This page is for UK sellers who want to sell digital products alongside a monthly box, a booked appointment and a gift card. It covers what each type needs from your shop software, the VAT and consumer-law points that catch people out, and the monthly bill when you bolt them on as apps. Every rule was checked against gov.uk and legislation.gov.uk on 15 September 2026, and every app price came off the vendor’s own listing the same day. Full disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, so we have a stake in you opening a shop. Every price is linked to its source.
Which of these four can your platform actually do without an app?
Usually only one. Most platforms are built around a physical product with a weight, a stock count and a shipping label. Gift cards are commonly included. Downloads, subscriptions and bookable services are nearly always a separate paid app each, from a separate vendor, billed and supported separately.
| Product type | What the software has to do | Where it usually lives |
|---|---|---|
| Digital download | Host the file, release it after payment clears, cap downloads, issue licence keys | A paid app |
| Subscription | Store the card, bill on a cadence, retry failed payments, allow pausing | A paid app, often plus a revenue share |
| Service with a booking | Availability, duration, capacity, lead time, deposits, cancellation policy | A paid app |
| Gift card | Issue a code for any value, track the balance, allow part-redemption | Usually included |
The real test is whether a customer can put a candle, a downloadable pattern and a workshop slot in one basket and pay once. Bolt-on apps often fail it, because each owns its own checkout logic and none of them owns the order.
How do I sell digital products in the UK?
You attach the file to the product, the customer pays, and the platform releases a download link tied to that order. The limits are what matter: how many times the link works, how long it lives, and whether each buyer gets a licence key.
- Download cap. Three to five per order covers a failed transfer and a lost email without leaving the link open forever.
- Link expiry. Thirty days is generous for a buyer and short enough to discourage republishing.
- Licence keys. For software, or anything you might need to revoke later.
Do I charge VAT on a digital product?
If you are VAT registered, the place of supply for cross-border digital services sold to private consumers is where the consumer usually lives (gov.uk, last updated 28 March 2022, checked 15 September 2026). A UK consumer means UK VAT. A consumer elsewhere is outside the scope of UK VAT, though that country may have its own rules. HMRC lists e-books, digitised documents, images, music, films, games and software as digital services, which is the ordinary download business in one sentence. Registration still follows the normal thresholds, covered in our guide to UK VAT for online sellers. Check gov.uk before relying on this.
The human-intervention rule that catches service sellers out
A supply is only a digital service if it is essentially automated with minimal human involvement. HMRC’s examples put a live webinar, a course taught over the internet, and consultants advising by email outside the rules (gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). So a recorded course sold as a file is a digital service, and the same course taught live is not. Sellers who do both get this wrong constantly.
Can a customer cancel after they have downloaded it?
Only if you skipped the paperwork. Under regulation 37 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, the 14-day cancellation right for digital content ends once supply has begun, but only where the consumer gave express consent to start and acknowledged that the right to cancel would be lost (legislation.gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). Miss either half and they keep the right and pay nothing. In practice it is one tick box saying both things, plus a line in the confirmation email. Physical goods are covered in our UK returns law guide.
A worked example: one £12 download, two customers
Assume you are VAT registered, selling a £12 pattern at a VAT-inclusive price, on Orbit’s Solo card rate of 2% + 25p for UK cards, 3.1% + 25p international.
| Line | UK buyer | US buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Price paid | £12.00 | £12.00 |
| UK VAT at 20% (included in the price) | −£2.00 | £0.00, outside the scope |
| Card processing | −£0.49 | −£0.62 |
| Left over | £9.51 | £11.38 |
Same file, same shelf price, £1.87 difference in what reaches you. Worth knowing before you set one worldwide price, and it is the thinking behind our guide to pricing handmade products in the UK. Note there is no postage line in either column, which is the quiet reason to add digital products to a physical catalogue.
Subscriptions: recurring billing, failed payments and letting people pause
A subscription needs four things: a repeating cadence, a stored payment method, a retry process when a card fails, and a way to pause. The first two are the easy part. The last two are where the money leaks.
Failed payments. Cards expire, get replaced after fraud, or bounce on the 1st because the salary lands on the 3rd. Dunning is the automatic retry-and-remind process that recovers those. Without it, an expired card is a silent cancellation you spot at month end.
Pausing. The instinct is to make cancelling hard. It produces one-star reviews. Someone with three unopened boxes in a cupboard wants to stop for a month, not leave, and if the only button says cancel they press cancel. Our subscriptions guide covers cadences, trials, setup fees and per-plan discounts, and the subscriptions page has the rest. Price one thing in early: these apps often take a cut of subscription revenue too.
Services and bookings: a slot in the same basket as a product
A service product is a physical product with a calendar instead of a stock count: availability, a duration, a capacity per slot, a lead time so nobody books you for 20 minutes from now, an optional deposit, and a cancellation policy shown before payment.
The awkward part is the basket. A candle maker running workshops wants someone to buy two candles and a Saturday place in one order, appearing once in the orders list. When bookings live in a separate app they usually live in a separate checkout: two payments, two emails, a reconciliation job every month.
Gift cards: expiry dates, unredeemed balances and the fairness rule
Gift cards do two useful things at once. They get paid for now and redeemed later, which is unusually kind cash flow. And they put your brand in the hands of somebody who has never bought from you. The bit people get wrong is expiry.
Consumer contract terms have to be fair under Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Section 62 makes a term unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations to the detriment of the consumer, and section 68 requires written terms to be in plain and intelligible language (legislation.gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). A short expiry buried in small print is the shape of term that gets challenged.
This is not legal advice. If real money will sit on unredeemed cards, get the wording checked by a solicitor and ask your accountant how to treat the balance, because an unredeemed card is a liability until it is spent. Part-redemption and freezing a card are covered in our gift cards guide and on the gift cards page.
What does it cost to bolt these on with apps?
Here is a real stack, priced from the vendors’ own Shopify App Store listings on 15 September 2026. All bill in US dollars, so the sterling figure moves with the rate. We costed three apps, not four, because gift cards are usually included.
| Need | App | Published price (15 September 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Digital downloads | EDP Easy Digital Products | Free tier, then $14.99/month for 100GB, $24.99 for 200GB, $44.99 for 500GB |
| Subscriptions | Seal Subscriptions | Free to 50 subscriptions, $5.95/month to 100, $9.95/month to 250, $24.95/month to 500 |
| Bookings | Sesami | Free tier, then $19/month, $129/month, $299/month |
| Bookings, cheaper option | Tipo Appointment Booking | Free tier, then $9.90/month or $14.90/month |
Take the middle tier of each: $14.99 + $9.95 + $19 comes to $43.94 a month in apps, on top of your platform fee. Shopify’s UK pricing on 15 September 2026 is £25 a month for Basic, £19 billed yearly (shopify.com/uk/pricing, checked 15 September 2026). And those prices are not flat: EDP steps up with storage, Seal with subscriber count, Sesami by tier. The stack gets dearer as the thing starts working.
The same catalogue on one platform fee
Orbit has six product types in one editor, which shows only the fields relevant to the type you pick: physical, digital, subscription, service with bookings, gift card and bundle. Digital products carry files per product or variant, licence keys, download limits and expiry. Subscriptions run weekly through annual with trials, setup fees, pausing and dunning.
| Setup | Monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Platform plus three apps | Platform fee + $43.94, four vendors | Downloads, subscriptions, bookings; gift cards usually native |
| Orbit Solo | £25, or £19 billed yearly (ex VAT) | Downloads, bookings, gift cards, unlimited products, custom domain. No subscriptions or licence keys |
| Orbit Team | £85, or £64 billed yearly (ex VAT) | Adds subscriptions, dunning, licence keys, custom fields, bulk editor, 10 staff |
Read that honestly. If you need downloads, bookings and gift cards but not subscriptions, Orbit Solo at £25 covers them without apps, as the plan table on the pricing page lists it today (licence keys start on Team). If you do need subscriptions, Team at £64 billed yearly is £13 a month more than Shopify Basic plus that $43.94 app stack at £1.30 to the dollar (£19 + £33.80 = £52.80), and the difference buys one system and one bill instead of four vendors. Orbit charges no platform transaction fee; UK card rates are 2% + 25p on Solo and 1.7% + 25p on Team. More arithmetic is in our breakdown of the real cost of Shopify in the UK.
How to sell all four from one shop, step by step
- List what you will actually sell this year. If subscriptions are a maybe, do not pay for them yet.
- Decide the VAT position per type. Automated downloads follow the place-of-supply rule. Anything a human delivers does not.
- Write the digital consent wording. Express consent to start, plus an acknowledgement that the cancellation right is lost.
- Set download caps and link expiry before launch, not after the first file leaks.
- Turn on dunning the day you turn on subscriptions, and make pausing obvious.
- Print gift card expiry on the card in plain language, and book the balance as a liability.
- Test one mixed basket end to end: a physical item, a download and a booked slot in one order.
Questions people ask about selling digital products in the UK
Do I charge VAT on digital products sold from the UK?
If you are VAT registered, yes for UK consumers. The place of supply for cross-border digital services to private consumers is where the consumer usually lives (gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). A buyer outside the UK is outside the scope of UK VAT, though that country may have its own registration rules.
Is a live online class a digital service for VAT?
No. HMRC treats supplies as digital services only where they are essentially automated with minimal human involvement. A live webinar, a course taught over the internet, and advice given by email all sit outside those rules (gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). A recorded version of the same class, sold as a file, is inside them.
Can a customer cancel a digital download after downloading it?
Only if you failed to get two things before supply began. Under regulation 37 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, the cancellation right ends when supply starts with the consumer’s express consent and their acknowledgement that the right will be lost (legislation.gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). Without both, the consumer keeps the right and pays nothing.
Can UK gift cards have an expiry date?
There is no blanket ban on expiry, but the term has to be fair under Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and written in plain, intelligible language (legislation.gov.uk, checked 15 September 2026). A short expiry hidden in terms is the kind that gets challenged. State it on the card, give a generous window, and take legal advice on large balances.
Do I need a separate app to sell subscriptions and bookings?
On most platforms, yes, one paid app each. Priced from their own Shopify App Store listings on 15 September 2026, a downloads app, a subscriptions app and a bookings app at mid tiers came to $43.94 a month on top of the platform fee. In Orbit they are product types instead: downloads, bookings and gift cards from £25 a month, subscriptions from the Team plan.
If you have a mixed catalogue and you are tired of four dashboards, test one thing: whether a single basket can hold a physical item, a download and a booked slot, and whether the order looks sane afterwards. Orbit’s 14-day free trial needs no card, so you can run that order before deciding anything. Start free, or read our guide to starting an online store in the UK first.