WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads: Which is Better?
Are you struggling to choose between WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads for your WordPress store? We’ve got you covered!
There are multiple WordPress eCommerce plugins in this crowded market of WordPress plugins. Even though all claim themselves as the best. There are only a few best WordPress eCommerce plugins that stood at the top of the game..
WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads are both top best and most popular WordPress eCommerce plugins. Yet each has its own unique features, pros and cons.
After all, WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads is a debate every online store owner faces once. The reason for confusion is simple: Both are popular, powerful and capable but still different.
Yet you don’t have to wrack your brain choosing between WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads for your WordPress store.
In this well researched blog, we’ll share everything you need to decide which is better for your business. So take a breath and let’s dive in!
Quick Comparison: WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads
In a hurry? No worries! Here’s a quick comparison of WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads to make a quick decision.
| Feature | WooCommerce | Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) |
|---|---|---|
| Base Plugin Cost | Free and open source | Free and open source |
| Premium Plans / Bundles | Depends on individual extensions | Bundles available for multiple addons |
| Product Types Supported | Physical and digital products | Primarily digital products; physical products via extensions |
| Ease of Setup | Moderate – setup wizard available, multiple settings | Very easy – lightweight with simple setup wizard |
| Extensions & Add-ons | Over 1000+ free and premium extensions | Around 300 free and premium addons/extensions |
| Payment Gateways | 140+ gateways including PayPal, Stripe, credit cards | Popular gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Amazon Payments |
| Analytics & Reporting | Built-in sales reporting and analytics tools | Advanced reporting and analytics for digital products |
| Scalability | Fully scalable – suitable for small to large stores | Lightweight – ideal for digital product stores |
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress. It is a perfect plugin for transforming your regular WordPress site into an online store for selling products.
Best of all, it allows you to create beautiful storefronts with more than 100 themes. Plus, it also got over 1000+ extensions, including 100+ payment gateways to grow your online store with ease.
Created by Automattic, WooCommerce powers over 4+ online stores to sell, build and grow. Apart from this, WooCommerce comes with a wide range of amazing features to sell and scale your WooCommerce online store.
WooCommerce Key Features
Here are the features that makes WooCommerce the best WordPress eCommerce plugin ever:
- Dashboard Management: Manage your online store straight from your WordPress dashboard
- Free & Open Source: It’s free to download and open source too
- Customizable Design: Easy to customize its design and functionalities the way you want
- Product Management: Add, manage and categorize your physical and digital products with ease
- Payment Options: Besides credit cards, bank transfer, checks, and COS, it got over 140 region specific payment gateways.
- Tax & Shipping Automation: Automated tax calculation, living shipping rates and options to print labels at home
- Shipping Management: Powerful shipping management along with options to set shipping zones, rates and connect with carriers
- Extensions & Add-ons: Hundreds of free and paid extensions to extend your stores limit
- Analytics & Reporting: Built-in sales reporting and analytics tools
- Scalability: Fully scalable, perfect for all size of eCommerce businesses
Having these key features will help you easily decide between WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads.
What is Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)?
Easy Digital Downloads is a popular WordPress plugin for selling digital products such as eBooks, software, images, videos and more. We can say it is also another best WordPress eCommerce plugin, perfect for creating online stores for selling digital downloads.
It is a lightweight plugin that excels for all sizes of businesses who want to sell digital products.
Best of all, EDD (Easy Digital Download) has all the features that WooCommerce has. Thus, it can help you create and run your own eCommerce store on WordPress.
EDD Key Features
Here are the features that makes Easy Digital Download the best and better than WooCommerce:
- Built-in Shopping Cart: It comes with an built-in shopping cart which is fully responsive and customizable
- Secure File Delivery: Secures downloadable file delivery by generating a unique and secured download link for authorized customers only
- Advanced Analytics: Make data driven decisions with advanced reporting, filtering and analytics
- Flexible Payment Options: Comes with flexible payment options with a wide range of popular payment gateways
- User Friendly Interface: Easy to sell and manage your online store with a friendly user interface and multiple customization options
- Powerful Integrations: Over 100+ integrations to empower your online business and manage your digital products more effortlessly
- Order Management: Easy to manage order status, reassign customer details, and manage refunds
- Customer Management: Easy to manage customers data to track purchase history and customer lifetime value
By having these key features in mind, you can easily decide between Easy Digital Downloads vs WooCommerce to find out which one is better.
Key Differences: WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads
Product types supported (physical vs digital)
Now here’s the thing. Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce are the most popular eCommerce WordPress plugins here. However, the main difference between them is the type of products you can sell.
WooCommerce is originally for selling physical products such as clothes, gadgets, Yoga mats, and so on. However, spotting a growing opportunity in the digital products, now it started managing both. It offers built-in features for selling physical goods such as:
- Inventory management
- Shipping calculation
- Order fulfillment
For selling digital products, WooCommerce marks them as “Virtual” products along with a downloadable file link. Yet we can say it’s a much better choice for selling physical goods rather than digital.
Apart from this, EDD was exclusively created for selling digital products only like e books, software, music, images, videos and more. Thus, it’s super lightweight compared to WooCommerce. Plus it comes with built-in features to sell your virtual products like:
- Secure file delivery
- Software licensing
- Simple and easy checkout
However, it also saw an opportunity in selling physical products so it now offers an extension “Simple Shipping” so you can sell simple physical goods too.
Thus, it’s a perfect choice for selling digital products rather than physical.
Ease of Setup
Let me be clear here. Easy Digital Downloads is way too much easier compared to WooCommerce. It comes with a simple setup wizard for setting up basic settings such as currency, location, payment methods and more.
Furthermore, EDD is lightweight. With only a few settings, you are all set to go.
On the other hand, WooCommerce offers a wide range of advanced features for selling both physical and digital products. Thus, it’s obvious the more the features, the more configurations.
Sure it comes with its own setup wizard too. But its dashboard with multiple section just spoils the water over it. Yet it’s still justified. The reason is, all these features are also needed to set up a perfect dashboard for selling physical goods.
Extensions & add-ons
WooCommerce offers a vast range of over 1000+ free and premium extensions, including 100+ payment gateways to scale up your online store with physical products.
On the other hand, Easy digital Downloads offers a good range of addons and extensions too for sure. Yet it’s a lightweight plugin focused solely on selling digital goods so its extensions are not as large as WooCommerce. Still EDD comes with around over 300 free and premium addons and extensions.
Payment Gateways
WooCommerce offers over 140+ region specific payment gateways, such as credit cards, PayPal, Stripe and so much more than you can think of.
Meanwhile, EDD also smoothly connects with popular gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon Payments for quick digital checkout.
Pricing and fees
Now here comes the main factor to consider when choosing a plugin for business. How much does it cost? We are sure every business has its own budget and all. So you’ll be surprised to know both – WooCommerce and Easy digital downloads offer a free version in WordPress plugin directory.
| Feature | WooCommerce | Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) |
|---|---|---|
| Base Plugin Cost | Free and open source | Free and open source |
| Premium Plans / Bundles | No fixed plans – pricing depends on individual premium extensions | Starts at $99/year (renewals at $199/year). Full access bundles around $499.50/year (renewal at $999/year) |
| Add-on Pricing | Individual extensions typically cost between $79 – $199 | Add-ons like software licensing ($99.50) and recurring payments ($199) available separately or in bundles |
| Typical Extension Costs | Payment gateway add-ons start around $79, software licensing $129, recurring payments $199 | Payment gateways cost $89, software licensing $99.50, recurring payments $199 |
| Transaction Fees | No transaction fee from WooCommerce; gateway providers (like Stripe/PayPal) may apply standard fees | No internal transaction fees; only payment processor fees apply |
| Overall Cost Efficiency | More flexible! Perfect choice for stores buying a few key add-ons | Better for bundles! cost-effective for multiple sites or many add-ons |
So we can say with ease that both plugins have their own pricing. So it’s completely up to your business budget and needs.
Final Verdict: Which Plugin is Better for Your Business?
Now here comes the final verdict we all have been waiting for – WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Download.
So the answer to the question is–both are best in their own ways.
Wait. Even though both are perfect in their own ways, which one is better for you? So First let’s understand which WordPress eCommerce plugin is better fit for your business by a scenario.
Every business has their own different needs and budget. So to help you find the perfect fit for your business, let us lend you a hand,
- Are you selling digital products only? Go with Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
- Are you selling physical goods plus a few digital products too? Go with WooCommerce
- Planning to make a large and scalable online store? WooCommerce is the best bet.
- Just want a simple online store for digital product sales only and maybe think of selling physical goods in future? Easy Digital Downloads is your first step to go forward.
With that being said, we have compared WooCommerce vs EDD yet there’s still one other player in the game known as ARMember.
Yes, you heard it right! ARMember is the best alternative to Easy Digital Download for selling digital products such as memberships. Further, You can also create and sell online courses and digital downloadable products such as PDFs, e-books, videos, etc.
The best is, you can also create, manage and sell Gift Membership on your website. It comes with 21+ payment gateways and built-in WooCommerce support.
In a nutshell, if you are looking for a power combo for selling WooCommerce memberships, digital downloads and physical products with WooCommerce then ARMember is the best all-in-one plugin you can ever come across.
So what are you waiting for? Get the ARMember now and skyrocket your business in all four directions!
Still have some doubts? No worries! We have answered some frequently asked questions about WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads too. Take a look and hope you may find yours.
FAQs About Easy Digital Downloads vs WooCommerce
Does WooCommerce do digital downloads?
Yes, you can do digital downloads with WooCommerce. It comes with a built-in feature for selling your digital products. All you have to do is mark your products as “Virtual” and attach downloadable files to them.
Which plugin is best for WooCommerce?
WooCommerce itself is one of the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress. Still if you want some more best plugins for extending WooCommerce features, you can go with ARMember. It is the best Membership and Subscription Plugin with in-built WooCommerce.
What is the best platform for selling digital downloads?
Easy Digital Downloads is the best platform for selling digital downloads such as eBooks, software, images, videos and more. We can say it is also another best WordPress eCommerce plugin, perfect for creating online stores for selling digital downloads.
Can you sell digital downloads on WordPress?
Yes, Absolutely! You can sell digital downloads on WordPress by using a popular WordPress eCommerce plugin like Easy Digital Downloads. It is one of the best plugins for selling digital downloads such as eBooks, software, images, videos and more.
How do I get downloadable files in WooCommerce?
If you want to get downloadable files in WooCommerce, all you have to do is simply create a product and check it as a “Virtual” and “Downloadable” product.
How do I add a downloadable PDF to WooCommerce products?
Adding a downloadable PDF to WooCommerce products is easy. Firstly, you have to create a new product like you always do. Next, simply mark it as “Virtual” and “Downloadable”. Once done, lastly you upload your PDF file in the products section under the “Downloadable files” section.
Is WooCommerce good for drop-shipping?
Yes, indeed. WooCommerce is a good choice for drop-shipping. It is originally made for selling physical goods so it also comes with advanced features such as inventory management and shipping automation.
Why not use WooCommerce?
If you wish to sell physical products then only it’s a good consideration.For selling digital products, WooCommerce may have a slightly steeper learning curve compared to lighter eCommerce plugins, but it offers extensive flexibility and features for sure too.
How to sell an eBook on WooCommerce?
You can sell an eBook on WooCommerce easily by creating virtual and downloadable products. All you have to do is create a new product, check it as virtual and downloadable and upload your eBook file. Whenever someone buys it, WooCommerce will send them a secure download link of your eBook file.
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Brian Denim
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