Smart Categories for WooCommerce – Product Categories & Category Management

WooCommerce product categories are manual: you add each product by hand and
re-check them every time a price, stock level or attribute changes. Smart
Categories for WooCommerce makes a category define itself — you describe the
products with rules, and matching items are added automatically and kept in sync
forever.

It is category management for a catalogue that will not sit still: the rule is
the category, so product categorization stops being a weekly chore and starts
being something the store does on its own.

• Unlimited nested rules. Combine AND, OR and NOT in nested groups — e.g. (Colour is Black OR Red) AND price < 50 AND on sale.
• 35+ fields to match on. Title, SKU, price, sale price, discount %, stock status/quantity, attributes, tags, brand, product type, ratings, all-time sales, dates, custom fields, dimensions and more.
• Live preview. As you build the rules you see exactly which products match, and how many, before you save.
• Always up to date. Membership refreshes automatically when a product, price or stock level changes, and on a daily sweep — no cron babysitting.
• Manual assignments are respected. Products you added to a category by hand are never removed by the engine.
• Categories or tags. Point a rule set at a product category or a product tag.
• Storefront sorting & stock. Order a smart category’s shop page by best-selling, newest, price or rating, and push out-of-stock products to the end (or hide them).
• Gutenberg block + shortcode. Drop a smart category’s products anywhere with the “Smart Category Products” block or [scwc_products id="12" limit="12" columns="4"].

Works with WooCommerce global product attributes and is HPOS-compatible.

Automated collections, the WooCommerce way

Other ecommerce platforms call these automated collections; WooCommerce categories
never had them. Smart collections here work the same way and go further: the
category rules nest to any depth, match on 35+ fields, and preview before you save.

Point a rule set at a product category or a product tag, and the same engine
runs both. Manual picks stay yours — the plugin only ever removes memberships it
created itself, so a hand-assigned product never disappears because a rule
changed.

See it work

Read the full documentation — getting started, the rule reference (every field and operator), nested AND/OR/NOT groups, storefront sorting, the block and shortcode, performance on large catalogs, the Pro subcategory generator and troubleshooting.

How it works

1. Create a category. Pick a ready-made template (On Sale, New Arrivals, Low Stock…) or write your own rules. The live preview shows exactly which products match, and how many, before you save.
2. Products flow in. Matching products are assigned immediately when you create the category.
3. It stays current. Membership refreshes when a product, price or stock level changes, plus a daily sweep — a product that stops matching leaves on its own.
4. Your manual picks are safe. The plugin only ever removes memberships it created itself.

Pro: a subcategory for every attribute value, generated

Shoppers search for black hoodie, not hoodies. The category page that would
answer that query usually does not exist, because building one per colour, size
or brand by hand is a week of work that starts going stale the day you finish.

Pro generates that level for you. Pick an attribute on any parent category and it
creates one smart subcategory per value — Red Dress, Blue Dress,
Black Dress — each with its own rule set, so products flow in and out on
their own from then on.

• Two attributes at once. Combine Colour × Size on “Dresses” and Pro builds the cross-product: Red XL Dress, Blue M Dress, Black S Dress.
• Editable name templates. {value1} {value2} {parent} is the default; rearrange it, or write your own, and every generated page follows it.
• Preview before anything is created. The generation screen lists every page it is about to make and how many products each one will hold, so you see the shape of the level before you commit to it.
• New values grow their own pages. Add a colour to the attribute and a subcategory for it appears on the next daily run — nobody has to remember.
• Optionally pre-build empty combinations, so the structure is live before the stock lands.
• Category Tree page to see the whole generated hierarchy at once.

These are real category pages. Each generated subcategory is a genuine
WooCommerce product category: its own URL, its own archive template, its own
product count — indexable and linkable exactly like a category you created by
hand. It is not a filtered view or a query-string variant that search engines
ignore.

And because the rule underneath is a normal smart-category rule, the pages stay
correct without maintenance: a product that changes colour leaves one
subcategory and joins another on its own.

Free vs Pro

The complete rule engine is free, with no limits on the number of categories, rules or products.

Free — everything you need to organise a catalog

• Unlimited nested AND / OR / NOT rule engine
• 35+ match fields, live preview and daily auto-refresh
• Category and tag rule sets
• Storefront sorting and out-of-stock handling
• Products block + [scwc_products] shortcode
• Ready-made templates and in-admin Help & FAQ

Pro — automation for growing stores

• Auto-generate a subcategory per attribute value (Colour, Size, Brand…)
• Combine two attributes into a cross-product of subcategories
• Editable name templates, e.g. {value1} {value2} {parent}
• New attribute values grow new subcategories on their own, daily
• Sales-intelligence fields: units sold 7 / 30 / 90 days, revenue, velocity, days since last sale
• Trending and stale-product auto-collection templates
• Category Tree overview page
• Priority support

Smart Categories Pro is a separate download distributed through Freemius. Full comparison and pricing: erenlabs.net/smart-categories-for-woocommerce

External services

This plugin can connect to Freemius (freemius.com) to power the optional Pro upgrade: licence activation, automatic updates for the paid version, and the checkout/upgrade screens. Nothing is sent unless you opt in. If you click “Allow & Continue” during the optional opt-in, non-sensitive environment data (site URL, WordPress and PHP versions, active theme/plugins and your admin email) is sent to Freemius to enable licensing and updates; if you skip it, no data is transmitted. Freemius is only contacted for these upgrade/licensing actions.

• Freemius Terms of Use: https://freemius.com/terms/
• Freemius Privacy Policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/