Multiple Free Downloads

I am at a loss for having this plugin [EDD + Free Downloads addon] do simple things that I expected would have been no-brainer features, hoping someone can help.

I have a free downloads page listing a bunch of free products in that category. I wanted to use the modal to collect e-mail address before allowing the download. It works fine for 1 download, but then after entering the e-mail once it keeps asking for an e-mail if the user keeps clicking Free Download on other products on the page.

According to the developers, there’s no way around this except to pay for custom development. Huh?

So as a workaround I am trying to use the “bypass the modal if user is logged in” feature.

Except now when the modal pops up and asks them to register first, the page doesn’t refresh after. So they get the 1st download, but the rest keep asking for registration. They have to manually refresh for the rest of the buttons to work.

I thought I could use the on-complete handler to refresh it, by redirecting them back to the page after registering, but then that disables the entire download, since it’s now just refreshing the page instead of letting them download a file.

Am I crazy or has anyone else encountered these issues? This plugin looked perfect and simple, but these little things are basically rendering it inoperable and useless for me.

Any help would be appreciated on how I could make this work easily for users and myself, without spending thousands on custom development. Thanks!