Physical product with digital product option

Shopify Discussion
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Topic summary

A seller of watercraft plans wants to consolidate three separate products into one listing with price-varying options:

Desired variants:

  • Digital PDF download
  • Digital PDF + DXF files (for CNC cutting)
  • Printed plans (physical delivery)

Proposed solution:
Create a single product with an abstract option called “formats” instead of traditional variants like color/size. Set up option value combinations for each format type.

Implementation considerations:

  • Digital delivery: Either customize email notifications with download links or use a dedicated app (though app compatibility with this setup may vary)
  • Inventory syncing: Multiple sync apps available in Shopify App Store, or automation tools like Mechanic for custom needs
  • Customer experience: Advanced theme customization can present multiple products as a unified offering if navigation clarity is a concern

The discussion remains open with the initial solution outlined but no confirmation of implementation or follow-up questions from the original poster.

Summarized with AI on October 26. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi all, I sell plans for watercraft in digital format and in printed plan format and want to start selling the DXF files for CNC cutting.

Instead of having 3 seperate products I want to have one product with the following variants which vary in price…

  1. digital PDF plan download (digital product)

  2. digital PDF & DXF file download (digital product)

  3. printed plans delivered to customer (physical product)

Any ideas on how I can achieve this? Thanks!

2

Hi @Aaron_d :waving_hand: if there aren’t other options like color and size, just make an abstract option like: formats

then setup the option value combinations.

As for automatically delivery the actual digital goods that will vary if your just customizing notifications to contain a link or using an app.

For apps choices will if that’s even possible to have a product setup like that.

If this is about sync’ing inventory there are other tons of sync apps available in the app store.

Or for custom needs automation tools like mechanic, examples https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=sync

If this is about customer confusion in picking options or navigating the site then advanced theme options can make multiple products be presented as if a single product.

If you need automation or theme customization then contact me for services.
Contact info in forum signature below :down_arrow: :down_arrow: :down_arrow:.
ALWAYS please provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL correspondence.