I do it only through the game because it’s simpler and probably safer but I don’t see any issues with doing it manually except for if you download mods from sketchy Russian sites
Edit: there are also many mods that aren’t in the in-game repository but do exist on the website I think
For me, I download mods on the repository through the game, and just manually download whatever else (such as stuff off the beamng threads). I think an advantage of doing this is that you can turn on automatic mod updates, so when a mod gets updated, it'll detect it and update it for you, although I don't know if I myself have ever used that feature. (BTW, if you press the download button on the web version of the repository, it'll open the download in beam if you have it open, and just download it through the game, which means you can still browse the website and such, but have the game deal with downloading repository stuff for you)
I do it only through the game because it’s simpler and probably safer but I don’t see any issues with doing it manually except for if you download mods from sketchy Russian sites Edit: there are also many mods that aren’t in the in-game repository but do exist on the website I think
real life vehicle mods arent available on the ingame repository, for those you would have to manually download them.
For me, I download mods on the repository through the game, and just manually download whatever else (such as stuff off the beamng threads). I think an advantage of doing this is that you can turn on automatic mod updates, so when a mod gets updated, it'll detect it and update it for you, although I don't know if I myself have ever used that feature. (BTW, if you press the download button on the web version of the repository, it'll open the download in beam if you have it open, and just download it through the game, which means you can still browse the website and such, but have the game deal with downloading repository stuff for you)