Best Platform to Sell Digital Products in 2023

Do you have digital products and want to sell them on an online platform? If yes, then you should stay on reading this article. In case you are going to sell a digital product online then you will probably like the WordPress Easy Digital Downloads plugin. It is considered an effective plugin, that may increase your sales on an online platform. Compared to WooCommerce this platform enables you to present digital products, as well. So, this article will help you to dive into the plugin’s many different features.

Why Easy Digital Downloads Plugin is Important?

Regardless of the fact what digital product (audio, video files, themes, templates, ebooks, etc.) you are going to sell you can benefit from the Easy Digital Downloads plugin. It has almost 50.000 and more active installations on the official website. And the rating is 4.7 out of 5-stars.

EDD is a dependable product. I have been using it to sell plugins for years. Whenever there is an issue they provide timely support to ensure my issue is resolved. I highly recommend Easy Digital Downloads.
By Arelthia Phillips

You may find 2 versions of EDD: Free and Pro. The yearly packages for the Pro version are mentioned below:

Personal Pass– $99.50.
Extended Pass– $199.50 (this package is the most popular among others).
Professional Pass– $299.50.
All-Access Pass– $499.50.

By installing EDD you will get the WordPress themes host. This was designed especially for EDD. But, fortunately, you are able to use any WP theme.

Another big advantage is that the plugin is translated into more than 19 languages. You can also contribute to the plugin’s translation if you do not find the needed language within the available list.

Many customers are delighted with 24/7 support.

So, the Easy Digital Downloads plugin for WordPress offers you a unique platform to sell almost all kinds of digital products. And you can upload your chosen digital product and sell it on your website. Working with EDD is a bit easier. It gives you a shortcode. You should add it to your website post and publish it there. You can even benefit from discount codes and different offers.

Main Features of Easy Digital Downloads

The plugin has many features in its Free version. One of the most important features is the availability of PayPal (+PayPal Pro), Stripe, Amazon payments, 2Checkout, Authorizze.net, and Coinbase. Moreover, the plugin enables you to accept payments with a credit card due to the Stripe and PayPal systems. As well as you can utilize Apple Pay and Google Pay included in the Stripe payment system. EDD supports Braintree, SOFORT Banking, and BitPay. So, if you use PayPal, then your customers are most likely to be directed to the PayPal payment system to finish the purchase. Yet, this plugin enables your customers to choose the most convenient payment way in this big variety of integrations.

You can show your customers their own purchasing history by using a shortcode. Moreover, you can download the entire report of your actions in CSV format. This will give you a precise review of your earnings, uploads, payment systems, etc. You may filter your sales by categories and tags. So in this way you can determine which one is the bestseller and how many times the customers buy it. The report option will give you precise information about the payment methods, for example, which payment system is the most preferred among others. And after all, you can see your taxes and fees.

What Is More?

One of the huge advantages of this plugin is its ease of use. In a few seconds, you will be able to upload the products for sale and put them on your website.

EDD enables your customers to see your catalog, add the needed items to the cart and then buy the products from there directly.

The plugin protects your products from suspected visitors. They can not access the files unless they pay for them.

The WordPress Easy Digital Downloads plugin offers some important integrations, such as Zapier which connects your shop to many web services and products. As it offers some integrations with MailChimp, AWeber, Amazon S3, and Dropbox File Store.

Operating with Easy Digital Downloads

To install the plugin you need to move to the WP “Plugins” section, type the plugin name and install, then activate it from there. Or else you can download it from WordPress official website.

Due to its eye-catching interface, you will not encounter any problems while using the plugin. You may upload one or more files by grouping them. The plugin also enables you to add descriptions to the uploaded files, choose their categories, and set the prices.

At this point, you get a purchase shortcode.

After saving the post, you may find all the “Downloads” displayed.

Here you may see also short statistics of your downloads, such as categories, price, sales, and earnings.

It enables you to create an Easy Digital Downloads discount code. You may determine the sale percentage, and downloads, and even limit the discount to a single-use for each customer.

The Settings section is divided into 7 parts: General, Payment Gateways, Emails, Styles, Taxes, Privacy, Misc.

In the “General” part, you can determine the country of transactions. The Easy Digital Downloads Payment Gateways section stands for the payment systems. The next option is responsible for the Emails. You may add a logo and set an Email address here. Also, the plugin’s settings enable you to change the styles and determine the taxes according to the selected country. After activating EDD, it generates a privacy policy page. You may either use it or change it depending on your own needs. And, finally, the Misc section with its sub-sections enables you to redirect the users to the checkout after they add a purchasing item to their cart.

The Available Extensions And Themes

There are almost 150 Easy Digital Downloads extensions on the EDD official website. Some of them are free. Yet, for the advanced extensions, you need to activate the Pro version. So, all these extensions and add-ons will increase your online shop’s functionalities and correspondingly the effectiveness, as well.

For example, the reviews add-on enables your customers to rate your products and write different reviews.

Another important add-on is Simple shipping. This is for selling physical products, for example, t-shirts, books, etc.

You can find many more add-ons and extensions on the official website. And this opens a huge variety of features to expand your store’s functionality.

Easy Digital Downloads integrates many themes. Some of them are free. Yet, for some others, you need to pay.

If you decided to sell digital products such as different docs, music, or ebooks then Themedd will be your great choice. It is free.

Besides, you will highly benefit from the marketplaces such as:

Easy Digital Downloads VS WooCommerce

So why is it so important to use this plugin if WordPress offers the WooCommerce platform? This question has a simple answer. It is because the mentioned platform is not designed especially for digital products. While EDD is a platform where you can promote the sale of your digital products. Besides, Woocommerce requires visitors to enter their physical address and pass the checking process. This is sometimes an irritating and long-lasting process. While EDD makes things so much easier. Moreover, the customers should only enter their names and E-mail addresses for the checking process.
Although Woocommerce has shipping options EDD does not have them because there is no need to ship digital products.

So, if you surely decide to sell specifically digital products, then EDD is your best choice.

Advantages and Disadvantages of EDD

Along with its all good features the WordPress Easy Digital Downloads plugin has its disadvantages too. But first, let us sum up its advantages.

Advantages

You are able to easily set up the plugin. You can simply install and activate it from your WP admin area or download it from the official WordPress.org website.
EDD has a simple interface and highly effective features.
It can set the recurring fees.
Integrates almost all the great payment systems, such as PayPal and Stripe.
Easy Digital Downloads offers you a huge variety of add-ons, extensions, and themes both free and chargeable.

Disadvantages

As we mentioned above, the plugin offers 4 Pro packages starting at $99.50 to $499.50. But there are no lifetime packages.
The licensing is limited.
You are obliged to activate so many plugins. Instead, for example, the developer can gather all the features in one plugin.

Summary

In conclusion, now you know everything about the WordPress Easy Digital Downloads plugin. This plugin is designed to ease your work and promote your online business related to digital products. You can easily install the plugin without any problem. It is simple to use and has many features and integrations. If you are not convinced with the available functions there is no need to be worried. You may activate some add-ons, extensions, and ready-made themes. The biggest benefit of EDD is that you create a product once, but you can sell it as many times as you want. So, it covers almost every issue that you may come across while managing your online store.

If you like the article, do not hesitate to find us on Facebook and Twitter. For interesting WP tutorials, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Author
Recent Posts

Anahit V.

Anahit V. is a technical content writer. She knows four languages: English, Armenian, Russian, Arabic. She has written many technical contents, articles, and guest posts, as well. Anahit V. works with WordPress and such plugins as Yoast SEO, Forminator, Contact Form 7, Supsystic, etc. She considers that the reader seeks to find simple and available information about a certain topic. So, she writes only SEO-friendly articles using some tools that can highly optimize the content.