Email Before Download (EBD) presents your users with a form where they submit information, like their name and email address, prior to receiving a dow …
As of April 2026, Email Before Download is a WordPress email plugin with 6.0K+ active installations and a 4.3/5 rating from 44 reviews. It has been downloaded 368K+ times in total. Requires WordPress false+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2011. Last updated 1 year ago — may have compatibility concerns. Downloads are up 11% this week. Top alternative: WP Mail SMTP by WPForms – The Most….
6.x Release is Here!
After a hiatus from EBD development, a community member has reached out and partnered with us to breathe life back into EBD! We have recently made updates to fix issues and enhance capabilities of EBD. Stay tuned for more to come in EBD v6.x and above!
Email Before Download (EBD) presents your users with a form where they submit information, like their name and email address, prior to receiving a download. This plugin integrates with the popular Contact Form 7 and WordPress Download Monitor plugins, allowing you to create any form you like and manage/monitor your file downloads. You can also EXPORT a list of users that have downloaded files from the plug-in’s settings page. Prior to installing Email Before Download, please confirm each of the dependent plugins…
Unfortunately like some of the other recent reviews, we too are now getting ‘plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error‘ message. Its a shame as it worked well when it was working on previous version of WordPress.
Getting Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error
I had a few problems setting up, but Support quickly answered my requests for help and got me up and running. Recommended for what it promises and what it does. Takes a little effort to get familiar with the plugin but worth doing so.
I think it could be good or maybe I am completely missing something but I cannot see how to create the links for the downloads. I fill out the info on the Email Before Download, but nothing happens. There is zero direction.
I’m getting some serious PHP errors with the new update 6.3 I’ll add them to support
| WordPress | false+ requiredTested up to false |
| PHP | false+ required |
=6.9.8=
* Resolved security incident reported from WordPress. Updated nonce validation to meet security needs.
=6.9.7=
* Fixed issues with new PHP version and download monitor
=6.9.6=
*Changed the link appearance for the multiple downloads
=6.9.5=
* Fixed issue causing From Name to be translated to lowercase.
=6.9.4=
* Added checking if the current environment is admin
* Security fix
=6.9.3=
* Updated delivery format instructions on admin screen to show how to properly override the delivery format in shortcode
* Added hook to make sure that the dependencies are loaded
* Fix to expirated links, changed function to home_url
=6.9.2=
* Fix to expirated links, changed function to grab home_url instead of The WordPress Address URL.
=6.9.1=
* Fixed crashing issue on link expiration related to filter conflict
=6.9=
* Fixed site crashing issue
=6.8=
* Updated GET request security.
* Reviewed WP changes and more data sanitized, escaped, and validated
=6.7=
* Updated GET request security.
* Updated Link Expiration Time bug to properly expire after selected time.
=6.6=
* Updated readme to link to customer feedback page
* Updated delivery format instructions on admin screen to show how to properly override the delivery format in shortcode.
=6.5=
* Updated readme screenshots
=6.4=
* Fix issue related to file_get_contents() function
=6.3=
* Update for support of CF7 latest release
* Enhancements to help with support for non-English websites
=6.7=
* Updated GET request security.
* Updated Link Expiration Time bug to properly expire after selected time.
=6.6=
* Updated readme to link to customer feedback page
* Updated delivery format instructions on admin screen to show how to properly override the delivery format in shortcode.
=6.5=
* Updated readme screenshots
=6.4=
* Fix issue related to file_get_contents() function
=6.3=
* Update for support of CF7 latest release
* Enhancements to help with support for non-English websites
=6.2=
* Moved EBD to own menu in preparation for more robust administration capabilities in upcoming releases
=6.1=
* Updated PHP session to resolve health check warning
=6.0=
* Display Download Monitor file thumbnails (optionally) by default for all files or on a case-by-case basis via shortcode override
=5.4=
* Multiple file download checkboxes were displaying a script, which is now hidden
=5.3=
* Download filenames were lowercased, but with with this release, they are no longer lowercased
=5.2=
* Fixed issue that will help support compatibility with latest versions of WP/PHP
=5.1.9=
* Changed the way DOMDocument removes wrappers to be compatible with older versions of PHP
=5.1.8=
* Fixed issue with some browsers not showing UTC-8 characters properly
* cleaned up some code to remove PHP warnings
=5.1.7=
* Fixed issue with some malformed HTML being created by DOMDocument()
=5.1.6=
* fixed issue where some people weren’t getting ajaxed links
=5.1.5=
* fixed issue with false positives on invalid uids
=5.1.4=
* minor bugfixes
=5.1.3=
* fixed issue with link displaying when email only selected.
=5.1.2=
* Simplified use of PHPDomDocument to better function with older versions of PHP
* Let Javascript do more of the work for hiding/showing forms
* Removed custom API endpoint that was giving issue for some users
* Using Download Monitor hook to serve files
=5.1.1=
* Fixed issue where some instances wouldn’t activate after update
* Fixed issue where some servers wouldn’t set session variables
* Added css class to download selectors for easier formatting
* Fixed issue where some settings would be reset to default on update
* Fixed issue with older versions of PHP not liking HTML5 tags
=5.1.0=
* Added compatibility with version 5.0 of Contact Form 7
* Fixed issue where blacklist wasn’t parsing correctly for some people
* Fixed issue with response box showing for some people
=5.0.9=
* Fixed issue with character encoding when building form
=5.0.8=
* Fixed issue with older versions of PHP giving parse errors.
* Added banner and icons for plugin.
=5.0.7=
* Fixed issue with [your-message] not being parsed properly
* Fixed downloaded files not showing in admin email
* Fixed issue where some people couldn’t activate the plugin
* Fixed issue where form reloaded the page on submit for some people
=5.0.6=
* Fixed issue where pages with multiple forms weren’t displaying inline links properly
* Fixed issee with link_format not working
=5.0.5=
* Fixed issue with some servers not attaching files to emails
* Fixed issue with malformed email headers if from_name was left blank
* Fixed issue with some multiple download forms
* Fixed issue with smart quotes being used in shortcode by third party content editors
* Removed some default styling that was conflicting with some custom styles
* Fixed issue with non standard upload folder names
=5.0.4=
* Fixed emails not being sent for some people
* Fixed display issues with colons in download titles
* Modified settings so EBD stays compatible with Custom Sender plugin.
* Added shortcode attributes for from_email and from_name.
=5.0.3=
* Fixed issue with form not displaying for some people
=5.0.2=
* Fixed issue with admin tables not showing.
=5.0.1=
* Bug fixes
=5.0=
* Complete tear down and rewrite of entire EBD plugin.
* Better integration with WordPress.
* Added admin view, export, and purge of download links and posted data.
* Added better integration with Contact Form 7 and Download Monitor.
* Removed masked option from settings as this is pretty much done by default now.
* Added option for default contact form id.
* Added some CSS to the generated inline links to make them look a little better by default. Can be overwritten easily if needed.
* generates shorter URLs.
* More settings available in shortcode.
* Can override multiple titles now, as long as they are in the same order as the download ids.
=4.1=
* Made a few more modifications at the request of email from “[email protected]”.
=4.0=
* Made modifications to address items requested by “[email protected]” such as ensuring further sanitization of email addresses and database inserts. Also, removed ability to access files directly from within the plugin folder. Finally, while making these changes, changed the URL for downloads to use “ebd_dl” instead of “dl” just in case another plugin were to begin using the “dl” parameter in order to prevent possible conflicts. Due to these changes, download links from prior to EBD v4.0 will no longer work with EBD v4.0+.
=3.6=
* Made modifications to shorten the download URL and potentially improve email deliverability by removing “download.php” from the download link
=3.5=
* Made minor changes to support PHP 7.
=3.4.2=
* Fixed issue regarding the download button on some themes where download button would display in wrong format.
=3.4.1=
* Fixed issue related to SQL functions used in code.
=3.4=
* Updated deprecated WPDB escape functionality to new one.
=3.3=
* Updated to be compatible with Contact Form Version 3.9
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.