Digitally ‑ Digital Products vs. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products Comparison

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Digitally ‑ Digital Products vs. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products: At a Glance
3. Deep Dive Comparison
4. The Alternative: Unifying Commerce, Content, and Community Natively
5. Conclusion
6. FAQ

Introduction

Moving into the world of digital commerce requires more than just a great product. It demands a delivery system that feels invisible to the customer while remaining bulletproof for the store owner. When a merchant decides to sell digital downloads, software keys, or instructional PDFs on Shopify, the choice of fulfillment software becomes the backbone of the customer experience. A slow download or a missing license key email can quickly turn a profitable sale into a customer support nightmare.

Short answer: Digitally ‑ Digital Products is a mature, feature-rich choice for merchants needing advanced security like PDF stamping and license key management with a high volume of orders. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products serves as a streamlined, budget-friendly alternative for those who prioritize simplicity and unlimited orders at a lower entry price. For brands seeking to eliminate friction entirely, a native platform that keeps users inside the store ecosystem often provides the smoothest path to growth.

The following analysis provides an objective comparison of Digitally ‑ Digital Products and Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products. This review examines their feature sets, pricing structures, and operational trade-offs to help merchants identify the tool that aligns with their current volume and long-term business goals.

Digitally ‑ Digital Products vs. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products: At a Glance

Deep Dive Comparison

Core Features and Fulfillment Workflows

Digitally ‑ Digital Products focuses on creating a robust environment for multiple types of digital assets. It supports e-books, PDFs, MP3s, videos, and license keys. One of its standout features is the ability to set download limits and expirations. This is critical for merchants who want to prevent link sharing or unauthorized distribution of their content. By allowing store owners to control exactly how many times a file can be accessed, the app adds a layer of protection that is essential for high-value intellectual property.

Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products takes a more simplified approach to the workflow. It is designed to "transform" existing Shopify products into digital downloads with a few clicks. While it also supports license keys and various file types, the emphasis is on speed and ease of use. It provides automatic email delivery and can instantly notify customers when updates are made to their digital products. This notification feature is particularly useful for software developers or authors who release frequent patches or updated versions of their work.

License Key Management and Automation

Managing license keys manually is a scalability killer. Digitally ‑ Digital Products allows for both automated and manual delivery of keys, promo codes, and vouchers. This flexibility is useful for merchants who might want to vet certain high-value sales before releasing a key. Furthermore, the inclusion of QR codes for unique access adds a modern touch for mobile-focused users. The ability to track license usage via built-in analytics gives store owners insight into how their products are being used after the sale.

Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products also emphasizes license key management, claiming the ability to generate unlimited keys automatically. For a merchant who sells software or membership access codes, the ability to churn out keys without hitting a ceiling is a significant advantage. The simplicity of their interface suggests that setting up a "key pool" is meant to be a straightforward process, though the lack of merchant reviews makes it difficult to verify the reliability of this automation under heavy load.

Security and Content Protection

Security is often the deciding factor for digital merchants. Digitally ‑ Digital Products offers PDF stamping, which is a powerful deterrent against piracy. By embedding customer-specific information into a PDF, the app makes it much harder for buyers to share the file on public forums without being identified. This feature is often a "must-have" for educational content creators and publishers.

In contrast, Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products does not explicitly list PDF stamping in its primary feature set. Its security model focuses more on the delivery side—ensuring files are sent automatically and providing quick download speeds. While this is sufficient for many casual digital products, it may leave a gap for merchants who are highly concerned about the redistribution of their proprietary documents.

Pricing Structure and Value Proposition

The pricing models of these two apps cater to different stages of business growth. Digitally ‑ Digital Products uses a tiered approach that scales with order volume and storage needs.

• Free to install: 50 orders per month and 5GB storage.
• Pro ($7.99/mo): 200 orders and 15GB storage.
• Plus ($12.99/mo): 500 orders and 30GB storage.
• Unlimited ($24.99/mo): No order or storage limits.

For a growing store, these tiers provide a predictable path, but the jump from 500 orders to unlimited is a significant price increase. However, the inclusion of "Digital Lotteries" and "Auto Fulfill" on the paid tiers adds extra functionality that justifies the cost for active stores.

Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products offers a more aggressive pricing strategy aimed at cost-conscious merchants.

• Free: 30 orders and 300MB storage.
• Standard ($2.95/mo): Unlimited orders and 12GB storage.
• Plus ($4.95/mo): 120GB storage and priority support.

Downly’s "Standard" plan is particularly interesting because it removes branding and offers unlimited orders for less than $3.00. This is a very competitive price point for merchants who have high transaction volumes but small file sizes. When comparing plan costs against total course revenue, merchants often find that a flat-rate plan is more sustainable than one that taxes growth through order limits.

Branding and Customization

Maintaining a cohesive brand image is vital for customer trust. Digitally ‑ Digital Products allows for the customization of both emails and download pages. This ensures that when a customer receives their digital item, the design matches the store where they made the purchase. Branded delivery pages can also be used as marketing opportunities, where merchants can suggest related products or offer discount codes for future purchases.

Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products includes branding removal on its $2.95 plan. While the data suggests a user-friendly interface, it provides fewer details on the depth of customization available for the delivery emails and pages compared to Digitally. For some merchants, a simple, clean delivery email is enough. For others, the ability to deeply customize the post-purchase experience is a requirement for their brand strategy.

Reliability and Social Proof

Data-driven decisions require looking at how other merchants have fared with these tools. Digitally ‑ Digital Products has a established history on the Shopify App Store, with 28 reviews and a 4.5-star rating. This provides a baseline of trust, indicating that the app generally delivers on its promises and that the developer, Conversion Pro Plus, provides a level of support that satisfies most users.

Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products currently shows zero reviews and a zero rating in the provided data. This does not necessarily mean the app is poor; it may simply be a newer entrant to the market. However, for an established business, choosing an app without a track record involves a higher degree of risk. Merchants must weigh the cost savings of the $2.95 plan against the peace of mind that comes with a tried-and-tested solution.

Performance and User Experience

In digital fulfillment, speed is synonymous with performance. Customers expect their downloads to be available the moment the payment is confirmed. Both apps prioritize instant delivery. Digitally ‑ Digital Products utilizes "secure hosting" to ensure that files are delivered safely. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products highlights "quick download speed" as a key benefit of its platform.

One subtle but important difference lies in how customers access their products. Digitally ‑ Digital Products mentions working with "Checkout Extensions" and "Customer accounts," suggesting a tighter integration with the modern Shopify checkout experience. This allows for a more integrated flow where the customer can potentially access their download without even leaving the thank-you page. Downly also supports automatic emails, which is the standard fallback for digital delivery.

Storage and File Size Constraints

The "storage" vs "file size" distinction is a common point of confusion. Storage refers to the total amount of data a merchant can host on the app's servers. File size refers to the maximum size of a single digital product.

Digitally ‑ Digital Products offers up to 2GB per file on its Unlimited plan, and this can be increased upon request. This makes it a viable option for selling high-resolution video files or large software bundles. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products states it has "no upload max file size limit" on its Standard plan, which is a bold claim that could be very attractive for creators selling 4K video content or massive architectural assets. However, their total storage on the Plus plan is capped at 120GB, whereas Digitally offers "Unlimited Storage" on its top tier.

The Alternative: Unifying Commerce, Content, and Community Natively

While choosing between Digitally and Downly often comes down to specific file-handling features, many merchants eventually hit a wall called "platform fragmentation." This occurs when a store uses a patchwork of different apps to handle digital goods, courses, and customer communities. Each app might send its own emails, require its own login, or host content on a separate subdomain. For the customer, this creates a disjointed experience that feels less like a brand and more like a collection of separate tools.

Fragmented systems also lead to increased customer support friction. If a customer loses their download email from one app but can see their order history in Shopify, they may become frustrated when the two systems don't talk to each other. This is where the concept of a native platform becomes a strategic advantage. By keeping customers at home on the brand website, merchants can ensure that every interaction—from the first click to the final lesson in a course—happens within the Shopify environment.

Tevello is built on this philosophy of "All-in-One Native" integration. Instead of acting as an external delivery layer, it lives inside the Shopify ecosystem. This means customers use their existing Shopify account to access their digital purchases, courses, and community forums. There are no separate passwords to remember and no confusing redirects. When a merchant is securing a fixed cost structure for digital products, they are also securing a more stable and professional customer journey.

The impact of this unified approach is visible in real-world results. For example, how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses demonstrates the power of combining physical and digital goods seamlessly. When a customer buys a physical kit and finds their instructional video waiting for them in their account immediately, the perceived value of the purchase skyrockets. This hybrid model is much harder to execute when using apps that only focus on file delivery without a native content dashboard.

Furthermore, fixing a fragmented system can lead to massive improvements in the bottom line. One merchant doubled its store's conversion rate by fixing a fragmented system that previously relied on disconnected platforms. By achieving a 100% improvement in conversion rate, they proved that reducing technical friction for the customer is one of the most effective ways to drive sales.

For store owners concerned about the long-term viability of their tech stack, all the key features for courses and communities should ideally work in harmony. Whether it is strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively or simply ensuring that a single PDF download is easy to find, the native approach eliminates the "duct-tape" feel of many Shopify stores. When you seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify, it becomes clear that the goal is not just to deliver a file, but to build a destination for the customer.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Digitally ‑ Digital Products and Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products, the decision comes down to the specific needs for security versus the desire for low-cost, high-volume order fulfillment. Digitally ‑ Digital Products is the clear frontrunner for those who require PDF stamping, advanced license key tracking, and a proven track record within the Shopify community. Its tiered pricing reflects a more feature-complete tool for established businesses. Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products, meanwhile, offers an incredibly low entry price for unlimited orders, making it a compelling option for new stores or those with high-frequency, low-file-size sales who are willing to grow with a newer platform.

However, as a digital business matures, the focus often shifts from simply "delivering a file" to "cultivating a customer." Specialized download apps are excellent at the former, but they can sometimes struggle with the latter. By assessing app-store ratings as a trust signal, one can see that the most successful digital brands eventually seek out solutions that unify their content and commerce. A native integration reduces the technical overhead of managing multiple logins and disconnected delivery flows, allowing the merchant to focus on creating great content rather than troubleshooting email delivery issues.

Choosing a platform that allows for predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees ensures that as your community grows, your profit margins remain protected. Whether you are selling a single PDF or an entire library of video lessons, the goal should always be to provide a seamless, branded experience that keeps users coming back.

To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

Is it better to have a limit on orders or a limit on storage?

This depends entirely on your product type. If you sell large 4K video files, storage and file size limits are your primary concern. If you sell many small PDF guides, order limits will affect you more. Generally, as a business grows, "unlimited orders" becomes more important to avoid surprise costs during high-traffic periods like Black Friday.

Does Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products offer PDF stamping?

Based on the current data, Downly ‑ Sell Digital Products does not list PDF stamping as a feature. It focuses more on ease of use and license key automation. If you require customer-specific information to be embedded in your PDFs to prevent piracy, Digitally ‑ Digital Products is the more appropriate choice between these two.

Can I use these apps to sell software license keys?

Yes, both apps have dedicated features for license keys. Digitally allows for both manual and automated delivery, while Downly emphasizes the ability to generate unlimited keys automatically. Both are suitable for software or membership code distribution.

How does a native, all-in-one platform compare to specialized external apps?

Specialized external apps are often excellent for one specific task, like sending a file or generating a key. However, a native, all-in-one platform integrates these functions directly into the Shopify storefront. This means customers don't have to leave your site to access their content, they use their existing Shopify login, and the merchant can more easily bundle digital content with physical products. This typically results in higher customer satisfaction and lower support volume.