Lately several customers have been reporting that the official WooCommerce “PDF Watermark for WooCommerce” plugin is broken, and they’re relieved to have found us. It’s a shame it broke for whatever reason. We are glad to have you here!
Taking another look at the PDF Watermark for WooCommerce feature list and the two promised “coming soon” features they’ve had posted for over 5 years gets us wondering, though: why people pay more for less plugin features? And what is in a WordPress plugin name?
Feature Comparisons
Below follows a brief list of PDF watermarking plugin features where the two plugins differ vastly; our plugin blowing the competition out of the… galaxy.
Set per document password
PDF Ink has always allowed users to set unique watermarking properties for individual WooCommerce products (or per Download Monitor or per Easy Digital Download product). Even more, PDF Ink allows users to set watermarking properties for variations of products. So each PDF can have a different password, or none. Each PDF can have a different watermark. Each PDF can have different everything.
Watermark specific PDF pages and exclude others
“WooCommerce PDF Watermark” allows for watermarking on “all pages,” “first,” “last,” or alternate pages.
PDF Ink allows the choice of “all pages,” “first,” “last,” “alternate,” and “custom pages.”
If you select “Custom” pages in PDF Ink settings, then you can type in your desired pages in a range, such as 2-4,6-8,11. (That’s pages 2 through 4, pages 6 through 8, and page 11.)
You can also use filter hooks included in our plugins to avoid watermarking or passwording any particular PDF page. If you need advice on that, get in touch!
Image and text watermarks in the same document
This feature has been “coming soon” on the WooCommerce website for years. It is still there in 2025, three years after this blog post was first written. This is something we coded in the first iteration of WaterWoo in 2014. PDF Ink also includes this feature.
You want two images and text? You can have it. Want three? Sure. What makes this possible is PDF Ink uses a different PDF parser/writer than WooCommerce’s plugin, one which writes HTML. So, put HTML in your watermark, such as an tag, and voila! Do you want transparency of your text? We have that here, and are the only WordPress PDF watermarking plugin with that (just use the {OPAC} opacity shortcode).
Allow watermarks to work on layered PDFs
Face it, you’ll never get this feature with a free, open source, PDF parsing plugin. That’s the truth, and it’s because of licensing issues and because better libraries are not free.
This feature is never coming to WooCommerce PDF Watermark, and we cannot fathom why they would have suggested such a thing for so long. We are aware that at one point another competitor was “illegally” bundling the non-GPL compatible SetaSign libraries which they had essentially pirated for end-customers. We have a good relationship with SetaSign and have always refused to do this. In order to manipulate your fancy PDFs, it requires some fancy additional software working alongside PDF Ink.
You need PDF Ink and SetaPDF Stamper (a paid 3rd party library) to get this going, but you CAN get it going. For a little more moolah, you’ve got your custom watermark and or your password and protections on a layered PDF. We can help you set this up at a discount, just reach out!
Selectable link stripping
This is another feature that has been “coming soon” on the WooCommerce website for a very long time. If Woo is referring to PDF internal links, it’s a false promise, this feature is never coming. It’s a really odd promise in fact, one we actually cannot fathom. Who wants links, or anything, stripped from their PDFs? If you own a PDF, why not just strip it yourself before sharing it? Maybe something was lost in translation.
The PDF libraries available to ship with GNU licensed WordPress plugins do not parse internal links (Table of Contents) into memory, and won’t because of how they are written in the PDF stream.
If you are tired of WordPress PDF plugins stripping your PDF links, use PDF ink alongside SetaPDF Stamper!
Compatibility with Newer PDF Files
“Unable to serve the file at this time. The file does not support watermarking.”
Does that sound familiar? WooCommerce’s plugin (from woocommerce.com) does not support newer PDFs! If you want to upload a PDF for manipulation with their plugin, it has to be old (version 1.4 and older!). To give you an idea of how bonkers this is, PDF version 1.5 came out in 2003. That was twenty years ago!
The cheapest way to solve this problem is to switch to PDF Ink. PDF Ink supports all versions of PDF, even in its free version. You’ll enjoy a ton more flexibility with watermarking, and many more features. But if you are determined to fix WooCommerce PDF Watermark to accept ALL versions of PDF, here is what you do:
- Purchase FPDI PDF-Parser from Setasign
- Install it in this folder (which will unfortunately need to be done again next time your upgrade WooCommerce PDF Watermark) : yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce-pdf-watermark/includes/lib You want to make sure yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce-pdf-watermark/includes/lib/FPDI_PDF-Parser-2.0.6/src/autoload.php will be found on your server.
- Open the file yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce-pdf-watermark/includes/class-wc-pdf-watermarker.php THIS IS MAYBE TEDIOUS but you’re almost done
- On lines 46/47 where it says
//Include FPDI Parser to make it work with 1.4+ //require_once 'lib/FPDI_PDF-Parser-2.0.6/src/autoload.php';make it say instead://Include FPDI Parser to make it work with 1.4+ require_once 'lib/FPDI_PDF-Parser-2.0.6/src/autoload.php';The // (code comment) is removed from the second line. Now the plugin will seek that file and use the paid FPDI parser instead of the free (open source) version, which only reads PDFs to version 1.4. Also, the wizards truly behind all this magic (Setasign) get paid. Heck, if I’ve helped you, like really helped, PayPal $2 my way to let me know.
Thanks and good luck!
Coming soon: unicorns and wizards!
(More likely: cactus thorns and lizards)
Maybe people pay more and choose the WC branded plugin because WooCommerce has better exposure for their plugins on the WordPress market.
WooCommerce made our year very difficult. WooCommerce contacted us via WordPress.org to bully force us to change our plugin names in the repository, which impacted users’ ability to find us. WordPress owns WooCommerce. Funny enough they did not come after us OFF the Repository, just through the Repository. Their trademark is strong, yet still they took advantage of big daddy WP to force us off using three letters: “Woo.” We changed from WaterWoo to PDF Watermark for WooCommerce, so then they changed THEIR name, which is how things got dark for us.
They had OPMC (the developer maintaining “WooCommerce PDF Watermark”) change the name to “PDF Watermark for WooCommerce.” That was the name we had just changed to! Well, this is because they believe all plugins made for WooCommerce BY WooCommerce deserve to be called “WooCommerce __Plugin__.” Plugins made for WooCommerce by third-party developers should be called “__Plugin for__ WooCommerce.” How this actually makes any difference to anyone but people who work AT WordPress is beyond us. But also, this was a great strategic move because then people thought the OPMC plugin was the upgrade for our plugin. NOPE! 🙂↔️
Keep an eye out as we slowly recover. If you have a blog and want to write up PDF Ink or work on any type of collaboration for your business site, get in touch and we can work out a trade!
All our existing plugin users are going to get a big upgrade (hint: not unicorns and wizards, but still pretty cool). Update 2025: that upgrade is PDF Ink!
PDF Ink costs $20 less than PDF Watermark for WooCommerce and does a whole heck of a lot more. Max cost to try it out for 30 days is $5 — what are you waiting for?