AccessDropEtsy's digital download file size limit
Five files, 20MB each, per listing. That is enough for most printables and not nearly enough for the products that sell best. Here's what the cap actually covers and the five things sellers do about it.
Twenty megabytes is a generous limit for a single-page printable and an impossible one for a wedding suite, a font family, a PNG clipart bundle or anything with a video in it. The cap is per file, not per listing, so the practical ceiling is 100MB across five files — but only if your product splits cleanly into five pieces, and many don't. This page is about what to do when yours doesn't. For the broader question of how Etsy delivery works at all, start with how to deliver digital downloads on Etsy.
Why a file that looks small is over 20MB
| What you exported | Why it's bigger than you expected |
|---|---|
| A print-ready PDF | Export at 300dpi with images left uncompressed and a single A4 page with a photo on it can pass 20MB on its own. Most design tools default to print quality when you pick "PDF Print". |
| PNG clipart or stickers | PNG is lossless. A transparent-background illustration at 3000px can be 5–15MB each, so a "bundle of 20" is nowhere near five files. |
| Fonts | A family with regular, italic, bold and a few weights is often ten or more files before you add the licence and the preview — over the five-file count long before the size limit bites. |
| Layered source files (PSD, AI, Procreate) | Layers and embedded assets multiply the size. A PSD that flattens to a 2MB JPG can be 200MB as a PSD. |
| Anything with embedded video or audio | Not a fit for upload at all. Buyers expect to stream these, not download a gigabyte. |
Five ways to get under the limit, in order
- 1
Export for the right use, not the maximum
A planner someone prints at home does not need 300dpi photos. Export PDFs at 150dpi, or use your tool's "compressed" or "web" PDF setting, and check the result on a real printer before assuming it looks worse. Most of the time it doesn't.
- 2
Compress the PDF after export
A dedicated PDF compressor — the one built into macOS Preview, or any of the reputable desktop tools — will usually halve a design-tool PDF without visible loss, because those tools embed images at their original size regardless of how they're displayed.
- 3
Zip it
A ZIP counts as one file, so twenty PNGs become one upload. Zipping saves little on already-compressed formats (PNG, JPG, PDF), so this solves the count problem rather than the size one — the ZIP still has to be under 20MB. Tell buyers in the listing that it's a ZIP and how to open it; a surprising number of one-star reviews are "the file wouldn't open" from someone who has never unzipped anything on a phone.
- 4
Split by how it's used
Five files is a constraint you can design to: the PDF, the PNGs, the fonts, the licence, the instructions. If the product genuinely has more parts than that, that's the signal you've outgrown upload.
- 5
Deliver by link instead
When none of the above gets you there — big bundles, fonts, Canva templates (which have no file at all), anything you update — upload a single small PDF to Etsy that contains the link to where the files really live. That's the pattern most large digital shops use, and it has its own failure modes, which the rest of this page is about.
The link-in-a-PDF pattern, done properly
Delivering by link moves the problem rather than removing it. The files now sit on Google Drive, Dropbox or wherever you put them, and the thing Etsy delivers is a one-page PDF with a link in it. Three things go wrong with that, and they arrive as reviews rather than as questions:
- The link doesn't open for the buyer. Almost always a sharing setting — the file is shared with specific people, or with your organisation, rather than with anyone who has the link. Google Drive link not working for customers walks through the exact fix, and it applies to Dropbox too.
- The link is fine today and broken in March. You moved the folder, renamed the file, tidied your Drive, or the link was set to expire. Every buyer who bought in the meantime has a dead PDF in their Etsy downloads, and you find out from the first one who complains.
- The PDF looks like a scam. A bare URL on a blank page, sent to someone who has just paid you, gets a hesitant click at best. A delivery page with your shop name, what they bought, and a short readable link gets opened.
Before you upload a link PDF to a listing
- Open the link in a private window with no account signed in — if it asks you to request access, so will your buyer
- Put the shop name, the product name and one line of instructions on the page, not just the URL
- Note the link somewhere you'll find it, so that when you reorganise your Drive you know which listings depend on which folder
- Decide now what you'll do when the link breaks — because it will, and the buyer who finds it won't message first
What AccessDrop does with this
AccessDrop (accessdrop.app) is the link-in-a-PDF pattern with the failure modes handled. You paste your Google Drive, Dropbox or Canva link; it gives you a branded delivery PDF with a QR code and a short link, which you upload to the Etsy listing as the file. The files stay where they are — AccessDrop doesn't host anything. If you move the folder later, you repoint the short link and every past buyer's PDF keeps working. And once a week it opens each link the way a stranger would and emails you if one has stopped opening — a check, not a guarantee, but it means you hear before the buyer does. £19 once, for a year, up to five links.
See a delivery PDF
A real example of what the buyer opens, and what the weekly link check catches.
See a sample delivery