How to sell subscriptions with Easy Digital Downloads

Decide what the customer receives and how often they pay. Choose a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly billing period, then decide whether to offer a free trial, a signup fee, a fixed number of payments or an ongoing subscription.

If the subscription grants access to lessons or member-only pages rather than downloadable files, check that your membership or LMS integration can use the subscription status to control access.

Easy Digital Downloads core can sell one-off digital products, but automatic subscription billing requires the Recurring Payments extension. Without it, the manual route is to take recurring payments through another service, create or update customer access yourself and record renewals manually.

That approach is only reasonable for a very small number of customers. It does not give you automatic renewal records, gateway notifications, customer self-service or reliable access changes, so a failed payment can leave someone with access when they should have lost it.

Install and activate Recurring Payments, then configure a payment gateway that supports it. Stripe and PayPal are supported options, but each gateway has its own connection and notification requirements.

For Stripe, configure the webhooks shown in Downloads → Settings → Payments → Stripe. For PayPal, follow the current EDD integration instructions. If the gateway cannot notify your site, payments may succeed while renewals remain missing or stuck in EDD.

Go to Downloads → All Downloads → Add New, or edit an existing download. In the Download Prices section, set Recurring to Yes, then enter the price, billing period and any trial, signup fee or payment limit.

Enable the settings that display subscription terms and signup fees if customers need to see them before checkout. Purchases containing a recurring product require the customer to log in or create an account. Changing a product to recurring affects future purchases, not existing sales.

Open the Recurring Payments settings under Downloads → Settings → Payments. Enable Limit File Downloads if downloads should remain available only while the subscription is active. Decide separately whether completed subscriptions should retain access.

Edit the EDD customer account or order history page and add the Recurring Payments account block or shortcode supplied by the extension. Customers can then view subscriptions, update payment details, cancel and, where supported, renew from their account.

Use test mode or a gateway sandbox to make a purchase, confirm the subscription appears in Downloads → Subscriptions, check the renewal record and test cancellation. Also test a declined payment and verify that the gateway notification reaches WordPress.

Do not skip this before launch. The common Friday problem is a customer being charged by Stripe or PayPal while EDD shows no renewal because a webhook, IPN or other gateway notification was not configured correctly.

For most stores, use Easy Digital Downloads with the Recurring Payments extension rather than building renewal handling yourself. It adds recurring product settings, gateway-driven renewals, subscription administration, renewal reporting and customer self-service to an EDD store.

This is the practical choice when you need automatic billing and access management for digital downloads, software, courses or an all-access membership.