It can sometimes be tricky to know which of these methods is required or is most appropriate for the type of products you’re wanting to sell. They all do similar jobs and have some overlap, but they also have significant differences and uses. Knowing how to bundle products with WooCommerce using any of the available extensions will help.
This document gives examples and use-cases to outline the differences between these methods for selling multiple products together and, hopefully, helps you decide which is right for your store.
Which One Do You Need?
↑ Back to top| If you want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Sell a fixed kit or starter pack as one product at one price | Product Bundles |
| Let customers build a configurable product, choosing an option at each step | Composite Products |
| Let customers fill a box with a set number of items they pick | Mix and Match Products |
| Collect engraving text, file uploads, or custom fields on a product | Product Add-Ons |
| Show frequently-bought-together and related-product suggestions across your store | Product Recommendations |
| Give away a free item when someone buys a specific product | Chained Products |
| Require two products to be bought together, each keeping its own price | Force Sells |
| Let customers add several similar products to the cart from one page | Grouped Products – Included in WooCommerce Core |
Solution Overview
↑ Back to top| Solution | Description |
|---|---|
| Chained Products | Chained Products is ideal if you want to gift customers product x & y when they purchase product z. |
| Product Bundles | Product Bundles is ideal for creating product packages. It can be used to offer bulk discount combos and pick-and-mix boxes and even allows you to attach optional items to existing products. |
| Force Sells | Force Sells is used to link ‘required’ products together such as a service and a separate product. |
| Grouped Products | Grouped products are perfect for letting a customer add several similar products from a range to their cart in one go and is included in WooCommerce core. |
| Composite Products | Ideal for creating product kits and assembled products by grouping existing products in configurable components. It offers many customization options and supports conditional logic. |
| Mix and Match Products | Selling cases of wine? A dozen donuts? Fruit baskets? Six-packs of T-shirts? Mix and Match is ideal for offering similar products in bulk containers. Perfect for encouraging customers to buy in bulk without forcing them to buy items that don’t interest them. |
| Product Add-Ons | Product Add-Ons is ideal for collecting customer input on a product — engraving text, gift messages, file uploads, or paid options like gift wrap and rush fees. It adds fields to an existing product rather than grouping products together. |
| Product Recommendations | Product Recommendations is ideal for showing frequently bought together and related-product suggestions across your store. It builds them automatically from your order data and can place them on product, cart, checkout, and category pages. |
Chained Products
↑ Back to topAs the name suggests Chained Products lets you chain additional products (simple/downloadable and variations) to a ‘main’ product. Chained products are visible on the details page for the main product and listed as such. When the main product is added to the cart, the chained products are also added with a price of zero. The chained products are free, unless purchased individually. The customer only pays the price of the main product.
Example
↑ Back to topAs an example, you might be selling mobile phone handsets and accessories. You want to run an offer so that when a customer purchases a particular handset they get a set of headphones (which can still be purchased individually for their listed price) for free. In this case, the handset would be the main product, and the headphones would be chained to it.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topUse Chained Products if you want to gift customers product x & y when they purchase product z.
Purchase Chained Products Documentation
Product Bundles
↑ Back to topProduct Bundles is a general-purpose bundling extension that lets you sell multiple products together. It allows you to build customizable bundles with configurable quantities and optional items by adding simple, variable, and subscription products to bundle “containers.” The extension supports virtual and downloadable flavors of all supported product types and is suitable for creating physical, digital and downloadable bundles. Thanks to its flexible pricing and shipping options, it covers a wide range of applications.
Example
↑ Back to topYou may be a musician looking to sell singles and albums as downloadable products. The singles will be available individually, but you also want to group a selection of singles into an album, with a set price, and sell that group as a bundled product. In this example, a customer purchases your album and gets access to all the singles as downloadable products.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topProduct Bundles is ideal for creating product packages and assembled products. It can be used to offer bulk discount combos and pick-and-mix boxes and even allows you to attach optional items to existing products.
Purchase Product Bundles Documentation
Force Sells
↑ Back to topForce Sells lets you link products together so they are added to the cart simultaneously. ‘Force Sold’ products are displayed on the main product page as being ‘linked.’ These products can be modified in the cart (quantity) or set to be synced with the main product (so they cannot be removed unless the main product is removed). The ‘Force Sold’ products retain their price. So if the main product is $20 and the force sold product is $10 the customer pays $30. This is one of the key distinguishing features that sets Force Sells aside from Chained Products.
Example
↑ Back to topYou may run a workshop that sells repair services such as ‘mobile phone glass repair’. If someone purchases that service, you know that they will also need to purchase a new screen. The new screen is, therefore ‘force sold’ along with the repair service.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topForce Sells is used to link ‘required’ products together such as a service and a product.
Purchase Force Sells Documentation
Grouped Products
↑ Back to topGrouped Products is a product type bundled in WooCommerce core and is more about product display — it does not involve any different purchase rules like the aforementioned three extensions. Grouped Products lets you add similar (think materials, design, etc.) simple products to a single parent product. This allows the customer to add products from a range, or a couple of products from within a range, to their cart on one page instead of navigating to several different pages to do so.
Example
↑ Back to topConsider a furniture store. It sells sofas, chairs, stools in different ranges. The ‘Classic’ range includes a three-seat sofa, a two-seat sofa, a sofabed, an armchair, and a stool. All products in this range are made of the same materials and have the same properties (size/shape excluded, obviously) and description. These individual products are set up as simple products that are purchasable individually. Finally, a grouped product is created to describe the range, the aforementioned products are added as children of this grouped product resulting in a single product details page where customers can add any of these products to their cart in one go.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topGrouped products are perfect for letting a customer add several similar products from a range to their cart in one go.
Composite Products
↑ Back to topWith Composite Products, it is possible to create sophisticated product kits and assembled products by grouping existing Simple and Variable products in configurable Components.
New Composite Products are created by defining Components and adding existing Simple or Variable products as Component Options. The extension allows you to:
- Customize many aspects of the configuration flow, layout, and appearance of a Composite product.
- Introduce dependencies between Component Options.
- Create multiple configuration paths by conditionally hiding entire Components.
- Use discounts to make your kits more appealing.
Example
↑ Back to topSay your store sells cameras, a product that typically requires several subsidiary products in everyday use. As a purchase option, you might want to allow newcomers to purchase the camera, along with those subsidiary products (lens, filter, memory card, bag) in one go from a single page. There may, however, be several options for these products. There are, for example, many different memory card sizes/manufacturers. Instead of listing these on the product details page, which will be messy, Composite Products walks customers through each option and allows them to choose what they want to purchase. Additionally, the extension makes it possible to define selection constraints between cameras, lenses, and memory cards, since some cameras might require the use of specific lenses or memory cards.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topThe Composite Products extension is ideal for creating product kits and assembled products with configurable components. It offers many options for customizing how a Composite product looks and works and supports conditional logic.
Purchase Composite Products Documentation
Mix and Match
↑ Back to topWith Mix and Match, its name should help explain what it does! You select a product container that you then can add simple and variable products into. Allow as many or as few items as you wish to be available in any given Mix and Match assortment. These can have a static price or be priced per item and totaled. The assortments can also be shipped together in one package, shipped separately, or not shipped at all and ready for local pickup.
Inventory for products in the Mix and Match assortment are tracked just like standalone products, and the Mix and Match product container can be stock-managed, too. Once set up, a Mix and Match product appears similar to a grouped product. Customers see a list of all available products and are allowed to assemble their assortment in any configuration that you allow.
Example
↑ Back to topSay you run donut shop and you want to let your customers create their own custom baker’s dozen. Set up your Mix and Match product to allow 12 products from your catalog of fried treats. That’s the easy part, your customers then have to make the hard decision of what donuts to get.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topMix and Match is ideal when wanting to give the ultimate choice to your customers. They can buy with flexible parameters to their heart’s content. If you sell products that work great with that in mind — shirt bundles, donuts, candy, candles, soda/beer/wine, essential oils — Mix and Match products is a great extension to encourage more sales in your store.
Purchase Mix and Match Documentation
Product Add-Ons
↑ Back to topProduct Add-Ons doesn’t group products together. It adds fields to a product you already sell, so shoppers can configure or personalize it before adding it to the cart. Those fields can be text inputs, dropdowns, image choices, checkboxes, file uploads, or date pickers, and each one can carry a price charged as a flat fee, a percentage, or by quantity.
Example
↑ Back to topA jeweler sells an engraved bracelet. Product Add-Ons puts a text field for the engraving and a dropdown for the font on the product page, adding $5 to the price when the customer fills them in. Add-ons aren’t separate products. They have no SKU and aren’t tracked as stock. If the option is a real item you count in inventory, use Product Bundles or Composite Products instead.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topProduct Add-Ons is ideal for personalization and paid extras on a single product — engraving, monograms, gift wrap, rush fees, or uploaded artwork.
Purchase Product Add-Ons | Documentation
Product Recommendations
↑ Back to topProduct Recommendations doesn’t group products together. It decides which products to show a shopper, and where. It builds frequently-bought-together and related-product suggestions automatically from your order data, then places them across your store — product pages, cart, checkout, category pages, and the order-received page.
Example
↑ Back to topA shopper views a camera body. Product Recommendations surfaces the lens and memory card most often bought alongside it, as separate items the shopper can add to the cart. It can also surface an existing bundle that contains that camera.
Conclusion
↑ Back to topProduct Recommendations is ideal when your products are fine as they are and you want to raise average order value by showing the right thing at the right moment.