How Much Does It Cost to Start Selling Digital Products? Our Real Setup Was $10.46

You can start selling a digital product for the price of a domain name, and you can start for $0 if you skip the domain. We know because we did it: the store that sells our own product was set up for $10.46, and everything else runs on free plans. Below is the itemized list, what each sale costs on top, and when paying for something is actually worth it. Prices were checked on the providers' own pages on October 27, 2026.

This is a cost breakdown, not a promise of results. What a product earns depends on whether it solves a real problem and whether the right people see it.

The short answer

• Minimum to start: $0. A Stripe Payment Link or a marketplace listing needs no website and no monthly fee. You pay a fee per sale.
• What we spent: $10.46, for one year of a .com domain. Hosting, checkout, email and analytics are on free plans.
• The real ongoing cost is per sale: about 2.9% + 30¢ on Stripe for a US card, or more on platforms that also handle sales tax or bring you buyers.
• Spend money later, once something is selling and a paid tool would remove a real bottleneck.

Our actual setup, itemized

A few details on the free plans, from each provider's own pages:

• Cloudflare Pages Free plan: up to 500 builds a month, up to 20,000 files per site and 25 MiB per file. A digital product site of a few dozen pages and one zip file is nowhere near those limits.
• Brevo Free plan: once your account is approved for sending, you can send up to 300 emails a day, and no card is needed to sign up. That's plenty for a new list.
• Stripe Payment Links: no monthly fee. You create a link to a product, choose where buyers go after paying, and Stripe hosts the checkout page.

If you want to see how the delivery part works without paid software, we wrote it up step by step in how to deliver a digital download after a Stripe payment.

What each sale costs

Fees are where most of the real money goes, so it's worth doing the arithmetic before you pick a setup. On a $20 sale to a US card buyer, using each platform's published rates:

The cheapest option isn't always the best one. Lemon Squeezy and Gumroad act as merchant of record and deal with sales tax and VAT for you; with raw Stripe, those taxes are generally your responsibility. Gumroad also has a marketplace that can send you buyers, which costs 30% on those sales. Our Gumroad vs Lemon Squeezy vs Payhip comparison goes through it in more detail. This isn't tax advice.

Costs people forget

• Refunds. On Stripe a refund has no fee, but the original processing fee isn't returned. Refunding a $17 sale costs about $0.79. A dispute costs $15, or $30 if you counter it and lose, so a clear refund policy is cheaper than arguing.
• Your time. Making the product, the sales page and the first round of promotion is the biggest cost by far, and it doesn't show up on any invoice.
• Subscriptions that creep in. A $29 plan here and a $15 tool there turns into a monthly bill before you've made a sale. Add a tool when a free plan's limit is actually in your way.
• Ads. Optional, and easy to overspend on. If you test them, set a hard daily cap and a total stop amount before you start.

When paying for something is worth it

1. You're selling to buyers in many countries and don't want to handle sales tax or VAT yourself. A merchant-of-record platform's higher fee buys that.
2. You have no audience at all and want a marketplace's built-in buyers. Gumroad Discover, Etsy or a template gallery cost more per sale but can bring traffic you don't have.
3. A free plan's limit is blocking you, such as an email list past the free sending limit. That's a good problem, and it means something is working.

Until one of those is true, a domain, free hosting, a Payment Link and a free email plan are enough to launch.

A $0 version

If even $10.46 is too much right now: skip the domain, create a Stripe Payment Link, and share it with a short description on a free page such as a Notion page or a link-in-bio service. We compared five no-website setups, with fees, in how to sell digital products without a website. You can add a domain later without changing your checkout.

Want to plan the launch in the same low-cost way? Our free price calculator shows what you keep at different prices, and the 30-day plan lays out the steps.

Sources (checked October 27, 2026)

• Cloudflare Pages limits: developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/
• Brevo pricing and FAQ: brevo.com/pricing/
• Stripe pricing: stripe.com/pricing
• Our domain cost: Cloudflare Registrar order, October 24, 2026 ($10.46 for one year)
• Platform fees: each platform's pricing page, as summarized in our platform comparison