Looking for an all-in-one creator store to monetize your knowledge? In this article, we deep dive into the pros and cons of two popular creator store platforms on the market: The Leap and Pillar.
While Pillar claims to be the “Shopify” for creators and talent managers, it doesn’t come for free. On the other hand, The Leap is a 100% free alternative, with an AI-powered digital product builder that saves you time and money.
Keep reading to learn how The Leap and Pillar compare, so you can decide which platform might work best for you.
Click here to start creating and selling digital products with The Leap. It’s free!The Leap vs. Pillar: Key differences
The Leap and Pillar are user-friendly creator store platforms with similar feature offerings, like the ability to build an online storefront quickly and sell digital products. However, there are some key differences to consider, like their pricing and the use of AI.
| Platform | Pricing and key features |
| The Leap | Price: Free! Digital product builder: ✅ Types of digital products you can build: Mini-courses, guides, tutorials, challenges Creator store: ✅ Generative AI: ✅ Email marketing automation: ✅ Native calendar booking: ✅ Flexible payment options: ✅ |
| Pillar | Price: $29 – $79/month Digital product builder: Online course builder Creator store: ✅ Generative AI: ✅ (Ebook content only) Email marketing automation: ✅ Native calendar booking: ✅ Flexible payment options: ✅ |
What is The Leap?
The Leap is an all-in-one creator store that features an AI-powered digital product builder, a mobile-optimized link-in-bio storefront, and email marketing automation tools, enabling creators to build, sell, and market their digital products all from one platform.
The Leap is a ridiculously simple platform to use, yet it’s jam-packed with all the features you need to transform your knowledge and expertise into digital products — and your audience into paying customers, quickly and easily.
Key features
- AI-powered digital product builder: The Leap’s digital product builder is the only of its kind powered by generative AI. Whether you want to create a mini-course, guide, tutorial, or challenge, The Leap can spin up a digital product draft and landing page for you almost instantly.
- Free to use: The Leap is 100% free. While many platforms charge a monthly user fee or pocket a part of each sale, The Leap is totally free to use with no platform fees. Once you start making sales from your Leap store, all you need to pay is the standard 2.9% Stripe fee.
- Lead generation: The Leap empowers you to turn your digital products into lead magnets, which help you grow your email list and, ultimately, boost your sales.
- Email marketing automation: Use The Leap’s pre-made email templates for setting up automated email flows and sending email broadcasts easily.
- Native calendar booking: The Leap’s Book My Time feature allows creators, coaches, and consultants to offer one-on-one sessions and get paid.
- Flexible payment options: The Leap creators have access to flexible selling and payment options, like Buy Now, Pay Later payment plans via Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm. Plus, discount/coupon codes and one-click payments via digital wallets like Apple Pay.
Overall, The Leap is a powerful all-in-one creator store designed to help creators start making money, today. Its robust and one-of-a-kind features and its $0 price tag make it the number one alternative to other creator stores on the market. Create your free Leap account today.
Create and sell mini-courses in minutes using The Leap!
What is Pillar?
Pillar is a creator store with a suite of tools for creators to manage their digital products, brand deals, leads, customers, and more. The platform considers itself the “Shopify” for creators and talent managers, and offers a suite of features tailored to both.
First and foremost, the platform offers a link-in-bio storefront, alongside audience and customer analytics, coaching and calendar automation, an auto-updated media kit, influencer and UGC post reports, and Apple Pay checkout. The idea here is that you can use Pillar to replace all your other tools (such as Google Analytics, Linktree, Wix, etc.) because the platform will take care of it all for you instead.
With Pillar, you can:
- Create a simple, customizable online storefront and link-in-bio landing page.
- Sell digital products and services.
- Accept one-click payments via Apple Pay.
- Track audience and customer analytics.
- Collect influencer and UGC post reports.
- Offer coaching and calendar automation.
- Build an auto-updated media kit to pitch to brands.
The Leap vs. Pillar: Comparison
Now that you know the basics of The Leap and Pillar, let’s take a closer look at the platforms. Read on to see how they stack up against each other.
- Pricing
- Digital product builder
- Generative AI
- Email marketing automation tools
- Native calendar booking
- Flexible payment options
1. Pricing
The biggest difference between The Leap and Pillar is their pricing structure.
Long story short: PIllar doesn’t come for free. It offers a Creator plan with limited features for $29/month plus 5% transaction fees. If you decide to pay annually, Pillar will offer a discount on its Creator tier and wipe transaction fees. For more advanced features like email marketing and the live Media Kit, you’ll have to upgrade to Pillar’s Entrepreneur plan for $79/month.
On the other hand, The Leap keeps pricing simple: The Leap is 100% free with zero transaction fees. All you’ll have to pay is a standard 2.9% Stripe processing fee.
Long story short: If you’re on a budget, then The Leap might be a better option for you.
Start monetizing your audience with The Leap, your free link-in-bio store.2. Digital product builder
Another significant difference between The Leap and Pillar is their digital product builder offering.
While Pillar has features for you to sell and market digital products, it doesn’t have a digital product builder. This means you’ll have to create digital products on a separate platform (like Canva, for example) and import them onto Pillar.
With The Leap, not only do you get a digital product builder that can help you create anything from mini-courses, guides, tutorials, and challenges, but it’s also AI-powered. That means you can use The Leap’s digital product builder to generate products and their landing pages for you in mere minutes.
3. Generative AI
When it comes to AI power, it’s hard to beat The Leap. The platform features an AI-powered digital product builder that can generate ideas and templates for digital products in just minutes. Plus, it has an AI assistant to help you generate copy for sales pages and product descriptions — it can even generate content for an ebook.
On the flip side, while Pillar has several useful features like an media kit with real-time updates on your audience stats and other beneficial data, the platform is less than robust when it comes to generative AI.
Turbocharge your income with The Leap’s AI assistant.
4. Email marketing automation tools
Both The Leap and Pillar offer email marketing automation tools that help you build an email list and nurture your leads.
The Leap offers email flows and broadcast features that simplify your email marketing efforts by turning your nurturing process on autopilot. Choose and customize a premade template (e.g. “Warm welcome,” “Friendly check-in,” or “Nurture funnel”), or build your own flow from scratch. Then, select a send trigger, like when a customer claims a lead magnet or purchases a specific digital product. With The Leap’s email automation tool, you can even add CTA buttons for that extra attention effect.
While Pillar’s Creator plan offers basic email and newsletter list building, you’ll have to upgrade to its Entrepreneur plan for more advanced email marketing features like automated email flows.
Either way, you have to pay for email features with Pillar, while all of The Leap’s email marketing features — including an email list builder, email automation flows, and email broadcasts — are free to use.
Nurture and convert leads with The Leap’s built-in email marketing features. Start free!5. Native calendar booking
Both The Leap and Pillar offer a native calendar booking feature that makes it easy for coaching and consulting creators to host one-on-one calls, set availability, and allow customers to book time slots.
Keep in mind that Pillar’s native calendar booking feature is part of its paid plan, which is $29/month or $228/year. However, The Leap’s Book My Time feature is free to use!
Use The Leap to offer micro-consulting and sell coaching sessions. It’s free!6. Flexible payment options
Both platforms offer mobile-optimized checkouts, but The Leap has more flexible payment options, including Buy Now, Pay Later payment plans via Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm. As well as one-click payments, plus discount and coupon codes.
Pillar offers one-click payments via Apple Pay which helps simplify the payment process, but it doesn’t have other payment option features.
Boost your digital product sales with The Leap’s flexible selling and payment options.The Leap vs. Pillar: Which creator store should you use?
Both The Leap and Pillar share the same primary goal: helping creators set up an online store and hub for generating leads and monetizing their audience.
Since Pillar is designed for both creators and talent managers, that means if you’re a creator, Pillar isn’t 100% focused on you as a customer — just something to keep in mind. The platform does come with several essential monetization tools like a link-in-bio storefront and audience analytics. However, Pillar doesn’t offer a digital product builder, meaning you’ll have to create digital products on a separate platform.
And if you’re looking for an all-in-one creator store where you can truly do it all without breaking the bank, The Leap is your best option.
When it comes to selling digital products, The Leap is a far superior platform. Why? Because while Pillar has no digital product builder at all, The Leap comes with a digital product builder that’s AI-powered, meaning it can generate digital products for you in just seconds.
That being said, Pillar might be for you if you’re looking primarily for a simple link-in-bio tool that specializes in brand sponsorship revenue.
A note on pricing
In terms of pricing, while Pillar does offer a limited free trial, to access any of its features long-term, you’ll need to shell out at least $29/month (plus transaction fees).
On the flip side, The Leap is free.
TL;DR
Ultimately, with the right strategy and quality digital products, you could find success on either platform. The choice between The Leap or Pillar should be based on your business objectives, your budget, and your most desired features.
The Leap is best if… |
Pillar is best if… |
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Build, market, and sell your digital products with The Leap
Now that you know all about the key features and differences between The Leap and Pillar, you can decide which platform suits you best.
If you’re more interested in a super straightforward link-in-bio tool that gives you the option to sell digital products, but specializes in brand sponsorship revenue, then Pillar is for you.
If you’re looking to monetize your audience and diversify your income stream with a genuine all-in-one tool, then The Leap is your best option. The Leap is a creator store that provides you with all the tools you need to start creating and selling digital products with no monthly subscription or transaction fees.
Once you sign up for free, you’ll gain access to all of The Leap’s features, from its link-in-bio storefront to its AI-powered digital product builder. Kickstart your monetization journey with The Leap. Try The Leap for free now!
Start monetizing your audience with The Leap, your free link-in-bio store.
The Leap vs. Pillar FAQ
How is The Leap better than Pillar?
When it comes to The Leap and Pillar, The Leap stands out for its digital product builder and pricing.
First, The Leap has an AI-powered digital product builder, whereas Pillar does not. With The Leap’s AI authoring tool, you can create a range of digital products, including mini-courses, guides, tutorials, and challenges almost instantly.
Secondly, The Leap is 100% free to use, whereas Pillar’s plans start at $29/month.
What is The Leap?
Brought to you by creator tech company Thinkific, The Leap is an all-in-one creator store designed to help creators jumpstart their monetization journey. This platform provides creators with everything they need to start earning money by selling digital products, including an AI-powered digital product builder, a link-in-bio storefront, email marketing automation, a native calendar booking feature, and more.
How does The Leap work?
The Leap is an all-in-one creator store with a digital product builder powered by generative AI. The Leap enables you to set up your link-in-bio storefront quickly and easily with its user-friendly builder tool.
You can upload your digital products to your storefront or create your own using the platform’s AI-powered authoring tool. Simply answer a few questions, like what your niche is and what type of product you’d like to build, and The Leap’s powerful authoring tool will generate digital product ideas and build out comprehensive, customizable drafts in seconds.
Create and sell digital products in minutes using The Leap!
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