I Part One
What you can sell
Every product type in WooCommerce, how they actually work, and what surprises you.
For anyone setting up products or debugging inventory.
- 01 Simple Products One thing, one price, one SKU. The foundation everything else builds on.
- 02 Variable Products Size, color, material — products with options that each have their own price, SKU, and stock.
- 03 Grouped Products A display wrapper for related products. No stock logic of its own — each child product manages its own inventory.
- 04 Downloadable & Virtual Products Files, digital access, and services. Two flags that do different things — and you often need both.
- 05 External / Affiliate Products Products that live on someone else's site. You display them — they handle the sale.
- 06 Product Add-Ons Custom fields at checkout — engraving text, gift wrapping, color preferences. Flexible. But does not track stock.
- 07 Measured & Weight-Based Products Fabric by the yard. Rope by the meter. Coffee by the kilo. Products sold by measurement, not by unit.
- 08 Product Bundles Kits and sets with real stock tracking. Unlike Add-Ons, inventory actually deducts per component. Unlike Grouped, there's a single cart item and a bundle price.
- 09 Composite Products Multi-step product builders. "Pick your base, then your topping, then your packaging." The most powerful product configuration in WooCommerce — and the steepest learning curve.
- 10 Print on Demand Printful, Printify, Gooten — products that don't exist until someone orders them. Zero inventory, but real operational friction.
- 11 Subscriptions Recurring billing — subscription boxes, SaaS, replenishment, memberships with ongoing fees. Powerful, but it adds complexity to every layer of your store.
- 12 Memberships Gated access to content, products, or discounts based on membership plans. Often confused with Subscriptions — they solve different problems and usually need each other.
- 13 Content Drip & Online Courses Selling access to content that unlocks over time. Courses, lesson sequences, gated libraries. WooCommerce can do it — but not alone.
- 14 Bookings & Appointments Time-slot and resource-based products. Tours, consultations, equipment rental, classes. WooCommerce Bookings exists — but it's not your only option.
- 15 Marketplace & Multi-Vendor Multiple vendors selling through your store. This is the hardest WooCommerce configuration by far. This is not a product type — it's a business model, and the operational complexity is massive.
- 16 Stock Management Cheat Sheet Which product types track inventory, which don't, and what surprises you.