Alex Mills

Now you too can show the <a href="https://wordpress.org/download/counter/" rel="ugc">WordPress download counter</a> on your website! This plugin adds a widget to your blog that shows the current download count and even refreshes the count every 15 seconds automatically.
Requirements
<ul>
<li>PHP 5.2.0 or newer (PHP4 is dead anyway)</li>
<li>WordPress 2.8 or newer</li>
</ul>

WordPress Download Counter

Allows you to show the download counter for WordPress on your site.

eugenealegiojo

The plugin that will let admin user to add download links to any posts/pages in simplest way and hassle free. 
Allows all your site visitors to download any files from your website without any user restriction.
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Downloader button is available in your admin content editor for post, page or post type. Shortcode will be generated automatically.</li>
<li>Insert download links manually via shortcode [media-downloader] to any posts, pages or custom post types. Check for more parameters below (Embedding).</li>
<li>Allow users to directly download in all file formats for free.</li>
<li>No file size limit for downloads. 
For more information please check the <a href="http://phplugins.softanalyzer.com/simple-file-downloader/" rel="nofollow ugc">Simple File Downloader</a> documentation page</li>
</ul>
<h4>Embedding / generated Shortcodes</h4>
Create a new post/page and click the ‘Add Download’ button from the content editor, then generate the shortcode below:
<pre><code>[media-downloader media_id="9" texts="Download Now!"]
</code></pre>
Media id is automatically added from your media library.
Here are the all the available parameters when generating shortcode for file download:
texts
If you choose to leave the texts parameter empty, then it be defaulted to ‘Download File’.
image_url
You can also use image/button as your download link. If you supplied this parameter, then texts parameter will be replaced by this image.
<pre><code>[media-downloader media_id="9" image_url="http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/images/button.png"]
</code></pre>
class
You can add class to your download link either a texts or image button. This is useful if you want to apply your own style.
<pre><code>[media-downloader media_id="9" texts="Download PDF" class="download-pdf"]
</code></pre>
display_filesize
You also have an option to display the size of the file. Just set it to ‘yes’
<pre><code>[media-downloader media_id="9" texts="Download PDF" display_filesize="yes"]
</code></pre>

Simple File Downloader

Simplest way to add download links into your posts/pages.

WordPress Download Counter vs Simple File Downloader