WooCommerce Product Builder is a quick and easy way to add custom product options to a WooCommerce product.

Like several of my plugins, it was made to give me complete control over important and sensitive functionality that inconsistently failed due to bugs introduced by the developers of 3rd party plugins.

Nothing was more frustrating to me than using a 3rd party plugin on a client’s site, only for an update to cause the functionality to break. The client would send me a message asking me to fix it. Since I was not the plugin developer and many of these plugins are extremely complex, I had to contact the developer or support team and wait for them to update the plugin and fix the bug they introduced with the last patch. Meanwhile, the client would lose money and there was nothing I could do but wait for a response.

Custom product options on the customer-facing product page.

By making my own plugins, I could ensure that any changes were properly tested within the contexts that the plugin would be used. Two client sites (so far) in the case of this plugin as opposed to thousands in the case of a 3rd party plugin. I knew that there would be no random update that broke the functionality, and I could be confident that my plugin would continue to produce an income for the client. If something did break, the issue could be resolved quickly because I made and knew the plugin.

WooCommerce Product Builder provides just a couple of simple options at the time of this writing in August 2024: Checkbox and Radio, ie “click all that you want” or “choose one”.

Two options for a product as they’re configured in the product edit page.