After getting determined to start a new online business using WordPress, people are usually searching for the right way, to begin with. One of the most common questions they have been asked by themselves “which plugins will successfully meet their need? Woocommerce vs easy digital downloads”
And apparently, all of them are looking for the best eCommerce plugin for their new online business. We know the fact because we were also in the same stage in 2015 while ThemeFisher has started the journey.
In the beginning, we have started by using WooCommerce as it seems like the king of the WordPress eCommerce world. After one year, we move to Easy Digital Download while facing some significant problems as a Digital Store using WooCommerce.
Here, we are going to share our knowledge and experience about both of these platforms. You may define this article as "A case study by ThemeFisher for choosing a WordPress eCommerce platform to build a digital store."
Behind the story
As I early mentioned that our journey began in 2015 and at that time we choose WooCommerce as it is the most popular WordPress eCommerce solution. While running our online store, we faced some problems to cope up with WooCommerce.
In the beginning, Themefisher provided fantastic free HTML & Bootstrap website templates. Our user can get those free templates after completing a few phases, which are built-in phases of WooCommerce itself.
It seems all of our users need to go through all the general steps of WooCommerce, Add to cart, provide billing details, proceed checkout, and after that, they can able to download the free items which took a considerable time.
Sometimes people lose their interest while facing up this kind of hassles even for a free product and they give up, that hamper our business and we lost a huge number of visitors. We always wanted to be flexible, being painful to our users is not our business motivation, and unfortunately, WooCommerce did not meet our needs.
Then after one year, we move to Easy Digital Downloads which make us super flexible to our users. Now a user can download a free product without facing those kinds of long processes, they provide just their email address and get the product in their inbox.
EDD improves the usability of our business by more than 3X, and in the back-end, it generates a report for every single product of our digital store.
Now we can monitor the number of downloads of a product on day to day basis. I also prefer to mention the customer profile page EDD has. While WooCommerce sorts by orders, and then you can filter by a customer, EDD summarizes all the purchases of a single customer, on one page.
WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads - Which one should pick?
We gather experience about both of WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. Both of these are for selling products online, but in our observation, it seems these two are specialized in different areas. While WooCommerce is perfect for those stores where SHIPPING is involved, the Easy Digital Download suits best with the store for digital goods such as ebooks, PDFs, plugins, themes, etc.
As a result, we think, the whole WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads debate can be solved with a single question: "what are you selling?"
If you are selling PHYSICAL products and SHIPPING is involved, then WooCommerce will rock it. WooCommerce is exactly built for Physical products, to manage shipping costs and stock management.
Or if you are selling DIGITAL products which do not need any shipping and are able to attach a file to a product and automatically deliver that file after payment is made then Easy Digital Download will be the best.
Both of these two giant plugins have their set of 3features, pros, and as well as some cons also. In this section, we are going to give a brief of these circumstances, from the perspective of our experience.
Pros and Cons of WooCommerce
Here I figure out the reasons why you could love this plugin or why this plugin must not be the best choice for your online business.
The Pros
- WooCommerce is free, and it does not cost you anything.
- It is the most familiar with all WordPress eCommerce plugins, and I’m sure you have had experience with this plugin before.
- There are many add-ons and themes with further modified colors for you to customize your website.
- It is regularly updated to take away your worry about security issues and bug
- WooCommerce has extensive community support.
The Corns
- Even WordPress and WooCommerce are free, sometimes the free themes and add-ons don’t meet your need. So, it may take your money if you need to go for a premium one
- You must have the required knowledge to use it effectively. It is hard for you to do by yourself if you don’t know both Woocommerce and WordPress.
- It is regularly updated to take away your worry about security issues and bug
Pros and Cons of Easy Digital Download
Now I am going to uncover the pros and cons of Easy Digital Download from my user experience.
The Pros
- EDD is a full Shopping Cart for selling and delivering digital items.
- With EDD it's effortless to manage the online shop, the system is pretty much ready to go after installation.
- A full customer management area gives you the tools to block or target some of your specific customers.
- EDD allows for flat rate or percentage-based discounts. You can specify which of the products you would like to include or exclude from that particular offer, while also limiting the number of times someone uses the discount code.
- EDD have also an infinite number of add-ons and themes with further modified colors for you to customize your website.
- EDD also has vast community support.
The Cons
- Payment processing can go through PayPal, but you’re going to have to pay for more advanced gateways like Stripe and PayPal Pro.
- The Easy Digital Downloads customer service is acceptable but limited, which means you may keep in the front of the queue when you have a question.
Final Thoughts
In our experience, we came to the conclusion to WooCommerce vs Easy Digital Downloads debate is that, if you are selling PHYSICAL products then use WooCommerce and use EDD for DIGITAL products. Do you use either of these plugins for your business? If so, then do not forget to share with us about your experience to which one did you go with and why?
Finally if you need any professional assistance setting up your eCommerce website you can contact us.
