Ah, the usual Payhip vs. WooCommerce argument.

If you’re thinking about selling direct to your readers, which one should you pick?

As someone who has been using Payhip for quite some time, I can see the allure of choosing Payhip over WooCommerce.

Well, what’s not to like about Payhip when you can get your store up and running in minutes?

What’s more, you also don’t have to deal with the technical hoopla because of how straightforward the Payhip setup is.

That’s never the case with WooCommerce, where the setup can be a little too complicated if you’re doing it without the WooCommerce video tutorial and Gemini’s help.

Get it wrong, and your readers will stumble upon errors when they buy books on your online store.

And let’s not forget about the file hosting.

While you can upload the PDF just fine on your WordPress site, you can’t do that with the ePUB files.

You will need to host the ePUB files elsewhere or use BookFunnel for file delivery.

But despite the technical hurdle, I still believe that WooCommerce is the best solution for me moving forward.

Payhip vs. WooCommerce: Why the switch

If you’ve been reading my blog long enough, then you’ll know how much I recommend that authors use Payhip if they want to sell directly to their readers.

But as much as I love the ease of getting my storefront up and running with minimal technical setup, it also comes with a huge drawback.

And these are some of them.

Lack of optimization for the search engine

We all know that WordPress is great for SEO.

And so does WooCommerce, since you can optimize your product page for the search engine like you would for WordPress pages and blog posts.

Of course, you can choose to opt for Yoast SEO for WooCommerce for more optimization options.

But I find it unnecessary, since the free version of the Yoast SEO works just fine.

Try to do that on your Payhip store and the product page, and you’ll see nothing significant on the SEO front.

The reason is that you have little control over your Payhip store’s metadata.

Sure, you can optimize the Payhip product page with your chosen keyword in the product description, like you would with a WooCommerce store.

But that’s the only thing you can do, which is not much.

SEO may not be much of a big deal if you’re using paid ads to drive traffic to your Payhip store.

But then again, we all know the cost of running paid ads can become unsustainable long-term.

And there’s also a big chance it may not even convert at all despite the money you’ve spent.

Say what you will about SEO, but I still believe that SEO matters even in the age of AI chatbots, AI overview, and AI mode.

Lack of integrations

Yes, you can argue that Payhip now integrates with many country-specific payment gateways.

And it also integrates with BookVault if you want to sell print books on your Payhip store.

But the issue with the BookVault integration is that you will need to pay $24.95 per title for the setup.

Of course, you don’t have to pay the setup fee if you’re a member of ALLI and IBPA, since you’ll get access to unlimited free title upload codes every month.

But if you don’t, then you will need to pay every time you set up a new title on BookVault.

Whether you use WooCommerce or Payhip, it won’t make much difference since you will still need to pay the setup fee.

But at the very least, you have another option to use Lulu Direct on your WooCommerce store, which is free.

What if you want to offer merchandising on your WooCommerce store?

You can integrate your WooCommerce store with other POD services, too, such as Printful.

Can you do the same with Payhip?

If you know how to connect your Payhip store to Printful using the Printful API, then what platform you use doesn’t mean much.

But for most people, it’s a little way too technical, even if you use ChatGPT and Gemini to come up with the API script for you.

Is Payhip not worth using?

If you’re using Payhip right now, should you switch to a different platform?

And if you’re considering using Payhip, should you consider using something else?

Whether you should use Payhip or something else will depend on your goals with the direct store, your marketing strategy, and how technically savvy you are.

There’s no doubt that Payhip is the right solution for you if you’re someone who isn’t technically savvy and you want something fuss-free.

And it can also be the right solution for you if your marketing strategy revolves around running paid ads and submitting your books to book promotion sites.

While many of them tend to focus on the retailers’ websites, there are a few that allow direct sales promotions.

But if you’re thinking about offering merchandising in the future, then Payhip may not be the right one for you, since it doesn’t have integrations with other POD services such as Printful.

Unless you want to fulfill the orders yourself, you will need to use something like WooCommerce or Shopify for fuss-free POD order fulfillment.

Will I still recommend Payhip moving forward?

This answer will come as a shock to many of you, but the answer is yes.

The reason for that is simple – it has all the bells and whistles you need, not just for selling direct, but also for something else, such as blogging.

Yes, it doesn’t have that much customization compared to WordPress and WooCommerce.

But for someone who is just getting started, Payhip can be a doable solution.

After all, it’s free to sign up.

The only reason you will need to upgrade to the paid plan is that you want to reduce your transaction fee to 2% or none if you opt for the highest tier.

You can then switch to a different platform if you want to take your author business to the next level.

Or you can choose to stick to Payhip if you think it’s still the right solution for you to this day.

Will I ever come back to using Payhip again?

To be honest, I can’t say for sure about that either.

If I may have to come back to using Payhip, it will be for something else, not for selling my books or any other digital products, for that matter.

For now, the default one will be the WooCommerce store, since I have so many things I want to do now that I’m using WooCommerce.

As always, I have yet to finalize the plan. But you can bet that you’ll be the first to know once I do.