DISCOVER wordpress payment plugins

Easy Digital Downloads Alternative

INTRODUCTION

Mindspun Payments vs Easy Digital Downloads 

Easy Digital Downloads is perhaps the second most widely known E-Commerce plugin for WordPress. It was originally developed by Sandhills Developments and then acquired by Awesome Motive. With over 50,000 active installations, it’s one of the most popular options for those who want to sell online using WordPress.

It’s a well-crafted and feature-complete solution – the Easy Digital Downloads review rating of 4 out of 5 stars in the WordPress plugin directory is a measure of how successful it has been. That said, the code is quite old and it inevitably affects performance and even its ability to embrace future developments in WordPress Core.

There are several important points that you should consider if you’re looking to implement it when considering it for your project:

• Easy Digital Downloads have become more sophisticated, complex, and heavy. So, it’s not that ‘Easy’ anymore
• As it’s an Awesome Motive product, you can expect regular cross-selling of their other plugins
• At the time of writing, Easy Digital Downloads – Blocks was last updated 4 years ago
• Easy Digital Downloads’ price: it’s very expensive and over twice the cost of Mindspun Payments

If you’re looking for a simple, powerful, block-friendly digital commerce solution, Mindspun Payments is a much better alternative.

EASE OF USE

Easy Digital Downloads isn’t that… easy

It’s complex by design for two reasons: firstly, they decided to pull in product management, customer management and reports within WordPress admin. The advantage of this approach is that you can do everything from within WordPress and not have to log in to the payment system.

However, this level of integration is quite complicated from a development perspective. Integrations are inherently fragile. From an efficiency perspective, ‘less is more’, both in terms of performance and avoiding problems that inevitably affect your workflow and the user experience.

Our approach with Mindspun Payments was not to replicate the same management option within WordPress but to let users use Stripe’s own dashboard, which is (obviously) better than what a third party like Easy Digital Downloads can achieve. A good example here is the analytics that you access directly in Stripe, which will always be more accurate than Easy Digital Downloads reports.

SHOPPING EXPERIENCE DESIGN

The path to the Easy Digital Downloads checkout isn’t optimized

To be fair, this is a common ‘problem’ with most E-Commerce solutions: trying to balance ease of use (and even speed of use) and the ability to customize the user experience. Easy Digital Downloads promises “a base style that looks great as-is but is also ready to integrate with any WordPress theme,” which sounds exactly like the aforementioned compromise.

But the problem with this approach in E-commerce is that you need to limit your ability to optimize for higher conversions. Once you start getting a steady sales volume, you will want to improve the path customers take to conversion.

With Mindspun Payments, you’re leveraging the Block Editor’s power and flexibility, as well as a series of custom blocks we have developed, so you can build a fully branded shopping experience exactly how you want it. Not only that, but Mindspun Payments comes bundled with Mindspun Responsive Blocks that address the Block Editor’s current limitations when designing for phones and tablets.

Let’s compare the key shopping experience features

STRIPE INTEGRATION

Want to use Stripe? It’s going to cost you more

Easy Digital Downloads Stripe integration comes with a catch: you must purchase the costly Extended plan to avoid additional charges on top of Stripe’s own.

On their Stripe Pro Payment Gateway page, they state the following, which is simply not true:

It’s a clever and lucrative strategy: if you want to avoid paying a premium for Stripe, you end up paying anyway because they will charge you a commission for each transaction.

Easy Digital Downloads Stripe payment gateway should be offered with all plans. Stripe is the most widely used payment gateway. Building the integration is easy. We did it with a fraction of their development resources and are not charging extra.

price

Easy Digital Downloads pricing: it gets expensive VERY quickly

The cheapest tier – the Personal Plan – is $199 /year, twice as expensive as Mindspun Payments. The higher price reflects the longer list of features, which is true. But most people building e-commerce functionality are starting simple – we are focusing on the core functions, adding new features frequently as Add-ons (which are not priced separately).

Please note: Easy Digital Downloads Personal Plan will charge you an additional 3% for each transaction.

If you’re offering Subscriptions, you will need to upgrade to the Extended plan, which will cost $399 /year. This is a significant amount of money, and not just for startup projects.

Mindspun Payments includes core features, including Subscriptions (recurring payments), for one affordable price: $129 /year. Check it out here.

One more consideration: given Easy Digital Downloads is an Awesome Motive product, expect frequent emails and prompts to try and buy other products. Tactics that have been called Tricky & Pushy Marketing by the Blog Marketing Academy.

conclusion

Consider Mindspun Payments before splashing out for Easy Digital Downloads

Chances are that Mindspun Payments does everything you need. Easy Digital Downloads is a more sophisticated and feature-complete product—we’re happy to admit that. If you have complex requirements, you should find an Easy Digital Downloads vs. WooCommerce comparison.

If you offer Subscriptions and/or software licensing, Mindspun Payments can save you a lot of money.

If you’re building E-Commerce using Blocks, Mindspun Payments is also the better option. Mindspun is 100% committed to Blocks.

You can also support a smaller, independent operator that isn’t trying to squeeze every possible dollar out of its plugin.