One plugin instead of the EDD add-on stack.
Stackless for EDD puts subscriptions, built-in Stripe, PayPal, Polar, Paddle and Dodo Payments gateways, software licensing, multi-currency, invoices, checkout tools and store tools into one plugin that runs on Easy Digital Downloads alone. Switch on the modules you use. The rest load no code.
Secure checkout. 14-day unconditional refund period.
Try the live demo storeRead the docsSelling with WooCommerce instead?
These screens come from an Easy Digital Downloads store running Stackless for EDD and the Stackless theme. Click any screen to see it full size, or try the demo store yourself.
Easy Digital Downloads now sells most of its extensions through yearly passes, and the ones a growing store needs sit in the higher tiers. Stackless is the all-in-one EDD plugin for those jobs: subscriptions, licensing, payments, currencies, invoices and the checkout. Here’s each job matched to the Stackless module that does it. File storage, marketplace and email marketing extensions stay separate.
| The job | What EDD stores usually add | Stackless module |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring billing | EDD Recurring Payments (Personal pass and up) | Subscriptions |
| Charging saved cards for renewals | EDD Stripe or PayPal Commerce Pro on an Extended pass and up, or a merchant-of-record plugin | Stripe, PayPal, Polar, Paddle, Dodo Payments, Payment Gateway Tools |
| Selling your own plugins and themes | EDD Software Licensing (Professional pass and up) | Software Licensing |
| Prices in more than one currency | EDD Multi Currency (Personal pass and up) | Multi-Currency Checkout, Currency-Aware Payment Gateways, Storefront Currency Selector |
| Buyer-only pages | EDD Content Restriction (Extended pass and up) | Page Access |
| Name your price | EDD Custom Prices (Extended pass and up) | Pay What You Like |
| Extra checkout fields | EDD Checkout Fields Manager (Professional pass and up) | Fields & Paid Add-ons, Checkout Enhancements |
| Wishlists | EDD Wish Lists (Professional pass and up) | Wishlist |
| Invoices and quotes | An invoicing plugin and a quote request plugin | Custom Invoices, Request a Quote |
| A better checkout | An order bump plugin, a checkout layout plugin and a popup checkout plugin | Order Bumps, Checkout Builder, Buy Links, Modal Checkout, On-page Checkout, Extra Enhancements |
| Referrals and customer tools | A coupon affiliate plugin, plus saved cart and reorder snippets | Coupon Affiliates, Saved Carts & Order Again, Service Products |
| Catalog tweaks | Snippets or small plugins for price text, quantities, badges and buttons | Free Price Text, Sold Count, Min/Max Quantity, Hide Price Until Login, Custom Add to Cart Text, External Downloads, Product Details Table |
| A faster store | A speed or asset clean-up plugin to stop EDD loading its scripts everywhere | EDD Optimizer |
| Admin and automation | An admin restyle plugin, a CRM connector and a webhooks or API add-on | EDD Redesign, FluentCRM, Webhooks and REST API, AI Agents |
Prices are full renewal rates from the Easy Digital Downloads pricing page. The first year is half price.
If an EDD extension you already run does the same job, such as Recurring Payments or Software Licensing, the overlapping Stackless module pauses itself and names the extension. Two plugins never fight over one checkout.
Every module is optional. Turn on Subscriptions and Stripe today, add Order Bumps next month and leave the rest off. Only License & Updates and Payment Gateway Tools are on when you install, and neither changes your storefront.
Recurring billing on downloads and variable prices: trials, signup fees, fixed terms, mixed carts, automatic or invoiced renewals, dunning, plan switching and a customer portal.
Take cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link and local payment methods with Stripe, save cards, and renew subscriptions automatically.
PayPal Smart Buttons and Pay Later at checkout, refunds, and saved PayPal accounts that renew subscriptions automatically.
Polar as a merchant of record: hosted checkout with sales tax and VAT handled for you, one-time orders, pay links and single-download subscriptions that Polar renews.
Paddle Billing as a merchant of record: an overlay checkout with sales tax and VAT handled for you, and subscriptions Paddle renews, including signup fees, free trials and one-time items in the same cart.
Dodo Payments as a merchant of record: a hosted checkout with sales tax, VAT and GST handled for you, cards, UPI and local methods, and single-download subscriptions that Dodo renews.
Duplicate Polar, Paddle or Dodo Payments to take payments with a second account, each copy with its own keys, webhook URL and orders. Every Stackless gateway carries a Stackless label in EDD’s payment settings.
Consent checkboxes with stored proof, a shorter checkout for free orders, a "Get it for free" button, your own checkout wording, and a trust block under the payment details.
Five ready-made checkout layouts with your colors, previewed and switched on without an editor. Works with the EDD Checkout block and the [download_checkout] shortcode.
Buy buttons and checkout links open the checkout in a modal on the same page, with optional payment method classes. Needs On-page Checkout.
Plan cards and your checkout on any page through a block or shortcode, so buyers pay without leaving it. Each plan gets its own cart, so the store cart is left alone.
Alerts for failed live payments, payment methods and an after-purchase link per download, ?coupon= links that stick, internal test emails, and a guard against throwaway emails and card testing.
One-click add-on offers at checkout, shown by cart rules, priced on the server, with take rates per bump.
Shareable links that fill the cart and open checkout, with discount codes, multiple downloads and tamper-proof signatures, plus an optional Buy now button.
Invoice customers for downloads or custom items with a branded, printable invoice and a secure pay link. Numbered invoices, recurring billing, deposits with automatic balance invoices, and due-date reminders.
Let customers ask for a quote from any page or download. Reply with a proposal they accept online; accepting issues the invoice and takes them to payment.
Let buyers choose what to pay for a download, with a minimum, a suggested amount, quick amounts and an optional maximum. Works on purchase buttons, the checkout and buy links.
Customers and partners earn a commission on paid orders that use their discount code, with a refund hold, automatic reversal on refunds and cancellations, and manual payouts with CSV export.
One settlement currency per cart and order. Exact per-download and per-price-option currency prices, manual or Frankfurter exchange rates, markup, rounding and missing-price rules.
Choose which payment gateways handle each currency and which one shows first. Unsupported gateways are removed at checkout and rejected on the server.
Let shoppers pick their currency with a shortcode, a block or a selector above the checkout payment methods. Switching reprices the cart on the server.
Sell plugins and themes with license keys, site activation limits, a license API and automatic updates from your store.
Unlock chosen pages for customers who buy a download. Private pages stay hidden from everyone except buyers, and subscriptions keep access while active.
Show custom text such as "Free" instead of a zero price on download pages, download grids and the checkout.
Show an "X sold" badge on downloads once they pass a sales threshold, using EDD’s own sales count.
Set minimum, maximum and step quantities store-wide, per download and per price option, enforced on purchase forms, the checkout cart and at checkout.
Hide prices and buying from guests, store-wide, by category or per download, with a login link in place of the price.
Rename the purchase button per download type, for free and subscription downloads, and per download or price option.
Sell a download on another website: an external buy link replaces the purchase button, with rel and target controls, optional price hiding and outbound click counts.
Add a specifications table to downloads with presets for software, books, services and more. Values fill in from EDD data and feed product schema.
Guest and account wishlists that merge on sign-in, with buttons on download pages and grids, a wishlist page, an account tab, share links and move to cart.
Download add-ons (checkbox, dropdown, text, number) with per-item or one-off prices, and collapsible checkout fields with optional fees.
Customers save their cart under a name, restore it later and reorder from any past order, from a Saved carts tab on the account page.
Mark downloads as services, with after-payment instructions and an optional booking or intake link on the confirmation, the receipt email and the account page.
Load EDD scripts and styles only where they’re used, defer store scripts, quiet EDD’s admin extras and keep scheduled action logs lean.
Activate your Stackless for EDD license to receive automatic updates from gauravtiwari.org. The plugin works fully without it.
A cleaner Easy Digital Downloads admin in the look of the Stackless screens: orders, downloads, customers, discounts, reports, settings and tools. Nothing changes on your storefront.
Signed webhooks for order, subscription and license events, and a subscriptions REST API that works with EDD API keys, for Zapier, Make, n8n or your own code.
Automation triggers for subscriptions, renewals, licenses, invoices and quotes, tags and lists that follow subscription status, and subscriptions and licenses on each contact’s profile.
Let Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other agents run the store through the free Site Agent plugin. Agents work as a WordPress user you choose and ask before anything reaches a customer.
Subscriptions is a pricing option on the downloads you already have, including each variable price, so there’s no new download type to learn. A customer can buy a monthly plan, a yearly plan and a one-time download in the same checkout.
A subscription store needs a gateway that can charge a saved payment method, which is why EDD stores end up buying gateway extensions. Stackless ships its own gateways that save the payment method and charge renewals. You connect your own Stripe, PayPal, Polar, Paddle or Dodo Payments account, and Payment Gateway Tools adds a second account when one brand isn’t enough.
EDD’s own Stripe and PayPal integrations, or any other EDD gateway, can still take subscriptions in manual-renewal mode. On the due date Stackless creates the renewal order and emails the customer an invoice to pay. One-time orders work with any gateway, as they always have.
Stackless lives in its own wp-admin menu. Every module is a switch on one dashboard, grouped the same way as the list above.
Upload Stackless for EDD to a site running WordPress 6.7+, Easy Digital Downloads 3.5+ and PHP 8.0+. Only License & Updates and Payment Gateway Tools are on at first, so nothing changes on your store yet.
Open Stackless in wp-admin, search or filter the module list, and flip a switch. A module that stays off loads no code at all.
Each module has its own settings screen. Add your license key for updates and support. Every feature works without it.
When another plugin already does a module’s job
The module pauses and the dashboard says why, for example: Paused because EDD Recurring Payments is active and does the same job.
A plugin that replaces a stack has edges. These are the ones that matter today, so you can decide before you install it.
Both licenses include all 40 modules and unlimited site activations. The license adds updates and support; every feature works without it. For comparison, the EDD Professional pass that includes Software Licensing renews at $599 a year for 2 sites.
Renews yearly
Limited-time price
Updates and support while your subscription is active.
Renews yearly until you cancel.
Limited-time price
Limited-time price
Keep your license with no recurring payment.
No renewal, ever.
For a limited time, Lifetime is Regular price $399 Sale price $99 and Annual is Regular price $69 Sale price $39/year. 14-day unconditional refund period. Prices shown in USD; checkout shows supported local currencies and the final amount before payment.
Everything here is quick to set up, light on your pages and built to do one real job well. I only charge for the tools that can make you money. The rest are free.
I design, build and support every product on this site myself. When you email me, the person reading it is the one who wrote the code.
I’d rather ship one tool you’d miss if it vanished than ten that sit in your plugin list doing nothing.
18+years building websites, plugins and stores, since 2008
Switch a feature off and it loads nothing. What does load stays small. A tool that replaces a plugin shouldn’t make your pages slower.
Clear screens, sensible defaults and settings written in plain English. If you need a tutorial for the basics, that’s my design mistake, not yours.
Full keyboard support, visible focus, proper labels and text you can actually read. When more people can use your store, more people can buy from it.
My paid tools help you sell, renew, license or convert. If one just sits in your stack, I haven’t done my job.
I won’t charge for anything that can’t make you money. The free tools get the same care as the paid ones, down to the last setting.
The things worth knowing before you move a working EDD store onto one plugin.
Something else on your mind? Ask through product support. You get one-on-one email and Twitter Chat support from me.
It does the work an Easy Digital Downloads store usually spreads across separate extensions, with one license and one dashboard of switches:
It isn’t the right fit for every job. Frontend Submissions, Commissions, file storage integrations such as Amazon S3 and Dropbox, and email marketing integrations stay separate.
Not for the jobs Stackless covers. It runs on the free Easy Digital Downloads plugin from WordPress.org. You’d only keep a pass for EDD extensions Stackless doesn’t replace, such as Frontend Submissions or Commissions.
No. You connect your own Stripe account and pay Stripe’s normal rates. EDD’s own Stripe integration adds 3% per transaction on the free plan and the Personal pass; the Stackless gateway doesn’t add anything.
Stackless works through EDD’s own purchase buttons, checkout, receipts and emails, and adds an account page through a shortcode, so a theme that supports Easy Digital Downloads supports it.
Updates and support stop. Every module keeps working, because the license only adds updates and support. You can renew later or buy the lifetime license instead.
You can install Stackless next to it, but the Stackless Subscriptions module pauses while Recurring Payments is active, so two plugins never bill the same customer. The other modules work alongside it. There’s no importer for existing subscriptions yet.
The built-in Stripe and PayPal gateways charge renewals automatically, and Polar, Paddle and Dodo Payments renew the subscriptions they bill. Any other EDD gateway works in manual-renewal mode: the customer gets an invoice by email when each renewal is due. One-time orders work with any gateway.
There is a 14-day unconditional refund period. Use Product Support for help or a refund request.
My advice is simple. I’d switch on the module that replaces the most extensions in your store today and leave the others off until you need them. For a limited time, Lifetime is Regular price $399 Sale price $99 and Annual is Regular price $69 Sale price $39/year.
