Selling
Selling plugins, themes and digital downloads from WordPress: pricing, checkout, licensing and the fees that eat the margin.
9 articles
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Core Forms 4.6
Products & Licensing rebuilt as a WordPress-native workspace: searchable tables, product workspaces, release preflight checks, currency-to-gateway routing, a native checkout, seven blocks and shortcodes, a commerce REST API with WordPress 6.9 Abilities and safer customer access. Released July 22, 2026, with two patches through July 27.
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Easy Digital Downloads Alternatives (One Speaks EDD's Own API)
Which EDD alternative fits depends on what you sell. If it's one plugin with license keys, an EDD-compatible API means shipped clients keep working.
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Freemius Alternatives: What Keeping the 7% Actually Takes
At around 7%, Freemius costs a $100k plugin business about $7,000 a year. Here's what that fee actually buys — and what replacing each piece takes.
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Gumroad Alternatives for Selling Software and Digital Products
Gumroad's flat 10% takes $1,000 of every $10,000 you sell. When a 5% platform or your own Stripe checkout with license keys wins — and when Gumroad still does.
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Lemon Squeezy Alternatives for WordPress Product Sellers
Lemon Squeezy takes 5% + 50¢ per sale as merchant of record. If you sell WordPress products, self-hosting checkout and licensing keeps that margin.
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How to Sell WordPress Plugins From Your Own Site
Five pieces sell WordPress plugins from your own site: checkout, license keys, updates, customer area, gateway. All five can run inside WordPress itself.
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How to Sell WordPress Themes Without a Marketplace
Marketplaces take a big cut and keep your customer emails. Here's the five-piece stack that sells themes from your own WordPress site instead.
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A Software License Manager You Can Self-Host on WordPress
A software license manager does four jobs — keys, activations, downloads, expiry. Here's how to self-host all four on WordPress instead of paying a SaaS cut.
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Stripe Fees for Software Sellers, Actually Calculated
Stripe takes 2.9% + 30¢ per US card charge — $1.72 on a $49 license. See the effective rate at four price points, the add-ons, and the refund catch.
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Stop reading. Ship a form.
All these notes are from running Core Forms on real client sites. Use code
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