Gumroad vs. Patreon – Which Is Better?

You’ve already honed your product, perfected your marketing strategies, and built the brand. Now it’s time to sell! If you’re an artist—a musician, writer, designer, or videographer—you can make money through multiple income streams: selling products directly, building a membership program, or using an online platform to streamline the process. 

Choosing the right way to sell your work is one of the most important decisions as an independent creator. So will you take on Gumroad or Patreon? Both are viable platforms for selling digital content. But how do they stack up against each other?

Gumroad

Gumroad is a platform for selling digital products. Digital products include ebooks, music, videos, and other content.

Gumroad helps you sell your physical products too. You can use the platform to sell things like stickers and t-shirts to your fans.

Patreon

Patreon is a membership platform that makes it easy for artists and creators to get paid. It’s built on a relationship of trust between you and your audience. You provide your fans insider access to an exclusive world they can be part of in exchange for their support.

Patreon can help you build a community of patrons around your work. Your payment structure is flexible: instead of the one-time or monthly payment options that Gumroad offers, Patreon lets you choose from multiple tiers or tiers plus pay-what-you-want options, including custom amounts per creation (the way I do things). 

This means that if someone likes one of your videos but wants to pay less than $5/month for it (or $5/video), they can do so without having trouble accessing the content later on down the line—something which might happen if there was only one tier available at any given time due to budget restrictions or other concerns about pricing level stability over time, etc…

Gumroad vs. Patreon: A Comparison

Advantages of Gumroad

• Gumroad is an excellent option for selling digital work, such as ebooks, videos, and music. It’s not so good at helping you monetize your brand or sell services.
• Gumroad has an easier-to-use app, with features like drag-and-drop uploading of files, automatic backups in case anything goes wrong during sales periods, etc., which makes it easy for creators who aren’t tech-savvy but want to use it nevertheless!
• Gumroad offers a digital sales platform that is more robust than Patreon and has a much better user interface.
• For example, Gumroad gives you the ability to sell digital goods such as ebooks, PDFs, and audiobooks directly from your page. It also allows you to set different prices for each item based on what price point you choose (i.e., free vs. paid). This can be useful if you have multiple products available at different levels of quality or content quantity (for example, free ebook vs. professional PDF full of images).

Advantages of Patreon

• Patreon is better for selling memberships, online courses, or private coaching sessions. If your main goal is to build an audience and sell products that help people achieve their goals (like books), then Patreon may not be the best route for you.
• Patreon offers an opportunity to sell services through its platform but doesn’t offer any tools for selling digital goods as Gumroad does. So if this is something you want your patrons will need access to, then Patreon might not be suitable for them yet!

Which one should you use? 

It really depends on what kind of content you’re selling. If you’re just starting out, we’d recommend Gumroad—it’ll help you get your feet wet without having to worry about any of the more complicated stuff. If you’re already making money from your content, though, we’d recommend Patreon as an option for getting even more cash from your audience!

Final Thoughts

When it comes to innovative products versus creative personalities, Gumroad is the better choice if you are only looking to sell digital products. Patreon is the better choice if you want to sell a brand or services associated with your creative personality.