Child products or variants?

[microtribe]

I want to add a variant to a product that includes shipping. So the options would be printed or digital. Digital would have no shipping charge. Printed would be a different price plus shipping charge. Is this best achieved with child products? Or is it possible with product variants?

[lindapowers]

Ill say is better with chilld products to have different sku and product id for the digital and printed version for shipping options.

Thererore you can set free shipping for the digital and charge shipping on the printed child.
I believe you could do that with the shipping by rules plugin per SKU.

I dont see how you could do it with variants unless you sell only to one country with same shipping costs and you add the shipping cost in the string custom field for the printed version.