MAK WooCommerce Download Permissions

MAK WooCommerce Download Permissions

(6 customer reviews)

US$19.00

This plugin allows you to grant download permissions to past orders for files that have been added to WooCommerce products after the orders have been placed by either copying existing files’ permissions in the orders to the newly added files, or by adding new permissions.
It also allows you to manually attach files from other products to orders of a different product – even if that originally purchased product has been deleted from the system.

SKU: WP-WCDP Category:

MAK WooCommerce Download Permissions

This plugin is compatible with the newer “High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS)” Feature in WooCommerce.

This plugin allows you to grant download permissions to past orders for files that have been newly added to WooCommerce products in WooCommerce 3.0.1+ after the orders have been placed so that customers with accounts can download them.
This is great if you want to add new a new version to your software and give past purchasers also download access while having the old versions still available if, for example, it only runs on a different OS or PHP version.

Are you selling eBooks and want to add some worksheets for download that can only be accessed by purchasers? Use this to give old orders access to the new files.
Selling music and wanting to add a different mix to the song or album? Use this.

You can also add these new permissions only to orders that have been placed on or after a certain date. Want to offer major software updates to everyone who has purchased in the last 6 months? You can do this now while still having the older versions available as well.

If you add lots of files to your product at once you can select a bulk update on all the product’s files or you can just select the one new file that you want to process.

The plugin will not automatically add permissions once you add new files to products.
Once you have added the new file(s), you go into the plugin and add the permissions you want to add, for the files you want to add them to, for the orders dated after the date you want – or for all the orders.

There are four ways to add download permissions to newly added files.
You can copy permissions from existing files that existing orders already have download permissions to, or you can also create new permissions.
Copying is faster and recommended over creating.
The permissions can be added to single new files or to all files of a product in one run.
And you can do this on the same product – which is the most used option – or you can give download permissions for users to files from different products that have not been purchased based on other purchases.
So you can give permissions to someone who has purchased product A to some or all current files of product B.

Copy Permissions

This can be much faster for large stores than just creating permissions since it uses less database resources and it allows better handling of downloads that expire or are limited by the number of downloads.
It can also work if at some point you added new files that only new orders received and want to only give these newer orders permissions to even more new files.
To copy the permissions you select one file to copy the access from and also the product’s new file to copy the access to.
The plugin then copies the download access with expiry dates from the old file to the new one for each order that has (still) access to the old file.
If there is a limitation in downloads available for that old file then it copies the number of downloads remaining as well – just keep in mind that WooCommerce tracks these files separately and downloading one does not decrease the downloads available of the other file.

Create Permissions

This procedure can create new permissions if no old files are linked to some or all orders.
It can come in handy if orders don’t have any current files linked to them as available to download. This can happen with imported orders, if all the product’s files have been deleted at some point in WooCommerce, or if the product didn’t have any downloads in the beginning – like physical items that get downloads attached to them later that you don’t want to be available to everyone visiting the website. For example Errata or new information that becomes available after the item was shipped.

Cross Product Copy Permissions

This works just like the Copy Permissions above, except that one product’s downloadable file(s) will be added to existing orders of a different product. No new products will be added for the client. The files behave similar to the granting access in the “Downloadable product permissions” feature in WooCommerce orders, except the handling of download limitations.
When copying, the permissions of the existing file in the purchased product are being used.

Cross Product Create Permissions

This works just like the Create Permissions above, except that one product’s downloadable file(s) will be added to existing orders of a different product. No new products will be added for the client. The files behave similar to the granting access in the “Downloadable product permissions” feature in WooCommerce orders, except the handling of download limitations.
When creating new permissions, the permissions of the other product’s files at the current time are being used, not any possibly existing limitations on the purchased product’s files.

If you accidentally completely deleted a product from your store and want to give those past purchasers access to a file of a different/replacement product, then you can do this with this function as well.

Cross Product operations now also offer you to select an end date which allows you to give access to file downloads to purchasers during a select period of time: “Buy product X in August and you will get file Y once it is released in September” for example.

6 reviews for MAK WooCommerce Download Permissions

  1. Clarissa Mosse (verified owner) –

    Purchased and sorted in under 30 minutes. Can’t believe it’s not standard procedure for Woocommerce, but thanks for the plugin 🙂

    • admin (verified owner) –

      Thanks for the great review. One of the goals is to make it as easy to use as possible while still providing enough features to make it work for most stores/scenarios.

  2. Jaap Visser (verified owner) –

    I am using this plugin already for a few years and just renewed my license to version 5 as I only use it every now and then. The updates are great and the product really improved very nicely in time.
    When I bought it a few years ago I ran into some problems and Mark was very swift and helpful.

    And of course the plugin itself is so nice and such a timesaver. Easy to use and this should have been a core feature in woocommerce, but I am very happy that Mark created this product as it saved me now and then so much time!

    • admin (verified owner) –

      Thanks for the great review. I am always trying to improve the features and user experience.

  3. Shelley Tomich (verified owner) –

    This is an amazing plugin and I am also shocked it is not a part of the WooCommerce core. This has already saved hours of work for me and the developer is incredibly responsive to requests. He is willing to hear and understand the problem and work for a solution. I will be a customer for a long time to come!

    • admin (verified owner) –

      Thank you very much for this review and for working with me. The improvements made for your use case will help anybody who uses this plugin with product bundles.

  4. Jacob de Graaf (verified owner) –

    Mark, I can’t thank you enough for this plugin. This is exactly what I have been looking for, for a couple of years now. It is so simple to use, and I’m baffled that this is not a build in feature within WooCommerce! Thank you for creating this. Had I known about this one earlier I would not have wasted hundreds of dollars on some rather useless plugins that didn’t do what they were supposed to… 😛

    • Mark (verified owner) –

      Great to know that it helped you – hopefully your kind words about the plugin can save someone else time and money too! Thank you very much for the review.

  5. Sam Krieg (verified owner) –

    Used this Plugin for over a year now and it survived all updates and still works without even the slightest hint of an error. It saves us a lot of time, protects us from answering endless “why can’t I download XYZ?!” customer service questions, doesn’t nag with stupid “GET OUR NEWEST PRODUCT! BITCOIN! BITCOIN!! BITCOIN!!!” ads etc.
    Long story short, I really like that Plugin. And support was great too. Thanks Mark.

    (The only negative thing I have to say is that it didn’t come with a catapult)

    • Mark (verified owner) –

      Thank you very much for the nice review. It’s always great to hear how our product and service can help…and I’ll think about the catapult, but can’t make any promises.

  6. Melinda Measor (verified owner) –

    This plugin is exactly what I was looking for, plus Mark and his team are amazing! Stellar products, helpful and professional customer service/client care.

    Mark was so kind to help troubleshoot why something was causing a WordPress plugin to stop working (not due to their product, it was another company that had a buggy issue). He was very thorough and got my website back up and running in no time!. Highly recommend them, they take awesome care of you.

    • Mark (verified owner) –

      Thank you very much for the kind words. Glad to be able to help.

Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee & Refund Policy

We want to ensure that you are 100% happy with your purchase. If you have any technical or sales queries, do not hesitate to contact us. However, if you feel the product(s) you purchased are not the best fit for your requirements and you attempted to resolve issues with our support staff, we want to make things right.
 
Contact us for a full, no-questions-asked refund within 30 days of the date of purchase. We’d love to know where things went wrong, or how we can improve, so any information will be appreciated.
 
Please include your order number so we can issue a refund as soon as possible.
Kindly note that we make every attempt to process the refund as quickly as possible. But Stripe or your financial institution can take up to 20 days for the refund to reflect in your bank/card account.

How do I use it?
The plug-in does not work automatically when you add a new download to a product. You have to go to “Products”->”MAK Download Permissions” and select the category and product you want to work on and either one or two files depending on the mode.
You also have direct links to the functions on WooCommerce product pages with downloadable files.
This allows you to have different policies for different products or even add some files to a product that you give past purchasers access to and other files where you don’t.
If at any time you have removed all files from a product and updated/saved it the plugin can not find any existing download files it can copy the permissions from and will be unable to copy download permissions for past orders of the product placed before all downloads were removed. In this case you can only create new permission.

I don’t see “Products”->”MAK Download Permissions”
If you used a version prior to v3 then please be aware that the menu point moved from “WooCommerce” to “Products”.
You also need to Deactivate and Activate the plugin for the menu point to show up if a version prior to v3 was installed due to some changes required to allow access at different user roles.

“0 new download permissions granted” when testing
Please make sure that any product you test with does have a valid order attached to it. When testing the copying, then that product has to still have files with download access attached.
If not then it will say “0 new download permissions granted”.

Where do the new files show up for customers?
The newly granted downloads will only show up in the user’s download page at https://WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM/my-account/downloads/ and not in the individual order’s display.
The system will not send out e-mails to your customers with updated/new download links.

How can I check what a customer will see?
We found that a good plugin for an administrator to switch to any user to check on the granted permissions is the “User Switching” plugin by John Blackbourn at https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-switching/
To check who bought a particular product you could try https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-filter-orders-by-product/ or https://wordpress.org/plugins/wc-product-customer-list/
Please be advised that it is up to you to research the plugins you use on your site and these are just examples of plugins we used at some point and we do not keep checking the code base of these plugins for security issues and can not take responsibility if any of these plugins have been compromised.

5.1.6
Support WooCommerce database change for HPOS when offering time-limited downloads on orders in processing.
Fix for version display in plugin footer.

5.1.3
Cross Product operations now also offer you to select an end date which allows you to give access to file downloads to purchasers during a select period of time: “Buy product X in August and you will get file Y once it is released in September” for example.
Cross Product Create now also supports giving file access to purchasers of products/variations that have been permanently deleted out of WooCommerce. Great if you accidentally fully deleted a product/variation and you need to give purchasers access to some files.

5.0.1
Compatible with WooCommerce HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage).
Version check on WordPress Plugins page.
More bundled programs support for direct link to add products added to bundle.

4.0.5
Show MetaBox in WooCommerce Product Bundles product for direct link to add products added to bundle.

4.0.4
Allow to select “– ALL CATEGORIES –” instead of having to select a specific category.
Fixed a regression bug with date-limited downloads creating a SQL error when trying to execute.

4.0.2
You can now add files from other products to your existing different product’s orders: “Cross Product Copy or Create” *WooCommerce versions 5.3.x to 5.5.x may block downloads of cross-product files due to some internal WooCommerce changes that were reversed later.

3.2.0
There are now direct links on WooCommerce product pages with downloadable products to go to copy or create permissions with the product already preselected.
Some error notices have been expanded for easier troubleshooting in edge cases.

3.1.2
The product drop-downs now show the product titles instead of the slugs.
If you have multiple products with the same titles you will have to watch the product IDs now, but variations – especially from duplicated variable products – are much easier to recognize now.

3.1.1
This version works now properly with non-ASCII (UTF-8) characters in categories, products and files.

3.1.0
New variable products couldn’t be recognized any more after WooCommerce made changes on what/how it saved them to the database. This version now recognizes the variations of the new products as well.

3.0.4
Bugfix: Version 3.0.3 introduced a bug where a bulk copy operation didn’t process the product’s first file.

3.0.3
Only add “– ALL FILES –” to COPY TO when there are three or more files to a product.
Bugfix: Remove “– ALL FILES –” from files to COPY FROM.

3.0.2

  • Only downloadable products will be displayed.
  • You can now give access to this plugin to users other than Administrators and Shop Managers through WordPress Capabilities.
    Required to use:
    ‘mak_wc_download_permissions’
    ‘edit_product’
    ‘edit_products’
    Optional:
    ‘edit_private_products’
    ‘edit_published_products’
    ‘edit_others_products’
  • Change: The menu point moved from “WooCommerce” to “Products”.
  • Ugrading: You need to Deactivate and Activate the plugin for the menu point to show up.

2.5.0
New permissions can now be bulk added to all files of a product.

2.3.2
Now you can limit the new permissions to orders on/after a certain date.

2.2.0
You can now also add download permissions instead of just copying them.

1.1.2
The system will now recognize if WooCommerce changes the download ID and notify the admin when running.

1.1.1
Fix for WooCommerce 3.3.0 switching format of download ID in database.

1.1.0
Initial Release.

Additional information

Access, License & Support

You will receive instant access to download the current version and any updates from our site and e-mail support for one domain for 12 months with your purchase.
You receive a life-time license for the plugin and any updates downloaded during the 12 month period.

There is a 30 day money back guarantee on the plugin if you run into any issues.
Requirements & Compatibility

As of 2025-09-23, the plugin has been tested on WordPress 4.5 to 6.8.2 with WooCommerce 3.0.1 to 10.1.2 running on PHP 5.5 to 8.3.23.
*WooCommerce versions 5.3.x to 5.5.x may block downloads of cross-product files due to some internal changes that were reversed in later versions.

It will NOT run on WordPress versions less than 4.5 and PHP versions lower than 5.5.

Websites hosted on WordPress.com do NOT support installation of plugins.

If you are logged in as an administrator into your site's backend you need to see "Plugins" in the left menu to be able to install any plugins. If someone created your website for you and you do not see "Plugins" in the left menu please contact your website designer for administrator access or supply them with the plugin file to install for you. In this case you may not have access to set the site defaults and your designer would need to set them for you.
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