WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads: Which is Better?

Are you trying to decide between WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads for your online store? This article will help you make the right choice.

WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) are both the most popular choice of WordPress eCommerce plugins. Both WordPress plugins enable you to build online stores and sell products online, but they differ in features and functionalities.

This article will examine WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads to help you understand their strengths and weaknesses and choose the best solution for your eCommerce store.

Before comparing EDD and WooCommerce, let’s review these popular eCommerce WordPress plugins.

What is Easy Digital Downloads?

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is a popular WordPress plugin for selling digital, downloadable products. Its primary purpose is to help you easily sell digital products such as ebooks, video training, downloadable software, and more using WordPress.

Easy Digital Downloads offers numerous features, including multiple payment gateways, coupons and discounts, order and customer management, and more.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a popular WordPress eCommerce plugin for selling physical and digital products. It was originally built primarily to sell physical products in WordPress, but over time, it has evolved to support digital product sales.

WooCommerce also offers numerous eCommerce features, such as a shopping cart, coupons and discounts, shipping and order fulfillment, and more.

WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce have similar features and functionalities, but the two plugins have some key differences. In this section, we will compare their features and functionality to understand their strengths better so that you can make the best decision for your eCommerce business.

Supported Product Types

The supported product types will be the first comparison in our Easy Digital Downloads vs WooCommerce debate.

WooCommerce is the most suitable eCommerce plugin for selling physical products. It includes all the features needed to successfully manage sales, inventory, and fulfillment.

WooCommerce can also be used to sell digital products, but most of its features will become redundant and irrelevant for the sale of digital products.

Easy Digital Downloads is the most suitable choice if you sell digital products, subscriptions, software, and other downloadable products. It is a lightweight plugin with just what you need to sell digital products.

If you are selling only digital products, EDD will be the best fit, but if you are selling physical goods or a mix of both, WooCommerce should be the go-to plugin.

Design and Customization

Regarding design and customization, WooCommerce is supported by thousands of free and premium WordPress themes. Due to its popularity, most WordPress themes have out-of-the-box compatibility and customization options for WooCommerce, making creating beautiful store designs and customizations to your needs easy.

As for Easy Digital Downloads, EDD mainly relies on themes from its community. Easy Digital Downloads has a library of third-party recommended themes you can use to design and customize the look of your store.

Easy Digital Downloads also has out-of-the-box integration with a few WordPress themes, but not as many as with WooCommerce.

Both Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce integrate with popular page builders like Elementor, giving you the power for more customization and designs for your online store.

Features and Extensions

One important consideration when choosing an eCommerce plugin is its extendability. Fortunately, both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads can be extended with add-ons and extensions. If any feature you require is unavailable in the core features, you can always find an extension or add-on.

For WooCommerce vs. Easy Digital Downloads extensions, WooCommerce takes the lead, and this is not far-fetched based on its popularity and the developers’ efforts. Numerous free and paid add-ons and WooCommerce extensions exist, most built by third-party developers who want to provide additional features on top of the core WooCommerce features.

Easy Digital Downloads also offers a long list of free and paid extensions built by in-house development teams and third-party developers. EDD add-ons allow you to add new functionalities to the core EDD features, improving your store and customers’ shopping experience.

WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads Pricing

When it comes to pricing, various factors come into play.

The WooCommerce core plugin is free to use. Easy Digital Downloads also offers a free version and a Pro version that unlocks more features.

For WooCommerce, your cost can stack up pretty high if you require various add-ons and extensions to add more features to the core WooCommerce functionality. Still, the free version is more than enough to start selling online.

For Easy Digital Downloads, the free version won’t be enough if you require recurring payments from your customers. You need to purchase at least the “Extended Plan” which costs $399/year to use this feature.

The WooCommerce subscription addon costs $279/year for the same feature.

So, when it comes to pricing, your feature list will determine how big the hole in your pocket will be. For simple product sales, the free version of both plugins will suffice.

WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads Payment Gateways

Both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads support all major payment processors, such as Stripe and PayPal.

If you require more payment gateways, you will find various paid and free addons you can integrate into either of these plugins.

So far, we have compared EDD with WooCommerce, but another kid is on the block called ProfilePress.

ProfilePress is a popular membership and payment WordPress plugin. It allows you to sell digital products and accept payments via multiple payment processors. The free version has many features that can quickly get you up and running.

ProfilePress can be a good alternative to EDD and WooCommerce because of its flexibility and features. Its free version includes all the features you need to start selling digital products and accepting customer payments. In addition, it offers a membership system that gives you flexibility over product access and user account management.

The ProfilePress Plus plan costs $299 and gives you access to all add-ons. This is very cost-effective compared with EDD or WooCommerce, where you may need to buy individual add-ons at higher prices. With ProfilePress, you can get all the tools you need with a single payment.

How to Sell Digital Products in WordPress with ProfilePress

Installing and activating the plugin is the first step in selling digital products with ProfilePress. You can install the free version from the plugins page in your website’s WordPress dashboard.

After the installation, Go to ProfilePress > Settings > Payments > File Downloads.

You must select your desired File Download Method from the dropdown list. Each option is explained below.

Force Downloads—Files are served and forced using PHP for forced downloads. Force Downloads can help protect the file from direct linking, preventing a buyer from sharing a direct link to the file. However, if your file is large, we recommend you use the “X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile” method.

X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile: This method is the most reliable option because the file is served directly to the customer and provides the best performance.

The server (Nginx, Apache, LiteSpeed, Lighttpd, and Cherokee) handles downloads. This method requires the X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile module to be installed and enabled on your server. Before using this method, you should clarify with your web host whether either of these modules is installed on your server.

Redirect (Insecure): The Redirect method is an insecure way of creating downloadable products. Users are redirected to the file URL when they want to download a file. This method means your files will be unprotected, and whoever has the file link can download them.

The Download Limit setting allows you to configure the number of times a file can be downloaded after a successful purchase. The Download Expiry setting enables you to set the validity of a generated download URL. The download link will expire after a set number of days.

The Access Restriction setting allows you to require users to be logged in or not to your WordPress site before they can download files.

You can also enable Append a unique string to the filename to enhance file security. This feature is not required, but it can be helpful if you don’t want users sharing access to your files.

Create Digital Products for Sale in WordPress with ProfilePress

The next step is to create digital downloads or downloadable files on your WordPress website to sell to your customers or members.

Navigate to ProfilePress >> Membership Plans >> Add New to create a new membership plan or select an existing plan to edit it.

Input your desired plan name, price, and subscription settings, scroll to the Downloads & Integration settings box, and open the Digital Product section.

Click the Add File button, and enter the name of the file. Put the file download URL if it’s hosted elsewhere, or select the “Choose file” button to insert an existing file from your Media Library or upload a new file. Upload the file and click Insert to set up each downloadable file URL.

You can input a “Download limit” to set the maximum number of times a user can download the file. 

You can also set the “Download expiry”. If you want the download link to expire after some days.

Once you’ve completed this edit to the membership plan, save your changes.

Each membership plan has a checkout link, which you can add to your website pricing page or email your users to make payments or purchase the plans.

After purchase, customers can access the downloadable files in their membership subscription on the order details page, linked to the “My Account ” page.

And also from the “Downloads” section on the “My Account page”.

This simple setup using ProfilePress lets you quickly start selling digital products or downloads on your WordPress website.

If you want to sell memberships or create a WooCommerce membership site, ProfilePress has all the tools you will need to achieve this. Check out how to create a WooCommerce membership Website.

Which Plugin is the Right One for You?

Both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads are very mature and widely used eCommerce plugins; however, they excel in some areas more than others.

When is WooCommerce a good choice?

If you are planning to sell physical products or goods, WooCommerce should be the go-to choice as it offers the tools to manage the sale of physical products effortlessly.

Though it could be used to sell digital products, it shines better when selling physical products.

When is Easy Digital Downloads a good choice?

Easy Digital Downloads’ primary focus is on digital products, making it the best choice for anyone selling downloads or digital products.

If you try to use Easy Digital Downloads to sell physical products, you will have to tweak and extend it endlessly to get all the required features.

Though it can be extended to sell physical products, Easy Digital Downloads excels at selling digital products and managing licenses for digital products.

When is ProfilePress a Good choice?

ProfilePress is a good choice for selling digital products and membership products. It is also a good choice if you want to start selling digital products quickly or build a members-only website with content restrictions.

Your choice of plugin will depend on your current needs and future requirements. If you are selling physical products, choose WooCommerce. If you are selling digital products, choose Easy Digital Downloads. If you are selling a mix of digital products and members-only features, choose ProfilePress.