Restored Traditions review for Digital Downloads

Nov. 5, 2013

PRO: It's free and supports multiple files for one product, which is the primary reason we switched to Shopify. We only sell .jpg files. ANNOYING BUT BEARABLE BECAUSE IT'S FREE: Having to do some minor things twice, "re installing" the app every time we start using it again, and not having the download link show up on the order confirmation page. UNACCEPTABLE: 8% of our orders have one of three technical problems (yes, I spreadsheeted the data to get that figure): 1) The email download doesn't show up (yes, we verified that it wasn't in their spam folder) 2) In Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows 8, customers download the .jpg file but it saves as a MHT file that they can't use (customer service nightmare here). 3) Customer clicks link to download, and it simply says the limit has been exceeded (yes, we verified that the product had a download limit of 2). On average, we receive a technical complaint directly caused by the Shopify app every 5.5 days. We've verified that other complaints we've received have been at the user end and did not include those in our data set to give you the above numbers. CONCLUSION: I don't expect a free app to have the shiny features of a paid app, and I don't even think the paid solutions are that overpriced. I do expect this free app to do what Shopify says it should do in its second bullet point as of 11-5-13: "Customers get access to content instantly." Shopify's description of this app is true 92% of the time. So Shopify either needs to change the app description to reflect the truth (come on copywriter, get creative), or it should have one of its developers walk away from the tapped keg, grab some Tim Horton's coffee, work out some bugs and write some scripts. I look forward to Shopify making this ok app great!