Introduction

Hello and welcome to this DLGuard Review. In this review I am going to be looking at the digital delivery script created by the Australian developer Sam Stephens. Before I start the review, here's a brief introduction about who I am and why I'm writing this review.

My name is Dan Thompson and I'm a Web Designer/Web Host/Internet Marketer from the UK. I've been working online since 1997 and run a number of different websites for both personal, and business use. A number of these websites are e-commerce websites selling digital goods, how do I deliver these goods? - Yep, you guessed it, DLGuard!

I also run a review website (this is what you are looking at now!) so as a DLGuard user I thought that it would make a lot of sense to review the product. So with that out of the way, lets get started on the review.

Features

For me this is what sets DLGuard apart from the other solutions that you can see listed to the right of the page. Most digital delivery scripts work with PayPal and that's about it, but what if you don't want to use PayPal as a payment option? To put it bluntly - you're in trouble! If the delivery script you are using doesn't support your payment processor then you can't use it. DLGuard on the other hand doesn't have this problem, just take a look at all of the supported payment processors:

• PayPal
• Clickbank
• 2Checkout
• Authorize.net
• WorldPay
• AlertPay
• eBay
• PayDotCom
• e-Gold
• LinkPoint

Supporting all of those processors is all well and good, but it means nothing if the functionality isn't there. Fortunately for us though, this isn't the case with DLGuard. The script is packed with all of the standard features you'd expect such as secure expiring download links, secure expiring download pages, ready to go shopping cart for multiple item support, and so on.

One of the more simple features is also one of my favorites - the stats module. DLGuard includes a simple stats module that allows you to see how many hits your sales page is getting and the conversion rate for your product. It's not exactly Google Analytics but it does a great job. (Plus it's much easier to setup!)

Here's a screenshot taken from my installation of DLGuard, it shows the hits and the conversion rate for one of my products, The Boomerang List Builder.

After taking the above screenshot showing the stats page in action I did get a little bit carried away and started to take some more. The screenshot below shows a standard download page that a customer will be sent too after they make a purchase. The page in the example below has already expired, so as you can see there is no download link, but if I had visited that page within the 12 hours that the download link was active for, a download link would be displayed for me instead of the "Expired Link" message.

Not only does DLGuard deliver your products instantly to your customers, it also creates a customer database for you. After the customer is added to the database you can pull up the details of any customer through a simple search box. DLGuard then pulls up details of the customer showing amongst other things their IP address, products purchased, number of download attempts and so on. You can see an example below:

I've only mentioned a handful of the features here that I use, there are many more that we could talk about but the review would go on for waaaaaaaaay too long! Other things that I haven't yet talked about in detail are the discount coupons you can offer, the built in membership script and much more. You can check out all of the features in full on the DLGuard Website.

That brings to an end the "Features" section of the review. After each section I give a score out of 5, then at the end of the review all of the scores getting added together to give us the final score.

DLGuard Features Score: 5/5

Ease Of Use

From the very first installation screen you can tell that DLGuard has been designed with the end user in mind. The layout of the script follows the same, easy to recognize color scheme throughout and everything is in the "right place". Let me explain what I mean by that; you'll find that a lot of scripts out there have all the features, but you have no idea how they work or where to find them! Luckily for us DLGuard doesn't fit into this category, every feature and page can be accessed from every other page from the navigation menu at the top of the page.

Not only is the navigation a piece of cake to use, it's also really easy to use in general. Let's take "Adding a new item" as an example. With some scripts you have to go through at least 2 screens filling out tedious information, not so with Download Guard. Adding a new item is all done on the same screen, even if you are unsure about what you should be entering, each field has a little blue question mark next to it that you can click on to bring up a full explanation of what you need to enter in the field. Take a look at the screen below for a sneak peak at the "How to add a new item" page.

Once you have added a new item, it's added to your inventory and you can see an overview of the item, and any sales made on the home screen when you first log into the script. Again, nothing ground breaking but it's great to see a little overview of your items as soon as you log in, it saves you clicking through menus (as you need to do in other scripts) to find the information you want.

With that in mind you are probably wondering why I didn't give this section a perfect score. Unfortunately I had to knock off half a point because of the installation process, i'm kind of old fashioned and like to upload the files myself via FTP, that way I know exactly where they are going and I know i'm not overwriting anything I shouldn't be. DLGuard uses a .exe installer wizard, much like you'd find for a desktop application, this is my own personal view, but it's my site so I'll say it...I just don't trust the .exe installers, I always have fears of overwriting things when it does the uploading for me. So for that i'm taking off half a point, so the final score for "Ease Of use" is 4.5/5

Ease Of Use Score: 4.5/5

Support

One of the most important things for any script or product that you purchase, be it online or offline is the after purchase support that you will receive for the product. DLGuard offers the best support of any of the main delivery scripts bar none!

The support isn't provided by a 3rd party either, all support is provided by the developer of the program Sam Stephens, he knows the program inside out (he wrote the code!) so he is able to answer any support questions with ease, and if you do find a bug you are able to report it to him first hand and he'll get a fix for you.

Support is provided by both email, and his online support forum. No matter which contact method you choose, you will receive a response within hours rather than days. Just go to the Download Guard site now and take a look at the forum and you'll be able to see Sam is in there every day helping out his customers with any questions, you can't get better than that.

Support Score: 5/5

Price

At the time of writing, DLGuard is priced at $127 for a double install license, which means you can install DLGuard on 2 domains, although bear in mind you can use 1 installation of the script to run multiple websites. This is the most expensive delivery script out there at present, however for what you get it's still a massive bargain and I'm sure Sam can't be making much of a profit when you consider how much time he spends developing the script and providing the support.

I would give it full marks however after a year you do have to pay a nominal fee to receive any future upgrades, so that means I have to knock a point off. So the final DLGuard Review score for pricing is...

DLGuard Price Score: 4/5

Final DLGuard Score: 18.5/20!

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