AccessDropTest a digital download before you publish, not after
Every failure mode in this section shows up as a one-star review, not a support message, because most buyers don't tell you something's wrong — they just leave. All of this takes fifteen minutes, once, before the listing goes live.
A physical seller finds out about a damaged item because the buyer emails asking what to do. A digital seller usually doesn't — the file either opens or it doesn't, and a buyer whose download fails rarely writes in first. They leave a review, or ask Etsy for a refund, or just don't come back. That asymmetry is the whole argument for testing before you publish rather than waiting to hear about a problem.
Before you upload anything
The file itself
- Under 20MB per file, five files or fewer per listing — Etsy's hard limit, covered in full on the file size limit page
- File name is 70 characters or fewer, using only letters, numbers, periods, underscores or hyphens — anything else is rejected at upload
- The file name itself is one a buyer would recognise months later in their downloads folder, not "final_v3_USE_THIS.pdf"
- If it's a ZIP, the listing photos or description say so, and say how to open one — a surprising share of "file wouldn't open" reviews are someone who has never unzipped anything on a phone
If you're delivering by link instead of a file
Fonts, Canva templates, and anything over the size limit get delivered as a link inside a small PDF rather than as the product file itself. That pattern trades one set of problems for another, and this is the point to catch them.
The stranger test
- Open the link in a private or incognito browser window — this is the only way to see what a signed-out buyer sees, not what you see as the file's owner
- Confirm it opens with no sign-in prompt and no "request access" screen
- Repeat on a phone, on mobile data rather than home Wi-Fi — a work or school account restriction, or a settings difference, can behave differently on each
- Try actually downloading the file, not just viewing it, if that's what the listing promises
- Check the delivery PDF reads clearly on a small screen — a bare URL on a blank page reads as suspicious to someone who's just paid a stranger
Before you hit publish
The listing
- The description sets a correct expectation — a printable is not a printed product, a Canva template is not a finished file, a font isn't a completed design
- Sizing, colour or format limitations are stated up front, not discovered in a review
- There's a way for a genuinely stuck buyer to reach you before they resort to a review — an FAQ section, a note in the listing, or your shop's message settings
None of this is unique to Etsy — it's the same handful of checks any digital seller should run before shipping. What's specific to Etsy is that a bad review sits permanently against the listing rather than against a single order, so the cost of skipping this checklist compounds every time the listing sells again with the same broken link.
Making the recheck automatic
The checklist above is a one-off before publishing. AccessDrop does the recurring part: paste your Google Drive, Dropbox or Canva link once, and it produces a branded delivery PDF with a QR code and a short link, then re-runs the stranger test itself once a week and emails you if a link has stopped opening — before the next buyer finds out the hard way. £19 once, for a year, up to five links. It doesn't host your files or change anything about Etsy's limits; it makes the one file you upload to the listing the reliable part of delivery.
See a delivery PDF and the weekly check
A real example of what a buyer opens, and what the access check catches.
See a sample delivery