Payhip vs Shoplit.io: fees, VAT and features compared

Shoplit.io and Payhip: two ways to sell online

Payhip and Shoplit.io both let you sell digital products from a page with your name on it, with online checkout. They differ on what happens before the sale.

Payhip is a store. You upload a product made somewhere else (an ebook, a template pack, course videos) and it handles the sale. It also covers coaching, memberships and even physical products. Shoplit.io creates the product too: its AI assistant writes the ebook, then the sales page that presents it, before taking payment through Stripe.

• Yes
• Partly
• No

Platform commission, excluding payment processing fees. Prices checked on October 20, 2026 on the official websites. Sources: Payhip (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

The main difference lies in the first two rows of the table: AI creation. No such feature appears in Payhip’s list of features as of October 20, 2026, or in its changelog. Everything else exists on both sides, organized differently: Payhip includes it all on its free plan (apart from course video hosting), while on Shoplit.io the Pro plan adds the custom domain and email marketing, and the Business plan adds video courses.

Fees and pricing: is Payhip really free?

Yes. Payhip’s free plan, called Free Forever, has no time limit, no cap on products or revenue, and includes every feature (Payhip help center). Payhip earns money on your sales, with a commission that drops when you pay for a subscription:

• Free Forever: Free, with a 5% commission per transaction.
• Plus: $29/month, with a 2% commission.
• Pro: $99/month, with no commission.

On Shoplit.io:

• Free: enough to create and sell a first ebook with its classic sales page, with 2 AI creations (an ebook and its page take two) and a 10% commission per sale.
• Pro: €29/month, a 0% commission, 20 AI creations, advanced sales pages in your colors, order bumps, a custom domain, email marketing and ad pixels.
• Business: €59/month, a 0% commission, everything in Pro plus video courses, funnels with one-click upsells, the AI funnel and quiz funnels.

On both, payment processing fees come on top: PayPal’s or Stripe’s on Payhip, Stripe’s on Shoplit.io.

To stop paying commission on Payhip, you need its Pro plan, at $99/month. Shoplit.io drops its commission on its Pro plan, at €29/month, AI creation included. Payhip prices are in US dollars and Shoplit.io prices in euros, so factor in the exchange rate when you compare.

To find out whether a subscription pays off, divide its monthly price by the drop in commission written as a decimal (3 percentage points is 0.03): the result is the monthly revenue above which it costs less than the commission. Below that, stay on a free option.

Creating the product: AI on one side, your own file on the other

With Payhip, you write and lay out the ebook somewhere else (a word processor, a design tool, an AI assistant), then upload the file. That’s simple if the ebook already exists, but all the creation work is yours.

With Shoplit.io, you describe the ebook to the AI assistant in one sentence, for example “a guide to learning watercolor in ten sessions”. It asks you two to four questions, shows you a recap, then delivers a written, illustrated and laid-out PDF in a few minutes. You then adjust the text and layout in the editor. The + button lets you attach a PDF of your notes so the AI starts from what you know. You can also import an ebook you have already written, as a PDF or a ZIP, and sell it as is.

Either way, read everything before you sell. The full method is in our guide on how to create an ebook with AI and sell it.

Can you sell courses on Payhip?

Yes, even on its free plan. A course accepts seven lesson types: video, text, quiz, download, survey, assignment and embed (Payhip help center). Payhip also offers certificates, drip content and progress tracking. Hosting your videos with Payhip is billed on top of your plan, while an embedded YouTube or Vimeo video costs nothing.

On Shoplit.io, video courses are part of the Business plan. Each lesson has its video (uploaded, or linked from YouTube, Vimeo, Loom or Wistia), a text and downloadable files. Students take the course in their own area, with their progress saved, and you can unlock lessons over time. Videos are hosted within your plan’s storage, 20 GB on Business. A course can also be the one-click offer shown right after someone buys an ebook.

The sales page: written by you or drafted by AI

On Payhip, each product has its page, which you build with sections (text, video, gallery and so on), and the checkout matches your branding. The copy, however, is yours to write. You can connect your own domain or a subdomain for free. The storefront your buyers see can be shown in 15 languages, while the seller dashboard stays in English (Payhip help center).

On Shoplit.io, the AI writes the sales page from the ebook, in the ebook’s colors. It isn’t created automatically: ask for it in the same message as the ebook, for example “…and a classic sales page to sell it”. The Free plan gives you a classic sales page with its checkout, the Pro plan an advanced page (sales page, checkout and thank-you page), the Business plan a full funnel with an optional offer right after purchase. Read the draft and cut any promise your product can’t keep.

On an advanced page or a funnel, you then adjust the page in the block editor: text, image, video, customer reviews, FAQ, countdown, guarantee and more. You pick a theme from ready-made palettes and check how it looks on mobile.

On the Free plan, you use the editor to build up to 3 funnels yourself. From the Pro plan, it also opens on AI-written pages, which you can publish on your own domain.

Payments and tax: who takes care of what?

To take payments, Payhip has you connect your own payment accounts, from thirteen processors including PayPal, Stripe and Mollie. In most cases, you can connect PayPal plus one other service for cards (Payhip help center).

Shoplit.io takes payments through Stripe: the money from each sale goes straight to your own Stripe account, and the buyer gets the file automatically. Your customers pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Klarna, depending on the methods turned on in your Stripe account.

On tax, Payhip collects and pays VAT on digital products by default for your buyers in the European Union or the UK (Payhip help center). Since July 1, 2026, it does the same for US sales tax, at no extra cost (Payhip help center), and for Canadian sales tax outside Quebec (Canada sales tax). You choose whether tax is added on top of your price or included in it, and you can turn this option off to handle VAT yourself.

If tax is added on top, the buyer pays the price plus their country’s VAT. Payhip keeps the VAT to pay it to the tax authority and takes its commission; you receive the rest, minus payment fees. For EU and UK VAT, Payhip says it acts as your reseller and takes full responsibility (Payhip VAT page). In other countries, if you apply a tax, Payhip adds it at checkout and passes the amount on to you, and you file and pay it yourself (same page).

For sellers based outside the UK, HMRC says digital services sold to UK consumers are liable to UK VAT and require UK VAT registration; when you sell through a third-party platform or marketplace, the platform accounts for that VAT instead of you (GOV.UK). With Shoplit.io, the money goes to your own Stripe account: you are the seller, and you file any VAT or sales tax you owe yourself.

In the EU, VAT on digital services sold to consumers is due in the buyer’s country. The €10,000 annual threshold that keeps small sellers on their home rules only applies to sellers established in a single EU country, and the One Stop Shop lets you declare EU VAT in one place (European Commission). In the US, whether a digital product is subject to sales tax depends on the state; our guide on where to sell ebooks online covers EU, UK and US rules in more detail. This is general information, not tax advice: an accountant can confirm what applies to you.

When to choose Shoplit.io

Shoplit.io comes out ahead when creating the product matters as much as selling it:

• You are starting from an idea, not a file. The AI assistant writes the ebook and, if you ask in the same message, its sales page. You skip the back-and-forth between a writing tool, a design tool and your store.
• You want a sales funnel. On the Business plan, a complementary offer (an ebook or a course) can be bought in one click right after checkout, and the AI funnel builds the whole funnel from your product. Payhip offers discounted cross-sells at the time of purchase and a discount after purchase, but no one-click offer described in its help center.
• You want the product and the way you sell it built in one place: the AI-written ebook, its page, checkout, then email marketing from the Pro plan and video courses on the Business plan.
• Your sales justify a subscription. Shoplit.io’s commission drops to 0% from the Pro plan, at €29/month, while Payhip needs its most expensive plan to stop taking one.

When to choose Payhip

• Your product is ready and you want to start with no subscription: the free plan includes every feature, with no cap on products or revenue.
• You want tax collected for you, or you are counting on a marketplace to be discovered (changelog).
• You also sell coaching, memberships or physical products, or your buyers prefer to pay with PayPal.

If you are starting from an idea and already have an audience to tell about it, on TikTok or Instagram for example, Shoplit.io gets you from idea to product on sale faster.