This DLGuard review covers 24 months using the product to promote and sell digital products from my domain and highlights the products key selling point (link security) and main flaw (the license domain limit).

DLGuard is a set of scripts that can be installed on most web servers in order to include a sequence of checkout pages on your website and the associated back-end logic to communicate with Paypal & other vendors to complete sales.

The product differentiates itself after sales are completed by automating sending emails to customers with download links for their software/ebook/MP3/any form of digital product that can be transmitted across the web.

The link security is a key selling point with sales tools like this as it is too easy for customers to simply share the URL with friends who also get to download the product.

DLGuard limits the chances of this occurring by (a) making the link unique for each customer, (b) allowing configuration of how long the link is to be valid and (c) allowing configuration of how many download attempts are possible. The product tracks & reports on all sales/downloads that are made so genuine customers that get caught out by these safeguards can easily be identified.

In truth, the product target audience is individuals/small ventures that are looking to make digital sales through their own website. One possible setback with this however is the two-domain license limit so if DLGuard users want to install it on several domains they will require more licenses or would need to set a designated ‘sales server’ which handles the checkout processing for all their sites. This will affect a lot of the target customer base who invariably manage several sites.

That said, most webmasters will enjoy the level of configuration that is possible. Anyone that can code scripts can alter the design of the checkout pages (to match the website’s design) and add in their own widgets/scripts For example, automated messaging/emailing when specific events occur, such as security breach attempts.

Over my two years of writing ebooks and selling them through the DLGuard shopping cart I have grown to like the products ability to completely automate sales and product distribution and found the support & online forums to be a great source of help and advice.