For WordPress plugin sellers, Easy Digital Downloads is the obvious choice. It’s a powerful & pragmatic tool to get your work sold without paying “freemium” commissions… But you’re still facing $300+ a year to license your work, and updating can be very time-consuming. This is where Steve’s PVD + EDD Marketplace comes into play:

Steve’s Version Display (required core) : Also known as PVD (Plugin Version Display); this functions independently but is required for the marketplace system. Shortcode & block editor parameters control what your customers see.

• Monitors current plugin version, update time-stamps, zip file size, plus any extra help doc you specify.
• Translates, escapes and de-curly-quotes readme files from your plugin to pretty html. Your customers will have an easy cut & paste experience with code samples, shortcodes, hooks, etc. and you only update help docs in one place.

PVD + EDD: This is the holy grail that a) licenses your production and b) keeps them synced with your Easy Digital Downloads store. Your admin panel provides real-time data of your customer’s activated domains, uploads, ownership, and more. Your plugins sync with WordPress’s own version checks, so your customers enjoy the same updating experience they’re used to.

• Assigns a unique, trackable license to each file as it’s downloaded.
• Enforces rules like downloads limits, domain activations, expirations, ownership per license.
• See who is using your plugins and where.
• Provides the Admin total override control of licenses individually or in bulk.

Folder Zip: This is admin-based plugin works independently and also enhances the marketplace system.

• ZIPs your selected (live) plugins on-the-fly
• Saves the ZIP in a secure folder
• Strips unnecessary files (extensible/editable)
• Provides a tokenized URL for secure download
• (Optionally) saves a production-ready package in EDD’s download directory ~ ready for sale

* Simplified description. The licensing core & security is very complex.