Discontinued Products Manager for WooCommerce

Retire products without losing the traffic they earned

Discontinued Products Manager for WooCommerce is an extension for products you’ve stopped selling for good. It adds a Discontinued stock status next to In stock, Out of stock, and On backorder. A discontinued product can’t be bought, but its page stays online at the same address. Visitors who arrive from a search result, an old email, or a bookmark see why the product is gone and a grid of products they can buy instead. Meanwhile, your shop and site search show only what’s for sale.  

What changes when you discontinue a product instead of deleting it?

Deleting a retired product turns its page into a 404 error. Every link pointing at it breaks, and the search ranking the page built up is lost. Marking it Out of stock keeps the page, but tells customers the product might come back. Discontinued Products Manager gives you a third option, made for products that are gone for good.

• Keep the search traffic and links a product page has earned. The page stays online, and you decide whether it also appears in your shop, site search, and XML sitemaps.
• Turn dead ends into sales. Each discontinued product page can show up to 12 alternatives, picked by you or pulled from related products, upsells, cross-sells, or the same category.
• Stop orders you can’t fulfill. With the default settings, discontinued products and variations can’t be added to the cart.
• Sell the last units first, then retire the product automatically. Auto-discontinue switches a product or variation to Discontinued as soon as its stock reaches zero.
• Tell customers plainly what happened. A badge on the product image and a message in your own words explain that the product is retired, not just out of stock.
• See who retired what, and when. Every discontinuation and restore is recorded in an activity log.

What does Discontinued Products Manager include?

A real Discontinued stock status

Discontinued is registered as a WooCommerce stock status, so it sits alongside the statuses you already use rather than in a separate checkbox. You can set it in the product editor, on individual variations, with a bulk action on the products list, automatically when stock runs out, through the REST API, or by asking an AI assistant. The products list shows Discontinued in the Stock column and lets you filter by it. The extension also remembers each product’s previous stock status, so restoring a product puts it back where it was.

Clear signals for shoppers

• A badge on product images, on the product page and in shop listings, with your own text, colors, and choice of corner.
• An optional grayscale effect on discontinued product images, so retired products stand out at a glance.
• Your own wording in place of the usual stock label, such as “No longer available”.
• A message box on the product page, written once for every discontinued product or per product, with basic HTML for links and bold text.
• Three message positions (after the title, after the price, or before the Add to Cart area) and your own background, text, and border colors.

Alternative product suggestions

A shopper who lands on a retired product came looking for something. The alternatives grid gives them somewhere to go next.

• Pick alternatives by hand for each product, including individual variations.
• Or pull them automatically from related products, upsells, cross-sells, or the same category. Automatic sources skip other discontinued products.
• Set a fallback source for products without hand-picked alternatives, so you don’t have to fill in every product.
• Choose 1 to 12 products, 1 to 6 columns, and the section heading. The grid stacks to one column on small screens.
• Override the grid template in your theme for full control over the layout.

Visibility and search engine optimization (SEO) controls

• Hide discontinued products from the shop page and from product category and tag archives.
• Hide them from your site’s search results.
• Hide them from the WooCommerce Products widget.
• Exclude them from the XML sitemaps generated by WordPress, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and SEOPress.
• Send visitors to a replacement with a 301 redirect, to a product you choose or to the first alternative, switched on product by product.

Each control is independent, so you can keep a product out of your shop while its page keeps ranking, or keep it listed as part of a back catalog.

Automation and bulk tools

• Auto-discontinue per product or per variation, triggered when the stock quantity reaches zero.
• Mark as Discontinued and Restore from Discontinued bulk actions on the products list.
• Safe deactivation. Deactivating the extension moves every discontinued product to Out of stock, so nothing goes back on sale, and reactivating returns them to Discontinued.

Reporting and records

• A Discontinued Products widget on your WordPress Admin dashboard (WP Admin) with the total count and the five most recent changes.
• An activity log of every discontinuation, restore, and automatic discontinuation, including the user who made the change.
• A comma-separated values (CSV) export listing each discontinued product’s ID, name, SKU, stock status, discontinued date, the ID of the user who discontinued it, and its alternatives.

AI assistant tools

From version 1.1.0, the extension registers six tools through the WordPress Abilities API. Connect an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT with a connector like [MCP (Model Context Protocol)](https://woocommerce.com/products/w7s-mcp/), and you can manage retirements in plain language.

• Look things up: list discontinued products, check a single product’s status and alternatives, and read the activity log.
• Make changes: discontinue a product with its alternatives and a note in one request, restore a product to its previous stock status, or replace a product’s alternatives.
• The tools only work for users who can manage WooCommerce, and they check every alternative product ID before saving.

Built for developers and agencies

• 4 action hooks and 8 filter hooks covering discontinue and restore events, availability text, messages, badges, alternatives, visibility, and redirects.
• A REST API for settings, discontinued product lists, discontinue and restore actions, stats, export, and the activity log.
• Documented CSS classes, a theme-overridable template, and translation-ready text.

Which stores is Discontinued Products Manager built for?

Stores that replace models with newer versions

If you sell electronics, appliances, tools, or anything with model years, old product pages keep getting visits after the model is gone. Point those visitors to the new model with a hand-picked alternative, a custom message, or a 301 redirect.

Stores selling through seasonal or limited stock

Clothing boutiques, gift shops, and brands with seasonal lines can tick Auto-discontinue and keep selling until the last unit goes. The product then retires on its own and shows similar items from the same category.

Stores whose product pages bring in search traffic

If organic search drives your sales, deleting products throws away rankings you worked for. Keep retired pages live, hide them from your shop and search, and decide per product whether to redirect or exclude them from sitemaps.

Agencies and teams managing large catalogs

Bulk actions, CSV export, an activity log, a REST API, and AI assistant tools make it practical to retire hundreds of products and keep a record of every change.

How does Discontinued Products Manager work?

1. Install and turn it on. After installing, go to **WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Discontinued Products** and switch on the extension. Nothing changes in your store until you do.
2. Set your defaults. Six settings tabs cover the stock label and purchasing, the badge, the message, alternative suggestions, visibility, and redirects. The defaults already stop purchases, show a badge, suggest alternatives, and hide discontinued products from the shop, search, and widgets.
3. Discontinue products. Change the stock status in the product editor, use the bulk action, tick Auto-discontinue, or ask your AI assistant.
4. Customers see the change right away. The product page shows the badge, your message, and alternatives, and the product leaves your shop listings and search results.

How does it compare with other WooCommerce discontinued products plugins?

Several plugins add discontinued product handling to WooCommerce. The table compares Discontinued Products Manager with three others using the features and details each vendor lists on its own product page. “Not listed” means the vendor’s product page doesn’t mention the feature.

Discontinued Products Manager is the only one of the four whose product page lists sitemap exclusion, 301 redirects, automatic alternatives with a fallback source, and AI assistant tools. It’s also sold and supported through WooCommerce.com.