In today’s fast-paced and increasingly digital world, the ability to process payments seamlessly and securely is essential for businesses of all sizes.

However for creators, what’s more important is a platform that supports your creator journey by providing a seamless platform to sell your products and also accept payments easily.

Selar and Flutterwave are good options to sell digital products online. But which of these platforms is creator-focused? You’ll find out in this Selar vs Flutterwave review.

What is Selar?

Selar is an e-commerce platform designed for African creators to help them turn their knowledge into income by selling digital products or services anywhere in the world.

Selar was created for the African creator to provide a sustainable plan through which they can create endless streams of income for themselves and be rewarded for their knowledge and skills.

Today, over 70K African creators and 400k users trust Selar to help them sell their digital products across borders and thrive in the creator economy.

At Selar, we believe in equipping the African creator with all the resources needed to compete globally and get paid for it.

How does Selar work?

Selar is an easy platform to use such that you can sign up, create a store, and start selling your product in 5 minutes or less.

You can get started on Selar in just four steps

• Sign up @ Selar.co
• Enter your bank information to enable payout when you make sales.
• Upload products
• Share store link with your customers.

Selar’s goal is to help you sell your digital products seamlessly across borders as an African. So you don’t need to travel worldwide, have professional sales experience, or be an influencer to sell on Selar.

Selar functions as a free e-commerce store builder with payment integration. This means that when you create an online store with Selar, you automatically get an online payment integration that supports local and international payments, making it the ideal choice for the African creator.

What is Flutterwave?

Flutterwave is a fintech platform that provides payment solutions for global merchants and service providers across the continent. The platform enables digital transactions across and between Africa and other regions.

Although Flutterwave focuses on the African market, its headquarters is in San Francisco, California.

Flutterwave has diverse features designed for merchants to help them facilitate sales from all around the world, send and receive payments, and use its APIs to build financial products.

Due to its excellent service, Flutterwave is trusted by over 900,000 businesses globally helping them carry out payment transactions worth over $16 billion.

How does Flutterwave work?

Flutterwave is primarily used to send and receive payments worldwide. Once you signup, you can create a payment link to receive payments from anywhere in the world or to receive donations.

As a registered user, you can also register and incorporate your business from anywhere.

As a business owner, Flutterwave offers you tools to help you grow and scale your business. In addition to helping businesses process payments, Flutterwave also helps you to build financial products.

Selar vs Flutterwave: Features

Lots of people use both Selar and Flutterwave to sell their products online. However, while Selar focuses on helping African creators to monetize their knowledge, Flutterwaves supports merchants who sell goods and services, and need a reliable platform to make payments.

Here’s a comparison of key features you need to make a decision.

1. Online store

Both Selar and Flutterwave offer a free online storefront where you can sell your products. Flutterwave storefront is designed to help merchants create a simple and beautiful online store where they can showcase and sell their products.

Selar offers you an all-inclusive online store as soon as you sign up. So you don’t have to worry about using a template or dragging and dropping elements to create a storefront. With Selar, you can create an online store in minutes and start selling. No hassle.

Flutterwave also helps you to create an online store in minutes. You can also create and send payment links to your customers, and create invoices as well.

2. Pricing

The pricing structures of both platforms are different. Flutterwave has different charges depending on country and transaction mode (whether international or national). There are no hidden charges or monthly subscriptions. You can learn more about Flutterwave’s pricing here.

Selar, on the other hand, has three different price tiers. There is the free plan, the pro plan which costs ₦8,000 / $20 per month, and the Turbo plan which costs ₦15,000 / $35 per month, and an overall 20% discount on annual plans. Learn more about what you can get from each plan here.

3. Page builder

As a creator, owning a Selar store isn’t the only way to promote your products. You need high-performing landing and sales pages to boost the promotion of your products and increase sales.

And this is where Selar is the ideal option for you, as you can use the page builder feature to create a sales page for your products.

Selar provides a drag-and-drop page builder feature that makes it easy to create a landing page in minutes without the need for a developer. You can not only build landing pages for your products, but you can also build other pages such as a sales page, policy page, terms, and condition page, and more.

Plus you have the freedom to customize these pages to give them the unique look and feel of your brand. Use your logo and brand colors on the page to make them look exactly how you want them to look.

Flutterwave, on the other hand, does not offer a page builder feature to help you sell your products.

4. Payment system

Both Selar and Flutterwave offer a seamless method to receive payments from your customers. Flutterwave acts as a payment gateway that helps you to receive money from clients across the country.

You can integrate Flutterwave into your sales page, website, blog, and, every other product sales point to receive payments from anyone anywhere.

Selar, on the other hand, is not a payment gateway, but it has integrated with other payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe to process payments for you, helping you receive payments from anyone anywhere in the world.

5. Selar vs Flutterwave: Email marketing

When comparing email marketing between Selar and Flutterwave, Selar gives you more functionality that saves you the cost of paying for a separate email marketing tool.

You can send multiple emails, segment your audience, and market to your customers.

The best part about Selar’s email marketing feature is the “Abandoned Cart email” where automatic emails are sent to customers who do not complete their transactions in your store.

For example, if a customer just adds your product to his/her cart without checking out, Selar immediately sends an automatic email to the customer reminding them of pending transactions, while you get a copy of the customer’s details to try to reach out to them manually.

However, Flutterwave doesn’t offer this feature hence, there is no method of retaining your customers as a creator.

6. Affiliate network

Selar has an Affiliate network feature that helps you to leverage affiliates to promote your products and, for affiliates to make more money promoting other people’s products.

Merchants can apply for their products to be listed on the marketplace where affiliates can then promote their products. Since affiliate marketing generates 5% to 25% of online sales for big brands, it’s an effective strategy for creators to sell out their products.

Flutterwave, offers no affiliate marketing feature, as it is designed to be a payment gateway, not a creator focused/e-commerce platform.

7. Selar vs Flutterwave: Withdrawal/Payouts

When you use either of these platforms to sell a product, you receive a digital wallet where your earnings are stored till you request a withdrawal into your local bank account.

Upon registration on Selar, you are required to enter your local bank information where you’ll like to receive your earnings. When you request a withdrawal, your funds are sent to your bank account within 24hrs (for NGN currency).

For other currencies, you will receive your funds in your digital wallet within 4 days, after which you can withdraw to your local bank account anytime. You can see a list of supported countries here.

On Flutterwave, you receive your payouts through direct bank payouts which take 1-5 business days depending on your country. You can see a list of supported countries here.

Selar vs Flutterwave: Similarities

The most common similarities between Selar and Flutterwave include;

• They are both payment gateway platforms. You can receive payments for your service anywhere as an African creator using either platform.
• Buyers can know more about your products on these platforms before purchasing.
• You have access to your customers’ records e.g name, Phone Number, Email Address, etc after purchase.
• There are charge fees on every transaction made in your store.
• Both platforms send your money automatically into your designated bank account within 24 hours after payment is made.

Selar vs Flutterwave: Differences

• Flutterwave is a payment gateway enabling Africans to do cross-border payments while Selar is an e-commerce platform where you can sell your products

• With Flutterwave, you need to separately manage other tools you need as a digital creator but with Selar, you have all you need to run an online business in one platform so you can manage them from your Selar dashboard. Think of it as your all-in-one platform.

• Flutterwave supports merchants selling to customers across the world. Hence it’s ideal for businesses who want to come online to facilitate operations. Selar is designed for African creators, i.e artists, coaches, consultants, etc. who want to make money from their knowledge

Selar vs Flutterwave: Pros and Cons

While Selar and Flutterwave have proven to be reliable platforms for creators to sell their knowledge, they still have individual pros and cons.

Pros

Selar	Flutterwave
Built for the African creator	Offers business loans.
Upsell and cross-sell features	Generate invoices for your customers.
Easy-to-use page builder with thousands of templates to use without the need for a developer.	Create and start using physical and virtual cards.
Course certificates on completion of courses	Accept payment from anyone in the world.
Drip content to monitor student progress
Easy-to-use interface
Pre-launch product offers
Email marketing to help you follow up with your customers.

Cons

Selar	Flutterwave
Doesn’t support cryptocurrency payment	Isn’t suitable for other forms of digital products apart from ebooks or art.
Doesn’t offer business loans or an invoice feature	No up-sell or cross-sell feature to facilitate sales
No live chat or support community although you can reach out to the Selar team on social media	Zero email marketing features to retain customers.
No physical or virtual card offers	No affiliate marketing system to facilitate sales of merchant products.
	Isn’t designed as an e-commerce platform for creators who want to monetize their knowledge.
	No integration features for ad monitoring.

Selar vs Flutterwave: Which one is a good option?

Both Selar and Flutterwave are good platforms for selling digital products online. Flutterwave has its strengths. It helps you sell both physical and digital products so you can market to anyone and receive payment from anywhere in the world. It also offers you business loans and invoicing features.

But if you want to take ownership of your creativity, monetize your knowledge, sell different kinds of digital products, and receive payments from anywhere all within one platform, then Selar is the best option for you.

No more struggling with payment methods or difficulties in reaching your customers, paying for lots of tools, or looking for the ideal plug-in. Selar gives you a seamless, fully-integrated suite of resources vital for growing your business.

So whether you’re just starting out, or looking for a solution that takes out the stress part of managing an online business, Selar is the one for you.

Start today by creating a free account and see how easy it can be to manage a business and make money online.