Your product has a file that runs to gigabytes, and a post is about to send buyers to the checkout. The storefront will take the payment. Whether it accepts the file, hands it to every buyer, and keeps handing it over is a separate question, and the answers sit in the help pages, not on the pricing page.
Two problems that get sold as one
Selling a digital product is a payment problem and a delivery problem. Storefront pages foreground the first. Gumroad’s pricing page, fetched 2026-09-20, leads with 10% + $0.50 per transaction on direct sales and 30% on Discover marketplace sales, with no monthly fee. That fee is not this piece’s subject and is not compared across vendors.
The subject is delivery. A single post can send buyers in a wave rather than a trickle, and the file has to reach every one of them. For the physical version of the question, where the constraint is a shipped item, see what fulfilment costs when a post drives the order.
Two vendors were read, Gumroad and Payhip. Every limit below comes from the vendor’s own help pages, fetched 2026-09-20, with the article URL beside each. No ranking or recommendation follows.
What Gumroad documents about file size and downloads
| Limit | Documented figure | Source article |
|---|---|---|
| Single file, product priced above $0.99 | 20 GB for the largest single file. The page adds that it rarely sees files above 5 GB. | https://gumroad.com/help/article/289-file-size-limits-on-gumroad |
| $0 product (Pay What You Want with a $0 minimum) | 250 MB, cumulative across all files in the product | https://gumroad.com/help/article/289-file-size-limits-on-gumroad |
| “Download all” button | Shown only when total product content is under 500 MB. Workaround: upload one ZIP file. | https://gumroad.com/help/article/289-file-size-limits-on-gumroad |
| Video streaming | SD 480p, HD 1080p, 4K reduced to 1080p. Transcoding runs after the first successful sale and takes from a few minutes to hours. | https://gumroad.com/help/article/43-streaming-videos |
| Download links | Unique per buyer. Purchaser IP addresses are tracked, and the buyer’s email is requested if the link is opened from a different location. | https://gumroad.com/help/article/42-content-security |
Keep the units apart. The 20 GB figure is a ceiling on one file in a priced product. The 250 MB figure is the combined size of everything in a $0 product, so the two are not like for like.
The file size article also contradicts itself at the edge. Its summary says products priced “higher than $1” get the 20 GB ceiling, while the body says “greater than $0.99”. This piece does not claim which applies to a price between $0.99 and $1.00. If yours sits there, test it on a draft product.
Payhip’s ceilings sit elsewhere, and it counts downloads
For a digital product, each uploaded file can be up to 5 GB, and a larger file can be split into several smaller files uploaded to the same product listing (article 59, which shows “Last updated on March 17, 2026”). The page gives no combined figure.
Course products carry different numbers inside the same vendor. A download lesson takes files under 2 GB each (article 183). An uploaded lesson video can be up to 4 GB per file, and the page recommends compressing it (article 180). The ceiling depends on the product type you pick, not only on the vendor.
Payhip also meters downloads, which the Gumroad pages read do not describe. The default is 5 downloads per customer per product. The seller changes it under Account, Settings, Advanced Settings, Download Limit, and it accepts any number. A customer over the limit sees a system message, and the help page says the cause is that they “exceeded the number of download attempts”. The seller can reset that customer’s credits (article 79, article 80, article 81). Articles 80 and 81 both show “Last updated on June 14, 2021”.
The Payhip pages do not define whether an interrupted or failed attempt uses up a credit. That is an open question, not a finding, and it belongs in a written question to Payhip support.
Where a heavy file actually fails: one worked pass
Illustration only, with no buyer counts. Take a single 6 GB video pack, chosen because it sits between the two documented per-file ceilings.
On Gumroad, as a priced product, 6 GB is under the 20 GB per-file ceiling, so it uploads. The “Download all” button will not appear, because the content is over 500 MB, so the buyer is sent to the individual file or to a ZIP. On Payhip, a digital product file is capped at 5 GB, so 6 GB has to be split into at least two files. The arithmetic is 6 GB against 5 GB, nothing more.
The file-size cap is not where the pass ends. Gumroad’s troubleshooting page says a buyer’s connection may not support big downloads because an ISP sometimes has a time-out limit, and that extensions such as Adblock or Ghostery can impair larger downloads. It points buyers to the mobile app, to syncing, or to sending the files to Dropbox. The Dropbox article gives that route as Download all, then Save to Dropbox. That is the button hidden above 500 MB, and the pages read do not say whether the route is offered on a product too large for it. Test it.
On Payhip, credits count downloads per customer per product, and the page says a buyer who hits the limit will likely email the seller or Payhip. The pages do not say how a product split across two files is counted, and this piece does not guess.
A spike changes some of this and not the rest. A wave of buyers multiplies the number of people who might hit a time-out or a limit. It does not change any documented cap. Neither vendor’s pages read state a bandwidth, concurrency or throttling limit.
Video is its own pipeline, and it starts late
Gumroad transcodes video after the first successful sale, taking from a few minutes to hours, then emails the seller (streaming article). The page does not say what a buyer sees before transcoding finishes. That is unknown, so test it with a first sale before a post goes out.
Gumroad’s stream-only option keeps a video from being downloaded, and the same page says streaming links are signed and expire. The content protection page describes download links as unique and IP tracked, and neither page describes a time expiry on them. So the answer to “do download links expire?” has parts. Streaming links are documented as expiring, Gumroad’s download links as unique and tracked, and Payhip’s control is a count, not a clock.
Payhip’s uploaded lesson video is 4 GB per file, and it also supports embed lessons from YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia with no added Payhip cost.
Both vendors advise compressing first. Gumroad’s HandBrake page highly recommends it when buyers will download video, and Payhip’s lesson page names HandBrake too. For the team-to-client version of this problem, see how file transfer tools limit a finished-video handoff.
A pre-launch check in six steps
- Find the largest single file and the combined size of the product. Compare each with the documented ceiling for your product type, keeping per-file and combined figures separate.
- Decide whether buyers get one ZIP or many files, given Gumroad’s under-500 MB “Download all” rule and Payhip’s 5 GB per-file split.
- Check the download-count setting on Payhip, and decide whether the default of 5 suits a file large enough that buyers may need retries.
- For video, make the first sale yourself, or use a test buyer, so transcoding starts. Watch how long it takes on your file. That timing is your own measurement, not a figure this piece can supply.
- Download the finished product on a phone and on a slow connection, since the vendor’s own troubleshooting page names both.
- Write the fallback a buyer gets when a download fails, and put a way to reach you on the delivery page. Then ask each vendor in writing the three questions its pages leave open: whether bandwidth or concurrency limits apply, whether a failed attempt uses a download credit and how a split product is counted, and what a buyer sees during transcoding.
Sources, dates, and what this piece is
Prices and limits verified 2026-09-20 from the vendors’ own pages. The URLs read are listed under Sources at the end. This is a blog piece. It is not Watchdog data and it is not on the re-verification schedule, so re-check any figure on the vendor’s page before relying on it. followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost, and RecurPost is a covered vendor under the same rules as every other.
FAQ
Do download links expire?
On the pages read on 2026-09-20, Gumroad documents streaming links as signed and expiring and download links as unique and IP tracked, with no time expiry stated for download links. Payhip limits by count instead: 5 downloads per customer per product by default, resettable by the seller. Confirm on the vendor’s page before relying on it.
Will the storefront handle a sudden wave of downloads?
Neither vendor’s pages read state a bandwidth, concurrency or throttling limit, and absence from those pages is not proof there is none. Ask each vendor, in writing, what limits apply when many buyers download one product at once.
Sources
- https://gumroad.com/pricing, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://gumroad.com/help/article/289-file-size-limits-on-gumroad, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://gumroad.com/help/article/43-streaming-videos, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://gumroad.com/help/article/42-content-security, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://gumroad.com/help/article/193-my-purchase-isnt-downloading, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://gumroad.com/help/article/210-send-your-purchase-to-dropbox, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://gumroad.com/help/article/125-how-to-compress-a-video-using-handbrake, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://help.payhip.com/article/59-adding-a-digital-product, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://help.payhip.com/article/79-protecting-your-products, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://help.payhip.com/article/80-download-credits, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://help.payhip.com/article/81-download-limit-exceeded, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://help.payhip.com/article/180-add-a-video-lesson, fetched 2026-09-20
- https://help.payhip.com/article/183-add-a-download-lesson, fetched 2026-09-20