Product types: physical, digital & downloadable

Updated Oct 17, 2026 Products & Catalog

In TitanCart you don’t pick a “product type” from a dropdown when you create a product. Every product starts as a physical item, and you turn it into a digital download — or a product that is both — using two checkboxes in the product editor. This article explains the three cases and how each behaves at checkout. Everything here is available in both TitanCart Pro and TitanCart Lite.

1. Physical products (the default)

A new product is physical out of the box. That means:

It needs to be shipped — Requires shipping is on, so the cart shows the shipping section, picker and cost.
It has shipping details — weight and dimensions on the Shipping tab feed your shipping rates.
Its stock can be tracked — the Track inventory setting on the General tab decrements the quantity after each sale.

If your whole catalogue is physical goods, you don’t need to change anything here.

2. Digital / downloadable products

To sell a downloadable file, a license key, or anything delivered electronically, open the product’s General tab and tick Digital product (“This product is delivered digitally — no inventory, no shipping required”).

Turning this on changes three things:

No shipping. It automatically unchecks Requires shipping, so the cart skips the shipping section and cost for this product.
No inventory. Digital products have infinite supply, so Track inventory is switched off and ignored — you never run out.
A Downloads tab appears. This is where you attach the file(s) the customer receives.

Note: The Downloads tab only shows up after the product has been saved at least once with Digital product ticked. Save the product, then reopen it to see the tab.

3. The Downloads tab

On the Downloads tab you upload the files customers get after a paid order. Each buyer receives a unique signed download link — they can’t share a single public URL. Two limits govern those links:

Download link TTL (hours) — how many hours after purchase the link works. Leave it blank to inherit the store-wide default (24 hours out of the box). Enter 0 (or a negative number) to make the link never expire for this product.
Max downloads per key — how many times each customer can download a file before the link is exhausted. Blank or 0 means unlimited. There is no store-wide default for this one; it is always per product.

Use + Add file to upload each file. You can add several files to one product, and on a product with variations each file can apply to All variations or to one specific variation (a different file per edition, for example). Existing files can be replaced in place or test-downloaded from the list without placing an order.

Tip: The per-product TTL and max-download fields are overrides. Leave them blank to inherit the store-wide default under Settings → General Settings → Catalog, and only fill them in for products that need different limits. Remember these override values save when you click Save on the product editor, not when you edit a file in the list.

4. Products that are both shipped and downloadable

Some products are physical and come with a digital file — a vinyl record bundled with a download, for example. For that case:

On the General tab, tick Digital product and add the file on the Downloads tab.
Then go to the Shipping tab and re-tick Requires shipping (“This product needs to be physically shipped”).

Because ticking Digital auto-unchecks shipping, re-checking it on the Shipping tab is the step that makes a product both downloadable and shippable. Set its weight and dimensions there too so it gets a shipping rate.

5. Store-wide download settings

The store-wide controls live under Settings → General Settings → Catalog:

Enable downloadable products — the master switch. When it is off, digital products cannot be added to the cart (the product page says so instead of showing Add to cart), but your files and any links already issued stay intact, so you can switch it back on without losing anything.
Download link TTL (hours) — the default link lifetime every digital product inherits when its own TTL field is blank. Ships as 24 hours.
Revoke download links on refund — when on, cancelling or refunding an order deactivates that order’s download links automatically.

6. Download agreements (licence terms)

If customers must accept licence terms before they buy a download, go to Settings → General Settings → Download Agreements. An agreement has a title, the terms text, a Required flag and a scope: Global default (applies to every digital product) or Per-product (enter the Product ID; a per-product agreement overrides the global one for that product). Editing an agreement saves a new version; earlier versions are kept.

A required agreement is shown on the product page above the Add to cart button with a tick box the customer has to check before the button works. Checkout re-checks that acceptance. Each acceptance is recorded with the exact text the customer saw, its version, their email, IP address and time, and you can see that ledger under License agreement acceptances on the order page in Sales — useful as evidence if a download is later disputed as a chargeback. An agreement that is not marked Required is informational only and does not block the sale.

7. How customers receive their files

Download links are created when the order reaches a paid status — Processing or Completed. For card payments that settle immediately, the links are embedded in the order confirmation email. If payment is confirmed later (a bank transfer you mark paid, or a gateway that captures asynchronously), the customer gets a separate “your downloads are ready” email at that moment. Logged-in customers can also open My Account → Downloads at any time, which lists every file with its remaining downloads and expiry.

On the order page in Sales, the Downloads panel lists each issued key with its download count and expiry. From there you can Revoke a single link, or Revoke and resend to cancel the current links and email the customer a fresh set — the fix for an expired or exhausted link, so you never need to re-order.

Coming from WooCommerce

If you used WooCommerce’s Downloadable and Virtual checkboxes: TitanCart’s single Digital product checkbox covers both — it removes shipping (the “virtual” behaviour) and lets you attach files (the “downloadable” behaviour). A product that needs neither shipping nor a file (a pure service) can simply have Requires shipping unchecked. When you run the WooCommerce Migration tool, a WooCommerce Downloadable product arrives with Digital product ticked and a Virtual product arrives with Requires shipping unticked. The download files themselves are not copied — open each digital product’s Downloads tab and upload its files before you sell it.

Troubleshooting

The Downloads tab isn’t showing. Tick Digital product on the General tab, save the product, then reopen it. The tab is only present for saved digital products.
My digital product is asking for a shipping address at checkout. Open the Shipping tab and confirm Requires shipping is unchecked. If another item in the same cart is physical, the cart will still collect a shipping address for that item.
A physical + digital bundle skips shipping. Ticking Digital unchecks shipping automatically — re-tick Requires shipping on the Shipping tab for bundle products.
The stock field is greyed out. That’s expected for digital products — they have infinite supply, so inventory tracking doesn’t apply.
A customer says their download link stopped working. Check the product’s download lifetime (TTL) and maximum-downloads limits — the link expires once either is reached. Raise the limit on the product if it is too tight, then open the order in Sales and use Revoke and resend in the Downloads panel to issue new links. Also check that Revoke download links on refund did not fire because the order was cancelled or refunded.
The customer paid but never got a download link. Links are only issued when the order status becomes Processing or Completed — an order still Pending or On Hold has none yet. Move the order to Processing (or mark it paid) and the downloads-ready email goes out. Then confirm the product has at least one active file on its Downloads tab; a product ticked Digital with no file attached issues nothing.
Add to cart is missing on a digital product. Check Enable downloadable products under Settings → General Settings → Catalog is on, and that a required licence agreement has not been left unticked on the product page.