What is Sellfy ?
Sellfy, for starters, is no ordinary e-commerce platform. It is a system that basically offers tools for selling digital products such as ebooks, music, videos, works of art, etc.
Sellfy has managed to attract over 300,000 users in just 8 years.
On its main site, the Sellfy program claims that it can help you get your online store online in five minutes thanks to its website builder.
It's a statement that makes perfect sense when you discover the simple software tools from Sellfy for e-commerce sites.
In fact, the word “simple” sums up Sellfy's selling point well. He is trying to offer the fastest and easiest way to manage and sell digital products on the web.
Your storefront doesn't have to be a website. It turns out that Sellfy allows you to create a window on third party platforms, such as social networks. The trick is simply to integrate a buy button for your items and that's it!
When it comes to payment options, Sellfy integrates processors to handle online transactions and instant payments. But that is not all. The platform supports several other integrations, 750 of which are facilitated by the link she shared with Zapier.
The platform is now recognized as an all-in-one solution for creating online stores, managing digital products, processing payments, facilitating product delivery and marketing items, among other functions.
Who should use Sellfy?
Sellfy is the ideal platform for small business owners who sell more than three digital products and specialize in online transactions.
Sellfy can be the ideal tool for businesses that sell products such as photos, graphic designs, videos, or any other type of digital file.
Artists and creatives love this platform because it's great for monetizing creative digital projects.
Sellfy excels and stands out when it comes to digital products. But that doesn't mean you can't sell physical products on Sellfy.
However, if physical products are your main source of revenue, you may want to consider exploring other options that offer more functionality for shipping and delivering physical products.
Also, remember that Sellfy is a certain investment. There are monthly fees for its platform and fees for credit card processing.
Key Features
Ease of use
Luckily, you don't have to pay anything to start using Sellfy: they offer a 14-day free trial.
The entire onboarding process takes around 2 minutes. And so, even newbies who have never worked with an e-commerce platform should be able to proceed accordingly.
Speaking of which, managing your store is not a problem at all. Sellfy designed its dashboard to offer a favorable balance between simplicity and functionality. As a result, you'll notice that the system is not only refreshingly simple and well-organized, but also quite intuitive.
Personalize your online store
The default Sellfy storefront is clean, simple, and organized. You can go straight to the customization process and start editing the layout and content. Besides adjusting the layout colors, Sellfy allows you to work on the header, buttons, logo, page style, etc. Just the basic elements.
Unfortunately, you don't have advanced customization capabilities. I suppose that would, in the end, compromise Sellfy's fundamental purpose, which is to keep everything simple. The farthest you can go here is to add your social media profiles and probably change the store pages that come with them.
Yes, that is it. Sellfy's storefront comes with the standard web pages you'd find on a basic online store. The default pages are as follows: Contact, Terms and About.
Customizing any of these is as easy as clicking on the page and then setting up the corresponding layout options. You can even choose to edit the pages or eliminate them completely.
You will find these options in the menu Store settings. They offer a multitude of configurations to adjust general settings, fiscal variables, tax variables, product categories, store pages, integration buttons, and transaction processing gateways.
That said, you may want to use third-party applications to improve your online selling features. Sellfy supports a series of decent integrations.
Google Analytics, for example, is very useful for tracking the number and sources of your traffic. The Twitter Ads conversation tracking, on the other hand, suitable for businesses that sell on Twitter. Then, when it comes to customer engagement, you can proceed with the integration of tools like Facebook Live Chat.
Overall, the most important integration here is Zapier, because it essentially provides access to hundreds of other possible application integrations.
Incorporation products
Sellfy makes it easy for online retailers to set up a dynamic sales framework composed of multiple channels linked together in a holistic manner. You are free to sell directly from your blog, SoundCloud page, YouTube channel, or any other third-party platform you can think of. And that alone results in unlimited growth potential.
To save you the tedious process of coding integrations, Sellfy offers you three pre-established templates. You can integrate your products through the view of the store, ofone product sheet Or of a buy button. Regardless of your choice, Sellfy will generate relevant code to be placed on third-party platforms.
Overall, the buy button is particularly handy because it simply provides a shopping cart that shoppers can use in a convenient way. This leads to a much faster conversion and payment process.
Product Management
Sellfy has one of the simplest product management systems we've seen so far. The interface is fairly simple and the functions that come with it are all self-explanatory. So you won't need advice.
When you try to download your digital items, you'll notice that Sellfy comes with the same physical product structure that we're used to. It essentially allows you to specify not only the name of the item, but also the corresponding description and price of the product. Additionally, you can also introduce a descriptive image for a more intuitive product page.
And while you're at it, you can include the main keywords for your products in the product description sections. This will then allow you to optimize your sales pages for search engines.
If you're dealing with a vast collection of products, you'll be happy to see that Sellfy doesn't limit the number of items you can sell. Even its basic subscribers are free to download as many products as they want.
But listen carefully. For an online store with lots of items, it's always a good idea to group and organize all items according to their category.
Luckily, Sellfy has a simple but handy product category feature that can help you organize each item accordingly. The categories are suitable for all sorts of digital products, including books, videos, photos, subscriptions, and more.
When entering product category names, remember to associate each category with a corresponding slug for SEO purposes. A category such as “Cookbooks,” for example, should be associated with “Cookbooks” as the corresponding slug. The aim is to get Google to notice your products and, perhaps, send you solid leads directly from its search results pages.
Then, when traffic starts to pour in, you can take advantage of Sellfy's “Pay What You Want” feature to increase conversion rates. And in case you're wondering, this function does just that. It gives your customers the privilege of determining their purchase prices based on what they can afford.
Thinking about it carefully, I'd say subscription-based businesses are the best when it comes to “pay what you want.” You can keep a customer for an extended period of time by simply allowing them to choose a fair rate.
And that shouldn't be a problem with Sellfy, as it provides the basic tools you need to create and sell subscriptions.
For example, you can choose between billing systems for annual, monthly, and daily subscriptions. Sellfy will then automatically renew your customers' memberships on a recurring basis.
You can now compare these subscription options with those offered by Shopify or BigCommerce, for example. Which would you choose?
If you've read our Shopify review, I bet you'll prefer Sellfy over Shopify. Although the latter may offer subscription products, this option is not included in the default package. You need to buy an additional add-on to sell subscriptions.
However, it would be a whole different story if we considered Sellfy vs Cratejoy instead. But, given that there are a lot of factors to assess in this area, I think we would prefer to cover this whole issue in a specific article.
Regardless of how you look at these two elements, Sellfy excels at balancing flexibility and simplicity. You can easily use it to sell all types of digital product subscriptions. Additionally, it gives you the privilege of configuring parameters such as subscription price, time period, product overview, category, description, and name.
Marketing and promotion tools
I have to admit that at first I didn't expect to find great marketing tools on Sellfy. Most of its competitors only offer standard social media sharing features and typical SEO adjustments.
Sellfy, however, is taking it up a notch by including email marketing features, as well as product discounts and promotional coupons. And if you want to encourage your customers to spend more, you can even use upsells.
That said, it turns out that you can set up your emails to automatically target specific groups of customers. Sellfy gives you the ability to segment your customers or contacts based on parameters such as product categories, subscription status, and purchases. So you can easily encourage your customers to buy again by simply encouraging them to be interested in what they love.
Then, to retain your customers, you can complement this offer with discounts. Sellfy discounts come in the form of codes, which you can set at any time after you select a product and specify the corresponding discount amount and expiration date.
Ultimately, you can rely on the system to automatically apply your precise discount rules as soon as customers enter their codes.
And you know what? Sellfy's discounts can also be used smartly in upsells to encourage customers to buy more products.
For the sake of clarity, upsells are special offers that take the form of suggestions for complementary products. In short, you are advising a customer on additional items they could buy to complete what they already have in their basket.
And to help you run effective upselling campaigns for your digital products, Sellfy gives you the freedom not only to name your campaigns, but also to choose the items that go with them, as well as set expiration dates, discount percentages, and display messages.
A compelling call to action could significantly increase your average revenue per sale. So yes, it really is as simple as that.
Payments
So far, Sellfy only has two payment processors: PayPal and Stripe.
While you might prefer to have more options, a PayPal and Stripe account should suffice. They are the most common payment gateways in the world.
However, when comparing the two, PayPal proves to be the most dominant option as its coverage extends beyond 100 countries. Stripe, on the other hand, has only established itself in 24 countries.
Despite this, you need to be able to process payments from customers around the world. Both PayPal and Stripe provide instant but secure digital payment gateways for all major credit and debit cards. Your customers' card information will be adequately secured through encryption.
But it's not all good news. Indeed, it turns out that the process of integrating these payment processors is not as easy as one might think. Instead of providing payment gateways as apps, Sellfy requires you to copy the API code from PayPal or Stripe and then paste it into your Sellfy account.
Target users
All things considered, Sellfy was apparently developed for online retailers who want to sell digital products or subscriptions. And the good thing is that you don't need an e-commerce site.
You can benefit from Sellfy for the long term without ever creating your own website. Simply integrate Sellfy's shopping cart templates on third party sites and that's it!
That said, the digital products we're talking about here aren't limited. You can use Sellfy to sell any downloadable file: software, videos, audio files, books, documents, zip files, images, etc.
Subscriptions, on the other hand, can be set up to be renewed on an annual, monthly, or weekly basis. Sellfy will take care of facilitating the corresponding payments.
Overall, what sets Sellfy apart from others is its extremely simple approach to selling online. The entire structure offers simple and easy to use tools to create and manage online businesses without any technical skills.
In essence, it only takes a few minutes for you to create and personalize an online store with Sellfy. This means that even newbies should be able to get started on this platform.
Safety
As we've already established, you can rely on PayPal and Stripe to secure your customers' payment data through encryption.
While that's good enough for most people, Sellfy goes ahead and does its part to maintain a completely secure environment. More specifically, it combines SSL encryption with PCI DSS compliance, among other reliable security measures.
One of the most remarkable is the tracking of file downloads, which is quite effective in preventing the unauthorized distribution of digital products. Sellfy manages to control file access by sending a special download link to the original purchaser and then limiting the number of download instances to five. Beyond that, any additional download attempts are automatically blocked.
Pricing
The advantage of Sellfy's pricing is that there are no transaction fees or hidden costs. So what you see is what you get in the long run.
The only transaction fees you are required to pay here are the standard fees charged by PayPal and Stripe. That translates to around 2.9% + 30¢ for each trade.
Unfortunately, you won't find a free plan on Sellfy. While it's understandable that maintaining the platform's resources costs the company money, I bet they could afford to provide a free plan with limited functionality.
Or, on the contrary, offer a free trial period of a reasonable length of time. Fourteen days seems like a very short period of time for anyone who wants to get a clear idea of the platform's functionalities.
Despite that, I would say that the prices are pretty decent. The most you can pay for the entry-level plan is $29, while high-volume sellers making over $200,000 per year have to pay just over $130 for their custom packs. The interim package, on the other hand, charges businesses making up to $50,000 per year around $59 per month.
But guess what? You don't have to pay for all of this. It's possible to reduce your subscription costs by 34% with Sellfy's annual billing option.
As a result, the Starter plan goes up to around $19 per month, while the Business plan goes up to $39 per month, and then the Premium plan applies a Sellfy discount of $40 to be sold at $89 per month.
Here are the details of their respective characteristics:
Alternatives to Sellfy
There is an unlimited number of products to create your own website with eCommerce functionality. Is Sellfy the best?
It depends on what you're going to use it for and what features matter most to you.
We looked at Sellfy's top four competitors and analyzed their main features, prices, and how they compare to Sellfy.
First of all, a household name in the world of website creation: WordPress.
1. WordPress.
WordPress is probably thewebsite creation tool the most popular. It's easy to use and offers a free plan as well as lots of website templates and analysis tools to help people create their own site.
WordPress is a popular option for a reason. It offers tons of features to create your own website and make it look professional in a few minutes.
In terms of product functionality, WordPress is one of the easiest website builders to use, with countless positive reviews and exceptional customer service.
They're technically free but charge users for some features like creating a custom domain and buying advanced themes.
They make it easy to appear in search engines thanks to their SEO functions. However, they do not offer an online storefront integrated into their program.
WordPress compared to Sellfy
The biggest thing that WordPress doesn't have and that Sellfy specializes in is an e-commerce platform.
WordPress has tons of plugins that can do just that, but without the plugin, WordPress won't be able to satisfy your e-commerce needs. One of the main complaints from WordPress users is that there are too many plugins.
Plugins can slow the load time of your website and compromise your security, which is not ideal when dealing with critical information like credit card numbers and banking information.
WordPress is a giant in the field of website creation and is the ideal platform for creating simple websites, but it does not offer the e-commerce capabilities of Sellfy.
2. Shopify.
Shopify is an all-in-one solution for creating a solid personal showcase.
You don't need any coding knowledge to build a site on Shopify, and they offer 24/7 customer support if you run into issues. Customer reviews are great and Shopify is very popular.
Shopify also offers a lot of templates that you can use to create your website and an email marketing function. They also have point of sale options, an app store, and great SEO features that can help you get found in a variety of search engines.
Shopify compared to Sellfy
Shopify is an ideal platform for creating an e-commerce site. It has an integrated tool for sending email marketing campaigns and an application function that sets it apart.
Perhaps Shopify is a better option than Sellfy for businesses that sell physical products. Their integrated shipping options are perfect for physical sales.
However, Shopify has a 2% transaction fee, which can result in significant losses for your e-commerce business.
Additionally, Shopify's customization features can be complicated, and some key elements are hidden behind the paywall in their paid plans.
3. BigCommerce.
BigCommerce is another e-commerce option for businesses. With BigCommerce, it's easy to set up an online store and create a business selling your products online.
BigCommerce offers great built-in features, tons of themes, and an easy to use interface. Plus, it has great SEO features.
Like Sellfy, they don't have transaction fees. They also offer real-time shipping calculations for physical product sales.
BigCommerce compared to Sellfy
BigCommerce makes it easy to sell your products in different currencies and across multiple channels.
One of the downsides of using BigCommerce is that each plan limits the number of annual sales. Using BigCommerce can also be more expensive when you sell more products, so watch out for growing businesses.
Another issue is that most BigCommerce themes aren't free.
All of these cost factors are starting to add up...
However, the absence of transaction fees is an advantage compared to other solutions on this list (I'm looking at you, Shopify and WooCommerce).
FAQs
How much does Sellfy cost?
If billed annually, the cheapest rate plan is $19 per month, while the most expensive is $89 per month. You can try Sellfy free for 14 days.
Does Sellfy work with all types of content?
Yes, they have a number of different products that work with all types of content creators.
There is no limit to the type of content you can sell on their platform.
Sell:
- Digital downloads
- PDFs
- Mini-course
- Clothes
- Live broadcast
Final verdict
If you need to set up a store quickly, Sellfy is the easiest and easiest tool I've tried.
While it doesn't have some of the advanced features of incumbents like Shopify, it also doesn't have the steep learning curve or the higher annual costs.
