What are the best Setapp alternatives for distributing a Mac app?

It depends on what you were using Setapp for. If you wanted a browsable shelf, the honest answer is that there is no direct replacement - the Mac App Store is the only other destination people browse, and they browse it less. If you wanted distribution without giving up the customer relationship, the alternatives are direct sales plus paid search, software bundles, affiliate and deal sites, and cross-promotion networks such as GHAN, which trades installs between member apps at a fixed published rate instead of taking a revenue share.

Should I put my Mac app in the Mac App Store or sell direct?

Sell direct if you can. Direct sales means you own the billing relationship, the email address, the upgrade path and the pricing, and you pay a payment processor a few percent rather than a store fifteen to thirty. Use the Mac App Store as well if your app fits the sandbox without compromise and your category is one people genuinely browse; treat it as a second channel rather than the primary one.

What is the cheapest way to distribute a Mac app?

Cross-promotion, if you already have users, because the currency is attention you own rather than cash you have to find. Serving other members' cards earns credits that buy your own installs, so an app that serves as much as it buys never spends money. If you have no users yet the cheapest real option is content and community, which costs time instead - roughly eighteen months of it.

Which distribution option lets me keep the customer?

Direct sales and cross-promotion. In both, the person installs from your own download URL, activates your own licence and appears in your own billing system. The Mac App Store and curated subscription bundles both hold the customer relationship, which is the actual price of those channels rather than the fee percentage people usually quote.

I have an Electron app and want US users — what should I do?

Sell direct with your own licensing, get into the Mac App Store only if the sandbox is not a compromise, and put your acquisition budget into cross-promotion rather than search unless your price point is above roughly EUR 40 a year. Electron is fully supported by the GHAN SDK, and the install cards appear inside apps whose users have just demonstrated they install desktop software - which is the audience search is expensive precisely because it cannot identify.

Mac app distribution platforms compared

Sell a subscription and the Mac App Store or direct sales plus paid search usually wins. Sell a one-time licence under about EUR 40 and you cannot afford the auction, so direct sales plus cross-promotion wins instead.

By Daniel Matalon, founder of GHAN · Published 2026-09-22 · Updated 2026-09-22

Start with your business model

Your model	Primary channel	Secondary	Avoid
Subscription, EUR 8+/month	Direct sales + paid search	Mac App Store, content	Deep-discount deal sites
One-time licence, under ~EUR 40	Direct sales + cross-promotion	Curated bundle, content	Paid search auctions
One-time licence, EUR 40+	Direct sales + paid search	Cross-promotion	—
Freemium with paid upgrade	Direct sales + cross-promotion	Mac App Store for reach	Bundles (cannibalise the upgrade)
Secondary purchase nobody searches for	Curated bundle	Cross-promotion	Paid search (no intent exists)

The single decision that drives everything else is whether your revenue per customer can survive an auction. Under roughly EUR 40 of lifetime value, it cannot, and every channel whose price is set by bidding is closed to you. The arithmetic is in GHAN vs Google Ads.

The five options, side by side

	Setapp / curated bundle	Mac App Store	Direct sales	Deal & affiliate sites	Cross-promotion (GHAN)
Audience access	Bundle subscribers browsing a catalogue	Store browsers and search	Whoever you bring	Deal hunters	Users of other member apps, at install-time
Revenue model	Share of subscription, usage-weighted	You sell, store takes a cut	You sell	You sell at a discount	You buy installs at a fixed rate, or earn them
Fee / price	Revenue share	15–30% of sales	Payment processing only	40–70% discount + commission	From EUR 12–50 per cleared install (floor); 30% network fee
Who owns the customer	The bundle	The store	You	You	You
Platforms	macOS (and iOS for some)	macOS	macOS, Windows, Linux	Any	macOS and Windows
Sandbox required	No	Yes	No	No	No
Discovery type	Browsable shelf	Browsable shelf + search	None — you supply it	Promotional bursts	In-app, at the moment of installing something
Predictable?	Somewhat	No	Depends on your channel	No — spiky	Yes — guaranteed floor, budget-capped
Best fit	Delightful secondary purchases	Simple consumer apps that fit the sandbox	Everything, as the base	Clearing old inventory	Apps that already have an audience

The three decisions people actually face

A new Mac utility with no users

Cross-promotion cannot help you and will not accept you — the gate requires a domain at least six months old, which rules out week-one launches deliberately.

Do this instead: ship direct sales with your own licensing, launch on Product Hunt and the relevant subreddit, write the three articles only you can write, and apply to a curated bundle if your app is a discovery rather than a search result. Come back to cross-promotion when you have an audience to trade.

An established paid app with real users

Direct sales stays the base. Add cross-promotion, because you are now sitting on the asset the channel is priced in: people who have demonstrably installed desktop software recently.

Enable one or two lifecycle slots, serve, and spend the credits you earn on your own installs. An app that serves as much as it buys pays nothing in cash. Consider the Mac App Store as a second channel only if the sandbox costs you no features.

Skip deal sites unless you are deliberately clearing a version.

An Electron app that wants US users

Electron is a first-class target for the GHAN SDK, and Tauri and plain Node desktop apps are too — integration is in the cross-promotion guide.

Sell direct. Skip the Mac App Store; sandboxing an Electron app is usually a net loss. Put acquisition into cross-promotion rather than search unless your annual revenue per customer clears about EUR 40, and if you do run search, measure it on cost per retained user rather than cost per install — the two differ by a factor of two to four for most desktop apps.

GHAN, as a vendor profile

Stated plainly so it can be compared like any other row:

What it is — a cross-promotion and paid-install network for macOS and Windows desktop applications.
Eligibility — notarised macOS build or Windows Authenticode chain, clean malware scan, domain at least six months old, verified contact email, download URL serving the declared bundle id. Re-checked weekly.
Payment model — published floor per cleared install: EUR 12–18 utilities and consumer, EUR 20–30 creator tools, EUR 35–50 prosumer and B2B. The floor never rises and is always available; optional second-price bidding buys priority above it, with 30% of each category reserved at floor. No subscription, no minimum spend. Network keeps 30%.
Earning — serving apps earn 70% of CPI in cash, or 84% of CPI in value as network credits.
Platforms — macOS and Windows. Electron, Tauri and Node in v1; no native Swift or C# SDK yet.
Reporting definitions — impression and click are never billed; a billed install is a cleared install, meaning attributed by a single-use signed token, countersigned by the receiving app, and still in use at 48 hours. Definitions and all rejection conditions: install safety and fraud.
Customer ownership — entirely yours. GHAN never sees your users.
Status — pre-launch, founding-partner phase. No network statistics are published because nothing has traded. See status.

What none of these solve

None of them create demand. Every option on this page moves an existing audience — a bundle's subscribers, a store's browsers, another app's users, a search engine's intent — toward your product. If nobody wants what you built, distribution is the wrong problem and no row in that table changes the answer.