3 easy ways to hide WooCommerce products

Hide WooCommerce products

Looking for a solution to hide WooCommerce products at your store? Sometimes you don't want every single product available to the public, especially if you're running something like a B2B/wholesale or members-only store (though the use cases definitely don't stop there).

In this step-by-step tutorial, I'll show you how to hide products in WooCommerce using three different methods, depending on the level at which you want to hide your products. By the end of this article, you'll be able to hide:

  • A single product using WooCommerce to hide specific products from the shop page.
  • An entire category of products using the WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin (either by password, role, or individual user login).
  • Your entire store using the WooCommerce Private Store (either by password or user login).
An example of a category hidden with a password

WooCommerce Private Store
Protected Categories

Benefits of Hiding Products on a WooCommerce Store

There are several reasons why store owners might want to utilize WooCommerce hide products on your ecommerce store:

  1. Exclusive products: You may have some products that you only want to make available to a select group of customers, such as a VIP customer group or WooCommerce members of a loyalty program. By using the WooCommerce hide product feature, you can create a sense of exclusivity and make customers feel special.
  2. Seasonal products: If you sell seasonal products, you may want to hide them during the off-season to avoid confusing customers or cluttering up your online store. This can also help you to manage your inventory more effectively.
  3. Pre-launch products: If you're concerned about product visibility WooCommerce, and are planning to launch a new product or collection, you might consider hiding it until you're ready to make it available to the public. This can help to build excitement and anticipation among your customers.
  4. Wholesale products: If you offer wholesale customers pricing to certain customers, you may want to use the WooCommerce hide product feature from other customers who are not eligible for the discounted pricing.
  5. Personalization: You may want to create a personalized shopping experience for your customers by using product visibility WooCommerce based on their past purchase history, preferences, or other factors.

Which way of hiding WooCommerce products is right for you?

I'll keep this brief because you probably have a good idea of which is right for your situation already. But in a nutshell, if you're wondering how to hide products in WooCommerce, there are a few different methods available depending on your needs and preferences.

  • Option 1 - Hide an individual productThe core WooCommerce functionality is helpful if you just need to hide a single product. There's a built-in way to use WooCommerce to hide specific products from the WooCommerce shop page. But it becomes difficult to manage if you want to hide multiple products.
  • Option 2 - Hide categoriesWooCommerce Protected Categories are good if you want to just create some hidden products in an otherwise public store. You can use it to password protect products based on category; WooCommerce hide products by role; or WooCommerce hide products from everyone except specific users.
  • Option 3 - Hide your whole storeWooCommerce Private Store is good if you want to make every single product hidden. You can use it to password protect your entire store or hide it from all logged out users (guests).

Below, I'll take you through how to use each plugin to hide WooCommerce products, as well as the core WooCommerce functionality. Or if you prefer, then you can watch a video about how to set up product visibility WooCommerce:

Option 1: Hide a specific WooCommerce product from the shop page

Note: when you use this method, the product is hidden from the shop pages. But if a user gets their hands on a direct link, they'll still be able to access the product. For that reason, this method is not a good approach if you actually want to make the product private - not just hidden.

Also, this method isn't very efficient if you need to hide multiple products, as you'll need to manually edit every single product. When it comes to hiding multiple products on WooCommerce, a more efficient approach is to assign them to a category in bulk and then hide that category using one of the methods for how to hide products in WooCommerce.

If you're ok with the product still being accessible by direct URL, then it's fine to use WooCommerce to hide specific products from the shop page.

You can do this by editing the Catalog visibility option under Publish and choosing Hidden:

woocommerce hide product

Option 2: How to hide an entire category of WooCommerce products

To get started, you'll need WooCommerce Protected Categories installed and activated at your WooCommerce store.

Then, create a new product category for your private products. I'll give mine a creative name of "Private Products", but you can name yours whatever makes sense.

Once you have the category, assign the products that you want to hide to that category.

Now, you've come to the point where you need to make a choice about how you want to let people "unhide" the products in this category. You can:

  • Let users unhide the products by entering a password
  • Make the products automatically visible to certain users or user roles

How to password protect your hidden WooCommerce category

To add password protection, go to Products → Categories and edit the category that you created for your private products:

  • Scroll down to the WooCommerce product Visibility section
  • Select Protected → Password protected
  • Enter your desired password. You can also add multiple passwords to unlock the category if you want to give different users different passwords
  • Save changes

WooCommerce Protected Categories Password Protect

Then, you can configure how your password protected categories function by going to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Protected Categories.

In this area, you'll want to:

  • Uncheck the two Category Visibility checkboxes to make your category 100% hidden
  • Select a Category Login Page where users can enter the password to see the WooCommerce hidden products/categories
WooCommerce Protected Categories Visibility Settings

You can also peruse the other settings to see if anything applies to your specific needs.

Case study: eLearning Launchpad

eLearning Launchpad is a TOGAF 9 accredited training course provider based in the US. Delegates on training courses need to be able to download the course materials in advance of attending the courses.

But instead of using a commercial filesharing service, our WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin hides WooCommerce Products by working alongside the Free Downloads WooCommerce Pro plugin from Wp Enhanced.

Here’s how the two plugins work together. A password protected category page hides the course materials (i.e. WooCommerce products). A password is sent to course participants to access the category page. Then the materials can be downloaded. Thanks to the Free Downloads WooCommerce Pro plugin, they’re able to capture a few details before any file is downloaded.

Even though each download isn’t being sold on the site, they decided to set up the downloads as WooCommerce products to make them easy to manage - and easy to hide.

The site’s owner is pleased with how our plugin is hiding their WooCommerce products, just look at his feedback:

“I like the category simplicity and flexibility, and the ability to quickly add and delete multiple passwords”

How to hide WooCommerce products by specific user or user role

If you'd prefer to automatically give access to the WooCommerce hidden products to certain users or entire roles:

  • Go to Products → Categories
  • Edit the category that you created for your WooCommerce hidden products
  • Scroll down to the WooCommerce product Visibility section
  • Select Protected → Users and choose which users and/or roles can access your hidden WooCommerce products.
  • Save your changes

WooCommerce Protected Categories User Role Protection

Then, you can configure how your user and role protected categories function by going to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Protected Categories. Here, you need to choose what happens when a logged out or guest user tries to access a hidden category or one of its products:

WooCommerce protected categories redirect for logged out users

Option 3: How to hide your entire WooCommerce store

Now it's time for the third, and most private, way to hide WooCommerce products.

If you want to hide all of your products from the public, you'll need the WooCommerce Private Store plugin installed and activated.

Then, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Private Store to configure the plugin.

Just as with hiding specific categories of products, you can hide your store in two different ways:

  • Require users to enter a password to unhide the store
  • Automatically unhide the store for logged in users

Password protecting your hidden store

To add a password:

  • Enter a password (or multiple passwords) in the Store passwords box.
  • Choose how long the password should unhide the store (in days) in the Password expires after the box.
  • Enter the product page you want users to be taken to after logging in using the Redirect URL box.
  • Configure the Login form options.
how to hide your entire woocommerce store

Letting logged in users see your private store

If you want to automatically allow logged in users to see your private store, you just need to check the box for Automatically unlock the store for logged in users. Underneath, you'll find an option to choose which user roles to unlock the store for. This is handy if you only want certain user roles to have access, such as administrators and store managers.

You can also choose whether or not to Hide the login form… that displays for users who aren't logged in:

automatically unlock woocommerce store for logged in users

Three different options to hide WooCommerce products

Whether you need to hide a single product, one or more categories of products, or your entire WooCommerce store, one of the above methods should work for you.

Remember:

  1. To hide a single product, you can use the Hidden Catalog WooCommerce product Visibility option. Just remember that people can still see the product if they get a direct link - it's not actually private.
  2. If you want to hide an entire category of WooCommerce products, WooCommerce Protected Categories lets you do so via either password protection or specific logged in users or roles.
  3. To hide your entire WooCommerce store, WooCommerce Private Store lets you do so via either password protection or by automatically unhiding your store for logged in users.

Private Store Protected Categories

Any other questions about how to hide WooCommerce products on your WordPress website and provide great user experience? Leave a comment and we'll try to help out.

11 Comments

  1. Thank you for sharing ! That's strange we can't easily hide products from unregistered visitors : I asked ChatGPT4 all day and it couldn't solve this request. I tried several shortcodes but it doesn't work. A free plugin offers this feature but it's not compatible with new version of Woo, so ... That's cool to discover this one for a private category, I hope it will work ! TY !

    • Hi Luciade! I'm glad that you found our plugin and hope that it'll work for your needs. Should there be anything that we may assist you with, just let me know – or send us a new message via our dedicated Support Center. Cheers!

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