Guide: setting custom prices for clients on WooCommerce, using a membership plugin

Want to make your products stand out using unique custom pricing?

Custom pricing is used in different ways by all kinds of businesses including businesses that sell custom products, businesses that want to offer discounts for bulk purchases, and businesses that want to sell to a private audience.

In this tutorial, we’ll explore the different ways you can customise your WooCommerce product pricing, and understand the steps to implement custom pricing on your WooCommerce site using a plugin.

What is custom pricing?

Custom pricing is a pricing tactic that isn’t based on a set price but is rather customised according to your target audience. This way, you can attract interested buyers and sell more products.

Here are some examples where custom pricing makes sense:

• Sell products to a private audience. By implementing user role pricing or using password login protection, you can sell specific products to certain user roles only on your website. This is perfect for online art galleries, wholesale stores, and membership websites.
• Offering bulk discounts. Custom pricing is a great way to offer bulk discounts on purchases. This way, customers are encouraged to add more products to their cart before checking out. For instance, you can offer a “Buy 10 get 20% off” discount or offer free shipping on orders above $75. This can help boost sales and increase the average order value.
• Offer “name your price” pricing. “Name your price” pricing gives customers the option to pay as much as they’d like, of course, while making sure it’s not below a specified minimum price. “Name your price” pricing is commonly used by artists for putting a price on art pieces.

Why should you use WooCommerce custom pricing?

By offering customised prices to customers on your WooCommerce site, you encourage them to purchase from your online store. When you offer discounts or “name your price” pricing, there’s a high chance more customers will purchase from your online store rather than going to a competitor.

Custom pricing also helps store owners cater to clients that are spread across multiple geographical locations. This will help you streamline your business model by reducing the costs incurred due to multiple currencies and logistics expenses.

Offering customised pricing also helps you build goodwill among customers who want to buy products in bulk. You can offer bulk pricing to registered wholesale customers. Since wholesale buyers already buy in large quantities, offering them a better price encourages them to always purchase from your online store.

In addition to this, offering unique and dynamic pricing on your WooCommerce site also helps you stand out from the competition. As a result, it can help improve sales and increase the average order value.

How do I set up WooCommerce custom pricing?

While WooCommerce is one of the best plugins to sell online, it still has some limitations. For instance, it doesn’t have the functionality to support custom pricing. This is why we recommend using plugins to implement customised pricing on your WooCommerce site.

Let’s take a look at some of the best plugins for setting up custom prices on your WooCommerce site:

#1: WooCommerce Members Only

The WooCommerce Members Only is an all-in-one membership plugin that gives you full control over content restriction options on your WooCommerce site.

It lets you protect or restrict individual posts, products, categories, and even the whole website using password login protection based on user role or user ID. This way, you can create and sell private products to specific user roles on your WooCommerce site, without having to code. It works for both simple products and variable products.

#2: WooCommerce Fees and Discounts

The WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugin is designed to help you quickly apply dynamic pricing, fees, and discounts on your WooCommerce site.

The custom price plugin lets you create different WooCommerce pricing tiers for your products based on quantity, user role, or payment gateway. You can also apply bulk pricing rules either globally, per product category, or per individual product on your WooCommerce site. The best part about these custom pricing rules is that they are versatile and easy to customise to your specific requirements.

Additionally, the WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugin is very user-friendly, even for non-tech savvy people. It offers a simple way to construct a sales and marketing plan based on special pricing, without store managers having to spend time and effort on manual modification or coding.

#3: WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate

The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin lets you fully customise how your WooCommerce products look and feel on the front-end of your ecommerce store.

While the plugin’s main functionality is to add extra options to your WooCommerce products, it still allows you to set up different prices. You can use it to offer a price based on the cost of different add-on options selected by the customer.

In addition to this, the plugin lets you create complex calculations to determine the ideal product price. You can also set up “name your price” pricing with a minimum price, maximum price, or a price range. This way, you can charge customers different prices based on their selections.

How to set up WooCommerce custom price using plugins

WooCommerce lets you add a regular price and a sale price for each product in the Product data section. Using plugins, you can do so much more.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can set up WooCommerce custom pricing using plugins.

For this tutorial, you will need a WordPress site with the WooCommerce plugin installed. In addition to this, you’ll also need the WooCommerce Members Only and the WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugins to create custom pricing offers.

Step #1: Install and activate the plugins

For starters, get both the custom price plugins and install them on your WooCommerce site. Once you purchase the plugins, you will receive an email containing the download links and the license keys for the plugins.

Navigate to Plugins → Add New from the WordPress admin panel and click on the Add New button. Drag the zip file to the Upload meta box and click on the Install Now button. Activate the plugin after it’s finished installing.

Once you have both the plugins installed and ready to go on your WooCommerce site, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Fees and Discounts and click on the Licence link to activate the plugin. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Similarly, do this for the WooCommerce Members Only plugin by navigating to WooCommerce → Settings → Members Only and clicking on the Licence link.

Step #2: Hide product prices

Using the WooCommerce Members Only plugin, you can hide prices across all products or for specific products and categories on your WooCommerce site. To do this, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Members Only and set the Restriction Method to User Role.

Select All Product Pages or specify a product or category that you want to hide product prices for by using the Restricted Content dropdown menu. Enter the user role using the Permitted User Roles text field and select the Hide Price checkbox below. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

This will only allow shop managers or staff members to view product prices while regular customers will only see product details, excluding the price.

Step #3: Create new user roles

The WooCommerce Members Only plugin also gives you full control over user roles on your WooCommerce site. You can create new user roles, duplicate existing ones, and edit user role capabilities from the same screen.

To do this on your WooCommerce site, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Members Only and click on the User Role link.

Select the user role you want to duplicate using the User roles dropdown menu under the User Roles section and click on the Duplicate role button after entering a new name for the user role. You can also edit role capabilities by selecting the user role from the Edit Role section and selecting permission checkboxes below. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Step #4: Show or hide payment gateways and shipping methods by user role

Using the WooCommerce Members Only plugin, you can also display or hide payment gateways and shipping methods by user role on your WooCommerce store. To do this, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Members Only and click on the Payment Methods link.

Specify authorised user roles using the Permitted roles text field and enter unauthorised users using the Restricted roles text field. Click on the Save changes button once you’re done.

Similarly, you can also hide specific shipping methods based on the user role of your customer. Click on the Shipping Methods link to specify authorised and unauthorised users as mentioned previously.

Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Step #5: Enable password login protection

You can also enable password login protection on your WooCommerce site using the WooCommerce Members Only plugin. Navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Members Only and select Log In Status using the Restriction Method dropdown menu.

You can select what happens after site visitors log in to their accounts using the After Logging In dropdown menu. If you choose to redirect users, you can set which page to redirect them to using the After Login, Redirect To dropdown menu. Select the products you want to enable login protection by using the Restricted Content dropdown menu.

Additionally, you can also display a custom add to cart button for restricted users. Edit the Add To Cart Text text field and click on the Save changes button to continue.

Only logged-in users will be able to purchase products on your WooCommerce site while logged-out users will be notified to log in to see product prices.

Step #6: Hide the add to cart button for specific user roles

The WooCommerce Members Only plugin also lets you hide the add to cart button for specific user roles on your WooCommerce site.

To set this up, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Members Only and select User Role from the Restriction Method dropdown menu.

Using the Permitted User Roles text field, specify the user roles you want to show the add to cart button to. Select which products to restrict using the Restricted Content dropdown field and select the Access Product Pages checkbox. This will let all site visitors browse your WooCommerce site’s single product pages while only allowing specified user roles to see the add to cart button. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Authorised users can add products and product variations to their cart like they normally would and proceed to checkout. On the other hand, unauthorised users will not see the add to cart button on their screens.

Step #7: Create custom options

While the WooCommerce Members Only plugin is great for customising product pricing on your ecommerce store, the WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugin also lets you create custom price options.

Enable modules

With the plugin installed and ready to go on your WooCommerce site, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Fees and Discounts and select both the Enable Dynamic Pricing and Enable User Role Pricing checkboxes.

Create dynamic pricing rules

Now, click on the Dynamic Pricing link after clicking the Save changes button.

Click on the Add Rule button and select Bulk Pricing from the Offer Type dropdown to offer discounts on bulk purchases on your WooCommerce store. Enter a Label for your offer and specify the products you want to offer the discount on using the Applies to dropdown menu. Click on the Add New Tier button to create pricing tiers for discounts. This way you can offer a multi-level discount, based on the number of items customers add to their shopping carts. Once you’re done, click on the Save changes button to continue.

Customers will receive a discount when they add the minimum amount of items to their cart.

Similarly, you can also offer discounts based on the total amount a customer spends on your online store. To do this, select Order Total from the Offer type dropdown menu and enter a catchy Label.

Add your discount tiers and specify the discount amount using the Amount text field. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Customers will receive a discount when they add products that amount to higher than £75.

You can also create a combination of both discount offers and create a “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” offer. Just select Buy X Get X from the Offer Type dropdown menu and enter the offer Label.

Set which products you want to offer the custom pricing on using the Applies to the dropdown menu and enter 2 in the Buy text field and 1 in the Get field. This will create a “Buy 2 get 1 free offer”. Now set the Adjustment Type to Percentage Discount and enter 100 in the Amount field. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Customers will not have to pay for the third item they add to their cart once they have added two of the same items.

Create user-role based discounts

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts also lets you create user role-based discounts on your WooCommerce site. Navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Fees and Discounts and click on the User Role Pricing link.

Using the Adjustment dropdown menu you can set the type of discount and specify the amount using the Amount text field right next to it. You can also choose to display each role’s prices and display role-based prices for variations using the Role Price Fields section. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Using user role pricing is a great way to encourage more people to register with you or log in to your website. For instance, you can offer a discount if users are logged in as the Editor user role or offer a fixed discount to Shop Managers.

Conclusion

Setting up custom prices on your WooCommerce site is a great way to offer purchasing incentives. As a result, it can help improve sales and generate more revenue for your business.

Using both plugins, you have all the functionality you need to create custom pricing options. You can easily create dynamic pricing offers and discounts based on the payment gateway or shopping method customers select. The best part is that you don’t need any coding skills to create professional and effective pricing offers for your WooCommerce products.

Here’s how these plugins have helped other users transform their businesses and overcome challenges:

“Excellent and useful plugins. Technical support is fast, available, and decisive even for complex problems. Good job.” – Marco Brughi

“We’ve been using Fees and Discounts to make discounts possible if visitors buy 10+ items and to add fees for PayPal payments. Without the plugin it wasn’t possible to achieve this.” – Bert Hennephof

Other than offering custom pricing, you can use the WooCommerce Members Only plugin to easily create private membership sites and restrict content by user role, password, or logged-in status. The plugin is perfect if you’re looking for an easy-to-use, intuitive experience while still having all the control and flexibility to offer custom pricing.

Ready to start setting up custom prices on your WooCommerce site? Get WooCommerce Members Only and WooCommerce Fees and Discounts today!