Today, we’re excited to introduce Commissions 3.6, the latest version of the extension with a few exciting updates.

Benefits of EDD Commissions

If you’re unfamiliar, EDD Commissions is the ideal solution if you’re looking to establish a marketplace system where vendors receive earnings on a commission-based model.

In addition to features like support for generating CSV files and tracking commission payouts over time, the add-on offers:

• Effortless commission tracking: Automatically track commissions earned by affiliates or collaborators for each sale they drive.
• Flexible payouts: Split revenue between multiple users, with options for both percentage-based and flat-rate commissions.
• Simplified management: No more manual calculations! The extension handles all the complex math for you.

Once installed, you can access and manage the extension under Downloads » Commissions.

What’s New in Commissions 3.6

We’re excited to announce a new update to the Commission extension that brings even more efficiency and valuable information to vendors.

First, we’ve drastically improved the performance of paying out vendors. Whether you are generating a payout for a few commissions or tens of thousands of commissions, the new form can handle it.

We’ve also made significant improvements to emails.

Consolidated Commissions Emails

Say goodbye to multiple emails per order. With the upcoming release of Easy Digital Downloads 3.3.0, you’ll have all new email controls available to you.

In previous iterations of the Commission extension, each download that was purchased would generate its own email.

Now, vendors will receive a single email summarizing all the commissions for an order:

Note that this feature is not enabled by default. The option to turn it on is located under Downloads » Emails then click Commissions Earned on an Order:

Simply toggle the setting at the top of the screen to enable the consolidated commission emails feature and click the Save button. 

Enhanced Commission Insights & Visibility

The next major update included in the Commissions 3.6 release is the addition of two new email tags.

The first is a tag that displays a vendor’s pending (unpaid) commission amount. The second new email tag shows the vendor’s lifetime commissions earned:

This provides a clearer picture of their overall earnings.

It also helps encourage active vendors. This level of insight shows vendors exactly how their efforts are paying off. 

Update EDD Commissions Today

Updating your Commissions extension to 3.6 can help streamline communication with users and make it easier to track performance more effectively.

Don’t have Commissions yet? Installing it on your EDD site can help you grow your sales network and streamline operations by effortlessly tracking and managing commissions.

Commissions is included with Professional and All Access plans. If you don’t have one of these passes, grab one today and install the add-on in no time:

📣 P.S. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook or Twitter for more WordPress resources!

The post NEW: Commissions 3.6 Streamlines & Consolidates Emails and  Enhances Visibility first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

When you’re running an e-commerce site, it’s important to be able to accept credit card payments. There are a handful of plugins that can add this functionality to your store. But deciding which one to use can be challenging.

Comparing the top options available will help ensure you find a solution that meets all your needs.

In this article, we’ll cover:

Benefits of Credit Card Payment Plugins

Integrating a WordPress credit card payment plugin into your online store offers several advantages. It benefits both you and your customers.

By accepting online payments directly on your WordPress site, you provide a seamless and convenient checkout experience for your customers. They can complete their transactions without being redirected to external payment gateways, saving time and reducing friction.

Accepting credit card payments instills confidence in your customers. It signals that your business is legitimate and trustworthy, as credit card transactions require robust security measures and compliance with industry standards.

Credit card payments are widely accepted and preferred by customers worldwide. By offering this payment option, you open your business to a larger audience, including international customers who may not have access to other payment methods.

Credit card payment plugins automate payment processing, making it easier to manage and track transactions. You can generate reports, view sales data, and streamline your financial management processes, saving you time and effort.

What to Look for in WordPress Payment Plugins

When selecting a WordPress plugin for accepting debit cards and credit cards on your online store, it’s important to consider certain factors to ensure you choose the right one for your needs. Here are some key aspects to look for.

• Security Features: Security should be a top priority when handling credit card information. Look for WordPress payment plugins that offer robust encryption, PCI compliance, and other security measures to protect payment data.
• Payment Gateway Options: Check if the plugin supports multiple payment gateways. It’s also important to choose gateways widely used among consumers. For instance, research shows that, with over 1 million live websites currently using it, Stripe makes up more than 68% of e-commerce payment processing marketshare in the U.S.
• Ease of Use: The plugin should have a user-friendly interface and intuitive configuration settings that make it easy to use, even for beginners. A complex setup process can be time-consuming and may require technical expertise.
• Customization Options: Look for plugins that offer customization options for payment forms and checkout pages. This allows you to align the payment process with your brand identity and provide a consistent user experience. It’s also helpful to consider variety in the type of payment buttons/options, such as Buy Now buttons.
• Support and Updates: Ensure that the plugin developer provides regular updates and offers reliable customer support.
• Additional Features: Some plugins may offer additional features like recurring payments, subscription management, tax calculations, or integration with other e-commerce plugins. Evaluate if these features align with your business requirements.

By considering these factors, you can select a credit card payment plugin that best meets your needs, providing a seamless payment experience for your customers while ensuring the security of their sensitive information.

Summary: Best Credit Card Payment Plugins

Plugin	Lite/Free version	Pricing	Best For
Easy Digital Downloads		$199 – $999/yr	Selling digital products
WP Simple Pay		$49.50 – $299.50/yr	Accepting one-time or recurring payments without a shopping cart
WPForms		$199.50 – $299.50/yr	Building custom payment, order & contact forms
WooCommerce		Varies by addon	Selling physical products
MemberPress		$179.50 – $399.50/yr	Selling membership site content & online courses
Stripe Payments			Accepting Stripe payments

Gateway	EDD	WP Simple Pay	WPForms	WooCommerce	Member Press	Stripe Payments
Credit & Debit Cards
Stripe
Apple Pay
Google Pay
Amazon Pay
PayPal
PayPal Advanced/ Commerce
Authorize.Net
Braintree
Square
SOFORT
Pay later options

6 Best WordPress Credit Card Payment Plugins

Ready to take a closer look at the best credit card payment plugins for WordPress? Below, we’ll explore the top options, including the key features and pricing details.

1. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is a powerful plugin designed specifically for selling digital products, including eBooks, software, PDFs, and any other downloadable content. The complete e-commerce solution offers excellent integrations with all major payment processors.

In addition to the standard and popular payment gateways available out of the box (PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon Payments), EDD’s ecosystem includes a range of other payment addons. This includes extensions for Authorize.net, Braintree, SOFORT, ClickBank, and more.

With an All Access Pass, you can get access to the entire extension catalog, eliminating the need for you to add multiple third-party credit card payment plugins. Instead, you can easily install payment gateways on an as-needed basis directly from your WordPress site.

There are plenty of other features to enhance your online selling experience. From customizable purchase receipts and discount codes to detailed sales reports and customer management tools, EDD has everything you need to run a successful online business.

Key Features

• Support for PayPal (Express, Pro, Advanced, & Commerce), Stripe & Stripe Pro (Apple Pay/Google Pay), Authorize.net
• Recurring Payments & Subscription-based payments
• Software Licensing & Front-end submissions
• Email marketing integrations
• Full shopping cart
• Option to save payment details for customers
• Buy Now & Add to Cart buttons
• 100+ extensions & integrations
• Support for Multi Currency payments
• EDD Gateway Fees extension to pass credit card processing fees to customers
• Test Payments
• Ability to manually approve/deny payments
• Pre-approve payments to charge at future date
• Detailed reporting & analytics
• Easy refund management
• Customizable product pages
• On-site checkout options
• No transaction fees

Pricing: A free/Lite version of Easy Digital Downloads is available which supports Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon Pay. EDD Pro plans start at $199 per year. Learn more about EDD Free vs. Pro.

Grab an Easy Digital Downloads Pass

2. WP Simple Pay

True to its name, WP Simple Pay is one of the simplest credit card payment plugins for WordPress that you can use. It’s an excellent Easy Digital Downloads alternative if you don’t sell many products or don’t want to add a full shopping cart. It’s ideal for accepting one-time payments on your WordPress site.

WP Simple Pay uses Stripe as its primary payment processor. It also supports multiple currencies and lets you add clean, intuitive payment forms on your site. It supports more than 10 payment methods, including alternative options such as Afterpay, ACH Direct Debit, Alipay, and more.

Key Features

• Support for Stripe, Apple Pay & Google Pay
• Location detection to auto-fill customer payment & shipping info at checkout
• Drag-and-drop payment form builder
• 10+ payment methods
• Support for alternative payment methods (ACH Direct Debit, SEPA Direct Debit, Afterpay, Klarna, Alipay, & more)
• Automatic tax calculations
• Support for one-time & recurring payments
• Discounts & coupon codes
• Email receipts
• Integration & compatibility with most WordPress themes and page builders
• Summary reports
• Ability to remove Stripe transaction fee for every transaction
• Multi-language support
• Ability to accept donations
• Support for SCA (Secure Customer Authentications)

Pricing: WP Simple Pay is a freemium plugin. Premium plan pricing starts at $49.50/year.

3. WPForms

WPForms is a bit different from the other credit card payment plugins on this list as it’s a WordPress form builder. It’s the best plugin for creating any type of form for your website, including contact, survey, payment, registration, and order forms.

This beginner-friendly tool lets you create forms and accept payments directly from your website. You can integrate the forms with email marketing services, add conditional logic fields, add multiple steps, and much more.

Similar to WP Simple Pay, WPForms is a great choice if you don’t want to add a full shopping cart to your site. Instead, you can use it to accept one-time payments or donations via forms. In addition to Stripe payments, WPForms supports multiple other gateways to allow customers to complete credit card transactions.

Key Features

• Support for multiple payment gateways, including Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Authorize.Net, & Square
• Drag-and-drop form builder
• 3000+ templates
• Pre-made & importable templates
• One-click payments
• Marketing & conversion tools
• Payment, order, booking & membership forms
• Support for recurring payments
• Landing pages
• Option to require payment on file upload forms
• Form notification emails
• Built-in spam protection
• Analytics & entry management

Pricing: WPForms Lite is available. Pricing for premium plans starts at $49.50 per year.

4. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the most popular and widely used e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It not only provides comprehensive online store functionality but also offers robust credit card payment options.

With WooCommerce, you can easily accept payments from major credit card providers, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and more.

Out of all the credit card payment plugins on this list, WooCommerce is most similar to Easy Digital Downloads. However, where EDD is ideal for selling digital goods, WooCommerce is better suited for physical products.

As the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, WooCommerce is an excellent, affordable, and flexible choice for building an online store. In addition to all major debit and credit cards, it supports several popular payment gateways, including Stripe and PayPal as the default payment processors. Through addons, you can also accept online payments via Apple Pay, Google Pay, and WooCommerce Payments.

Key Features

• Accepts all major credit & debit cards (MasterCard, Visa, American Express)
• Support for Stripe & PayPal out-of-the-box
• Option to collect Apple/Google Pay, WooCommerce Payments & more
• Free & premium addons
• Compatible with Stripe refunds
• Supports SCA & PCI-Compliant
• Shipping & inventory management
• Detailed reporting & stats dashboard
• Wide range of integrations (email marketing, CRM, e-commerce, etc.)

Pricing: WooCommerce itself is free as are several of its payment gateway addons. Pricing for premium extensions vary.

WooCommerce vs. Easy Digital Downloads: Which Is Best?

5. MemberPress

If you’re interested in selling online courses and similar content, MemberPress is one of the best credit card payment plugins you can use. This WordPress membership site plugin offers an all-in-one solution for monetizing your website and creating a paywall for exclusive content.

MemberPress lets you create drip content that is only available to paying customers/subscribers. You can restrict access to your site based on membership levels and create scaled subscription plans.

It supports multiple payment gateways, making it easy to collect credit card payments from your users. You can also accept one-time or recurring payments.

Key Features

• Membership site
• Drip content & paywall
• Ideal for selling online courses & course content
• One-time or recurring payments/subscriptions
• Support for Stripe (Apple/Google Pay) & PayPal
• Addons for Authorize.Net & Square
• Ability to create multiple membership levels with variable pricing/perks
• Integrations with bbPress, MonsterInsights, & other popular tools
• Detailed reporting & stats
• Coupon code generation

Pricing: MemberPress is a premium plugin. Plans start at $179 per year for one site. This includes a 14-day money-back guarantee.

6. Stripe Payments

Rounding out our list of the best credit card payment plugins for WordPress is Stripe Payments. As you can likely guess, this plugin is built for WordPress users looking to process payments via Stripe.

One of the things that makes this plugin unique is that it is completely free to use. Of course, this means it isn’t as feature-rich and sophisticated as some of the other credit card payment plugin options. However, it might be perfect if you’re looking for a cheap, straightforward solution and only want to accept Stripe payments.

It comes with a handful of useful features, including one-click payments, Buy Now shortcodes, and the option to accept donations.

Key Features

• Accept credit card payments via Stripe
• Payment forms
• Buy Now button shortcodes
• Easy installation & setup, even for beginners
• Authorize-Only payment options
• SCA Compliant
• Ability to accept donations
• Order management system
• Simple Stripe payment buttons & widget to add to sidebar, posts, and pages
• Ability to sell physical or digital goods
• Tax & shipping calculations
• Remember-me features for returning customers
• Addons for Subscription Payments, Apple & Google Pay, SOFORT & Multi-Currency

Pricing: Stripe Payments is a free payment gateway plugin.

FAQs About Credit Card Payment Plugins

What is the best recurring payment plugin WordPress?

The best recurring payment plugin for WordPress is the Recurring Payments extension available with an Easy Digital Downloads pass. It integrates seamlessly with your online store and makes it easy to sell subscriptions.

Is Stripe free with WordPress?

It depends on which plugin you use, and which version of Stripe you want access to. For instance, the free/Lite version of Easy Digital Downloads lets you use Stripe for free. However, if you want to remove the additional transaction fee on each transaction and get more advanced features, you can upgrade to Stripe Pro Payment Gateway. This premium addon is available with every EDD Pro plan.

Download the Best Credit Card Payment Plugin

If you run an online business or sell products and services on your WordPress website, integrating a reliable credit card payment plugin is essential for a smooth and secure transaction process.

In this post, we covered some of the best credit card payment plugins for WordPress. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for accepting online payments and selling digital products, you can’t go wrong with Easy Digital Downloads!

Grab an Easy Digital Downloads Pass

Ready to get started? Learn How to Use Stripe Payments Element in WordPress

P.S. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook or Twitter for more WordPress resources!

The post 6 Best Credit Card Payment Plugins for WordPress (Compared) first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

Easy Digital Downloads now makes it easier than ever to display and accept payments in more than 200 currencies anywhere in the world.

Today we are excited to announce Multi Currency for EDD 

With multi-currency support, potential customers will be more likely to purchase from your website because:

• They can see prices in their own currency (no mental math!) and
• Avoid additional currency conversion fees on their bank statements (no surprises)

Take that competitors!

In the past you needed in-depth knowledge of code or had to hire a developer for functionality like this. Not anymore. You can manage it all with EDD without leaving your WordPress dashboard.

We’ll walk you through the highlights:

• A currency switcher for site visitors on the frontend
• Complete exchange rate controls on the backend
• Fully integrated and supporting 200 currencies

Currency Switcher

Customers can switch currencies with just a click. Choose from buttons if you’ll support a few, or a dropdown if you’ll support a bunch. Display the currencies in a widget. This widget can be shown on product pages and the checkout page to give potential customers every opportunity to switch.

Set the Exchange Rate Yourself or Automatically

EDD’s Multi Currency extension lets you automatically ‘set and forget’ the exchange rates with the Open Exchange Rates API. Leave it automatic and never have to think about it again. Select the Auto Update Exchange Rates option.

Simply leave the ‘Set the exchange rate manually‘ unchecked on any currency you want automated.

For the rates set to auto, you can choose how often you want to check and update the rates. Choose hourly, once daily, twice daily, and weekly.

Need to set one or two manually for some reason? Just do it. You can individually set an exchange rate yourself by clicking the ‘Set the exchange rate manually’ box and setting a rate.

Important Note:
If you are or were using the third-party Aelia Currency Switcher extension you can migrate everything over to Multi Currency. Be sure you have our Multi Currency extension activated before migrating from an EDD version 2 site to an EDD version 3 site.

Learn more on this Doc

Fully Integrated and Supports 200 Currencies

You let us know that you wanted this functionality and didn’t want to rely on third party extensions. Set up Multi Currency and never worry about it again. It’s part of EDD’s official features now and we’ll keep maintaining and improving it.

Multi Currency supports over 200 world currencies. No matter where your site visitors are from, they won’t think twice about making a purchase, without any hassles or fees. This will set your website apart from the others.

You never have to deal with manual calculations or conversions again.

Multi Currency helps you grow your business without growing your busy work!

We know that Multi Currency will improve conversion rates. It’s such a simple way to grow your business.

Multi Currency is included with any EDD Pass.

• Have an EDD Pass? Click here to download and install Multi Currency (must be logged in), or
• Grab an EDD Pass today with 50%-off introductory pricing!

Thanks for using EDD. We’ll keep bringing you features like Multi Currency, to help increase your conversion rates. Did you hear about version 3.0? It’s a big deal, it’ll make improvements faster than ever.

Share your digital creations with the whole world!

Cheers,

Joe Wells
Product Educator, Easy Digital Downloads

P.S. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook or Twitter to stay up to date on EDD, WordPress, and digital creator tips.

The post New! Grow a Global Audience with Multi Currency first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

With Frontend Submissions (FES) you create an easy way for other people to submit products to your store. These ‘other people’ are called vendors. Once you have vendors, your site has become a marketplace.

In the past building a marketplace site was hard. But Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) makes it simple. No custom coding required!

Today we are excited to announce Frontend Submissions version 2.7. Running a marketplace website is easier than ever.

Here are the highlights of this release:

• An all-new experience for email management
• More intuitive menus and settings
• Accessibility enhancements that make FES better for everyone
• Behind-the-scenes improvements and fixes that make FES faster and more reliable

What Is A Marketplace? Why Would I Want to Build One?

You may be wondering what exactly a marketplace is. You may be thinking that it sounds hard to do, or there may be no reason for you to try building one. But there are many reasons to consider it.

Building a marketplace = adding value for your current and potential customers

More products in your store make more sales possible. That’s one nice benefit for you if you build a marketplace.

But let’s think about your customer. There they are, busy running their business and looking for solutions to their problems.

And you save the day, providing valuable solutions to their problems with your products. You have found a niche. A little segment of the market where your skills and experience can really help others.

Once you have a store set up that is serving a niche, you’re in business! The next step is to continually add more value for your current and potential customers.

One way to add value is to offer other related products (solutions) to their other problems. The fastest way to add more products to your store is often to sell other creator’s products. You don’t have time to build everything. So sell what’s already out there.

Curate a group of products for your customers. Now your store is becoming a one-stop shop. A marketplace.

How An FES Marketplace Works

1. First use EDD + FES to set up a way for other creators to submit products to sell in your store
2. Review vendor products as they come in
3. Approve those you want to sell
4. When these items are sold, you make money, and you pay a commission to the vendor. You get to decide the terms of the revenue split, and control the entire customer experience!

The first thing you’ll notice when setting up a marketplace is that there is a lot of emailing involved.

The good news is that we have thought through all the emails for you!

Not only that, with Frontend Submissions 2.7 we have rebuilt the entire email experience to make it easier than ever. Let’s take a look.

All-new Email Experience

The FES emails are now located under Downloads > Settings > Emails > Frontend Submissions.

Here we have a redesigned view of all the emails needed to manage the frontend submission process. It’s easy to see each email’s status and click through to edit.

You can quickly enable or disable each email with just a click. The individual emails are ready to send, with sensible default text.

Or, edit their content with the rich text editor. Make use of a wide array of Template Tags that automatically insert things like first names, last names, post title (the name of the product) and so on. Click here for a full Template Tag guide.

Redesigned Menu Structure

We’ve made Frontend Submissions more tightly integrated with Easy DIgital Downloads. FES has its own menu item for general settings under FES. The email settings have been moved under Emails as shown above.

Vendor Forms

Another big component of building a marketplace are the forms. You’ll need a form for vendors to register on your site, submit products, and create a profile. FES has all this built and ready for you.

FES includes a powerful form builder for customizing each form just as you need it for your business.

 Learn more about FES basic setup

Version 2.7 has a lot of behind-the-scenes improvements. The form editing interface has been updated with better accessibility, validation, and HTML 5 markup.

Other Improvements

There are also more than 15 subtle behind-the-scenes improvements and bug fixes to the plugin. We’ve even consolidated the base code to streamline it and make it more secure.

Mark(etplace) It Up

Turn your digital product store into a marketplace with Frontend Submissions. Make more money and help more people!

Commissions

When you sell outside vendor products in your store, you’ll need to pay them. This is called paying a commission. FES works perfectly with our Commissions extension.

Most people who use FES also use our Commissions extension. Don’t worry, you don’t have to buy both extensions! Both are included in a Professional Pass.

• Click here to upgrade an existing Pass to Professional
• Click here for 50%-off introductory pricing on a Professional Pass

If you already have a Professional Pass, log in to your account now and get started!

Thanks for using and supporting EDD. We are working every day to make EDD better, as fast as we can type.

Cheers to your growth,

Joe Wells
Product Educator, Easy Digital Downloads

P.S. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook or Twitter to stay up to date on EDD and relevant WordPress information.

The post New! Build A Marketplace with Frontend Submissions 2.7 first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

Keeping track of all your code and files so that your product works flawlessly for your customers is crucial. Thank goodness for git, right?

Today we are excited to announce Git Download Updater version 1.3.

Here are the highlights of this version:

• Deploy software packages using GitHub’s Releases
• Improved error handling and messages
• Other stability enhancements

What Is Git?

First let us explain git, just a bit, if you are not familiar with it. (Sheer poetry)

Git is a version control system for digital documents and computer code. It keeps track of every little change you make to your software product or codebase. It helps remote teams stay in sync with each other as they continuously make improvements.

With git you create a single place where all your files and code are stored; it’s called a repository. Most people call them ‘repos’ for short. Then, git automatically keeps track of any little changes committed to the repo. You know who did what, when, and why (via commit comments).

Git is used by software developers of all sorts. Other people use git too, to collaborate on writing books, creating music, maintaining legal documents, even designing 3D models.

Two of the most popular platforms for storing git repositories online are GitHub and Bitbucket.

Now, back to the highlights.

Deploy Software Packages Using GitHub’s Releases

In previous versions of Git Download Updater, you selected a GitHub tag and the plugin then downloaded the entire source code of the repository to attach to the product. This had some frustrating limitations. Using Composer? That meant you had to commit your /vendor/ directory—yuck!

In this new version, you can now select any of the assets uploaded to the corresponding GitHub release. This gives you more control over how files are organized and deployed.

As an example: you can use GitHub actions to build your production-ready zip file, attach the zip file to the release, and select this asset using Git Download Updater. You can work faster and prevent errors. Your customers get more reliable software.

Learn more about GitHub releases on their announcement post and this Doc.

*Please note; the Release Assets feature is only available when hosting your repositories on GitHub.

Improved Error Handling and Messages

There are a lot of moving parts between your Downloads (products) and your git repos. Sometimes something can go wrong. Often it’s just a little configuration error that is quick to fix.

We’ve added more detailed feedback to error messages to help you get back on track. It can be faster if you understand the error and fix it yourself. But don’t worry, our support team is also always here to help!

Other Stability Enhancements

We’ve also made a dozen or so behind-the-scenes improvements:

• The minimum PHP version is now 5.6.
• Improved compatibility with PHP 8.
• The new/edit download interface has been further updated to be consistent with the WordPress admin.
• The transient to store the list of repositories is now stored indefinitely, but can be manually refreshed.
• The warning modal has been updated for improved accessibility.

Git After It

Streamline your software releases! Add Git Download Updater and make your next version release faster for you while keeping it simple for your customers.

To download the Git Download Updater extension, you need to have an All Access Pass.

• Click here to upgrade your existing Pass
• Click here to get 50%-off introductory pricing on an All Access Pass

Git Download Updater works with repos hosted on GitHub and Bitbucket.

If you already have an All Access pass, log in to your account now and git it (I just can’t help myself, GitHub dad jokes ).

Thanks for using and supporting EDD. We have plenty of new features to roll out in 2022. We can’t wait to tell you about them!

Happy releasing,

Joe Wells
Product Educator, Easy Digital Downloads

P.S. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook or Twitter to stay up to date on EDD and relevant WordPress information.

The post New! Improve your Releases with Git Download Updater 1.3 first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

Some studies say it takes 5 times the expense to get a new customer. Others up to 25 times the expense! Either way…wow.

We’re here to help develop loyal customers. Today we bring you Invoices 1.3!

Happy customers are more likely to become repeat customers. Providing customers with easy access to their purchase information builds trust.

Here are the highlights of Invoices version 1.3 release:

1. Attractive invoices with no coding required
2. Secure (tokenized) invoice links for easy access
3. One-click PDF generation
4. Merging of Invoices and PDF Invoices into one extension

Attractive Invoices with No Coding Required

Create great-looking invoices all from your WordPress dashboard. There are 3 Invoice Styles to choose from.

• All 3 allow you to add a logo or graphic.
• “Default” and “Lines” styles allow you to set a color which is used throughout the lines in the document.
• A third “Minimal” style allows you to drop the lines if that is your preference.
  

Fully Customizable Invoices

The invoices are built with HTML, so you or a designer have the option to fully customize the style with CSS. Developers will appreciate the hooks available to change the output.

All this means you can tailor invoices to best suit your customers’ wants and needs. Those professional details go a long way to building trust and making your customers become repeat customers.

Improved Invoice Workflow

The Invoices extension has always allowed both store owners and customers to adjust the customer information on an invoice.

This is so a customer can include important information, for example; full customer address, or a VAT or tax number.

The workflow for Invoices used to look like this:

1. Click Generate Invoice
2. Fill out form to make edits to the invoice
3. Submit the form
4. View the Invoice

We wanted to improve that and make it more intuitive. We also have made the edit step an option that site owners can enable or disable.

Now the workflow for Invoices is:

1. Click View Invoice
2. The customer sees the invoice
   • Optional: Allow user to edit invoice

This is easier and more intuitive for customers. It has the added benefit of allowing you to disable customer invoice editing if that’s a feature you do not need.

All of this means you can give your customer self-serve access to attractive invoices for their records. This saves you time and labor in customer support.

The ease of use and transparency on your store will encourage customer loyalty.

Secure (Tokenized) Invoice Links for Easy Access

The custom URL used to view invoices has been updated to allow secure access to invoices. This means customers can view their invoices, without logging in, if they have the secure link.

Customers can share the invoice with their accountant or tax preparer with no fuss. Or they can easily access a nice printable invoice at any time, even if they are not logged in.

This is much more convenient for your customers. They just click and view.

This is much better than clicking, trying to log in, forgetting their password, resetting password and getting frustrated.

(I know, that never happens to you because you remember all your passwords on all your sites ).

When you make things convenient for your customers, you are developing customer loyalty.

One-click PDF Generation

You can now generate and download a PDF invoice with one click. They will have the styling you chose from the 3 Style Presets.

Merging of Invoices and PDF Invoices into One Extension

The best features of PDF Invoices are now a part of Invoices 1.3. So we think it will be more simple if we just roll these two extensions into one.

Everyone using either extension will have access to all features. There’s no more wondering which EDD Invoice extension is the best for your use case. Sweet deal!

Existing PDF Invoices user?

Perfect. None of your data will be affected. You just get more features!

If you have a PDF Invoices license, you can now log in to your account and grab Invoices any time you want. It’s yours to use as long as you keep your license subscription active.

All you have to do is log in to your EDD account area. Look for File Downloads. Next, look under Files and grab the Invoices ZIP file.

If you have an EDD Pass you can find Invoices under View My Downloads in your account area:

Remember: with the release of the Invoices extension version 1.3 we are recommending all users of the PDF Invoices extension switch over to the Invoices extension.

Want to keep more of your customers? Add attractive invoices to your site so you can make a good impression and make it easy for customers to access their purchase information.

To use Invoices you need an EDD Pass. Grab one today if you don’t have one.

To learn about all configuration options for Invoices 1.3 click here to view our Docs.

Thanks for using EDD to sell your digital creations. We’ll keep working on more great features to grow your business.

Joe Wells
Product Educator
Easy Digital Downloads

The post Introducing Invoices 1.3 – Impress Your Customers with Attractive Invoices first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

That’s HUGE!

This is why today, we’re excited to share our newest release of the Reviews extension to help you get more sales.

Here are the highlights of the Reviews 2.2 release:

• A new Reviews Block for easily displaying reviews with the Block Editor
• Improved structured data output for rich search results
• Other enhancements and bug fixes

The New Reviews Block

The most exciting feature in Reviews 2.2 is the Reviews Block.

The Reviews Block makes it simple to add reviews to your product pages. Here’s how it works. When you are editing a post or page with the block editor, go to the + button on the top left.

Search for or scroll down to the block called Reviews and insert it into your page.

You can select which product and which review you want to add to the post. The review, or reviews, are added to your post with professional styling.

Not using the block editor yet? Don’t worry.

The Reviews extension has full support for shortcodes and the classic editor. Visit our documentation to learn more.

Improved Structured Data for Rich Search Results

Have you ever Googled for an eBook, movie, or another product and saw additional details about a product in a special box?

That’s called Rich Snippets, and they can help you get higher rankings, more clicks, and of course more sales.

With our Reviews extension, we automatically add improved schema markup on your product pages, so your website can stand out in Google.

For example, let’s say you are selling an eBook called ‘The 1 Hour Workweek’ on your site. Here is your search result page without Reviews.

Now, here is your rich search result page with Reviews.

Which of these two search engine results would you rather have? The rich search result page is far better.

The free version of Easy Digital Downloads has support for basic structured data, including displaying product prices.

The Reviews extension takes this a step further by including stars, the average rating, and number of reviews given.

This is proven to help you stand out which means you get more clicks and higher sales.

Using the Reviews extension

Reviews allows you to collect and manage product reviews all within EDD.

Once installed, you’ll have a full-featured reviews system on your site. Customers can leave reviews, complete with a title, 1-5 star rating, and a comments field.

On your WordPress dashboard look for a new menu item on your left-side navigation. Under Downloads » Reviews, you’ll see each review as it comes in.

You can moderate the reviews the same way you manage comments on your WordPress site. There are options to approve, unapprove, or mark as spam.

The plugin will output everything as properly structured data. It will look good visually to your site visitors. It will also look good for the Google bots that crawl your site to create search results. You don’t have to code anything.

The Reviews extension includes CSS classes. It will look great without any coding or customization. However, you or your developer can also use the built-in CSS classes to do more customization if desired.

Aside from the awesome new features, Reviews version 2.2 also includes 9 other enhancements and 7 bug fixes. Learn more on the changelog.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and add Reviews on your site, so you can increase your sales with the power of social proof.

To download Reviews, you need to have an Extended, Professional, or All Access Pass. Get started or upgrade your Pass here.

If you already have one of these passes, log in to your account now and grab it.

As always, we want to thank you for your continued support of EDD, and we look forward to bringing you more amazing features to grow your business.

To higher conversions,

Joe Wells
Product Educator
Easy Digital Downloads

The post Introducing Reviews 2.2 – New Ways to Drive Sales Using Social Proof first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

What is a staged rollout?

A Staged Rollout is a method of releasing updates to your software to only a defined percentage of users, as opposed to releasing the update to all of your users at the same time. Instead of an “everyone or no one” approach, you can gradually distribute your latest update to some of your users. For example, when first released you may choose to only show the update to 10% of users, and over the course of a few days.

Used by numerous software companies world wide, you may have been part of a staged rollout without even knowing it. Common real world examples are mobile phone app releases as well as sites like Netflix and Uber.

The benefits of using staged rollouts.

A staged rollout can serve many purposes depending on the type of software you build. By using a staged rollout, you can take the time to analyze the real world performance impacts of your update, identify any unforeseen bugs, and verify the releases stability prior to giving to all of your users.

As always, we know that you take every precaution to release stable and bug free software to your users, but we live in the real world, where there are some things we just cannot account for. Conflicts with other software, server configurations, and user behavior are all things that organically become apparent as you release an update.

With a Staged Rollout, you can slow down the exposure of your changes to users by only releasing to a specified percentage of them, in order to impact as few people as possible. A bug is much better controlled when only 10% of your users experience it than 100%. If you’ve created a new user interface, getting it in the hands of 25% of users before making it widely available, gives you the time to take feedback from real world users, and release follow up improvements based on this feedback.

How to use staged rollouts with Software Licensing

The Software Licensing extension for Easy Digital Downloads allows you to quickly and easily configure a staged rollout for your releases. When editing your licensed product, you have the ability to do the following:

• Enable staged rollouts.
• Define the percentage of sites that get the update.
• Release the update to sites based on the current installed version.

Staged rollouts is available to all users of our Software Licensing extension who are on version 3.8 or greater. Thanks to the work by Thomas Maier and the team at WP AdvancedAds for inspiring this feature and writing the first proof of concept, which allowed us to quickly integrate this directly into Software Licensing for all users.

The post Take control of your release cycles with Staged Rollouts first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

Today we’re excited to offer all users the ability to use the new PayPal Commerce integration for Easy Digital Downloads.

How can I use PayPal Commerce with Easy Digital Downloads.

As of Easy Digital Downloads 2.11, PayPal Commerce is included in Easy Digital Downloads core for free. With this version of the PayPal Commerce integration, you will be able to accept payments via PayPal just as you have been with PayPal Standard. Upon enabling the gateway, you need to connect your Easy Digital Downloads store to PayPal and you are done! No API Keys to copy and paste, no IPN URLs to setup.

How is PayPal Commerce better than PayPal Standard?

Increased reliability

PayPal Standard has long been the go-to integration for quickly accepting payments via PayPal. However, over the years many improvements have been made to the payment gateway industry. PayPal Commerce communicates with your Easy Digital Downloads store via webhooks instead of the older IPN method of communication. According to PayPal, the new PayPal Commerce API is 5% more reliable when it comes to notifying your site of new sales, which results in fewer payments left ‘pending’.

Simplified configuration

PayPal Commerce offers a quick and easy way to connect your Easy Digital Downloads store with your PayPal account. Gone are the days of copying API Keys, usernames, PDT Tokens, and IPN URLs. We’ve built the new integration to be a single click, and upon completion, we’ll verify all the necessary permissions and webhooks are configured, giving you peace of mind that your store can accept payments.

Customers trust PayPal

With PayPal being a world leader in payments, it is no surprise that customers like ours and yours trust the PayPal brand. With the PayPal Commerce integration for Easy Digital Downloads, your customers will have no surprises at checkout, as they are seeing the PayPal brand while they complete their checkout with you.

How can you start using PayPal Commerce today?

After you’ve updated your Easy Digital Downloads plugin to version 2.11, you can head over to your gateway settings and connect your store to PayPal.

Once connected to the new PayPal Commerce gateway, head over to your General gateway settings and be sure to enable the “PayPal” gateway, and you should see the new PayPal button on your checkout.

What if I use the PayPal Pro or PayPal Express extension?

As the PayPal Pro and PayPal Express integrations are also being deprecated in the future, every user who has purchased a license key for the PayPal Pro/PayPal Express integration will be given access to the new PayPal Commerce Pro integration based on their previous purchase. Any Professional Pass, Extended Pass, or All Access Pass holders will have access to this new integration as well, via their purchased pass. Just visit the Account page to view your license key and download the latest version.

The new PayPal Commerce Pro extension provides the same on-site card payment field experience that the PayPal Pro integration previously did, but in a new and more secure integration thanks to PayPal’s new checkout experience.

What is the difference between PayPal Commerce and the PayPal Commerce Pro extension?

The PayPal Commerce integration included with Easy Digital Downloads core allows you to accept payments via PayPal (just like PayPal Standard) as well as Subscription payments (with the Recurring Payments extension). The PayPal Commerce Pro extension opens up access to on-site card payments, a number of European gateway payment methods, and Venmo.

Ready to get started?

We’ve outlined how to get your store connected to the new PayPal Commerce integration in our documentation, so you can start accepting payments more reliably today!

The post Introducing the new PayPal Commerce integrations for Easy Digital Downloads first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

On November 1, 2019, PayPal will be entirely disabling support for purchasing multiple subscriptions in a single checkout.

Earlier this year, in January 2019, PayPal disabled support for multiple subscriptions on newer accounts. Merchant accounts that had been selling subscriptions prior to January 1, 2017 were grandfathered in and permitted to continue selling multiple subscriptions in a single checkout.

Just under three weeks ago, PayPal sent the following email to affected merchants:

Unfortunately PayPal has now decided to cease supporting multiple subscriptions entirely. So now, regardless of when the account was created, PayPal merchants are no longer able to sell multiple subscriptions in a single checkout.

This change takes effect on November 1, 2019.

We have released an update to our Recurring Payments plugin. This update is to ensure your customers do not encounter an error during checkout.

Customers that attempt to purchase multiple subscriptions through PayPal Website Payments Pro or PayPal Express will be shown the following message on checkout:

Only one subscription may be purchased through this payment method per checkout.

A lot of stores frequently sell multiple subscriptions in a single purchase and we fully recognize that this is not an ideal experience for customers. Unfortunately this is entirely outside the realm of our control and we’ve had no choice but to comply with PayPal’s sudden change.

To help the checkout experience when purchasing multiple subscriptions, we recommend disabling PayPal and, instead, using a payment gateway that continues to support multiple subscriptions. Our recommendation is Stripe.

If you’d like to continue offering PayPal alongside another gateway but also proactively prevent customers from having a poor checkout experience, please refer to our Development blog post where we have included a method for automatically removing PayPal as a payment method when there are multiple items in a checkout.

The post Important update for Recurring Payments and PayPal first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

Update: Stripe Gateway 2.7 and Recurring Payments 2.9 are officially released, offering SCA Support for Stripe payments.

I’m pleased to let you know that the following extensions have betas available that enable accepting payments that require SCA:

• Stripe Gateway 2.7 Beta 1
• Recurring Payments 2.9 Beta 1

So without further delay, here are the big changes coming in each of these releases

How to test beta releases

In order to help ensure the final release of these extensions go as smoothly as possible, we need your help testing this beta version.

Testing the beta is very simple. Simply log into your testing site that has Easy Digital Downloads with Stripe and/or Recurring Payments installed and activated and navigate to Downloads → Tools → Beta Versions and check the box for the extensions you want to allow beta testing for.

The beta update will now be available as a standard WordPress plugin update from your Plugins page, though it could take up to a few hours for the notification to appear. For further details you can view this documentation about enabling betas for extensions.

Note: we do not recommend you test the beta on a live site, please do all testing on a staging site. While we do our very best to not cause issues during updates, sometimes issues do slip through unnoticed, so having a staging / testing site is very important.

Stripe 2.7 Beta 1

SCA and PaymentIntents support

We’ve refactored our Stripe integration from the ground up to support this new platform that not only supports the Payment Intents API, but also complies with the SCA regulations. When required by their bank, the customer will be prompted with the SCA/3DS challenge prior to completing their purchase:

Inline card errors with Stripe

You’ve been asking for it, and finally, with the help of the Stripe Elements platform, customers who pay via credit card with Stripe will see inline card error messages that do not require a page refresh.

Important: If you’ve customized your checkout page to make changes to the Stripe card fields, please read the following paragraphs.

You may have noticed that the credit card fields have been changed quite a bit. Instead of three form fields for the card number, expiration date, and CVV, we have what looks like one form field. This is part of Stripe Elements, and is necessary for Stripe to work now.

If you have customized your checkout page, and unhooked our card fields with something like the following, you will need to remove this customization for the checkout and card management system to continue working.

remove_action( 'edd_stripe_new_card_form', 'edd_stripe_new_card_form' );

Stripe Checkout modal deprecation

As we covered in our initial post about SCA, Stripe has removed the ability to use the Stripe Checkout modal in this version of their API. While they do have a replacement Checkout system, it is no longer a modal and requires the customer to be redirected off your store in order to complete their purchase. Because this is such a large change in behavior, we chose not to simply move to the new Checkout, and instead redirect to the Easy Digital Downloads checkout page instead. In the future we are looking into a solution to reintroduce a ‘checkout-like’ feature that will give you the ability to use a modal once again.

PHP version requirements

Due to all the amazing new functionality that we’ve been provided via the Stripe v3 library, PaymentIntents, and the Elements checkout fields, it was necessary that we bump our PHP version requirement to PHP 5.6 or greater.

Other notable changes

• Users now have the ability to remove all cards from their account as well as add a new card, when they have no cards associated with their account.
• Store owners can now choose to only load the Stripe Javascript library when it is needed.
• A much improved experience with the billing address form.
• Updated to version 2019-08-14 of the Stripe API

Recurring Payments 2.9 Beta 1

As with Stripe, we needed to make some significant changes to our Recurring Payments extension to support SCA and the new Stripe API versions.

Mixed cart support for Stripe

Due to some changes in the way that Stripe payments are created for subscription purchases, it is now possible for customers who choose to checkout using Stripe to purchase a subscription and non-subscription product at the same time. For the mean-time, this feature is limited to when using Stripe at checkout.

Other notable changes

Most of the changes for this release are ‘behind-the-scenes’ changes. There are some other highlights that will likely be of interest for you though.

• Ability to change the text for the link to cancel a subscription.
• Admins can now configure and receive an email when a customer cancels a subscription.
• Fixed a bug that caused PayPal Pro/Express to sometimes handle each other’s IPN calls.
• Added a checkbox to allow cancelling a subscription when refunding a payment.
• Admins can now change the price ID a subscription is associated with, when the product has variable prices.

So what about other gateways?

PayPal Pro

We’ve recently started building out support for PayPal Pro, but at this time we do not have a working integration with Cardinal Commerce, the vendor we’ve chosen to work with. We eagerly await their continued support in helping us become SCA compliant with PayPal Pro.

Braintree

We have added Braintree to our list of gateways to support in the near future. At this time we are researching what it will take to get Braintree SCA support into Easy Digital Downloads, and will communicate when if and when it is ready.

The post Easy Digital Downloads SCA update first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.

Since this is such a major change, we wanted to phase in this release in order to work out as many issues as we could before making it generally available, and today is that day. Here are the big changes you can expect to see in Software Licensing 3.6.5.

Custom database tables

As we’ve been doing with our other extensions, store owners will be presented with a migration utility that allows them to move the data from the old custom post types, to the new data format. With this version we’ve introduced a more user friendly experience that has more user-facing feedback as to how things are migrating.

If your site was already part of the previous “roll out” process, you would have seen the following migration notice in versions 3.6 – 3.6.4. You do not need to run another migration process if you have previously migrated to the custom tables already.

Initially, store owners will be presented with an expandable admin notice informing them of this upgrade, and what it encompasses.

Instead of immediately starting the upgrade, as we have previously done, the store owner needs to click to start this process. There are a possible 3 steps that need to be completed on the initial view:

• Migrate Licenses
• Update bundle licenses
• Update license logs

Since it may be possible that your store does not need all of these options, only the relevant steps will be shown:

Starting the upgrade will ‘batch’ this process by only migrating a handful of licenses at a time, to help reduce any risks of causing errors due to server resources. When step 1 is completed a check is run to see if the number of legacy license keys matches the number of new license keys.

If these numbers match, any remaining steps will be automatically started. If the numbers are different, however, the remaining steps will not be started automatically, allowing store owners to go see if there was a reason for this, and verify any necessary data was migrated prior to starting the remaining steps.

When all steps are completed, store owners will be notified they can navigate away from the upgrades page to verify data. At this point their store is 100% using the new license tables. The old data still exists, until the final ‘Remove Legacy Data’ step is performed.

If you are running a large store, with more than a thousand licenses, we recommend running this migration over WP-CLI with the provided command. This will ensure the fastest and most reliable method of upgrading a large data set.

If you are a developer and would like to know the new database table structures, you can see our blog post announcing the beta to see this.

New license capabilities

In the past, Software Licensing has always used some of the Easy Digital Downloads roles and capabilities to restrict who can view and modify licenses. In version 3.6, we’ve added 3 capabilities, which allow a granular customization as to what roles can view, edit, and delete licenses from a store. By default, the mappings for license capabilities are tied to EDD Core roles, but can be customized to your preference with a role management plugin or custom integration.

• view_licenses: Allows viewing the list table and details page of individual license keys. The capability has been added to these roles:
  • Shop Manager
  • Shop Worker
  • Administrator
• manage_licenses: Allows modifying license data. The capability has been added to these roles:
  • Shop Manager
  • Shop Worker
  • Administrator
• delete_licenses: Allows deleting license records. The capability has been added to these roles:
  • Shop Manager
  • Administrator

Download betas from the front-end

In version 3.5, we added support for adding beta versions of licensed products. In version 3.6, customers are able to download beta versions from within their accounts, just like they do with stable versions. These beta files will appear anywhere that EDD outputs download files by default.

Swap variable price assignment

If a license is attached to a product that has variable pricing enabled, users with the ‘modify_licenses’ capability can now change the variable price assignment of a license.

Other improvements

• More information has been added to the Licenses list table.
• Improved performance for front end license management views.
• Added the ability to regenerate a license key for an existing license.
• Item ID has been added to the API responses.
• License search has been improved to allow partial license search.
• Front-end tables have the .edd-table class added to allow better theme support.
• Changelog output can now be filtered.
• Refunding a renewal payment rolls back the license expiration.
• Better tool-tips for license management.
• Removed final keyword from the EDD_SL_License class.
• License export tool now uses batch processing API to avoid timeouts.
• Upgrade and Renewal dates are now stored in License meta.
• Added the customer name and email address to the licenses export.
• Added support for plugin Icons to appear in the Updates page (requires WordPress 4.9+)
• Allow product level renewal discount settings.
• Updated the readme and markdown parser libraries.
• Added a test to the list of local subdomains.

Notable bug fixes

• Fixed a fatal error when EDD was not active.
• Improved overall performance of license count checks.
• Changelog widget configuration could fail on stores with a large number of products.
• Lifetime child license expiration is now tied to their parent licenses.
• activate_license API call logged the activation twice in the license logs.
• Upgrading from lifetime to a bundle caused some issues with the expiration dates.
• Deleting a payment record now properly affects license meta for renewals and upgrades.
• Beta file URLs are no longer forced to http.
• Sample plugin now uses time() instead of current_time( 'timestamp' ).
• Using the empty_cart function now removes any renewal session data.
• Using Emoji in changelogs could cause issues on sites where the database schema is set to UTF-8.
• Added a health check to the EDD_SL_Plugin_Updater to prevent issues when stores are not responding.
• Managing a license now requires a user to be logged in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did the status counts change after the migration?

You may notice, after running the migration, that some of the status counts in the license list table have changed. This is because during the migration, some checks were run against the licenses to correct any incorrect statuses. While you may see some differences in the counts for individual statuses, the overall license count should remain the same.

Can my store still receive new payments and generate licenses while this migration is running?

Yes! While this migration is running, your store will still be able to process payments and generate new licenses, while the old data is being migrated.

Installing this update.

This is a significant update for Software Licensing and we have tested it as extensively as possible. As we always do, we suggest first applying these changes and running the migration routines on a staging site prior to doing this on your production store, to avoid any unforeseen issues unique to your store.

As we have been slowly rolling out this update, we feel like we have caught many of the common issues already, but if you do find one, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team at https://easydigitaldownloads.com/support.

The post Software Licensing 3.6.5 is now available for all license holders first appeared on Easy Digital Downloads.