A self-hosted software store. License keys, downloads, refunds,
EU VAT, multi-currency — built in. No platform cut.
Gumroad takes 10%. Lemon Squeezy takes 5%. They also keep your customer list,
your analytics, and the right to deplatform you. VBWD lets you run the same
checkout on your own VPS — you pay 2.9% in card-processing fees and keep
everything else. Your store, your customer, your data.
ICP
Indie devs & small dev shops $5K–$200K monthly revenue
Why creator platforms are quietly the most expensive vendor in your stack.
Three things they don't tell you when you sign up.
You shipped the product. You found the audience. The platform takes a slice
because it's "frictionless" — until you do the math, lose a payout, get
deplatformed for a wrong-day-of-the-week reason, or watch your customer
list become someone else's marketing asset.
%
5–10% off the top, forever
Gumroad 10%, Lemon Squeezy 5%, Paddle 5% + $0.50, Sellfy 5–9%. At $5K MRR
that's $250–$500 / month — every month, in perpetuity. It scales with you.
Your hosting bill doesn't.
⌖
Your customer is their customer
The receipt comes from noreply@gumroad.com. The customer's
credit card is at Gumroad. Their email is in Gumroad's CRM. You can export
it — until you can't. The platform owns the relationship; you rent it.
⚠
One ToS update from deplatformed
NSFW change at Gumroad in 2022. SaaS-only restriction. Crypto bans.
Each platform tightens its policies; you discover yours doesn't fit
anymore. Backup plan is "rebuild on something else and email your list" —
assuming you still have the list.
The math, in one line. At $5,000 / month in product sales:
Gumroad: $500 / mo, Lemon Squeezy: $250 + $0.50 × sales,
Paddle: $250 + $0.50 × sales. VBWD on a $15 / mo VPS: $15 / mo
plus 2.9% direct to Stripe (which you'd pay either way). The 7-percentage-point
gap is the second laptop you didn't have to write off this year.
VBWD for Software Stores · Problem
02 / 11
Solution
VBWD for Software Stores · Solution
A checkout you own. A customer list that's yours.
Your store, on a $15 VPS. No platform cut.
VBWD is a complete software-store stack: products, license-key generation,
downloadable delivery, EU VAT, multi-currency, refunds, customer accounts,
and an admin to run it from. You self-host on a VPS, point Stripe at it,
and ship. Switching from Gumroad? A migration script reads your CSV and
backfills customers + license keys.
License keys
Generated, delivered, revocable
Per-product key generators (UUID, alphanumeric, custom format). Issued on
successful payment, emailed to the customer, visible in their portal.
Per-customer key caps. Revocation flow for refunds. Per-machine activation
limits via a 6-line client SDK.
VBWD Shop plugin · license-key feature
Downloadables
Signed URLs, time-limited
Upload binaries to ${VAR_DIR}/downloads/ (or S3-compatible
storage). Customer gets time-limited signed URLs (default 24h, configurable).
Per-customer download caps. Plugin hook for watermarking PDFs / executables
if you want to.
Self-hosted or S3 · cap + audit log
EU VAT + multi-currency
Compliant out of the box
Per-country VAT rates, MOSS/OSS reporting export, B2B VAT-ID validation
against the VIES service. Multi-currency pricing with country-aware
display. Tax-exemption flags for B2B buyers. No "merchant-of-record" tax
— you handle filings, but the math is done for you.
Built-in · no Paddle-style MoR fee
You own the customer. The receipt comes from your domain.
The customer's email lives in your database. Your CRM exports work because
you control the schema. Your audit log is yours. No platform decides
which of your products you're allowed to sell.
VBWD for Software Stores · Solution
03 / 11
Features
VBWD for Software Stores · Feature breadth
Everything a Gumroad-replacement needs — already on the platform.
▦
Product catalog
Products, variants (Free / Pro / Team), bundles, upgrade paths from Free to paid. Markdown product descriptions, drag-and-drop image gallery.
REST API for everything the admin does. CLI for batch operations (key generation, refunds, exports).
▤
Marketing CMS
Landing pages, product pages, blog. Multi-locale. Edit without redeploying.
⚡
Self-hosted
On your VPS, your backup policy, your data residency. No platform-fee surprise.
VBWD for Software Stores · Features
04 / 11
Math
VBWD for Software Stores · The savings math
The savings, in dollars, at your revenue.
The headline rate isn't the only cost. Below, we compare what you actually
pay on three creator platforms versus VBWD self-hosted, at three revenue
tiers. The "VBWD" column includes a VPS ($15/mo), Stripe processing (2.9%),
and a one-time VBWD license ($499 first year, $499 renewal). Everything else
is your money to keep.
$2K / mo
"Side project" tier
Gumroad: $200 / mo VBWD: $73 / mo
Saved: $1,524 / year
$6K / mo
"Going pro" tier
Gumroad: $600 / mo VBWD: $189 / mo
Saved: $4,932 / year
$20K / mo
"Full income" tier
Gumroad: $2,000 / mo VBWD: $595 / mo
Saved: $16,860 / year
What's included in "Gumroad" cost
10% platform fee on all sales.
2.9% + $0.30 Stripe / PayPal processing (same as VBWD).
Discoverability: nominally a benefit; in practice, marginal for 99% of products.
Hosting + support included.
What's included in "VBWD" cost
VPS hosting: $15 / mo (Hetzner CX22 or equivalent).
Stripe processing: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (same as Gumroad).
VBWD license: $499 / year (Starter) or $1,499 / year (Pro). Amortized to a flat $42 / mo or $125 / mo.
Your time: 1–2 hours / month maintenance once running.
VBWD for Software Stores · Math
05 / 11
Pricing
VBWD for Software Stores · Pricing
Annual license. Self-hosted. No percentage of your revenue.
The license is annual and the price is a single number. Buy it once, install
on your VPS, and every dollar of sales that follows is yours minus Stripe
fees. Use the same instance for your next product launch — no incremental
cost. Use it for ten products — same license.
Community
Free · for proofs of concept
Under 5K EUR annual revenue. All shop features. Email support 48h. The
right tier to launch your first product on; upgrade when you cross the
threshold (we'll email you, not ambush-bill you).
$0 / forever
Starter
First profitable year
Above the Community threshold. Same code, licensed for commercial scale.
Single store, unlimited products, all shop features. Email support 48h,
monthly platform-updates webinar. Pays for itself in 8 weeks at $5K MRR.
$499 / year
Professional
Multi-product creator
Multi-store license — run separate storefronts on subdomains (one for
software, one for courses, etc.) on a single VBWD instance. Priority
support (8h SLA, Slack), monthly architecture check-in, early access to
new plugins.
$1,499 / year
Enterprise
Marketplace / dev shop
White-label rights, multi-deployment license, 4h SLA, dedicated engineer,
40h custom plugin / year. For dev shops running VBWD-as-a-service for
their indie clients.
$4,999 / year
The breakeven, at a glance. The Starter license pays for
itself when you cross ~$417 / month in sales (the point
where 10% to Gumroad equals $42 / month to VBWD).
VBWD for Software Stores · Pricing
06 / 11
Next step
Section opener
Stop paying the 10%
Three paths to your own store.
Get help migrating · Buy + run it · Resell to other creators.
VBWD for Software Stores · Next step
07 / 11
CTA · Talk
Talk to us about your migration
Thirty minutes. Your store's CSV, your savings math.
Drop us a 30-minute call. We'll plug your monthly sales into the
Gumroad-vs-VBWD calculator on a screen-share, walk through how a CSV import
backfills your existing customers + license keys into a new VBWD instance,
and answer the question you actually came for: "how much pain is this
migration?" (Honest answer: a weekend if you have one product, a long
afternoon plus a deploy if you have ten.)
What to bring to the call
A CSV export from your current platform (Gumroad / Lemon Squeezy / Paddle).
Your monthly sales total — we'll put it in the calculator.
The 1–3 things you're worried might not migrate cleanly.
Your timeline. "Next weekend" works. "Q1" works. "Today" usually doesn't but say so.
shop@vbwd.cc — your platform, your monthly $, your timeline.
💬
GitHub Issue — public
Open a public issue. You get a citeable answer; the next reader benefits.
What we will not do. Pretend the migration is "one click."
Sell you Enterprise if Starter does the job. Hide the limits. The pitch is
honest because the math is. It only takes one cycle of monthly platform
fees to know whether VBWD pays off for you.
VBWD for Software Stores · Get in touch
08 / 11
CTA · Buy
Buy a license. Migrate this weekend.
License a store. Migrate the weekend after. Keep next month's $500.
The fastest path: license today, install on a $15 VPS this weekend, point
your domain at the new store, fire off a "we've moved" email to your
customer list (which you've finally got in your own database), watch the
first organic sale from your own domain land on Monday. The Gumroad
subscription stops at the end of the month. The savings start.
Community
Free · BSL 1.1
Under 5K EUR / year. Launch your first product. We email you when you're
about to cross the threshold (not ambush-bill).
$0 / forever
Starter
Above 5K EUR
Same code, commercial license. Unlimited products, one store, all
shop plugins. Pays for itself in 8 weeks at $5K MRR.
$499 / year
Professional
Multi-store creator
Multiple storefronts on one VBWD (software / courses / templates each
on its own subdomain). Priority support 8h SLA, Slack channel,
monthly check-in.
$1,499 / year
Enterprise
White-label / dev-shop
White-label rights, multi-deployment, 4h SLA, dedicated engineer, 40h
custom plugin work / year. For dev shops hosting VBWD-as-a-service for
their indie clients.
$4,999 / year
Buy now.vbwd.cc/buy —
instant license-key delivery, 30-day money-back, no questions. We'll throw in
a Gumroad / Lemon Squeezy migration script with any annual plan.
VBWD for Software Stores · Buy
09 / 11
CTA · Partner
Reseller program — for dev shops & creator agencies
Sell VBWD-stores to your indie clients. Run their stack. Keep 20–30%.
If you run a dev shop, a creator agency, or you consult on monetisation for
indie developers — VBWD is a product you can resell. The indie creators in
your network are the perfect ICP: tired of platform fees, technical enough
to want self-hosted, not technical enough to want to deploy + maintain it
themselves. You bring the client, deploy the store, hand them the keys.
We provide the platform, updates, and tier-3 support.
Registered
Free · for starters
Listed in the partner directory. 20% commission on every store-license
you sell. Partner Slack. Quarterly partner-update webinar.
Free / year · 20% commission
Certified
Trained on migrations
25% commission. Migration-from-Gumroad certification track (1 week).
Early access to shop plugins (template marketplace, course features).
Co-marketing for indie-creator-focused channels.
$999 / year · 25% commission
Premier
Inbound creator leads
30% commission. Inbound creator leads from vbwd.cc routed to you.
Featured listing above Certified partners. Monthly strategy call.
Path to white-label for hosting-as-a-service.
$2,499 / year · 30% commission
The hosted-shop play. The biggest reseller opportunity isn't
one-time license commissions — it's recurring managed hosting.
Charge your creator clients $99–$299 / month to host + maintain their VBWD
store. Your hosting cost: ~$15 / instance. Margin: 80–90%. Across 20 creator
clients, that's $24K–$60K / year of recurring services revenue on top of
license commissions. Apply at vbwd.cc/partner.
VBWD for Software Stores · Partner
10 / 11
VBWD for Software StoresSell your software, keep your margin2026
Thank you.
Your store, your customer, your data. A weekend's work to migrate,
$15 / month to run, $499 / year for the license. The 10% you used to pay
Gumroad — keep it. Reinvest in the next product, the next
campaign, or the new MacBook you've been putting off.