Bad software, support refuses to do their job, WAY too expensive.

TLTR: Do not let them lock yourself in this nightmare. Otherwise, click the title to see this formatted.

I am a long time EDD user and plugin dev and WP expert myself. I never used WooCommerce, but it has to be purchased by Automatic itself, and I read that selling digital products only with it works just fine. Yoast took on an extremely complicated migration journey because they were not satisfied with this plugin, perfectly understandable.

Software has Lots of Issues

I like to tell everyone that I had only problems with EDD over the years. I am honestly too lazy to list them all. EDD acting weird, doing weird things with things that should not be uncommon. And that without any warnings or messages. There was always something that went wrong. I had to issue so many refunds because EDD messed things up. Operating this plugin with its extensions is not only NOT EASY at all. It’s time-consuming and reflects very unprofessionally to your customers because it always messes something up.

• Honesty, always something weird non-transparent things. People with cancelled subscriptions getting charged anyway.
• Multiple subscriptions linked to one key, when I cancelled one subscription for the customer the key got deactivated as well even though another
• People having no cancel subscription buttons under certain outdated conditions.
• People getting error messages on purchase, purchase goes through anyway, they get charged triple because they retried again 2 times
• Protected files setup for NGINX does not work for me since 3.0

Support Refuses to Help

The EDD devs also seems to only care about sites that are set up a total default way, with everything and every setting default only.

I had an issue years ago when I hosted on Pantheon (I also not recommend them). And they simply did not reply to me Support ticket anymore. After I pressured them they said they have a lot to do (not an excuse for a company that size with that pricing), what they really did was move on to other tickets that have some basic default WP site instead and just ignored me because there was no copy pasta for my case.

Now in 2022 I have protected files setup for NGINX does not work for me since 3.0, and they claim they did change nothing. Support refuses to help me and just tells me I should set up my site like a default site, that is totally unacceptable!

I use Bedrock site structure that has the site like this:

└── web
    ├── app
    │   ├── mu-plugins
    │   ├── plugins
    │   ├── themes
    │   └── uploads
    ├── wp-config.php
    ├── index.php
    └── wp

This is not uncommon, and pretty much everything and every plugin that is not coded wrong works like that. WordPress INTENDS and supports this! EDD devs do not care, they do NOT. Even though I told them it worked in 2.0. With hours and hours of my own research and config that was not fully documented, btw. Their initial response was just “We used NGINX as well, so it should work” that kind of answer tells you A LOT!

Prices are Insane!

Let talk about pricing. EDD used to be somewhat affordable, I do not remember how many years ago EDD made a sudden price hike that was very negatively received by the community. A single extension for more than $100 a year and you need at least a few extensions to operate. All the essential functionality is locked behind expensive add-ons.

Last year, EDD was acquired, and the original dev and founder left WP development altogether. They made the pricing even worse again. You can now no longer purchase only the extensions you need. You are forced to buy an insanely expensive subscription package. And guess what, the only one that makes any sense for Digital Downloads for software that is maintained is the one that contains the add-ons needed to “Sell Licensed Software” that lets you set up subscriptions. This is how they themselves to it anyone who sells plugins or themes for WP should set up a yearly subscription model, it has been proven that a subscription model gets you the most money by far.

They know this, exploit it, and charge you $500 a year. I simply can not afford this! I am a single dev who does not make that much on my add-ons. All the email and marketing and other extensions included, I do not have time for, I do not need them at this point. But I am forced to pay for them because they no longer let you purchase add-ons individually. Not everyone has a large revenue and a big company. What I always liked about WP is that it empowers individuals. EDD only thinks of its customers to be some large revenue, huge company. They do the opposite of supporting individuals, in fact individuals may not know how good the subscription model works and may choose to “save” on the EDD package and take the cheaper one without the subscriptions add-on and think they save money when in fact they lose money in the long run.

Just pick WooCommerce, again, never used it, but it can only be better, and I bet they have actual support that helps you.

Sorry for my bad writing, I am angry, English is not my native language. Too much “I this, I that” I know ??

• This topic was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Nico.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Nico.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Nico.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Nico.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Nico.