---
title: "How BigBinary Built Gumroad"
description:
  "A case study on how BigBinary built Gumroad. Learn about the approaches,
  development, and success behind this impactful project."
canonical_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/clients/case-studies/gumroad"
markdown_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/clients/case-studies/gumroad.md"
---

# How BigBinary Built Gumroad

A case study on how BigBinary built Gumroad. Learn about the approaches,
development, and success behind this impactful project.

## Project

A great platform built for new beginnings

Client: Gumroad

Role: Software Development

Year: Feb 2017 - Aug 2021

## About the project

Gumroad is a leading e-commerce platform that allows creators to sell products
directly to their audience. Gumroad is used by creators and entrepreneurs to
setup their own landing pages and sell their products. In Feb 2017 Sahil
contacted BigBinary to allow creators to put in their own Stripe and paypal
accounts. In this way Gumroad would become a pure SaaS.

## Approach

When Sahil contacted BigBinary then Sahil was the only person working on the
product. Through various calls we understood what needed to be done and we
started working on the payment integrations.

## Features

### Payment Integration

Working with Stripe was pretty straight forward. However working with Paypal was
tricky. They had just released a new version of their software and it had some
edge cases. The documentation was also not fully updated. We had to get on calls
with paypal folks multiple times to sort things out.

### Web development

Besides the payment integrations BigBinary worked on a number of code
improvements and new features. Webpack was the new kid on the block but it was
gaining both popularity and maturity very quickly. We worked on switching
Gumroad from RequireJS to webpack. During this period we published following two
blogs which came out of our engagement with Gumroad. \[Deploying feature
branches to have a review
app\](https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/deploying-feature-branches-to-have-a-review-app)
\[Migrating Gumroad from RequireJS to
webpack\](https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/migrating-gumroad-from-requirejs-to-webpack)

### Praise for BigBinary

on Jan 7, 2021 Sahil Lavingia \[wrote a blog\](https://sahillavingia.com/work)
about how he runs Gumroad without any meeting, deadlines or any full-time
employees. In this blog Sahil mentions the following.

## Testimonial

BigBinary has been a huge asset for Gumroad. They've helped us ship features we
wouldn't have been able to otherwise. If you’re looking for a ruby/rails-focused
dev shop, they have my full endorsement!

Sahil Lavingia

## Links

- [Human page](https://www.bigbinary.com/clients/case-studies/gumroad)