Payhip Review 2024

Various e-commerce platforms allow you to sell digital products online. Each platform offers different features that cater to a specific audience. If you’re looking to sell items such as ebooks, software, memberships, coaching courses, or even physical products, Payhip is an excellent option to consider. This Payhip review will examine various features to understand its online store builder offerings comprehensively.

What Is Payhip?

Payhip is an e-commerce platform designed to promote and sell digital products. In addition to eBooks, it supports uploading and selling various digital content, such as music, software, videos, and images.

Upon visiting Payhip’s website, you’ll find that it prides itself on being a user-friendly platform for selling digital downloads and memberships. It aims to offer a comprehensive suite of tools needed to establish and run your business, including setting up a storefront, uploading and managing digital files, and executing marketing and sales strategies.

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Additionally, Payhip includes features for recurring sales through its membership program, allowing customers to subscribe and access various digital products regularly. If you value simplicity and ease of use, Payhip is a solid option. This service can save you considerable time and effort since it comes pre-configured and is fully hosted on the Payhip website. With 130,000+ sellers worldwide, Payhip is a platform that deserves consideration for anyone looking to sell digital goods online.

Payhip Review: Pros and Cons

Before we proceed with the features, let’s examine some key points about what makes it a good option and what doesn’t.

How Does Payhip Work?

As mentioned, Payhip is an e-commerce platform that enables you to sell digital products, physical goods, memberships, and online courses directly to customers. You can use their pre-built storefront or integrate their checkout system into your website, blog, or social media platforms.

With Payhip, you can accept sales from anywhere and sell directly from your site or social media, significantly boosting conversion rates. The checkout process is optimized for quick transactions, allowing customers to complete purchases in seconds.

Payhip manages the technical aspects of the website, letting you focus on customer engagement and product creation. You can upload any file type and set it for immediate delivery upon payment.

Here’s how Payhip works:

• Setting Up Your Store: Sign up for free on Payhip and use their straightforward interface to add products, set prices, and manage your storefront. While customization options are somewhat limited compared to platforms like Shopify, you still have control over the appearance of your store.
• Payment Processing: Payhip supports payments through PayPal and Stripe, allowing customers to pay using major credit cards. Payments are transferred to you immediately after a transaction is completed.
• Selling and Marketing Tools: Payhip provides various marketing tools, even on the free plan, such as discounts, coupons, and cross-selling features to help increase sales. It also handles EU VAT, simplifying international transactions.
• File Management: Payhip offers features to protect your files from unauthorized sharing for digital products. You can add watermarks to PDFs and set download limits to prevent overuse.

The platform includes built-in analytics to help you track your store’s performance, including customer behavior and sales trends. This can be useful for optimizing your marketing strategies.

Payhip is a straightforward platform suitable for creators looking to sell digital products or memberships without extensive technical knowledge.

Top Features of Payhip

★★★★☆

• Detailed Analytics:

Payhip’s analytics suite enables you to track product performance through the “Analytics” section of the dashboard. This section shows metrics like daily views, sales, unique customers, and total order counts for each product. It includes a Conversion Rate tool that monitors the purchase process and identifies where potential customers may drop off.

The “Visits Map” displays your visitors’ geographic locations, filtering out bot traffic for more accurate data reporting.

• Online Course & Membership:

Payhip significantly distinguishes itself from other checkout platforms through its comprehensive course builder. This integrated feature allows for the easy creation and management of your curriculum. Users can select from various lesson types, including video, text, surveys, assignments, quizzes, or embeds. It’s important to note that hosting videos incurs an additional cost of $5 per month.

However, Payhip also includes several advanced features. These include drip content, which releases course modules on a set date or based on the student’s enrollment date, and certificates of completion that enhance the learning experience and provide students with tangible achievement.

Additionally, prerequisite lessons can be set for courses requiring a structured learning path to ensure students complete specific modules before advancing. The Digital Product type is available for simpler course structures that involve delivering downloadable documents. The course presentation remains professional despite limited customization options on the front end. This robust set of features positions Payhip on par with specialized online course tools, making it a valuable platform for course creators.

• Customer Management:

Payhip offers a comprehensive set of tools for managing customer relationships. The dashboard’s “Customers” section provides insights into customer behavior and order history, allowing you to track purchases, manage email subscribers, and view your store’s followers.

The platform also features an “Email Updates” function for sending targeted messages to your mailing list. Additionally, the “Sales Report” feature helps you generate detailed sales reports, aiding in maintaining customer connections and monitoring sales and engagement metrics.

• Store Builder:

The Payhip store builder offers customization options for your online store. Accessible from the “Store” tab, this tool allows you to modify your site’s layout, including adding or removing pages such as Custom Pages, Product Pages, and Blog Pages. You can make specific edits or apply broader changes to maintain a uniform appearance.

The editor’s side navigation bar provides quick access to customization settings, like background colors and overall style, helping you tailor your store to match your brand and product lineup.

• Taxations:

Handling taxes and VAT is a challenging aspect of launching an online business. When selling digital products in the UK, you are required to charge VAT due to legal obligations. For newcomers, calculating, charging, and reporting VAT can be daunting. However, Payhip simplifies this by managing VAT payments and reporting on your behalf. They act as your reseller, ensuring compliance with UK, EU, and US tax laws.

Payhip automatically identifies customers from these areas, applies the appropriate tax laws (whether in US or UK) that the seller has set. Additionally, Payhip assists with the collection of other taxes. You can set up tax rates for various countries or states by navigating to Settings > Taxes > Add Tax Rate in your Payhip account.

Ease of Use of Payhip

Overall, Payhip is user-friendly and intuitive. Thanks to the clear and understandable language used throughout, setting up features and navigating the platform are straightforward. The platform offers various customization options to align your online presence with your brand. You can select from various fonts and adjust most sections’ colors.

For those familiar with other course builders or checkout systems, adapting to Payhip should be quick and easy. Additionally, numerous options are available to enhance and optimize your customers’ experience on the site.

Payhip Design and Customization Options

The platform enables users to set up a neat, professional-looking online store without advanced technical knowledge. Users can select from several attractive themes, adjust layouts, and upload product images to display their offerings effectively.

The website builder is easy to navigate and includes customizable options for adding personal pages like “About Me” or “Terms and Conditions,” allowing users to shape their store to fit their brand. However, the scope for customization is somewhat restricted. Primarily, you can alter colors, images, and apply CSS changes.

Specific adjustments you can make include altering the shop’s color scheme and logo to reflect your brand identity, modifying the colors and borders of buy and cart buttons, and setting a background image or color for your storefront. Additionally, you can upload a profile photo, include a brief biography, link your social media profiles, set the default currency, and craft personalized email templates for customer receipts.

You can also specify an 11-character transaction description that will appear on your customers’ bank statements. However, it’s important to note that uploading custom themes is not an option in Payhip.

Payhip Marketing Features

For marketing, Payhip offers straightforward tools. It integrates with social media, enabling users to promote products on platforms like Facebook and Instagram directly. It also supports email marketing by allowing integration with services like Mailchimp, which streamlines customer communication. Although the marketing tools are basic, they meet the needs of most small to medium-sized sellers.

A notable feature of Payhip is its affiliate program, which aids in increasing store traffic. Sellers can effortlessly initiate and oversee affiliate campaigns from their dashboard, motivating others to advertise their products for a commission. This feature can significantly boost visibility and sales.

Payhip Blogging Feature

Payhip provides an integrated blogging feature that helps users boost their online visibility and attract more store visitors. This feature is part of the Payhip storefront, allowing creators to post content that supports their digital products and services.

While Payhip offers basic options for customizing blog pages, such as changing colors and layouts within the store builder, these options are limited compared to specialized blogging platforms like WordPress. Users can adjust the design of their blog homepage and individual posts to match their store’s branding.

A key benefit of Payhip’s blogging tool is its direct connection with the online store. This integration lets you include blog links in your store’s navigation bar, facilitating easy access for visitors. Payhip also supports blog comments, which can be controlled and moderated within the platform.

Payhip Additional Integration Options

★★★☆☆

Payhip provides multiple integrations to improve your online store’s functionality and simplify your management tasks. The platform is compatible with several prominent website builders and email marketing tools like WordPress, Squarespace, EmailOctopus, and Wix, enhancing its usability.

Payhip’s integration with the Classic and Gutenberg Editors in WordPress allows users to add buttons, embed products, or provide direct links to their stores. Similarly, Squarespace users benefit from the ability to embed product buttons and links directly to their store or checkout page.

Wix offers comparable integration options, enabling users to add product links or embed buttons on their sites. Plus, Weebly users can access similar functionalities, facilitating easy product linking and embedding. On the email marketing front, Payhip works with ConvertKit and EmailOctopus, which helps connect with subscribers and manage email campaigns effectively.

Pricing Overview of Payhip

Payhip offers an attractive pricing model for bloggers, especially those new to selling online. It uses a subscription-based approach where a small percentage is deducted from each sale, which can benefit those with limited initial budgets.

Here’s a look at the different pricing tiers offered by Payhip:

• Free Forever Plan: There is no monthly fee but a 5% transaction fee. The plan supports unlimited products and revenue and includes all Payhip features.
• Plus Plan: $29 per month with a 2% transaction fee. This plan includes all features and support for unlimited products and revenue.
• Pro Plan: $99 per month with no transaction fees. Like the others, this plan offers full access to all features and supports unlimited products and revenue.

Stripe and PayPal are integrated payment processors that apply their standard credit card processing fees to each transaction. These fees typically are around 2.9% plus an additional $0.30 per transaction and vary by country and payment type.

Boggers starting may find the free plan sufficient and can scale up to premium plans as their needs grow, allowing for lower or no transaction fees. Although the 2% fee for the Plus plan can be a downside, including all features and the ability to support unlimited products and revenue across all plans are significant benefits.

Payhip Customer Support Options

Payhip offers several support options if you need help or have questions. The primary resource is the Help Center, which provides a comprehensive collection of articles addressing common issues and setup queries. This should be your first stop when you begin using Payhip or if you encounter any problems.

Should the Help Center not address your issue, you can contact Payhip’s support team directly through email or their website’s chat feature. The chat feature tends to provide quick responses, making it suitable for urgent matters.

Additionally, Payhip has a Facebook group for community support. Although it’s beneficial for connecting with fellow users, it’s smaller and less active than communities on other platforms. This may be a drawback if frequent user interaction is important to you.

Conclusion

With an overall rating of 3.7 out of 5, Payhip stands out as a versatile platform for selling digital products, memberships, and online courses. It offers a range of features that cater to beginners and experienced sellers, making it an appealing option for those seeking a straightforward e-commerce solution. While its customization options are somewhat limited, Payhip compensates with ease of use, a comprehensive suite of tools, and efficient customer management.

The free plan’s indefinite availability and immediate payouts add to its appeal, though the higher cost of premium plans and lack of custom domain support may be drawbacks for some. Payhip is a strong contender for creators looking to establish or expand their online business with minimal technical hassle.

Frequently Asked Questions