Digital Downloads

It's working but it's not a niceview

The Good
Simple interface, ideal for attaching pdf instruction manuals or rebates to products.

The Bad
No customization
No sorting options
No way to purge items from the list without editing individual products and removing their associated files
After adding a digital attachment to a product you must refresh the page to change the settings on how that digital file is delivered. There is no way to configure default settings to apply to all products you carry.
If you use SmartVendor-Shopify E360 removing products with smartvendor breaks the list and leaves phantom entries. There is no way to remove these entries. We are looking at completely removing the app and reinstalling it to try to fix/simplify the list.
When we asked about future development we were referred on to a $40/month product that does not work well with stores that have a large number of sku's. We have 4000+ so it would not have worked for us.
No way to attach files to a parent item and all it's sub-variants. Even if all variants use the same file they must all be added individually.

This is all disappointing. The app has a huge potential as an improvement in the system but Shopify seems to be more interested in farming it out to third party developers.

PRO: It's free and supports multiple files for one product, which is the primary reason we switched to Shopify. We only sell .jpg files.

ANNOYING BUT BEARABLE BECAUSE IT'S FREE: Having to do some minor things twice, "re installing" the app every time we start using it again, and not having the download link show up on the order confirmation page.

UNACCEPTABLE: 8% of our orders have one of three technical problems (yes, I spreadsheeted the data to get that figure):

1) The email download doesn't show up (yes, we verified that it wasn't in their spam folder)

2) In Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows 8, customers download the .jpg file but it saves as a MHT file that they can't use (customer service nightmare here).

3) Customer clicks link to download, and it simply says the limit has been exceeded (yes, we verified that the product had a download limit of 2).

On average, we receive a technical complaint directly caused by the Shopify app every 5.5 days. We've verified that other complaints we've received have been at the user end and did not include those in our data set to give you the above numbers.

CONCLUSION:
I don't expect a free app to have the shiny features of a paid app, and I don't even think the paid solutions are that overpriced.

I do expect this free app to do what Shopify says it should do in its second bullet point as of 11-5-13: "Customers get access to content instantly."

Shopify's description of this app is true 92% of the time. So Shopify either needs to change the app description to reflect the truth (come on copywriter, get creative), or it should have one of its developers walk away from the tapped keg, grab some Tim Horton's coffee, work out some bugs and write some scripts.

I look forward to Shopify making this ok app great!

It worked well for over a year, but now it hardly works. My store sells digital tutorials, now customers are complaining that they can't get the file. I am posting this manually but it does so many times. I now need to explain to everyone why they cannot download their files ... I see that many have encountered this problem and it has not been resolved. I used the Shopify store because they promised that I could use digital downloads. now I can't use it ... I found other apps, they are paid and now I have to pay almost 50 dollars a month for this ... I'm very disappointed ...

Usually the app is doing what it should. If there was not the big BUT:
But I have serious problems getting uploads done. It works only in a maximum of 25% of the cases. Sometime yes, sometimes no. Have to wait for a couple of days and then like a miracle it works... Maybe. Of course this is nothing I would call a fully functional app and it is crippling workflow and sales seriously. Would be nice if someone from the support team could help me with this.

This app cannot send out updates if the volume of customers and purchases on the given digital asset is too high.

Basic, the price is right, because paying for this would be a robbery.

This app has now crashed on me and i have no way to put digital files to download for my customers. On top of that when it DID work itd send a downlaod link for my videos but itd only let my customers VIEW the video, wouldnt let them actually dopwnload it on mobile

The app is fine until you realize how laughably easy it is for a fraudulent customer to scam you with this. If a digital downloads order is marked as HIGH risk of fraud, the digital downloads app does not care and auto sends the digital files no matter what. Meaning, this will likely end up with a charge-back on the order, with the fraudulent customer receiving all the files and not paying. What a joke. The app does have some protection for PayPal eChecks, but absolutely nothing for high risk of fraud orders. If this was fixed then the app would be just fine to use, but depending on the size of your store, this may cause you a big headache. FIX IT Shopify!

Cannot be combined with bundles, which is very inconvenient.
Also, I added a digital file to a product, but then the file just vanished... In the product overview the app still says the product has a file attached, but when I click on the product it says there's no file attached. Very strange. I added the file again, we'll see if it stays there this time.