Want to sell digital products on your website without coding? It’s easy using the Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) plugin.
EDD is one of the best WordPress plugins for selling digital products on your site. But is it worth the hype?
In our Easy Digital Downloads review, we put the plugin to the test to examine how good it is for creating a digital storefront.
What Is Easy Digital Downloads and Why Use It?
Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress plugin that makes it simple to sell digital products. It is an effective WooCommerce alternative. Easy Digital Downloads, as the name suggests, is designed specifically to sell digital products.
You can use Easy Digital Downloads to sell all sorts of digital products. You can sell an eBook you have written, software, memberships, and subscriptions.
Easy Digital Downloads can also be used to create a digital vendor marketplace.
Getting Started With Easy Digital Downloads
Installing Easy Digital Downloads is easy. Simply add the free Easy Digital Downloads plugin from the WordPress Plugins repository.
You can increase your revenue by selling advanced products like subscriptions or licensed software. To do that, you’ll need to upgrade your plugin license.
Once you’ve upgraded your license, download any extension files you want to use and add them to your WordPress site.
Adding Products to Easy Digital Downloads
Adding products to Easy Digital Downloads is quick and simple.
From your WordPress Dashboard, mouse over Downloads, then click Add New.
Add a title and description for your Download.
Set the price for your Download.
Upload a file for your Download. You can add multiple files for a single Download.
Make sure to add an appropriate file name for your Download. Customers will see this name when they download their purchase, so it’s a good idea to name it something descriptive.
If you’d like, you can add Download Notes. These will appear on the purchase receipt. This is a great place to add a thank you note, usage instructions, or a request for review.
You may want to add a Category or Tag to your Download, especially if you have lots of digital products to sell. The Category and Tag boxes are on the right side of the screen.
When you’re ready, click Publish. You can also set the visibility to Password protected or Private to control access. If you want your Download to go live on a later date, click Edit next to Publish immediately and choose a future date.
Easy Digital Downloads Features
Easy Digital Downloads is an easy-to-use plugin for bloggers, coaches, content creators, and anyone using WordPress.
The plugin is designed to do one thing very well: sell digital products.
Once you install it, it’s easy to add your products and start selling.
Easy Digital Downloads has many features that can supercharge your digital product sales. Here are the most important ones.
Payment Gateways
The free version of Easy Digital Downloads works with Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon Pay. Customers can pay using all major credit cards, their PayPal balance, or their Amazon account. You can also enable other payment gateways using Easy Digital Downloads Extensions.
To set up your payment gateways, go to Downloads » Settings.
Click the Payments tab to customize your payment settings.
Test Mode
Want to test your shopping experience? It’s a good idea to have a few friends go through your checkout process to make sure everything runs as it should. With Easy Digital Downloads, you can enable test mode so that your testers don’t have to actually pay for the Download. You will need a sandbox (test) account for the gateway you are testing.
To turn on Test Mode, go to Downloads » Settings.
Click the Payments tab.
Check the box for Test Mode.
Follow any instructions from your payment gateway to use your sandbox account.
Checkout Options
Easy Digital Downloads checkout can be customized to suit your business. You can choose to redirect users to the checkout after they add an item to their cart.
You can enable registered or guest checkout. (We usually recommend allowing guest checkout to improve conversions.)
There is also an option to enable cart saving. Cart saving creates a special temporary link to a shopper’s cart so they can bookmark it to come back later or send it to someone.
Custom Checkout Form
If you want to collect more than just the customer’s email address, Easy Digital Downloads makes it easy!
The Checkout Fields Manager allows you to add custom fields such as dates, URLs, and text boxes. This is great if you need more information for custom orders or to follow up on orders. (For example, a wedding planner that sells a planning calendar might ask for the couple’s wedding date.)
Variable Pricing
You can use variable pricing if you have different versions of the same Download. You might offer a full or abridged eBook, additional support packages for software, or different membership or subscription periods.
Recurring Payments
Easy Digital Downloads makes it easy to offer subscriptions, memberships, or payment plans.
With recurring payments, you can set up daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly payments. You can combine recurring payments with variable pricing to show both recurring and non-recurring price options.
Automated billing means you don’t have to constantly send invoices or renewal emails. Customers can manage their own subscriptions which means less work for you!
Custom Pricing
“Name your price” is a popular marketing strategy that lets customers choose how much they want to pay for a product. This is a great way to test the market for a new product. You can also use custom pricing to collect donations.
To use custom pricing, install the extension, then simply check the box for Enable custom pricing under Download Prices.
You may choose to add a default price and/or a minimum price.
You can also set a bonus item that customers get when their price is more than, equal to, or less than an amount that you set.
Bundles
Offering bundles can increase your overall sales and the average spend per customer. A bundle is multiple Downloads sold together, often at a lower price than buying them all separately. Someone looking for a bargain may decide to pay a little more and get the entire bundle, rather than just a single product.
To create a bundle, add a new Download.
Scroll down to Download Files.
Under Product Type, select Bundle.
Select the Downloads to include in your bundle.
Add the price, title, description, and any other product information you need.
Discount Codes
Easy Digital Downloads discount codes can be a great way to nudge people toward buying. You can offer discount codes to visitors before they leave your site with Optinmonster’s Exit-Intent® technology.
You can also share discount codes at webinars or workshops, post them on social media, or send to your email list. Use different codes to help you see which audiences are most interested in your products.
To add a discount code, go to Downloads » Discount Code.
Click the Add New button.
Enter the name of the discount. This is for your information only, so choose a descriptive name.
Enter the discount code. This is what you will share with customers, so choose something short and easy to remember. You can only use letters and numbers for discount codes.
Choose whether the discount code should be a percentage of the price or a flat amount. For example, you could create a code for 10% off, or a code for $10 off.
Enter the amount of the discount.
Choose which Downloads the discount applies to. If you leave it blank, customers can use it on any Download.
Select any Downloads that you would like to specifically exclude from the discount.
If you’d like, set a start and expiration date for the discount code. You can also set a minimum amount that customers must add to their cart before they can use the discount.
Finally, you can set how many times a single customer can use a discount, or limit how many times the discount can be used overall.
Customer Management
Within Easy Digital Downloads, you can access important customer information. Easy Digital Downloads maintains a separate record for each customer. You can view, edit, or delete a customer record at any time.
You can also link customer records to user profiles, and create customer account pages. This is a great feature if you want to let customers manage their own account information or view past purchases.
Reporting
Easy Digital Downloads automatically reports your earnings so you can quickly see how your sales are doing.
You can view reports for earnings by category, number of downloads, payment methods, and taxes collected.
Easy Digital Downloads Extensions
There are plenty of Extensions for Easy Digital Downloads that can help you grow your business. You can add additional payment gateways, collect customer reviews, sell software licenses, and integrate with all kinds of marketing tools such as:
- AffiliateWP
- Mailchimp
- ConvertKit
- ActiveCampaign
- and more!
Does Easy Digital Downloads Work With Your WordPress Theme?
Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress plugin designed to work with any WordPress theme.
Whether you are using Divi, Elementor, or other popular WordPress themes, Easy Digital Downloads can sell your digital products. Certain style elements may look different depending on the theme you are using.
If you’re looking for a theme to build your website on, Themedd and Vendd are two free themes that integrate seamlessly with Easy Digital Downloads.
Easy Digital Downloads vs WooCommerce
One common question we get asked a lot is, “Can you use Easy Digital Downloads with WooCommerce?”
Easy Digital Downloads does the same thing as WooCommerce, so you actually don’t need both plugins.
Easy Digital Downloads is specially designed to sell digital products. You can, however, configure it for physical products as well.
WooCommerce is a great plugin with lots of customization options. But because it’s most often used for physical eCommerce, there may be extra settings like shipping costs that you don’t need for digital products.
Easy Digital Downloads is easier to use because it was built for digital product sales.
Easy Digital Downloads Pricing
Is Easy Digital Downloads free? Yes and no.
The free version supports Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon Payments, and has everything you need to run a simple digital product store. You can purchase a yearly pass for support, updates, and extensions.
There are four tiers of passes based mostly on how many features you get and how many site licenses you need.
Extensions can be purchased individually or as part of bundles included with different passes. Each extension requires a yearly payment. If you buy an extension but cancel your subscription, you can keep using that extension but you won’t receive any updates or support.
Easy Digital Downloads Review: Final Thoughts
Easy Digital Downloads is a cost-effective, simple, and complete eCommerce solution for selling digital products.
It has all the features you need to easily sell digital products. You can also add extensions as your business needs grow.
Easy Digital Downloads is fully customizable without being overwhelming.
Did you like our review? Read more about other digital download plugins in our article here.
If you’re ready to sell your digital products, get started today with Easy Digital Downloads.
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