# Inkwharf vs Shopify Canonical page: https://www.inkwharf.com/vs/shopify Figures verified against Shopify's published pricing on 2026-09-01. Shopify is a general ecommerce platform. ## Verdict 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. ## Cost - Shopify charges a flat fee — $19 a month on Basic billed annually, $25 billed monthly — and 0% of a sale. - 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. - Inkwharf charges $19 a month and 0% of any sale, with a free tier to $500 of sales a month. | Monthly sales | Shopify per year | Inkwharf per year | Difference | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | $500/mo | $228 | $0 | $228 | | $2,000/mo | $228 | $228 | — | | $5,000/mo | $228 | $228 | — | ## What Shopify sells on top of its cut - **Basic** — $19/month: $19/mo billed annually, $25 monthly — 2% on sales taken through a third-party payment provider - **Grow** — $49/month: $49/mo billed annually, $65 monthly — the third-party fee drops to 1% - **Advanced** — $299/month: $299/mo billed annually, $399 monthly — third-party fee 0.6% ## Where Shopify is the better choice - **You sell objects as well as files** — 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. - **The app store, which is the real product** — 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. - **A checkout buyers already recognise** — 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. ## Where Inkwharf is - **Nothing to pay until you are selling** — 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. - **It knows what an EPUB is** — 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. - **Watermarking rather than download caps** — 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. - **No surcharge for using your own processor** — 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. - **A corrected file reaches everyone who already bought** — 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. ## Side by side | | 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 | ## Questions ### Why not just use Shopify with the free Digital Downloads app? Plenty of authors do, and it works. What it gives you is a file attached to an order and a download counter. What it does not give you is a spec check before the file can be sold, a real chapter sample, an in-browser reader, send-to-Kindle, a per-buyer watermark, or a way to push a corrected edition to people who bought last year. If none of those matter to you, Shopify is a bigger product than this one and you should use it. ### Is the 2% avoidable? Yes — Shopify does not charge it on orders processed through Shopify Payments, and most authors will use it. It applies where Shopify Payments does not: a country it has not launched in, or a rail it does not carry, which includes bitcoin. The fee is real but conditional, and a comparison quoting it as a flat 2% would be misleading. ### I already run a Shopify store for paperbacks. Should I move? No. Keep it for the print and the merch, which this cannot do, and link the ebooks here from it. Two tools, one bill each, and the half that needs EPUB handling gets it. ## Sources Every claim above about Shopify's pricing, checked 2026-09-01: - Basic $19/mo billed annually, $25 monthly; 2% charged only where the sale is taken through a payment provider other than Shopify Payments — - Shopify's own Digital Downloads app is free —