DLGuard has existed now for several years providing an economical and low-fi way to sell digital downloads from a web server. This DLGuard review highlights the key features and benefits found, along with its main issue, during three years using the product on small sites.
Software for digital sales management range from an array of costly enterprise level products down to those targeting small businesses – with DLGuard being one such product. The product’s scripts cover all the shopping cart, checkout payment handling and automation (tracking customers, sending emails, etc) that are required for basic sales management.
While installation consists of ten simple steps, initializing your inventory and customizing the web forms (for the shopping cart & auto-responder emails) can take a little more time if your coding is not good. Customizing the pages is worth doing so that they blend in with your own website design. Administering your inventory is simply a case of setting up the download folder, specifying digital files and providing some meta-data on the product. My first foray into online sales with DLGuard was when I was writing ebooks, so the small inventory of PDF format ebooks was easily administered.
The shopping cart itself can handle/store any number of products along with free products and membership sales. If your site offers free downloads then DLGuard can be used for capturing customers email addresses for your own mailing lists. Membership sites provide a passive monthly income stream so are becoming an increasing popular way of monetizing blogs. You may not wish to setup membership sections on your site, but having the functionality in DLGuard at least gives you the option to use it in the future if you change your mind.
As with any download sales tool protecting the hyperlink from misuse will always be a crucial feature. DLGuard takes the approach of allowing the site owner configure the time period for which the link stays valid as well as configure the number of download tries that can be attempted. This may catch out some genuine customers who don’t download the digital media in time, but at least the products reporting will track any download attempts so you can gauge if the link is being shared.
One key issue that many small web entrepreneurs will have with the product is the 2 domain limit specified in its license. Many users will have several sites which they wish to install a shopping cart/sale tool. In this case, you will either need to pay for the extra licenses or settle for a single sales server (one web server that handles the checkout process for several sites).
DLGuard is ideally targeted to small business owners wishing to dip their toe in ecommerce. In such a context, it’s a stable low-maintenance product that is easy to set up and use. It can offer an additional income stream if your site receives enough traffic. But if your site has low volumes then your better option would be to place your digital products on dedicated online services (ebook publishers, software hubs, etc.).