Ecommerce App Starter · Industry version
Digital Products Ecommerce Template
A storefront for files — presets, fonts, courses, plugins — with licensing and delivery built in and no marketplace taking a cut.
Marketplaces for digital products charge double rent: a slice of every sale and ownership of your customer relationship. This starter generates a store where the download delivery, license terms, and buyer list are all in your codebase — the audience you built stays yours.
- 7 core entities
- Storefront + admin
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · The problem
Why a generic Ecommerce falls short
Digital fulfillment is its own discipline, and physical-first stores fake it badly. A product here is a file with versions, a license with terms, and a grant that must work at 3 a.m. for a buyer on hotel wifi — not a box with a tracking number. Bolted-on download apps handle the happy path and abandon you at the first 'my link expired' email.
Licensing is the actual product. Personal versus commercial, single-seat versus team, this-version versus lifetime-updates — the tier structure is where digital margin lives. Generic stores flatten it into SKUs with no enforcement behind them, so your commercial tier is priced on the honor system.
And a file business compounds through updates. Version 2 of your preset pack should reach every past buyer as a fresh download and an email — that's retention, reviews, and the reason to buy direct. On a marketplace, those buyers are the marketplace's list. That's the whole problem.
02 · Data model
The data model, adapted
Everything in the base Ecommerce starter —
productsvariantscollectionscartsordersdiscountsinventory— plus the entities this industry actually runs on:
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
digital_assets | The deliverable files with versions, sizes, and formats — linked to the variants that sell them. |
download_grants | Per-purchase access rights with signed links, expiry rules, and download counts per buyer. |
licenses | The terms attached to each purchase tier — personal, commercial, team seats — recorded per order. |
03 · Screens
Modules through the industry lens
Instant secure delivery
01Payment confirmation mints a download grant and signed links, delivered on the confirmation page and by email. Links expire and re-issue on rules you set in your own code — generous to real buyers, useless to a link pasted into a forum.
License tiers at checkout
02Buyers choose personal, commercial, or team at the point of sale, and the license record persists with the order — retrievable when their client's legal team asks. Tier pricing is a variant, upgrades from personal to commercial are a purchase path, not a support thread.
Version updates to past buyers
03Upload version 2 and every valid grant gains access; an update email goes to the buyers it concerns. Your changelog becomes a revenue instrument — the buyer who got free updates for a year is the one who buys the next pack on day one.
04 · In practice
Workflows it models
Launch-day drop
01Publish the pack, send the list, and watch orders mint grants with zero fulfillment work per sale. The launch spike costs you server load, not a marketplace percentage — a hundred sales at midnight need nobody awake.
The expired-link rescue
02A buyer from eight months ago lost their files. They log into the buyer portal, see every purchase, and re-download within their grant rules — no support ticket, no proof-of-purchase forensics, no goodwill spent.
Commercial upgrade
03A freelancer's personal-license font ends up in a client pitch. They buy the commercial upgrade from their account page; the license record updates and the delta payment clears. Compliance becomes a product flow instead of an awkward email.
Digital Products Store template — frequently asked questions
How are files protected from sharing?
Grants issue signed, expiring links tied to the purchase, with counts and re-issue rules you control in your own code. It's proportionate protection — honest buyers never notice it, and casual link-sharing dies at the expiry.
What file types and sizes can I sell?
Anything your storage holds: preset packs, fonts, video courses, plugins, multi-gigabyte sample libraries. Files live in your object storage under your cost structure, not a platform's per-product limits.
Do buyers get accounts?
Yes — a buyer portal lists every purchase, its license, and its current files. It's the piece marketplaces keep for themselves, and it's where re-downloads, upgrades, and version 2 announcements turn one-time buyers into a list you own.
Can I bundle products or run launch discounts?
Bundles are products whose fulfillment grants multiple assets, and the discount engine scopes codes by product, tier, or window. Both are readable rules in your codebase — a Black Friday stack that does exactly what you meant it to.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Digital Products Store on your terms
A storefront for files — presets, fonts, courses, plugins — with licensing and delivery built in and no marketplace taking a cut. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.