Compared September 2026
Shopify is a general ecommerce platform.
Shopify 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.
Shopify's Basic plan is $19 a month billed annually — $228 handed over before the first copy sells — and it buys a store that has never heard of an EPUB. Selling a file at all needs an app on top, and taking the money through anything other than Shopify Payments adds 2% of every sale on that plan. Here the same $19 is a ceiling rather than an entry price: nothing is charged until you are selling $500 a month, and no percentage is charged at any volume, because the payment runs on your own account.
Printed because a headline rate is not the whole bill, and because what a competitor charges for is the clearest statement of what it thinks it is selling.
| Inkwharf | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | None on Shopify Payments; 2% on Basic through any other provider |
| What you pay | $0 up to $500 of sales a month, then $19 | $19/mo billed annually from day one, $25 monthly |
| Who holds the money | Your own Stripe account. We never hold a cent | Shopify Payments, or a gateway of yours at 2% |
| Merchant of record | You are the merchant of record | You are |
| Bitcoin | Your own wallet, 1% and no fixed fee | A third-party app, and the 2% still applies |
| Selling a file at all | The whole product | An app you install — Shopify's own is free |
| EPUB validation | Spec-checked uploads, real chapter samples | None. A file is a file |
| Free sample | First chapters cut into a real EPUB the buyer can read | Not a concept it has |
| Reading experience | In-browser reader and send-to-Kindle on every book | A download link |
| Piracy answer | DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer | A cap on downloads per order |
| Physical books and merch | None at all | Inventory, shipping, card reader, the lot |
| Apps and extensions | None | Thousands |
| Buyer account required | None. An email address and a card | None required; Shop Pay if they want it |
| Where your shop lives | Your own domain, or a free address on Inkwharf | Your own domain |
| Setup | Upload an EPUB, paste a Stripe key, publish | A theme, a catalogue, an app, and a weekend |
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.
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.
Subscriptions, bundles, affiliates, upsells, abandoned-cart flows, a dozen email tools — someone has already built whatever you are about to want, and it installs in a minute. This has a fixed feature set and no ecosystem, on purpose, and that is a genuine cost.
Shop Pay is a saved card and a familiar screen for a large share of buyers, and reader trust at an unfamiliar checkout is the one number this product has not yet measured on itself. That is a real advantage and it is not a small one.
Basic is $19 a month billed annually, so a store that sells nothing in its first year still cost $228. The free plan here has every feature the paid ones have — both payment rails, the reader, watermarking, samples, send-to-Kindle — and stops at $500 of sales a month. The bill arrives after the money does.
Uploads are checked against the EPUB spec before they can be sold, the sample is real first chapters cut into a genuine EPUB rather than a PDF teaser, and every buyer gets an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle. Shopify's own Digital Downloads app hands over a file and a download counter, which is the same thing it does for a brush pack.
Shopify's answer to a file being shared is a limit on downloads, which does nothing to a leak and punishes the buyer who changed phones. Every copy sold here carries the buyer's name and a licence code, and their download page never expires.
On Basic, taking payment through anything other than Shopify Payments costs 2% of the sale — which is precisely the arrangement this product is built on. Here the author's own Stripe key and their own bitcoin wallet are the only way it works, and neither carries a platform percentage, because there is no mechanism by which one could be charged.
Upload a new edition and every past buyer's permanent link serves it, with the changelog on the page they already have. On Shopify a downloadable product is a file attached to an order: fixing a typo means fixing it for the next buyer, and emailing the previous ones yourself.
Every figure quoted for Shopify above, and the page it was read from, checked September 1, 2026. 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.