AfterShip vs Payhip

AfterShip is a post-purchase platform for ecommerce brands, started in Hong Kong around 2011 to 2012 by Teddy Chan, Andrew Chan and Dante Tsang after Teddy built a script to cut where-is-my-order emails in his own store. It raised a $66M Series B led by Tiger Global in 2021. Its core job is keeping shoppers informed after checkout and reducing support tickets about deliveries, returns and delays.

The suite is sold as separate products: Tracking (branded tracking pages, delivery notifications, estimated delivery dates and analytics across 1,300+ carriers), Returns (self-serve returns and exchanges), Shipping (label printing and rate comparison), Protection (shipping insurance), plus personalization and warranty tools. AI features and an MCP server give assistants read access to shipment and return data. Each product has its own tiers, and the Shopify App Store versions are priced differently from direct plans.

AfterShip fits Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce brands that ship thousands of orders a year and want to turn tracking emails and pages into a marketing channel. Brands mainly needing cheap labels should look at Shippo, Easyship or ShipStation, and EU merchants often pick Sendcloud.

Buying tip: in mid-2026 AfterShip cut its direct Tracking plans from four to three, renamed Pro to Premium at $59 a month billed yearly, and moved to annual shipment quotas (6,000 a year on both paid tiers). API and webhooks start on Premium. On Shopify, compare the app's own plans, which include a free tier for 50 shipments a month.

Payhip is a London-based e-commerce platform for creators selling digital products. Writers, educators, designers and coaches use it to sell ebooks, templates, software, online courses, coaching sessions and memberships from a hosted store or through buy buttons embedded on their own website, and it can handle physical products too.

Payhip processes payments through PayPal and Stripe, issues license keys for software, and calculates and collects EU and UK VAT on digital sales, a common headache for creators selling internationally. Marketing features include coupons, upsells, affiliate programs, email marketing and a built-in store and page builder. Pricing is unusual: every plan has the same features, and you choose between a free plan with a 5 percent transaction fee, Plus with a 2 percent fee and Pro with no transaction fee, so the right plan depends purely on sales volume.

Payhip fits independent creators who want a simple store with VAT handled and costs that stay low as sales grow. It offers little marketplace discovery, so you bring your own audience, design customization is limited and analytics are basic. Gumroad has a marketplace and broader brand recognition but charges higher fees, Lemon Squeezy targets software sellers as a merchant of record, and Podia or Kajabi suit creators building larger course businesses.