Welcome to our comparison page.
Let’s speed ahead and find the best option for your budget and needs.
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| Non-exclusive Can you sell with other platforms, too? |  | | |  |
| EU Vat Since Jan 1, 2015, if you want to sell plugins or themes to European customers, you are required to to collect VAT even if your business is not based in Europe. Besides the complexities of different VAT rate per EU country and exemptions for business customers, you are also obligated to open a legal entity in the EU and pay the extra charged EU VAT to the European countries. Freemius does all of that for you automatically and seamlessly. | Free | $50 / year | $50 / year | Free​ |
| Exclusive for plugins and themes Is the platform concentrated on plugins & themes? | |  | | |
| Stripe gateway Is the Stripe gateway included in the price? | Free | Free​ | $89–$209 / year | Free​ |
| PayPal gateway Is the PayPal gateway included in the price? | Free | Free​ | $89–$209 / year | Free​ |
| Software licensing Is Software Licensing an included basic feature? | Free | $129–$299 / year | $199–$419 / year | Free​ |
| Recurring payments and subscriptions | Free | $199–$399 / year | $199–$419 / year | |
| Automatic updates Do your customers automatically get software updates? | | | | |
| Free trials Can you offer Free Trials without a payment method? | | | | |
| Paid trials Can you offer Trials with a payment method? | Free | $199–$399 / year Subscriptions extension | $199-$419 / year Recurring revenues extension | |
| PDF invoices | | $79–$199 / year | $29–$89 / year | |
| Coupons and discounts | | | | |
| Multi-currency Can you sell your product in multiple currencies at the same time? | | $99 / year | | |
| Checkout Localization Can the checkout be loaded and presented in different languages? (e.g. German, French, Spanish) | | Third-party plugin | Third-party plugin | |
| Checkout exit-intent discount | | Third-party plugin | Third-party plugin | |
| 100% GPL Does the platform fully support the GPL license? | | | | |
| Feedback form Capture user feedback upon plugin/theme deactivation. | | | | |
| Multi-site licenses support | | | | |
| Time to set up | Hours | Weeks | Weeks | Hours |
| Sell from any site Can you embed the checkout on all kinds of web pages? | | | | |
| Sell from any WordPress site | | | | |
| Sell from WP Admin Dashboard Can users purchase your Pro version right within the WordPress admin dashboard of their website? | | | | |
| Sell add-ons Can you sell multiple extensions independently? | | | | |
| Sell bundles Can you sell a combination of multiple plugins, add-ons, and themes as a discounted package under the same subscription or a lifetime purchase? | | $49–$149 / year | | |
| Sell memberships Can you sell access memberships to your shops' plugins, add-ons, and themes collection? | Free | $149–$249 / year | $199–$419 / year | |
| Prorating Are charge adjustments supported when upgrading and downgrading plans? | | | | |
| Partial refunds Can you refund a partial amount of a charge? | | | | |
| One version management Can you manage your entire code base on one repository, or are you required to separate Premium version from Free version? | | | | |
| Staged rollouts Can you distribute your updates progressively to only a subset of your users? | | | | |
| Seamless upgrade process | | | | |
| Users account management | | | | |
| Impersonated customer login Does the platform allow you logging into your customer's account management dashboard so you can easily debug issues and see exactly what your customer sees? | | | | |
| In-dashboard account management Does the platform allow customers to manage their account directly from within their WP Admin dashboard? | | | | |
| Help Scout integration Does the platform integrate with Help Scout via a dynamic app to pull user / customer information directly into your Help Scout’s sidebar? | | $79 / year | | |
| Affiliate platform Does the platform come with a robust affiliate solution to for on-boarding affiliate marketers to promote your product for a commission? | Free | $99–$249 / year | $99–$249 / year | |
| MailChimp integration Does the platform integrate with MailChimp to push users and customers to your lists? | Free | $49–$129 / year | $49–$149 / year | |
| Access to customer data | | | | |
| Access to free user data | | | | |
| Manage licenses expiration Can you control a license's expiration date? | Free | $199 / year | $147 / year | |
| Subscriptions renewal date update Can you update a subscription's renewal date to align with license expiration changes? | | | | |
| Manage product behavior Can you decide what happens when a license to your product expires? Do they lose access to updates/support? | | | | |
| Contact channel Can users issue support tickets from within your plugin/theme admin interface? | | | | |
| Dunning mechanism Does the system automatically handle failed renewal payments? | | | | |
| Cart abandonment recovery Unlock lost revenue by automatically tracking and emailing shoppers who start, but don’t finish your checkout process. | Free | $99–$249 / year | $49–$129 / year | |
| Data export Can you easily export all of your data, in case you decide to leave the service? | | | | |
| Payouts schedule How often are your earnings transferred to you? | Monthly | Immediate | Immediate | Monthly |
| Zero maintenance | | | | |
| Solution type | SaaS | Self-hosted | Self-hosted | Marketplace |
| Hosting and secure repository | Free | $600 / year | $600 / year | Free |
| Composer repository Can agencies and hosting companies install your plugin/theme as a Composer dependency? | | | | |
| Secure daily backups | | On you | On you | |
| Marketing automation and email | Free | | $199+ / year | |
| PCI compliance | | On you | On you | |
| GDPR compliance General Data Protection Regulation | | On you | On you | |
| SCA compliance Secure Customer Authentication using 3DS 2.0 | | | | |
| SSL certificate | Free | $65 / year | $65 / year | Free |
| Conversion optimization Pricing & checkout auto-optimization using (inside) industry data | Free | | $999 / year | |
| Analytics and usage tracking Do you get data about your plugin/theme users? | Free | $300 / month | $300 / month | |
| Segmentation Are your users and their product feedback segmented to help you take action and improve your product? | Free | | $100 / month (for 10,000 users) | |
| Verified buyer reviews Send a request for review after a successful purchase to collect testimonials. | Free | $99–$249 / year | $89–$209 / year | |
| Price How much is using the platform going to cost you? | 7% | > $1,700 / year | > $1,900 / year | 30% - 70% |
| Set up your own prices | | | | |
CRO
Hosting
Gateway Fees
Usage Tracking and Analytics
Support Integration
User Segmentation
Website Maintenance
Dunning Mechanism
Event-Based Marketing Automation
The total cost of going with the ‘scattered’ route and having each service handled by a different company is $7,548 / year. This leaves you with $12,452 in your pocket (which does not account for the time and resources spent on setting everything up).
The total cost of having the Freemius platform handle all of these tasks for you is $1,400 / year (+$660 gateway fees), which leaves you with $17,940 in your pocket.
Usage Tracking & Analytics
User Segmentation
CRO
Event-based Marketing Automation
Gateway Fees
Dunning
Hosting
Support Integration
Website Maintenance
The total cost of going with the “scattered” way and having each service handled by a different company is – $ 7,548 + / year, which leaves you with $12,452 in your pocket (and that does not include the price of all the hours you invest in setting it all up).
The total cost of having the Freemius platform handle all of these tasks for you is $1,400 / year (+$660 gateway fees), which leaves you with $17,940 in your pocket.
Each of the compared options carries its own set of pros and cons that will impact not just the present, but your product’s future too. When you make a commitment to a sales platform, it’s critical to predict your future needs to gauge how each solution will cater to potential requirements down the line.
It bears repeating that ‘there’s more to selling products online than checkout forms and gateway fees’, which is why the solution you pick today is so critical for success tomorrow. But before you commit, it’s important to know what each platform offers in terms of migration should you ever need to transition to another service. If a platform ‘locks you in’ and does not provide comfortable data export, it’s a persuasive reason to think twice about selecting it.
We hope that the insights in this comparison will help you make a wiser decision about which service suits your needs and budget best. If you’re feeling up for another comparison deep-dive, check out this Envato / Freemius comparison.
