Compared August 2026
BookFunnel is ebook delivery for indie authors.
BookFunnel is delivery without a checkout, so selling direct with it means pairing it with a store and paying two bills. Inkwharf is both halves in one subscription. BookFunnel still wins outright on ARCs and group promos, which aren't selling at all.
Both charge a flat fee, so there’s no percentage to model. The difference is what the fee buys. BookFunnel is $200 a year on the middle tier, billed annually and delivers files. $19 a month here is delivery and the checkout, the storefront, the samples and the reader, which is otherwise two subscriptions.
A headline rate isn’t the whole bill, and what a competitor charges for is the clearest statement of what it thinks it’s selling.
| Inkwharf | BookFunnel | |
|---|---|---|
| Takes the payment | Yes — cards and bitcoin | No. Delivery only |
| Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | None, because it does not handle sales |
| What you pay | $0 to $19 a month, everything included | $30, $200 or $300 a year — plus a store bought elsewhere |
| Storefront | A shop on your own domain | A landing page per book |
| Limits are counted in | Sales per month | Downloads per month |
| ARCs and review copies | Not a dedicated feature | The thing it is best at |
| Group promos | None | A large author network |
| Reader support | Self-serve link recovery by email | A staffed helpdesk and an app |
| Reading experience | In-browser reader and send-to-Kindle on every book | A reading app the reader installs |
| Watermarking | DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer | Watermarked |
| Buyers into your mailing list | Kit, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, beehiiv or Ghost, on every plan including free | It never handles a sale, so whatever storefront you pair it with does this |
| Pen names | One shop for now | Up to 4 on the $200 tier, 6 on the $300 tier |
A dot marks the side a row genuinely favours. Rows without one are a draw, and the ones marked against us are why the rest is worth reading.
A large share of what BookFunnel moves was never sold: advance copies, newsletter magnets, cross-author promo swaps. Their tooling for handing a file to a list of people who didn't pay is better than ours, and it's most of the reason authors keep them.
BookFunnel will talk your least technical reader through getting a file onto their device, on the phone if it comes to that. That's a real operation with real people in it, and it's a genuine reason to pay them.
Their entry tier is around $30 a year. If you sell nowhere but Amazon and just need somewhere to park a newsletter magnet, nothing here is cheaper for that job.
BookFunnel doesn't take money. Selling direct with it means a storefront tool for the checkout plus BookFunnel for the file — typically $20 to $50 a month between them, two dashboards, and neither one knowing what the other did. Here the sale and the delivery are the same event.
Your pen name, your bio, your accent colour and every title in one place, on your own domain. One link in your back matter instead of a different one per title.
BookFunnel gates on downloads per month, which is the wrong unit for a shop: a good week costs you money. Plans here are capped on sales, so nothing you haven't been paid for counts against you — and a delivery is never blocked for a reader who paid, on any plan, over the cap or not.
Each copy carries the buyer's name and a licence code, so a file that turns up on a piracy site leads back to one purchase. It isn't DRM and it never restricts the reader.
Every figure quoted for BookFunnel above, and the page it was read from, checked August 28, 2026. These pages are re-read against those claims rather than trusted. If one of them changes, this comparison is wrong until it’s updated, and you should be able to tell that for yourself.