How to sell a PDF and stop the file from living on an open URL.

The steps

You can do this on Harbor before you have sold anything.

1. 01. Open a store with email and password, then name the store in onboarding.
2. 02. Create a product, choose a single download, upload the PDF, and set the price in cents on the form as a dollar amount.
3. 03. Publish it. Copy the public URL or the HTML button from the product screen.
4. 04. Connect Stripe from settings so a real card can be charged on your account. Paid checkout on production stays closed until that secret is set.
5. 05. When an order is paid, the buyer gets the download page by email. Set the store’s link lifetime and download cap in settings, or override them on that product.

Limits that are real

The upload stops at 20 MB. The download page will not open once the clock or the download count runs out. A refund closes the link.

Quay does not watermark the PDF or stop the buyer from saving a copy during the window you allowed. The control is the expiry, the count, and the refund.

If you sell the same PDF more than once

Orders live in the dashboard with the buyer’s email. You can search them, resend a live link, reset a spent one, or refund the charge. Customers can be exported as CSV. A buyer who lost the email can request a library link for that address.