Many a times, you might have had the urge to share a file with your audience of sincere readers- ranging from music to ebooks. The simple way of doing that would be to upload the file on your server and give the user a dull “Download File” link. The issue with the process is that there is no way you can get analytics on the downloads or maybe put a password to protect it. What if you wanted to go one step further and charge the readers for download? What would you do if you want to sell your digital products like images, PDFs, videos, music and more
Here are a few great plugins that will help you to sell digital products in WordPress.
5. WordPress Download Manager:
The WordPress Download Manager is perhaps one of the most hassle free plugins to manage files and documents that you want to make available to your readers, which helps you control, track and manage files from within the comfort of WP Admin.
This plugin comes with quite a few features. You can add a password, which one must enter to be able to download the file. You could restrict the file to certain roles, which would render it invisible to others. You could also add a simple download counter next to the file. What’s more is that it comes with shortcodes to be added wherever you want to place it.
Perhaps the only shortcoming of this plugin is the lack of a feature to monetize your site, by making the download available at a price to the user. You could not be able to put a tag on your file.
4. Sell Digital Downloads:
Sell Digital Downloads, formerly iSell, is an e-commerce plugin which has been developed keeping in mind the need to sell only digital products, as opposed to a mix of digital and physical products.
This plugin sends digital downloads directly to the customer’s email as encrypted links when the payment has been confirmed through PayPal. The standard WordPress UI is utilized for making product pages.
The obvious issue with this plugin is the lack of a detailed reporting system as present in most other plugins discussed here.
3. Simple E-Commerce Shopping Cart:
Simple e-Commerce shopping cart lets you convert your WordPress site into an e-commerce platform, with the ability to sell digital downloads, physical products and even services. This plugin allows for the addition of a flat or variable tax, ability to add discounts and run promotional offers, and even provides multiple currencies.
This plugin also lets you shop without an account on the site. All payments are through PayPal. One good thing to note is the product pages, shopping cart and checkout page are all fully customizable.
2. iThemes Exchange:
iThemes Exchange professes to have a clean UI, which allows you to start selling your product in five minutes. It’s pretty simple to install, activate, set your payment option and adding the product details.
To make it all simple, it has been divided into add-ons so that the basic functionality remains pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean that you lack out on the features. You can enable different features like basic coupons or the ability to pay using the Stripe payment gateway.
You can also enable a cart if you plan for your audience to purchase multiple items at a time. It also comes with a paid membership add on ($97), where you can give content access for a certain period of time (like an online course).
1. Easy Digital Downloads:
Easy Digital Downloads is a step above all the plugins mentioned here and proves by far the best e-commerce plugin, combining features of all the said plugins. It lets you create dedicated product pages, with detailed descriptions and media with a host of configuration options including pricing. You can also add variable pricing for your products and product notes that are added to the receipt.
What’s great about this plugin is that it provides a host of payment options, including PayPal and other manual ones. It also provides detailed reports on the sales, including the visual representation of the data.
Wait, it gets better. Not only does Easy Digital Download offer a cart system for multiple purchases and promotional offers, you can make the experience even better by using add ons for the plugin.
Hon’ble mention- E-Junkie:
E-Junkie is not a WordPress plugin, but a service that can be used on any website. Even though we mention WordPress plugins in this post, this one gets a mention partly due its usefulness, and partly because of clients like TechCrunch, CNN and VH1.
You are provided automated secure delivery of the digital products. The shopping cart has a built in sales tax, VAT and shipping calculator for goods. E-Junkie also provides a variety of payment gateways.
The best part is that E-Junkie has no limits- transaction, bandwidth or any hidden fees! You simply pay based on number of products, storage space and monthly cost.
We hope that this post helped you compare a few of the good plugins out there in the market for your digital products. There are no doubt some great plugins out there. However, at the end of the day, it comes down to your needs and the option that presents a best fit for your problems.