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So, are you looking for the best e-commerce platform for your business? Which one is better for you, Sellfy, Shopify or Selz?
It’s very important to choose the right e-commerce platform because you don’t want to waste your time and money on the wrong e-commerce software and end up having to transfer to another one in the future.
That’s why I’m going to share with you all the information you need to know to make an informed decision.
Sellfy
So, what is Sellfy?
Sellfy is a simple yet powerful e-commerce platform that allows you to sell digital products, physical goods and subscriptions all from one place.
It handles everything from product hosting and payment processing to automatically sending download emails and delivering the products, so the entire sales process is automated.
How To Sell On Sellfy
To start selling on Sellfy, you just need to sign up for a free trial here (no credit card needed).
Once you sign up, you will be asked a few simple questions:
- What is your field? ( Writing, Photography, Music or Finance?)
- How do you plan to sell? ( Selling on a storefront or embed on your existing website?)
- What is your audience’s size?
After that, you will be brought to the Sellfy dashboard where you can start setting up your online store and listing your products.
This dashboard is very easy to use.
I have no coding knowledge, and I managed to get my store up and running in a few minutes with just a few clicks.
To start selling, all you need to do is the following:
Step #1: Add your product
If you are selling physical products, you will need to upload product photos, add product description, set price and quantity of stock and finally set shipping information.
But if you are selling digital products, you will need to upload your product files for instant delivery to your customers.
Also, there are two interesting features that might be unique to Sellfy:
- It allows you to list a Freebie product on your online store
- It also gives you the pricing option of “Pay What You Want”
If you are a digital product seller (or service provider), then you can list a free version of your product (or service) to get more leads and later on convert them into paying clients through email marketing campaign.
For example, if you are a course creator, you can list a free mini-course to reach more potential clients.
Or if you are a coach, you can list a free 15 mins consultation session to book calls with potential clients and then try to convert them into paying clients over the phone.
Step #2: Customize your store
After you have finished adding all your products, you can now move to customize your storefront.
Again, there is no coding knowledge required to do this.
Sellfy give you the option to change everything from branding to page layout.
Here’s an example of a simple yet elegant Sellfy storefront.
Step #3: Enable payment
To get paid, you can either use Stripe or Paypal as your payment processor.
If you are using Paypal, all you need to do is to enter your Paypal email address and click “update”.
If you want to use Stripe, then you just need to click the button “Connect to Stripe” and follow the instructions to set it up.
Now, you are all set to start selling online.
The best part is that Sellfy also makes it very easy for you to sell it anywhere else online.
If you have a huge following on social media, Sellfy automatically creates a link for you to share your product with your audience on Facebook or Twitter.
That’s right, your audience can buy directly from through the link.
If you have an existing website, Sellfy also allows you to copy and paste “Buy button” or “Product Card” on your website for your website visitors to buy from there.
So, you can turn any website into an online store with just a few clicks.
Is Sellfy Secure?
Yes, it provides anti-fraud protection for its sellers.
Also, it’s secure to make payment and receive payment on your Sellfy store because Sellfy is PCI-DSS-ready. And buyers’ payment information is handled by trusted payment processors such as Paypal & Stripe.
Now, what about protection for digital product creators’ intellectual property?
Selly has implemented additional steps to help keep your files and sensitive information safe.
For example, it automatically adds buyer’s email address to every page of your PDF product file so that each customer gets a uniquely marked file.
What if you are worried about your digital files are being shared freely online?
You don’t have to worry about that because Sellfy prevents buyers from sharing your product files online by issuing unique download links with limited download attempts.
Is Sellfy legit?
It was founded in 2011, and has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Techcrunch.
Are there many people using Sellfy?
Yes, it’s trusted by over 270,000 creators to sell their products online.
So, who exactly is using Sellfy?
More importantly, are they making money selling their products using it?
You already know you can sell both physical products and digital products with Sellfy.
What you might not know yet is that Sellfy is especially a good platform for digital product creators who want to sell digital downloads or even membership.
Below is a list of different digital product creators who are using Sellfy to market and sell their products online:
- Writer
- Photographer
- Music producer
- Singer
- Designer
- Youtuber
- Painter
- Filmmaker
- Course creator
- Coach
- Consultant
- Author
- Magician
- Game developer
- App developer
- Service provider
So, are they making money using Sellfy?
Here are some of the many Sellfy’s success stories:
David Hutton, an experienced graphic designer, has been able to quit his full-time job after generating consistent sales of his graphic resources using Sellfy.
And he uses Sellfy to sell both on his own website as well as on social media.
Here’s another success story of using Sellfy to sell digital products.
Below is a very niche online store that sells trading indicators using Sellfy.
He made over 200,000 over 3 weeks just by selling trading indicators that tell people when to buy and when to sell to make a profit in the stock market.
How Much Does Sellfy Cost?
So, how much does Sellfy cost?
It offers a monthly starter plan of $29 which comes with 0% transaction fee,
unlimited products, store customization, discount codes and custom domain.
But if you go with the annual plan, it will only be $19/month which gives you about 35% in savings.
Who should go for this starter plan?
If you are just starting out and you expect your annual sales not to exceed $10,000, then this plan is perfect for you.
But, if you are confident that your sales will be more than $10,000 but less than $50,000, then you should choose the business annual plan which is $39/month.
For the business plan, you also have access to the “Upsell ” tool which allows you to offer customers exclusive deals on related products while they are shopping in your store.
For example, when your customers are checking out a book that they want to buy online, you can use the “upsell” tool to offer the audio version of that book for a discounted price.
Or when your customers are adding vitamin supplements into the cart, you can use the “Upsell” tool to offer a bundle at a steep discount.
So, this tool is useful if you have a lot of related products or your products are consumables.
Another good thing about this business plan is that you get access to its email marketing feature.
That means you don’t have to pay and get a third-party email marketing software (at least $15 /month)to stay in contact with your customers and promote your products to them in the future.
If you have the budget, you should always go for the business plan because it’s so much easier to sell to existing customers and email marketing can help you maximize the lifetime value of your customers.
Sellfy Alternatives
There are many Sellfy alternatives such as Shopify and Ecwid.
So, which E-commerce platform is more suitable for you, Sellfy or Shopify or Ecwid?
What’s the difference between them?
And which one is the best platform for you to sell products online?
To help you find the right e-commerce platform, you first need to ask yourself the following questions:
- What products are you planning to sell? Is it a digital product or physical product or service or subscription?
- How many products do you have?
- Are you just starting out or you have a growing business?
- What is your budget for e-commerce software?
Sellfy VS Shopify
If you are selling physical products, then Shopify is definitely a better choice than Sellfy.
This is because Shopify offers all the essential features to help you set up your online store and start selling your physical products as quickly as possible:
- Custom domain (i.e. you have your own custom domain name for your online store for better branding)
- Ease of setting up your store (i.e. it’s very easy to set up your store and list your products there even if you don’t have any technical knowledge)
- Order management (i.e. Shopify allows you to see the status of all orders, set up order fulfillment, cancel or refund orders, etc)
- Inventory management (i.e. Shopify makes it super easy for you to track your orders and also inventory)
- Payment processors (Shopify offers all the major payment processors such as PayPal and Swipe)
- Analytics (it shows you all the statistics and data such as sales, conversion rate, total visitors and visitors by traffic source, so you know what is working and what is not working)
- Email marketing (i.e. does it allow you to send promotional emails to your customers and also subscribers?)
- Discount codes (i.e. does it allow you to generate discount codes and run promotions?)
If you want to sell your physical products offline at markets or fairs or a physical store location, Shopify makes it easy for you to do that as well with its Point of Sale system.
The best part is that all the orders and inventory are tracked and managed from one place in real-time seamlessly.
How cool is that!
How much does Shopify cost?
Its basic plan starts from $29 per month or $26 per month if billed annually.
Try out Shopify and get a 90-day free trial ( no credit card required)
But, if you are selling digital products such as design templates, graphics, audio files, video files, software, ebooks and online courses, then I would recommend Sellfy because this platform is specially made for digital product creators.
Everything from product listing to product sales to product delivery is taken care of by Sellfy without having to pay extra for any third-party apps.
If you are a digital product creator and just starting out, you can sign up for a free trial here (no credit card needed) to try out everything by yourself.
Price-wise, Sellfy has a starter plan from $19/month (if you go for the annual plan).
Sellfy VS Ecwid
Ecwid is kind of a hybrid of Sellfy and Shopify.
When it comes to selling physical products online, Shopify is much better than Selz in terms of functionalities because it is a much more powerful e-commerce platform.
For example, you can set up automatic order fulfillment with third-party order fulfillment service apps such as Amazon FBA or even custom order fulfillment service.
On the other hand, Ecwid does not offer these tools.
When it comes to shipping, Shopify Shipping lets you connect your Shopify account with Shopify’s shipping carrier accounts, which has the following benefits:
- Display calculated shipping rates, instead of flat rates, to your customers at checkout
- Get reduced rates for your shipping labels
- Print shipping labels directly from your Shopify admin
Below is a list of Shopify’s shipping carriers:
- USPS
- UPS
- DHL Express
- Canada Post
- Sendle
On the other hand, Ecwid does not offer this.
In terms of pricing, Ecwid has a free forever plan which is extremely limited if you are serious about growing your business.
Ecwid’s cheapest paid plan is $15/month (or $12.5/month if billed annually) but you can only list up to 100 products in your store.
Its second-cheapest plan is $35/month (or $29/month if billed annually) and you can list up to 2500 products.
On the other hand, Shopify’s cheapest plan is $29/month (or $26 if billed annually) and you can list unlimited products.
So, if you have less than 100 products to sell online and are on a tight budget, then Ecwid is the better option for you.
But, if you have more than 100 products, then Shopify is definitely is the better choice here because it offers unlimited products and it has a lot of powerful features that Ecwid does not offer.
Try out Shopify and get a 90-day free trial ( no credit card required)
What if you are selling digital products online?
Which one is better, Sellfy or Ecwid?
When you compare the features of the two e-commerce platforms, you can see that they offer quite a number of similar features.
But, when it comes to selling digital products online, Sellfy is a much better option than Ecwid for a few reasons.
First of all, if you are selling a subscription product or service, Ecwid doesn’t offer this option.
Secondly, Sellfy does so much better when it comes to keeping your digital files and sensitive information safe.
For example, it automatically adds buyer’s email address to every page of your PDF product file so that each customer gets a uniquely marked file.
You also don’t have to worry about your digital products getting shared freely because Sellfy prevents buyers from sharing your product files online by issuing unique download links with limited download attempts.
Price-wise, although Sellfy is a bit more expensive at$19/month than Ecwid’s basic plan starts at $15/month (or $12.5/month if billed annually), it’s worth paying a few extra dollars a month to access Sellfy‘s powerful tools for selling your digital products.
Conclusion
If you are selling physical products online, Shopify is definitely one of the best options out there in terms of functionalities and you can do so much more on its platform if you are planning to grow your business aggressively.
But, if you are on a tight budget and are selling less than 100 physical products in your store, then Ecwid might be a better alternative simply because it’s very affordable at $15/month.
Lastly, if you are selling digital products online, then Sellfy is the best option for you.
If you are just starting out, their basic plan is perfect for you especially in terms of price while you also get access to all the essential features to help you market and sell your products.
Sign up with Sellfy for a 14-day free trial Now (no credit card needed)!
Further Reading:
How You Can Start A Profitable Online Store (In 12 Weeks Or Less)
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