How to Use Payhip to Turn a Free Download Into Sales

The short answer: if you have a checklist or template people would trade an email address for, Payhip's $0 plan runs this whole job and costs nothing until a paid sale arrives, when it keeps 5% of it (Stripe or PayPal fees on top, pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026). The steps: connect a payment processor, publish the download at $0, link your email provider to it, add the paid product, give subscribers a coupon, try an upgrade offer, and read the funnel after two weeks.

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The job: a stranger downloads something useful, lands on your email list, and some of them buy the paid product a few days later. For what Payhip is and charges, see the Payhip glossary entry.

Before you build:

1. Check that the $0 plan is the right plan. For example, 400 downloads a month with 3% buying a $39 product is 400 x 0.03 = 12 sales, or $468. At 5% Payhip keeps $23.40, less than the $29 Plus plan on the pricing page, so stay on $0 until sales pass $966.67 a month.
2. Use the list and the file you already have. Payhip links to 14 email providers, from Mailchimp and Kit to Klaviyo and MailerLite, per its mailing lists article, so the list stays where your other campaigns already run. The PDF on your drive is the lead magnet.
3. Decide the three numbers you will read. Downloads, paid sales of the follow-up product, and coupon redemptions, all inside Payhip.

What you need

• A Payhip account and Stripe or PayPal. The free product article says a payment processor must be connected even if every product is free.
• An API key from your email provider. Each provider's key is pasted into Payhip once.
• A custom domain, only if you want your provider's own signup form on the store. The newsletters article requires one for embedded forms.

Step 1: Connect Stripe

Go to Account, Settings, Payment Details and click Connect next to Stripe, then authorise the account, per the Stripe article. For a Dutch audience, the same article lists iDEAL among the local methods you can switch on in Stripe's payment methods settings.

Step 2: Publish the download at $0

Click Add New Product, upload the file, set the price to 0 and save, as the lead magnet article lays out. Buyers of a free digital product enter only an email address, no payment details. If the store exists only for this download, the same article suggests making the product your homepage.

Step 3: Send every download to your list

Under Marketing, open Mailing Lists, click Set Up Mailing Lists, pick your provider and paste its key. Then edit the free product, open Advanced Options, tick "Automatically subscribe customers to mailing list" and choose the list. Payhip pushes new subscribers to the provider every 10 minutes, per the mailing lists article.

Customers in the EU see a checkbox, "Send me product updates and offers via email", and the same article says those who leave it empty are not added. Payhip shows it to comply with the GDPR, whose conditions for valid consent are in Article 7 of the regulation (EUR-Lex). So expect the list to grow more slowly than the download count, and treat the gap as the law working, not a broken integration.

Step 4: Add the paid product

Add the product the download leads to, with its price and a description that picks up where the free file stops. Link it to a separate buyers' list in its Advanced Options, so your provider knows who has already paid.

Step 5: Create a coupon for the list

Under Marketing, Coupons, click Add Coupon Code. Apply it to the specific product, choose a percentage or fixed discount, and set an expiry date for urgency, per the coupons article. Two settings catch people out: the usage limit counts total redemptions, not uses per customer, and the expiry runs on UTC, so a coupon set to end on 1 January ends at 00:00 UTC. Put the code in the second or third email of the sequence your provider sends to new subscribers.

Step 6: Try an upgrade offer after checkout

An upgrade discount offers a discounted second product after a completed transaction for a trigger product, and repeats the offer in the receipt email. Under Marketing, open the Upgrade tab, click Add Upgrade, pick the trigger product and the promoted product with its discount. Set the free download as the trigger, download it yourself, and check whether the offer appears; if it does not in your store, the coupon from step 5 carries the job alone.

Step 7: Let an agent draft the onboarding note

Payhip's Zapier integration triggers on New Sale, which also fires for free downloads, and Payhip supports no Zapier actions, so the agent works on the far side. A useful version: on a New Sale of the paid product, an AI by Zapier step drafts a two-sentence note that names the product and the first thing to open, then Human in the Loop holds it until a person approves, edits or declines it. Keep it to buyers of the paid product: a free downloader who left the box in step 3 empty has not agreed to hear from you.

Step 8: Read the funnel after two weeks

The conversion rate report shows views, started checkouts and completed checkouts, free products included, and visitor sources shows where they came from. The Coupons page shows how often each code was used. Your own visits are not counted while you are logged in.

The store builder also offers a Newsletter section, and the newsletters article says it adds people to your followers on Payhip, from which they can be manually exported. That default keeps the list inside the platform you sell on; connect your provider as in step 3, or embed its form, so the list stays yours if you ever move store.

What Payhip's help centre warns about

• No processor, no free product. Connect Stripe or PayPal first.
• Missing EU subscribers. The GDPR checkbox decides it.
• Coupons used up by a few people. The limit is overall; the coupons article suggests separate single-use codes, which it can bulk create 50 at a time.
• Embedded forms in the preview. They do not show in the store builder; check the live store.

FAQ

Do people need a card to download a free product?

No. For a free digital product they enter only an email address, per the free product article.

Why is a downloader missing from my mailing list?

Either they are in the EU and did not tick the consent box, or they opted out, according to the mailing lists article and the lead magnet article.

Can I charge for the download later?

Yes. The free product article lets you change the price of a digital product at any time, and suggests a coupon or a timed sale for short promotions instead.