Last updated - July 8, 2021
Dynamic pricing is an increasingly popular pricing strategy that is used by a lot of eCommerce store owners to stay ahead of the competition. The strategy is to offer compelling prices based on parameters such as product types, product categories, bulk orders, or customer roles. There are quite a lot of WooCommerce dynamic pricing plugins, free and premium, that you can consider adding to your store. This article should give you an overview of the features of some free woocommerce dynamic pricing plugins and premium dynamic pricing plugins of WooCommerce.
Dynamic pricing adjustments based on different approaches
Setting dynamic pricing and discounts on your WooCommerce store requires you to consider several factors. A broad categorization of these factors would be based primarily on four aspects – products, categories, order value, and roles. Let’s look into each of these in more detail.
Product-based dynamic pricing
Product-based pricing helps when you need to offer a discount according to the number of units a customer is purchasing. Here, the pricing strategy you use for your store is based on individual products. Build your dynamic pricing strategy on a few conditions such as the number of products in the cart, the line-item quantity, or the number of products from a category. Then define the table rates with pricing rules. You can offer this type of dynamic pricing for bulk purchases or as special offers on your store. Additionally, this type of pricing can be used to give a special offer to loyal customers in your store too.
Some examples of this would be:
- Give a 15% discount on ‘bath towels,’ when shoppers purchase five or more.
- Offer a 15% discount to everyone and a 20% discount to ‘Privileged Customers’ (user role) when they purchase five or more bath towels.
Order-based dynamic pricing
This dynamic pricing strategy offers you a chance to set up a dynamic price based on the customer’s total spent on an order. You can create a rule that applies only to certain roles or to everyone. This strategy can be applied in two ways. One is to apply it to the whole cart. Another option would be to apply only to a select list of categories. However, for this you can set a clause like a customer’s cart should have products from another set of categories, for the rule to apply.
For example:
- If the customer adds at least two items in the cart, offer a flat discount of $10 on total order value.
- If the weight of total items in the cart is more than 15 pounds, get 30% discount on the cart.
Role-based dynamic pricing
This is a simple and very effective strategy for the long-term prospects of your store. You can define a pricing strategy based on the customer’s user role in your store. There are plugins that allow you to select a specific user role from a list of user roles available in your store. You can simply choose the role and set a rate for that. The scope of this strategy will improve if you are using it along with other plugins that allow you to define custom user roles.
For example:
- You can offer a discount of 10% to ‘Privileged customer’ on all products in your store.
- Or, ‘Loyal customer’ gets an additional 10% discount on all items on sale.
Category-based dynamic pricing
If you are using the WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing plugin, you’ll see there are two ways to do this. The straightforward, single category-based model, and the more advanced multiple-category model that sets the rate for a list of categories.
Simple category-based dynamic pricing
In this pricing model, you choose one category from all the product categories on your store to set the dynamic rate. If a particular product in the cart is featured in more than one categories, the bigger discount will be applied automatically.
You can simply set discounts like:
- 20% on all items under ‘Furniture’ category
- Or, 15% on all ‘Cell phones’
Advanced category-based pricing
Here, you have the freedom to set a price based on multiple categories that you choose to apply the special price. If a product from any of the chosen categories is in the cart, the customer will be able to get the special rate. You can set dynamic rates for products outside the selected categories also. As seen in other cases, the store owner has the control to apply this only to specific user roles, or across all users.
So for instance, you can now create:
- A rule that says, if the ‘privileged customer’ purchases any three items from the ‘women’s apparel’ category, he/she will receive a 15% discount on items in the ‘accessories’ category.
- Or give a 20% discount on all items in the ‘e-Books’ category when a customer adds five or more items from that category.
WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing Premium Plugins
There are quite a few plugins that help you set all the above-mentioned strategies in your store.
WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing
WooCommerce’s own dynamic pricing extension allows great flexibility to store owners when it comes to pricing strategies. It allows you to set a dynamic rate for every product in your store. For this, you can create a table of quantities and discounts, and choose to set a fixed discount amount, or a flat rate for the product, or a percentage discount. It also lets you adjust the price for all items in a category according to the number of items the customer is purchasing from certain categories on your store. In addition, you are able to configure discounts for all products in the store based on different user roles.
ELEX Dynamic Pricing and Discounts Plugin for WooCommerce
This WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing Plugin is a unique one as you can set a maximum discount limit over every rule. It helps you apply dynamic discounts and prices at product, combination, category and cart levels. It is relatively easier to use with no complex calculations and configuration on the admin panel. With the help of this plugin, you can apply complex rules based on a percentage value, or flat discounts, or even dynamically set a new price without too much effort. The plugin will display the price adjustment on the product page as well as the shop page.
WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts By RightPress
This plugin helps you create pricing rules without any upper limit using a very effective rule editor. The rules can be applied to all products in the store, or only to specific products or categories. You get to control which rules are applied; whether all, or the first match, or the one with the biggest discount. The plugin enables your store’s product pages to display the discount pricing table inline or in a modal. There is also an option to set a promotion start and end dates.
WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing Free Plugins
Though premium plugins would do a comprehensive job in gearing up your store for awesome deals, sometimes free plugins can do the job well too.
Pricing Deals for WooCommerce – This plugin enables you to set dynamic, wholesale or category pricing in your store. You are able to give offers like “buy one, get one free,” or “buy two products, get 10% discount on both.” With this, you can schedule a begin and end date for the offers too.
Cart Deals for WooCommerce – This is another plugin that would help you in setting up different types of cart deals in your store. With this, you can show the deal description on your checkout page as well as on shopping cart, when a cart deal discount is applied.
