticed I mentioned something about memberships. Well, with Payhip you can create simple memberships for your business.
Again, this is perfect if you’re selling premium content, bundled products, etc.
I will let you watch the short video that I created on how to use the membership tools in Payhip if you’d like to watch it. The video is a few years old now, and many new features have been added since it was recorded, but it gives a good overview of the membership features within Payhip.
Are there any other similar sites like Payhip?
Sure, you can check out this post to learn about 9 other similar websites you can use to sell your eBooks online and other digital products. Just remember the more places, the better. You can use more than one platform.
Are you ready to start using Payhip to sell your eBooks?
Well, there you have it, my personal review and overview of Payhip and why I love using this platform to sell my own eBooks.
There is no point in me waffling on about the service because it’s a simple enough solution if you’re looking for a no-frills simple way to get selling online. Payhip has been around for a good while now. They have withstood the test of time, as many other platforms have come and gone over the years, so you’re in good hands.
I want to wish you the best of luck, and if you have anything to say about Payhip; Good or bad, feel free to reach out to me on social media to let me know. I’m always happy to hear feedback from others on the tools and services that I use in my business.
Affiliate Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to the Payhip services which I use in my business and therefore recommend. This means if you click on an affiliate link and signup for the service, I may earn a small commission for each eBook you sell using the Payhip platform, at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your continued support.