Eren Labs – Smart Categories for WooCommerce

WooCommerce 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.

• 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.

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.

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/

1. Upload the smart-categories-for-woocommerce folder to /wp-content/plugins/, or install the zip via Plugins → Add New → Upload.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Open Smart Categories in the admin menu and create your first smart category.

1. 

   Start in one click — ready-made collections built from your own catalog, each showing how many products are waiting.

2. 

   Describe products with rules: combine AND, OR and NOT in unlimited nested groups, with a live preview of what matches.

3. 

   Created and populated — matching products are assigned immediately, then kept in sync automatically.

4. 

   Every smart category at a glance, with live product counts and one-click refresh.

5. 

   Turn any existing product category into a smart one; products you assigned by hand are never removed.

6. 

   A full Help & FAQ inside the admin: matching, performance, storefront and troubleshooting.

7. 

   Free forever, Pro when you grow — the complete comparison and pricing.

1.0.3

• Fixed: the Products block now carries its name, description and icon on the server too, so it is listed correctly as “Smart Category Products” everywhere (previously the WordPress.org listing derived a raw name from the block slug).

1.0.2

• Changed: every shared registry name now carries the plugin prefix to avoid collisions with other plugins — the shortcode is [scwc_products], the block is scwc/products, the REST namespace is scwc/v1 and the WP-CLI command is wp scwc.
• Note: if you used the previous shortcode or block in your content, update them to the new names.
• Fixed: the shortcode now matches the tag documented in the readme.
• Fixed: the block and shortcode no longer count products that are hidden from the catalog towards the product limit, so they always show as many products as you asked for.

1.0.1

• New: first-run Smart Start onboarding — ready-made category suggestions computed from your own catalog, with live product counts and one-click creation.
• New: a clear result screen after creating a category (products added, view-on-store link) and after generating subcategories (parent + children overview).
• New: in-admin Help & FAQ page.
• Pro: live generation preview — see every subcategory a template would create, with product counts, before generating.
• Pro: Category Tree page — all smart categories and their generated children as a collapsible tree.
• Pro: optional “Also create empty combinations” mode for pre-building a season’s structure.
• Improved: clearer action hierarchy in the create flow, connection-error retry on generation, full Turkish translation refresh.

1.0.0

• First release: the unlimited nested AND/OR/NOT rule engine (35+ fields, live preview, daily auto-refresh, manual-assignment-safe), category and tag rule sets, storefront sorting & out-of-stock handling, and a products block — plus the Pro subcategory generator and sales-intelligence fields.