Lemon Squeezy Review: Sell Digital Products the Easy Way

What Is Lemon Squeezy?

Lemon Squeezy is a relatively new SaaS platform designed to make selling digital products as painless as possible. If you've ever struggled with the complexity of setting up WooCommerce, connecting Stripe keys, or figuring out international tax compliance, this platform is built to eliminate all of that friction.

The pitch is straightforward: create an account, upload your product, and start selling. No third-party payment processor setup, no tax configuration headaches, and no need to build or maintain your own website. It handles digital downloads, subscriptions, and software licensing out of the box, with plans to add online courses and more advanced features down the road.

What originally caught my attention was hearing from developers I respect in the Facebook group saying that if Lemon Squeezy had existed when they launched their products, they probably would have used it. The biggest reason? It handles international tax laws for you — especially EU VAT compliance, which can be overwhelming for a solo creator or small team selling worldwide.

Pricing: Free Plan vs. Paid

Lemon Squeezy keeps pricing simple with two available plans. The Fresh plan is completely free, while the Sweet plan runs $29 per month. A third tier called Juicy is planned at $79 per month but isn't available yet.

The key difference between Fresh and Sweet comes down to transaction fees. On the free plan, you pay a higher percentage per sale. Move up to the paid plan and your per-transaction cost drops, but you're paying that flat monthly fee. At 3.5% for credit card processing on the free tier, the rate isn't the cheapest you'll find, but it's reasonable considering you're getting payment processing, tax handling, and a hosted storefront all included.

Here's the interesting part: the feature sets between Fresh and Sweet are essentially identical. You're really just trading a higher transaction fee for a lower one with a monthly commitment. That makes it easy to start on the free plan, validate your product, and upgrade once you're generating consistent revenue.

Creating Your First Product

Setting up a product in Lemon Squeezy is refreshingly straightforward. You give your product a name, write a short description (they recommend 120–160 characters), and configure your pricing. You can choose between a one-time fee or a recurring subscription, and there's even a "pay what you want" option where you set a minimum and suggested price.

The media section works like a standard e-commerce product gallery — upload up to 10 images at 10 megabytes each. For your actual deliverables, the files section lets you upload whatever your customers will receive after purchase, with a total limit of five gigabytes per product. That's plenty for PDFs, templates, or software, though a large video course might push up against that ceiling.

Lemon Squeezy also includes a licensing system, which is a nice touch for software sellers. You can set activation limits and license durations — daily, monthly, yearly, or unlimited lifetime licenses. There's also a post-purchase redirect option if you want to send buyers to a specific URL after checkout.

One thing to note: while you can technically sell course content as downloadable files, Lemon Squeezy doesn't yet have a proper online course infrastructure. That's on their roadmap, so for now the platform is best suited for digital downloads, software licenses, and subscriptions.

Discount Codes and Sharing Options

Creating discount codes is simple. You name the code, set the actual coupon string, and choose between a percentage or flat-amount discount. You can scope coupons to specific products and set a global redemption limit — though it's worth noting the limit applies across all customers, not per customer, so the same person could technically use a code multiple times.

For subscription products, there's an option to apply the discount on every billing cycle. Most software companies discount the first year and then charge full price on renewal, so you'll want to think carefully about whether you enable recurring discounts.

Sharing your product is where Lemon Squeezy really shines for simplicity. You get two options: a direct checkout link and a checkout overlay. The checkout link is a standalone URL you can share on social media, in emails, or anywhere else. The checkout overlay gives you a small JavaScript snippet to embed on your existing website — when someone clicks a button, a sleek popup appears right on your page. Both options have a clean, Stripe-like aesthetic that feels trustworthy and professional.

The Checkout and Purchasing Experience

The checkout experience is one of Lemon Squeezy's strongest selling points. Customers can pay by credit card or PayPal, and the entire flow looks polished and secure without any configuration on your end. There's no Stripe account to create, no API keys to paste — it all just works.

You do get some customization options for the checkout page. You can toggle the store logo, product media, product description, cardholder name field, and the discount code box on or off. A practical tip: consider hiding the discount code field unless you're actively promoting a coupon. When shoppers see an empty discount field, many will leave your checkout to hunt for codes online, and if they can't find one, some won't come back to complete the purchase.

The overlay option is particularly nice for existing website owners. It dims the background and presents a focused checkout modal. You can switch to a dark background theme for a more dramatic effect. There is some light "Powered by Lemon Squeezy" branding, but on a checkout page it feels standard — similar to what you see with Square, Paddle, or Big Cartel.

One small UX nitpick: the address form doesn't auto-complete your city and state from your zip code, and the state field could benefit from a dropdown instead of freeform text input. Minor stuff, but the kind of polish that makes a difference at scale.

Order Management and Payouts

After a purchase goes through, both sides of the transaction are well handled. Customers get an instant email receipt that looks professional out of the box, along with access to download their files. They can also generate invoices for their own tax records and see a full timeline of their order.

On the seller side, your orders dashboard shows customer names, payment status, and revenue at a glance. From the triple-dot menu on any order, you can refund the payment, resend the receipt, or generate an invoice. It's clean and functional without unnecessary complexity.

For getting your money out, Lemon Squeezy uses Stripe under the hood for payouts. You can connect either a PayPal account or a bank account. The bank connection process took about 30 seconds — just your business name, owner name, last four of your social, and bank details. Once connected, you're set to receive payouts automatically.

Store Settings and Design

Your Lemon Squeezy store lives at a subdomain like yourname.lemonsqueezy.com. In the settings, you can upload a logo, set your store name and URL slug, choose your country and currency, and add a contact email. Custom domain support isn't available yet, which will likely be important as the platform matures and adds features like website building and online courses.

For integrations, options are currently limited to MailChimp and ConvertKit. If you're choosing between the two, ConvertKit is the stronger option for digital product creators, but hopefully more integrations are on the way.

The store design tools let you upload a header image (1600×300 pixels), toggle your logo and store name visibility, adjust product thumbnail sizes between small, medium, and large, and optionally display product descriptions on the storefront. There's also a subscription form toggle for collecting email addresses.

Mobile Responsiveness

The mobile experience is solid overall, but the header image situation needs attention. Since you only upload one image at 1600×300, the mobile view crops to the center of that image. There are no safe-zone guidelines, no ability to reposition the image after upload, and no separate mobile header option.

The practical takeaway: keep any essential content — text, logos, key visuals — centered in the middle third of your header graphic. Treat the left and right edges as decorative space that will get cropped on smaller screens. It would be great to see Lemon Squeezy add a template or safe-zone overlay similar to what YouTube provides for channel banners.

Everything else about the mobile storefront looks great. The product cards, checkout flow, and overall layout all scale down cleanly. For a platform this early in its development, the responsive design is well executed.

Final Verdict: Should You Use Lemon Squeezy?

Lemon Squeezy delivers on its core promise: a clean, simple way to sell digital products without the overhead of managing your own infrastructure. The setup process takes minutes, the checkout experience is polished, and the automatic tax handling is genuinely valuable for anyone selling internationally.

The platform is still early. Features like online courses, email marketing, marketing automation, affiliate programs, and a website builder are all on the roadmap but not yet available. That ambition is both exciting and worth watching carefully — each of those features is a standalone product for most companies, and trying to do everything well is a massive undertaking.

Right now, Lemon Squeezy is best for creators selling digital downloads, software licenses, or subscriptions who want the fastest path from product to sale. If you need a full WordPress setup with deep customization, this isn't a replacement for that. But if you want to test the waters, validate a product idea, or just skip the technical hassle entirely, the free plan makes it a no-brainer to try. You only pay when you make sales — hard to argue with that.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.