Digital Access Pass (DAP) vs DLGuard Review

This is a review of my research regarding DigitalAccessPass (DAP) and DLGuard. Both are 2 powerful gateways built to sell your digital e-products. Their differences are mainly in the amount of options they have in delivering the product, securing the product, and displaying the product. Ultimately, I chose to go with DAP and I’m very happy so far. Nonetheless, I think my research can help others make the right decision for them.

 

Selling Ebooks and Videos

I was looking to sell an ebook on my WordPress site. I was trying to decide between ClickBank, E-Junkie, and Amazon but decided not to go with either (for reasons to be explained in another article). I owned a WordPress site and wanted to sell with the 2 options:

• sell a digital product securely, so  buyers cannot share the download link
• not pay high transaction fees (ClickBank costs 9% + $50 setup fee)
• have options to give out coupons

Ultimately, I realized that I had to use my own payment system if I wanted these features. My research lead me to many plugins and scripts for WordPress but the two that stood out were Digital Access Pass and DLGuard. In short, they are both excellent shopping cart scripts to help you sell and manage your digital products. They can do the similar things but in very different ways…

 

DLGuard Review

DLGuard is created and still maintained by Sam Stephens, a REALLY NICE GUY who offers amazing support. I know because I see him answer all questions on the forums.

DLGuard is designed to sell single items, multiple items, and memberships. The script runs as a stand-alone script and will take a little extra time and effort if you want to use it with WordPress.

DLGuard features (the ones I cared about):

• Secure Download Link – VERY SECURE with many options to limit the number of downloads by the user  or the expiration time to download, etc. This is the real strength of DLGuard, if you want to make absolutely sure that nobody can share your products with their friends, this is it.
• Sell Products or Memberships – you can sell digital products or memberships. By selling a membership, I mean that you can setup your site so that users will have to pay to access certain pages of the site.
• Super Easy Setup – I see endless reviews and reports of users on forums saying it was the easiest setup they’ve ever done.

 

Digital Access Pass review:

I purchased Digital Access Pass so I can tell you much more about it.

• Secure Download Link – there’s no options to set expiration time or anything like DLGuard. Your users have to be logged in to download the product or access the “protected pages”. It’s very simple and easy to setup but not as many security options or download limits like DLGuard.
• WordPress Integration – this was probably the reason I chose to buy Digital Access Pass. It installs and integrates easily with WordPress. It plays nicely with WordPress allowing you to use your WordPress installation for managing the members-only “protected pages” and using your WordPress user-logins to manage your free & paid members.
• Sell Products, Memberships, OR Drip Content – this is where Digital Access Pass blows everybody else away. Think of “Drip content” as a paid newsletter, where you can leak out your content in pieces. DAP’s organization and management of different levels/kinds of memberships make it the main reason why it’s rightfully called “Digital Access Pass”. Basically you can sell granulated levels of access to download products, protected pages, or protected newsletter. Originally, I just wanted to sell a download product but after researching DAP, I realized I could offer much more than just an ebook. I could sell it as a “course” and slowly leak the content to my users, like setting them up to receive an email every day. Or I could give free access to the first 5 “drip emails” and then they’d have to pay to receive the rest. I could also setup products that come with drip emails to help me upsell them to a more expensive product. Anyways, I recommend for you to look it up and see if you might find this feature to be potentially useful in the future (I’m sure you will).
• Affiliate Program – DAP has a built-in system for handling affiliates. So you can skip ClickBank and other companies and manage affiliates yourself.
• AND a billion more options – there are so many more features I didn’t list that DAP can do. It’s really worth checking out.
• DAP takes some time to setup – this is more as a warning than a con. DAP has many more features so it will take more time to configure. If you need to sell tomorrow and want to be up and running in 5 minutes, get DLGuard. If you have a little more time, like an hour, it’s worth learning how to use DAP.

 

Digital Access Pass vs DL Guard – Final Thoughts

Features both of them have:

• Automatic Mailing List Signups – DLGuard automatically adds your customers to your mailing list after a sale is made. Good for contacting them later to make new offers.
• Sales and Download Reports – will log and report your sales and downloads as well as the number of visitors to your sales pages. Good for you to see the health of your business.
• Built-in Shopping Cart – nice for you to have a shopping cart built into your own site instead of sending your users to another gateway like ClickBank/E-junkie/Paypal. Their shopping carts may look basic or plain or not as trustworthy as your site.
• Integration with ClickBank/E-junkie – this is especially important if you want to use ClickBank or E-junkie to make more sales through affiliates.
• Integration with many payment gateways – Paypal, Authorize, 2Checkout, 1ShoppingCart, etc…the list goes on and on
• Excellent Service – both have great documentation and very fast technical support. (I can vouch for DAP’s amazing technical support because I have questions regularly; they always answer within a business day and with excellent service.)

Both these products can serve the same purposes but they are functionally different. I would say that if you all you care about is the delivery and security of your digital products, then go with DLGuard. If you want to offer much more value than a digital product, DAP is the way to go. If you’re using WordPress and/or selling memberships, it’s almost a no-brainer to use DAP.

CLICK HERE to check out DAP – this is an affiliate link so I get some money if you do decide to buy. Thanks for reading.