WooCommerce alternatives
WooCommerce is a self-hosted store plugin for WordPress. Here is everything worth moving to if it is not working for you, what each one takes, and — first, since it is the part most of these lists skip — when the answer is to stay put.
When WooCommerce is still the right answer
- You own the whole stack. The code runs on your server, the database is yours, and no plan, cap or change of terms can reach it. That is a stronger ownership claim than this product makes — a shop here lives on infrastructure you do not control, and a custom domain is the most that can be said about it.
- There is no ceiling of any kind. Plans here are capped on monthly sales, and at some volume the cap is a conversation. Woo does not have one: fifty thousand dollars a month costs exactly what five hundred does, which is the hosting bill.
- It will do anything you can code. Memberships, serials, bundles, subscriptions, a licence key per download, a bookshop and a blog and a mailing list on one install. The plugin ecosystem is the largest in ecommerce, and nothing here is extensible at all.
We make this page and we sell one of the options on it. If the three paragraphs above describe you, none of the rest is an upgrade.
The alternatives
1. Inkwharf — a shop you own, at 0% of every sale
$0–19/mo, no cutStorefront, checkout and EPUB delivery in one subscription, on your own domain. Cards are charged on your own Stripe account and the funds land in your balance, so nothing takes a percentage — there is no percentage, because the money never passes through here. Readers buy with an email address and no account, and every book comes with a real chapter sample, an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle.
The catch: ebooks only, no writing toolchain, and no marketplace sending you traffic. You bring the readers; it does everything after that.
2. Shopify — a general ecommerce platform
flat feeShopify is a store for physical goods that can be made to deliver a file. It bills $19 a month before the first sale, adds 2% to every sale taken through a provider that is not Shopify Payments, and knows nothing about EPUB — no spec check, no chapter sample, no reader, no send-to-Kindle, no watermark. Inkwharf is free until you are selling $500 a month and is built around the file. The moment you sell anything physical, Shopify wins outright and this does not compete.
Pick it for: Signed paperbacks, a print run, box sets, merch at a convention table. Inventory, shipping rates, and a card reader that shares a catalogue with the website. Nothing here touches a physical object, and an author whose direct sales are half print should not be reading this page for a verdict.
3. Payhip — a storefront for digital products
5% cutPayhip sells anything digital and charges a percentage until you pay enough to stop it — 5% free, 2% at $29 a month, 0% at $99. Inkwharf sells ebooks only, takes nothing at any tier, and knows what an EPUB is. Below roughly $380 a month in sales their free plan is genuinely the cheaper deal, and we say so.
Pick it for: Under about $380 a month in sales, their percentage costs less than $19 — the arithmetic is on this page rather than left for you to discover. Our free tier answers most of it by covering you to $500 a month at 0% with no subscription, but if your catalogue is broader than books, that window is real.
4. Gumroad — a marketplace for digital products
15% cutGumroad is the fastest way to put a file behind a payment link and the most expensive way to leave it there. The headline is 10%, but it is 10% + 50¢ — 15% of a $9.99 book — and 30% if the buyer arrived through their marketplace. The crossover against $19 a month arrives at about $127 in monthly sales.
Pick it for: Upload, price, share a link. No Stripe onboarding, no domain, no decisions. If the question is whether anyone will pay for the thing at all, that is a genuine advantage and 10% of a small experiment is a rounding error.
Sources
Every figure quoted above, and the page it was read from. Each platform carries the date it was last checked. These pages are re-read against those claims rather than trusted — if one of them changes, this comparison is wrong until it is updated, and you should be able to tell that for yourself.
WooCommerce · checked September 1, 2026
- core plugin is free; 7+ million active installs wordpress.org
- WooPayments is 2.9% + $0.30 on US domestic cards, with no monthly fee woocommerce.com
Shopify · checked September 1, 2026
- Basic $19/mo billed annually, $25 monthly; 2% charged only where the sale is taken through a payment provider other than Shopify Payments shopify.com
- Shopify's own Digital Downloads app is free apps.shopify.com
Payhip · checked August 28, 2026
- Free 5%, Plus $29/mo at 2%, Pro $99/mo at 0% help.payhip.com
- Payhip collects and remits EU/UK VAT on digital sales help.payhip.com
Gumroad · checked August 26, 2026
- 10% + 50¢ per sale, 30% via Discover, no monthly fee gumroad.com