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Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative
Hi HN,
If you’re selling templates or digital assets online, platforms like Gumroad have a ton of amazing features . . . but they’re also expensive. It’s not uncommon to be paying 10%, 20% or even 30% of your revenue just to host and deliver some digital content to customers.
Instead, we think most creators should own their own Stripe account and use a lightweight fulfillment layer to send customers their orders.
So we built Easyful, a platform built on Stripe to email your content to customers when they buy it. And it’s free!
We’ve been using Easyful ourselves for a few months now. Try it out and let us know what you think!
- kreutz 3y agoHow do you plan to make money?
- GGO 3y agoone way or another, you will pay for it. I'd rather know how much I am paying and pay more, then don't know and keep paying.
- turnsout 3y agoI really wish Stripe would just make something like this. Just the bare minimum necessary to host Checkout for products entered in your Stripe dashboard. I wonder if they can’t due to some onerous clause in their agreement with Shopify.
- dgivney 3y agoI'm pretty sure they do with Stripe Checkout? https://stripe.com/en-au/payments/checkout https://stripe.com/en-au/payments/checkout
- vikeri 3y agoHave you tried Stripe's payment links?
- jhartist 3y agoDefinitely check them out - they're great. Easyful is just a fulfillment layer that plugs into Stripe payment links for emailing customers your content when they buy something.
- rpgbr 3y agoIt makes. I run my membership program entirely via Stripe's built-in, no-code features: https://manualdousuario.net/apoie/ https://manualdousuario.net/apoie/
- vxNsr 3y agoHave you done a write it up English for how that works? Does stripe send emails and you just have the emails contain the content as attachments or straight text?
- dubcanada 3y agoWhen you start competing with your customers, it typically doesn't end well.
- beezlewax 3y agoThey do appear have this with links
- philip1209 3y agoStripe offers revenue share to platforms such as Shopify [1]. Easyful could go this path. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000119312515129273/d863202dex1011.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000119312515...
- jhartist 3y agoGood question: we mostly built Easyful to use ourselves, but if it gets a significant of usage we might build some more advanced pro features and sell those features as a paid tier upgrade, while keeping the base app free. We've had success with that model before with Smallchat, a saas app we launched several years ago, and it's still going strong supporting millions of free users. With low-operating-cost saas apps, you can get away with offering a pretty generous free tier. A small percentage of paid users can more than pay for your mostly-free user base.
- vidyesh 3y ago> With low-operating-cost saas apps, you can get away with offering a pretty generous free tier. A small percentage of paid users can more than pay for your mostly-free user base. Thats good to hear. Congrats. I always wondered do low operating cost SaaS apps reach a point where the interest or subscription(s) for the paid plans outweigh the cost of running the free tier accounts? And how does one tackle that? Do you have a blog or some stats to look at? I would love to read about this and this mission of yours. I see many people suggest that there should be a small fee to cover the hosting costs, do you think such tactics lead to the race to bottom scenario where you can't really charge properly for the paid plan as the starter plan itself is under-priced?
- bberenberg 3y agoWhat exactly are you using it for yourself?
- jhartist 3y agoWe started building Easyful while looking for a platform to fulfill orders for Standerd, a Figma UI kit our team uses that we sell: https://www.standerd.co/ https://www.standerd.co/
- scastiel 3y agoNice platform it seems, but I have a couple of questions: - If it is free, does that make me the product? How will you make money? - How do you prevent the problems that Flurly had, which led to Stripe closing their account?
- scastiel 3y agoJust had a closer look, it seems the second question’s answer is: creators use their own Stripe account, so the problem should not happen here.
- jhartist 3y agoLonger answer to your question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37055297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37055297 tldr; we might add some paid features in the future but keep the base app free since operating costs are low.
- MitchJohn 3y agoFyi the floating coins blocks some of the text on mobile.
- weinzierl 3y agoWhat is the problem with Gumroad? I only used it as a buyer a few times and this is a couple of years ago. It seemed to me they are on the good side and fair to sellers and buyers? Was I wrong, has it changed or are they still ok?
- jhartist 3y agoGumroad is great! But their pricing model (flat 10%) doesn't make sense for many creators. We think it's better for most creators to own their own Stripe accounts and use a lightweight fulfillment platform like Easyful instead.
- fredley 3y agoHave you read Sahil Lavingia's blog? https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting
- keerthiko 3y agoIs any content in this blog particularly relevant to Easyful's reason for existence or are you just mentioning it because you enjoyed the post? (I remember reading it when Sahil posted that first, as a fellow bootstrapped tech cofounder but I don't remember anything of note from there to discuss re: Easyful)
- ojbyrne 3y agoPresumably because Easyful seems to be directly comparing itself to Gumroad, which is the subject of the blog post.
- joshxyz 3y agothank you for sharing this
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rozenmd 3y agoHow do you handle sales tax across all the jurisdictions for makers, are you a merchant of record like Gumroad?
- jhartist 3y agoGood question: we are not a merchant of record, and Easyful doesn’t even process transactions. We’re just a fulfillment layer that plugs into Stripe payment links.
- dna_polymerase 3y agoIn other words, you just ignore the topic.
- andrelaszlo 3y agoWhat's up with the design? It's really nice, but also very similar to Gumroad's visual language. Not really criticism, just curious about the idea behind it.
- fullstackchris 3y agoDefinitely noticed that too. Seems like a cheeky tip of the hat towards Gumroad.
- rogerclark 3y agoGumroad's design is itself a reuse of several design trends from 2021-2023. Wondermind is one example of another site using the same aesthetic. https://www.wondermind.com/ https://www.wondermind.com/
- andrelaszlo 3y agoHmm, I get your point but I think it's much closer than Wondermind. - Layout that uses the full width of the page. - The page is primarily made up of blocks that occupy a single column or two columns. - Large blocks of a primary color - The font used for the logos are quite similar. Not sure what it's called, but they're both some sort of chunky and playful sans with some oversized and/or geometric elements. - Decorative coins featured prominently (G) ($) - Cartoony graphics with a hand-drawn feeling to them. - Graphics poke out of the grid in many places. - Similar navbars Each point by itself is hardly surprising, most landing pages have some of them, but taken together it seemed like a lot to me :) Either way, great work and I'd love to try it on my next project <3
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- a2128 3y agoThis looks cool, but I'm curious about how taxes work with this setup. From my understanding, Gumroad handles sales tax for you in a number of countries (US and EU at least). Does Easyful do something similar, or is that left up to the user to go through that headache on their own?
- jhartist 3y agoStripe actually handles taxes for you with Payment Links, and Easyful is just a fulfillment layer on top of that. Check out the Stripe docs page about it: https://stripe.com/docs/tax/paymentlinks https://stripe.com/docs/tax/paymentlinks
- wahnfrieden 3y agoStripe does not act as Merchant of Record. So it is not directly comparable to Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle.
- a2128 3y agoThat's the term/information I was looking for. Thank you
- tansan 3y agoCould you share the implication this?
- coder543 3y agoI’m not an accountant, but I think the distinction is that the MoR will handle both the collection and remittance of tax for you, including filing any necessary paperwork. You get money deposited in your bank account, and you deliver product to customers, but you’re not worried about remitting taxes. If Stripe collects the tax and sets it aside, that’s helpful, but it still means you have to figure out which jurisdictions you owe tax to, and figure out how to get the taxes delivered and reported to those jurisdictions (“remitted”), which can be a headache, to say the least.
- ecuaflo 3y agoI made something similar for selling access to GitHub repos but it didn’t take off. People were hesitant to give a new product like mine access to their repos because we hadn’t built up trust that established brands like gumroad have. Makes it really hard for new players to enter this space. Have you seen similar concerns and how do you address them?
- jhartist 3y agoYeah, I wonder about that. My hope is that other platforms’ fees are high enough to motivate creators to switch, and the transition to Easyful is pretty fast for most users, especially if you already have a Stripe account. But I guess we’ll see whether we get any traction!
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIsn’t it possible to allow access to just the repo you’re selling, instead of all of them?
- ecuaflo 3y agoYes people had an issue with just that. Some would sell for thousands, so I can understand being cautious about access.
- pyuser314 3y agoStripe already has similar. It’s called Payment Links. Extremely easy and they manage all past transactions. https://stripe.com/payments/payment-links https://stripe.com/payments/payment-links
- jhartist 3y agoEasyful is a layer on top of Stripe Payment Links that handles the fulfillment for you. All Easyful users are using Stripe Payment links.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoWhat does fulfilment mean in this case? Digital downloads and the like?
- janosdebugs 3y agoI started making 3D assets in the past year and I have a newfound appreciation just how large these files can be. A single 3D model can easily grow to several hundred megabytes if not optimized properly. With the rise of photogrametry scans you'll have lots of rather large assets. I'd figure out the business model fast if I was you.
- snvzz 3y agoRelated: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528 Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233011 Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36403607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36403607 Don't Use Stripe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34035581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34035581 Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34271815 Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36967159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36967159
- lolinder 3y agoNote that half of those submissions were flagged to death. I don't doubt that there are some legitimate stories here, but one of those is a repeated repost with verbatim content from months earlier, and others are very vague about what sort of business they were running. It's become common knowledge that making a big stink on HN can get a lot of attention and sometimes resolve your problems, so even people who were shut down for clear violations of policy or law will try to use HN to get a mob going. Not that there aren't legitimate problems with Stripe, but the extent of those problems is blown out of proportion if you take all of these complaints at face value.
- snvzz 3y agoSeeing the discussions in these submissions doesn't give me that impression. Instead, I am inclined to think that mass-flagging is being done by Stripe sockpuppets as a means of mitigating negative impact on Stripe's public image.
- lolinder 3y agoThe person who called out "Don't Use Stripe" [0] tied a very legitimate account to their accusation. jacquesm is a very prominent user, and called out another one for being too vague, with no reply [1]. The third was clearly selling an NSFW AI service [2] and admitted it. The other three I'm willing to believe, I'm just cautioning against believing every submission you see. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34036111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34036111 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272248 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36969195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36969195
- codetrotter 3y agoDoes your service support payments with Bitcoin? / Do you plan to add support for paying with Bitcoin?
- d--b 3y agoWhy not take 1-2% instead of 30? Just what you need to cover the hosting costs. Taking 0% tells users you’ll end up screwing them one way or another in the future.
- jhartist 3y agoGood question: because we’re not handling payment processing or anything, just emailing users your content, we think Easyful can be default-free forever. If we get a bunch of usage, we might build some more advanced pro features and sell those features as a paid tier. We’ve had success with that model before.
- lockhouse 3y agoHow do you actually make any money though? It costs you money to provide this service. Where is that coming from?
- jhartist 3y agoTwo answers: • The operating costs are very low, since all Easyful does is email your customers your content when they buy it. • Our team at nicer.io is primarily a product agency, so when we make our own apps like Easyful, SimplePerks and Smallchat, they don't have the pressure to be highly-profitable. We often end up getting good connections, agency customers and referrals from these apps, and keeping them running and supported is pretty low-cost for us.
- janosdebugs 3y agoHow do you mail files that are several hundred megabytes in size? Also, you need to store these somewhere, which costs money. I might be wrong, but it seems you missed a few critical parts of why people use Gumroad. You should take a closer look at their audience, there is a sizable segment of people that sell 3D models, textures, etc.
- 3y ago
- leemcd56 3y agoCould you look into possibly switching to Adyen or an NMI gateway?
- fakedang 3y agoThis should be the advice at the top. If you want to be comparable to Gumroad, you're better off using Adyen because they are a Merchant Of Record.
- dangerboysteve 3y agoExactly how do you plan on making money? From a customer perspective, this is sketchy to me. How do you plan on funding development, paying for customer support, scaling services...etc?
- pooriar 3y agoBeautiful lading page and generous app. Thank you for making tools like this that help small-time creators improve their margins :) I used Payhip for my last project but I will bookmark this one to make sure I use it in the future
- KingOfCoders 3y agoIs this a point of sales or am I the one selling? If it's not a POS it's not an alternative. [Edit] Searching the website, it looks like it is not a POS.
- _trackno5 3y agoNice project, but this is a bit of a misrepresentation of Gumroad. The reason you “give up” so much money to them is because they handle VAT, which this service doesn’t seem to do at all. Stripe by default will not collect and remit VAT.
- tiborsaas 3y ago> because they handle VAT Not everywhere unfortunately, so I still have to pay attention to it, which I can't so it's a show-stopper for me.
- jhartist 3y agoStripe actually does collect VAT and helps you file and remit. Check out their docs page for doing this with Payment Links, which is what Easyful uses: https://stripe.com/docs/tax/paymentlinks https://stripe.com/docs/tax/paymentlinks
- _trackno5 3y agoLike I said, and the link confirms, it will not by default collect tax. For that you need to set up Stripe Tax on top of it. Stripe Tax itself also takes a cut from your payment. It also “helps” you file taxes only by providing the reports you need. You still need to file the reports and each country is different. Please read the FAQ before this causes you trouble: https://stripe.com/docs/tax/fa https://stripe.com/docs/tax/fa q >> Does Stripe Tax handle remitting and reporting tax, or filing tax returns? > Stripe Tax doesn’t handle remitting and reporting tax, or filing tax returns. Stripe Tax provides itemized and summarized exports to help users prepare, file, and remit the tax that was automatically calculated and collected. To automate filing in the US, we recommend using TaxJar’s AutoFile solution. In Europe, we recommend using Taxually or Marosa. To get started, visit Taxually’s partner page or Marosa’s partner page. Disclaimer: I work at Stripe
- emperor_ 3y agoI won’t use a service like this if it’s free. Without a pricing or business plan I’m worried it will shutdown any moment or doesn’t get maintained anymore. Where do I go if I need support? This doesn’t sound like a long term sustainable business.
- jhartist 3y agoWe’ve run Smallchat, a default-free saas app, for a few years now, supporting millions of users. Our experience: with low-operating-cost saas apps like this, you can add a paid tier with pro features if you get a lot of traction while keeping the base app free. With Smallchat, for example, a small percentage of paid users more than covers the operating costs of our mostly-free user base.
- xeornet1 3y agoAm I the only one that thinks the blatant copying of even details like the website style, colors and fonts from Gumroad is disrespectful? What about putting your spin on it? No thanks. We should be calling this type of thing out.
- qwerty456127 3y agoOn Gumroad there is a Discover section but I failed to find such on Easyful. How do I discover what's there?