The WordPress plugins for selling digital products that are worth a shortlist are Easy Digital Downloads for a dedicated digital store, WooCommerce if you also sell physical goods, SureCart if you want tax and licence keys bundled into 1 price, and WPForms if you are selling a single file and nothing more.
Picking one is the easy part. Selling a digital file from your own site is really 4 separate jobs: take the money, deliver the file so it cannot be passed around, handle the tax that follows a digital file across a border, and issue licence keys if what you sell is software. Most plugin roundups answer job 1 and leave the rest to you.
I have been reading these roundups for weeks while writing about WordPress selling tools, and the same thing keeps happening. wp101’s roundup names 8 plugins, gives each one a paragraph, and never once tells you what any of them costs.
That is annoying. What worries me more is the job that is missing from the list entirely.
There is a rule about selling digital files to buyers in another country. It changes the moment you stop selling through a marketplace and start selling from your own WordPress site.
Below you will get the shortlist with real year 1 and renewal prices, the 4 jobs mapped against each plugin, what the tax job costs on each route, and 1 thing on page 1 of Google right now that you should not install.
Key Takeaways
- Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, SureCart and WPForms cover different jobs. Only 1 of them bundles tax handling and licence keys into a single price.
- 2 of these plugins renew higher than they advertise. Easy Digital Downloads goes from $99.50 to $199, WPForms from $159.60 to $399.
- An EU or UK buyer can create a tax duty for you. A payment processor does not carry it. A marketplace usually does.
- The EUR 10,000 EU threshold only applies to sellers based inside the EU. A seller outside it cannot use that threshold at all.
- Licence keys are the most expensive job. They cost $179 a year on WooCommerce and need the $599 renewal tier on Easy Digital Downloads.
- Every plugin here needs a WordPress site. Gumroad, Payhip and CartMango (my platform) give you a checkout link that works on any page.
Quick aside before the shortlist. Most of what a solo seller loses goes on pricing and positioning rather than on plugin licences, and the Online Selling Mistakes Challenge is a free email course that walks through the 5 that come up most.
Selling a digital product on WordPress is 4 jobs, not 1 plugin
Selling a digital product on WordPress breaks into 4 jobs, and no single free plugin covers all of them.
Job 1, take the money. A checkout, a cart, and a connection to Stripe or PayPal. This is the job every roundup answers.
Job 2, deliver the file so it does not leak. A paid file needs a link that expires and a cap on how many times it can be used. Otherwise the first buyer posts it in a Facebook group and everyone else gets it free.
Job 3, handle the tax. Selling a digital file to a buyer in another country can put a tax duty on you. This is the one the roundups skip, and it is the only job on this list that is a legal obligation rather than a preference.
Job 4, issue licence keys. Only matters if you sell software, a WordPress theme or a plugin. It is also the single most expensive job to add.
There is a 5th thing that is not really a job, just a bill: where the files live. A 2 GB video course sitting in your WordPress media library will make your hosting sweat, and a lot of shared plans will simply time out mid download.
SureCart’s own pricing page says every plan from free upward carries the same features, which makes its free tier the only one here covering all 4 jobs. It takes 2.9% of each sale instead of a licence fee, and its automatic tax calculation is still a paid add-on. Easy Digital Downloads covers all 4 but puts tax and licence keys behind paid tiers. WooCommerce needs 2 extensions at $39 and $179. WPForms covers 2 of the 4 and does neither tax nor licence keys.
| Plugin | Take money | Deliver file | Tax | Licence keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy Digital Downloads | Yes, free tier | Yes, free tier | Paid tier only | Paid tier only |
| WooCommerce | Yes, free core | Yes, free core | Manual, or $39/yr extension | $179/yr extension |
| SureCart | Yes, free tier | Yes | Bundled, some parts as add-ons | Bundled |
| WPForms | Pro tier only | Yes, emailed link | No | No |
| WordPress Download Manager | Yes, paid tier | Yes | No | Licence-based pricing only |
Taking the money and delivering the file can also be done with no plugin at all. A hosted checkout link drops onto any page, which is how Gumroad, Payhip and CartMango work.
If you want the wider view of what a WordPress store costs before you commit to any of this, the breakdown of WordPress ecommerce plugin renewal prices covers the year 2 problem across the whole category.
The shortlist, and what a year of each actually costs
The paid options split 2 ways on renewal.
SureCart Pro at $199 and WordPress Download Manager Pro at $99 hold the same price every year. Easy Digital Downloads and WPForms both advertise an introductory rate and renew higher, $99.50 becoming $199 and $159.60 becoming $399.
| Plugin | Year 1 | Renewal | What the cheap tier cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy Digital Downloads Personal | $99.50 | $199/yr | No licence keys |
| Easy Digital Downloads Professional | $299.50 | $599/yr | Nothing on this list |
| SureCart Launch | $0 | $0 | Costs 2.9% of every sale instead |
| SureCart Pro, 1 store | $199 | $199/yr | Nothing on this list |
| WooCommerce core | $0 | $0 | No tax calculation, no licence keys |
| WPForms Pro | $159.60 | $399/yr | No tax handling, no licence keys |
| WordPress Download Manager Pro | $99 | $99/yr | Not a full checkout |
2 of those numbers deserve a note. Easy Digital Downloads prints the reason for the jump on its own pricing page: the introductory prices carry a footnote saying renewals are at full price. And WPForms Basic at $39.60 cannot take a payment at all. The tier that connects Stripe is Pro, which is why the floor for selling anything through WPForms is $159.60 in year 1 and $399 after.
If you want the wider field rather than this digital-only shortlist, the roundup of WordPress shopping cart plugins covers which of the 15 named on page 1 can take a payment on their own.
SureCart’s free Launch plan is the odd one out because it has no licence fee and takes 2.9% of every sale instead. That is cheaper than $199 a year until you pass roughly $6,900 in annual sales, and more expensive after.
Do you have to charge VAT on a digital download?
Selling a digital download to a buyer in the UK or the EU can make you responsible for the VAT on that sale, and where you live does not get you out of it.
The UK rule is written down plainly. HMRC’s guidance on supplying digital services to consumers puts it in 2 short steps. Sell a digital service to a UK consumer and that supply is liable to UK VAT. If the supply is liable to UK VAT, you have to register for UK VAT even when you are based outside the UK. Its own definition of a digital service covers exactly what most people reading this sell: PDF files, ebooks, photos, music, and software.
Selling through Etsy and selling from your own site put the duty in different places. None of what follows is tax advice and I am not an accountant, so check your own position before you act on it.
Read the middle of that first paragraph. Sell through a third party platform or marketplace, and the platform is responsible for the VAT instead of you.
That is why selling on Etsy or through a hosted storefront feels like the tax never existed. It did exist. Somebody else was handling it.
The same guidance closes the obvious loophole a page later. In HMRC’s own words, if your only role in the supply is to provide for the processing of payments you’re not regarded as a digital platform and you do not have to account for the VAT.
A WordPress plugin plus a Stripe account is exactly that. Stripe moves the money. It does not become the seller.
So the duty does not disappear when you move to WordPress. It moves to you.
The EUR 10,000 threshold does not help most people reading this. The European Commission’s One Stop Shop guidance lists the conditions for using it. The first condition is that the supplier is established, or has a permanent address, in a Member State.
A seller in the United States, Canada, Australia or anywhere else outside the EU cannot meet that condition. So the threshold is not available to them.
Here is what that confusion looks like in practice.
A seller running a WordPress store from Hong Kong asked r/Wordpress how to set up taxes for digital products sold globally. The top reply said taxes are built into WooCommerce and that you generally only need to worry about your own country.
They asked a follow up: so if Hong Kong has no sales tax and I sell into the US or EU, I do not need to set anything up?
The only reply was somebody naming a tax tool. Nobody answered the actual question.
A year later a different commenter turned up to say that EU digital B2C sales need VAT collection, with no threshold.
That is why the tax job belongs on your plugin shortlist rather than on a list of things to worry about later.
What the tax job costs on each route
Across the 5 routes below, WooCommerce is the only one that bills the tax job separately, at $39 a year for an extension that does less than you would expect. Easy Digital Downloads includes it from its cheapest paid tier. SureCart includes the basics and sells automatic calculation as an add-on. WPForms does not offer it at all.
| Route | Cost of the tax job | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce core | $0 | You type in the rate table by hand |
| WooCommerce plus EU VAT Number | $39/yr | Validates a buyer’s VAT number, does not calculate rates |
| Easy Digital Downloads | Included from $99.50 | Listed as EU VAT Compliance on all paid tiers |
| SureCart | Included, add-on for automatic | Its table lists Sales Tax and EU VAT as included |
| WPForms | Not available | Nothing |
The WooCommerce extension is worth looking at closely, because it is the obvious thing to buy and it is not in good working order. The official EU VAT Number extension costs $39 a year, has 30,000 or more active installs, and is rated 2.8 out of 5 from 11 reviews. Its own product page carries a notice saying the extension can no longer validate UK VAT numbers, after recent HMRC VAT API changes. HMRC now requires each merchant to register an API key, and the extension does not support that.
So the thing you would buy to handle the UK half of this problem currently cannot do the UK half of this problem. That is on the vendor’s own page, not in a review.
Stopping the file from being passed around
WooCommerce protects downloadable files in its free core, so keeping a paid file from being passed around does not need a paid plugin on any of these routes.
Downloadable products in WooCommerce carry a download limit and an expiry date, and its documentation refers to both as normal properties of a purchased download.
Easy Digital Downloads protects files on the free tier too. SureCart lists secure file delivery on every plan including the free one.
Where you put the file matters more than which plugin serves it. A file dropped into the WordPress media library sits at a URL anyone can reach if they guess it or get sent it, which is a different problem from the checkout.
This is a whole topic on its own. The walkthrough of the 3 file delivery methods in WooCommerce covers the settings in detail, and the guide to protecting digital downloads covers what actually stops sharing.
Selling software, a theme or a plugin? Licence keys are the expensive job
Licence keys cost more than every other job on this list, and the price gap between routes is wide.
On WooCommerce, the official Software Add-on is $179 a year on top of the free core.
It generates keys on purchase and handles activations. It has 900 or so active installs and is rated 3.3 out of 5 from 4 reviews, which tells you how narrow this corner of the market is.
On Easy Digital Downloads, licence keys are not on the $99.50 Personal tier or the $199.50 Extended tier. They arrive with Professional, which is $299.50 in year 1 and $599 on renewal. So a plugin developer selling their own plugin pays 3 times the price of a person selling a PDF, on the same platform. If that jump is what pushes you off the platform, the comparison of Easy Digital Downloads alternatives is the next thing to read.
SureCart puts licences in the same bundle as everything else, describing them on its features page as licence based access with automatic issuing and validation. Its trade-offs against the rest of the category are worked through in the guide to SureCart alternatives.
If you sell WordPress products, the numbers for the marketplace route against your own site are worked through in the guide to selling WordPress themes.
What the free versions will not do
Every free tier here has a catch, and 2 of them are charges rather than missing features.
WPForms Lite takes Stripe payments and adds its own cut.
Its documentation for the Stripe addon says WPForms charges no fee while your licence is active. When the licence is inactive, a 3% processing fee is applied to each payment, on top of Stripe’s own rate.
Read that again.
The trigger is an inactive licence, not the free version. So letting a paid licence lapse starts costing you 3% of every sale.
SureCart’s free Launch plan is honest about its version: no licence fee, 2.9% of each transaction instead.
Easy Digital Downloads Lite and WooCommerce core both give you a working store that takes money and delivers files. Neither can charge the right tax or issue a licence key, and on WooCommerce the extensions are where the money goes.
WordPress Download Manager is free to install and its paid tiers start at $99 a year. It began life as a file manager and had selling added later, so it suits a big library of files better than a small catalogue of products.
The page 1 guide still recommending a plugin that closed in 2022
Practical Ecommerce’s roundup, still on page 1 for this search, recommends 12 plugins. 1 of them has been permanently closed for years.
The guide was published in June 2021 by Sig Ueland. Its page shows no update to a reader, but the page’s own metadata carries a revision date of September 2022. That is 2 months after WordPress.org closed the Selz plugin, and the recommendation is still there.
Its 12th recommendation links to the Selz WordPress Ecommerce plugin.
That plugin’s page on WordPress.org now says it has been closed and is not available for download, that the closure is permanent, and that the reason was an author request. The listing records the last update as 6 years ago.
There is a reason for that. Amazon bought Selz, then shut it down. GeekWire reported in May 2022 that Amazon was shutting Selz down about a year after acquiring it. Amazon said it had made a difficult decision to stop offering Selz as a standalone service, and gave merchants 60 days notice.
I checked the other 11 on that list too. The wordpress.org ones are all still maintained and updated within the last few weeks. 3 are paid items on CodeCanyon that I could not verify, because that site blocks automated checks.
1 dead recommendation out of 12 is hardly a wholesale mess. It is still a plugin a beginner could try to install today, because Google put the page in front of them.
Which WordPress plugins for selling digital products fit what you sell
Match the plugin to what you are selling and to how many of the 4 jobs you need covered: taking the money, delivering the file, handling tax and issuing licence keys. The list below assumes you are starting from nothing and want the cheapest route that genuinely covers you.
Selling a handful of PDFs, presets or templates, no EU or UK buyers expected. WooCommerce core or Easy Digital Downloads Lite, both free. Add the tax handling when your first European buyer shows up, not before.
Selling PDFs and expecting international buyers. Easy Digital Downloads Personal at $99.50, renewing at $199, or SureCart Pro at a flat $199. From year 2 they cost the same. Across the first 2 years Easy Digital Downloads is cheaper, $298.50 against $398, and SureCart bundles more.
Selling software, a theme or a plugin. Easy Digital Downloads Professional at $299.50 then $599, or SureCart Pro at $199, or WooCommerce plus the $179 Software Add-on. For licence keys on their own, WooCommerce plus the add-on is the cheapest licence fee at $179. For keys and tax together, SureCart Pro at $199 beats WooCommerce at $218 and Easy Digital Downloads at $299.50.
Selling exactly 1 file and nothing else, ever. WPForms Pro at $159.60 is a lot of licence for 1 file. A hosted checkout link that you drop onto any page is the other route, and Gumroad, Payhip and CartMango all do that without you installing anything. I run CartMango, so read that as a disclosure rather than a recommendation. The trade-offs of skipping the site entirely are covered in selling digital products without a website.
Also selling physical products. WooCommerce, because that is the job it was built for.
Buy the job you need now rather than the whole stack. Most of these licences renew whether or not you used the feature, so a tier bought for a problem you do not have yet is a bill that arrives every year for nothing.
WordPress plugins for selling digital products FAQ
What is the best WordPress plugin for selling digital products?
Easy Digital Downloads is the usual answer and it is a reasonable one for a store selling files, because it was built for digital products and protects them on the free tier. SureCart is the better answer if you want tax handling and licence keys without buying extensions, since its $199 a year covers both. WooCommerce wins if you sell physical goods too.
Can I sell digital products on WordPress for free?
Yes. WooCommerce core and Easy Digital Downloads Lite are both free and both take payments through Stripe or PayPal. What you give up is tax calculation and licence keys. SureCart’s Launch plan is free as well, but takes 2.9% of every sale, so it stops being the cheapest option once your sales pass a few thousand dollars a year.
Do I need to charge VAT on digital downloads?
If your buyer is in the UK or the EU, quite possibly yes, and being based elsewhere does not exempt you. HMRC’s guidance says supplies of digital services to UK consumers are liable to UK VAT and that an overseas seller has to register. The EU’s EUR 10,000 threshold only applies to sellers established inside a Member State. Check your own position with an accountant.
What are the best plugins for e-commerce in WordPress?
For a general store the shortlist is WooCommerce, SureCart and Easy Digital Downloads, with WooCommerce carrying 7 million or more active installs on WordPress.org against 40,000 for Easy Digital Downloads. For digital products the answer narrows, because the deciding factors become file protection, tax handling and licence keys rather than shipping and inventory.
Is WordPress outdated for selling digital products?
No, but it is more work than it used to be. The plugin route means you own the site and pay no commission on sales, and it also means you maintain a stack of licences and carry the tax duty yourself. Hosted checkouts have taken over the simple end of the market because they remove the maintenance, not because WordPress stopped working.
Do I need a WordPress plugin at all?
No. A hosted checkout gives you a link or an embed that works on any page, with no plugin on your site at all. Gumroad, Payhip and CartMango all work that way. They still cost money, either as a cut of each sale or as a subscription. What you give up is the control a plugin gives you over your own product pages, and none of the 3 removes the tax duty.
Where should I store large files?
Off your WordPress hosting, if the files are big. Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce both support delivering from external storage, and a 2 GB video will time out on a lot of shared hosting plans if you serve it through PHP.
The jobs you can hand off, and the one you cannot
Whichever of these WordPress plugins for selling digital products you land on, taking the money, delivering the file and issuing licence keys all move with the software. Buy a different tool and they go with it.
This whole post is really an argument about who you buy those 3 from, and what the bill looks like in year 2.
The tax duty works differently. It follows the sale rather than the software, so no plugin makes it go away.
Worth saying plainly, since CartMango is my own platform: CartMango does not make it go away either. CartMango is a hosted checkout. It is not a merchant of record, so the VAT position is the same as it is on a plugin. If you want the duty to sit with somebody else, you need a merchant of record such as Lemon Squeezy or Paddle, which is a different legal arrangement and a different kind of product.
What CartMango does remove is the stack.
No WordPress site needed, no extensions to buy, and no cut of each sale. It is free until October 2026, then $10 to $30 a year.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
Related Reading
- WooCommerce alternatives, sorted into 4 kinds: for when the store is the part you do not need
- Easy Digital Downloads vs SureCart: the 2 plugins this post keeps coming back to, head to head
- Digital delivery systems compared: the delivery job on its own, across 10 tools
- Building an online store for digital products: 3 store types with real fees on a $10 sale