I've been using Payload for 18 months. They're only recently (with the upcoming v3 release) really piggy-backing on Next.js' server and routing. Before that, it was "just" a really nice headless CMS built on Node/TypeScript. This was obviously posted in the wake of the WordPress drama, but I landed on Payload while feeling stagnant after 10+ years building on WordPress. Everything else I was doing was 100% TypeScript…
How easy/hard would you consider the amount of work needed to create a ecommerce for digital products using Payload? I'm currently using WP + Woo but the plugins that I'm using aren't flexible enough and I'm re-inventing some of them, so might as well re-invent some more and learn Next.
You're better of using anything else, if you want a UI ontop maybe a tool like Pocketbase is better suited or you go the route of using an actual e-commerce tool like Saleor or Medusa.
Both are good, definitely better than homebrewing your database and that is >>> any open source CMS (I've tried a few dozen since I am building a CMS myself)