I’ve been using Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) for a while now. I love it. Chances are, you already know about it. Chances are, if you’ve used it (or any of Pippin’s plugins) you love it too. It’s a really, really, really well built plugin that does exactly what it says, right out of the box. FOR FREE.
Yep, there’s an add-on for that
Easy Digital Downloads is not feature heavy by default, and by design. Unlike other e-commerce plugins for WordPress, EDD doesn’t bloat it’s fundamental purpose by stuffing it full of features that most users will never touch, and probably don’t even understand. That being said, the needed functionality from user to user can be attained by the purchase of add-ons that can do just about anything and everything you may need. Multiple times, I’ve requested an add-on just to find out it’s already being built, or already available. Some examples are Volume Discounts, MailChimp, Featured Download, Software Licensing, Simple Shipping, etc.
See all of the extensions available. There are just too many to list.
My personal uses for Easy Digital Downloads
Currently, I have a few websites that use EDD. One of them, naturally, is right here on The Stiz Media. I use it to sell my Genesis child themes and my Styles add-ons for Genesis. It was really easy to setup, and really fast and efficient to customize.
I originally began using EDD on my recording studio website, to sell hip-hop beats to rappers that I work with. This beat shop led me to the idea to build something even bigger for other producers and beatmakers. As of this post it’s still in beta, but you can sign up to get notified of launch at BeatMinded.com.
BeatMinded is a SAAS (software as a service) designed to simplify the e-commerce process for non-web people trying to sell their beats… but that’s all for another post. The point is that it’s a really custom and complicated build, but EDD has been up for the task.
Support and Customizations
If you know anything about Pippin and his team, you know they are praised for their level of support they provide. I tend to avoid support and try to scour the forums and search google for a while until I come to a dead end. Most of the time I think you’re better off figuring out (or trying to figure out) something yourself before even considering opening a support ticket. It’s better for everyone that way.
When the time comes that you actually need support for EDD, the team behind Easy Digital Downloads will surely come to the rescue. I’ve used support (priority and basic) and have never been let down. I’ve either been provided the exact answer I needed or pointed in the right direction to find what I was looking for. In fact, this post is partially to thank EDD and Pippin for their dedication to their users. So… THANK YOU!
To the future, and beyond!
Over the past month or two I’ve been subscribed to EDD on github. If you are a developer, you can find it here. If you’re not, don’t click the link and don’t bother them… 😉
Having subscribed to the updates and comments on Github, I’ve really gotten a full picture of how tirelessly these guys work to improve their product(s), and patch any bugs that anyone may find. There are easily dozens of comments back and forth, surgically dissecting any and every issue, feature request, bug, etc., that is brought up. I honestly can’t even understand how they get any coding done with how much they are all doing to squash bugs and answer support requests.
THANK YOU!
This is my formal (or is this informal?) thank you to Pippin, Chris, Sunny, Daniel, and anyone else that has helped me, or helped the community behind Easy Digital Downloads. Keep up the good work, and we’ll do our best to support you.
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