As a business owner, you may feel tempted to show all your products to visitors at once and convince them there might be the item they’re looking for in stock. In reality, online customers need to know that your eCommerce store provides filters to find desired products faster than in brick-and-mortar stores. Ask yourself: which is faster, to browse through a list of hundreds and thousands of items or switch to another platform with a convenient filtering solution?
For this article, I reviewed dozens of WooCommerce product filter plugins and selected six with the best reviews, most advanced functionalities, and regular updates. Keep reading to find out which solution will work for you.
Table of Contents
- What Are the Best Practices for Implementing Product Filter Plugins
- The Best WooCommerce Product Filter Plugins
- FAQ
- Summary
What Are the Best Practices for Implementing Product Filter Plugins?
The first and foremost objective of WooCommerce filters is to help customers find what they’re looking for. Remember, most of them have already decided on their preferences. Furthermore, helping them find their products faster contributes to customer satisfaction and enhances user experience. The efficient product filters can lead to an increase in sales and returning customers.
I think the advantages of using product filters are pretty evident. Here are some tips to keep in mind when implementing WooCommerce product filter plugins in your Internet store:
- Provide all the essential filters for your customers. If you’re selling different categories of products with specific features, you must create special filters. For example, you’ll need size and color filters for clothes and power filters for power tools.
- Allow customers to use a combination of filters. Most of the time, they will use more than one filter simultaneously to get more accurate search results. For example, customers will most likely want to see results in their size category when looking for jeans.
- Get rid of unnecessary filters. Check whether all categories include products. It is better to use plugins that automatically hide filters that only show items that are out of stock.
- Ensure customers get search results fast. AJAX-based plugins display results almost instantly when users apply each filter without reloading the page.
The Best WooCommerce Product Filter Plugins
Let’s look at some of the best WordPress plugins for adding filtering functionality to WooCommerce sites.
HUSKY – Products Filter for WooCommerce (Free/Premium)
🏆 Best for experienced developers.
HUSKY (formerly known as WOOF) is one of the most popular product filter plugins on wordpress.org, with 100+ thousand active installations. Using this tool, you can provide your customers with filters to sort products by price, categories, attributes, product tags, custom taxonomies, and price. PHP developers can also use HUSKY extensions API to create new filters.
The AJAX technology implemented in HUSKY allows filtering WooCommerce products without reloading the page. Another dynamic feature is a dynamic product recount, which displays how many relevant products there are when using the selected filter.
HUSKY key features:
- can be used as a shortcode and a widget;
- shows product taxonomies and attributes as radio, checkbox, dropdown, and multi-dropdown buttons;
- provides AJAX product search;
- allows step-by-step product filtering.
Pricing: the basic version is free and includes all of the mentioned features. The premium version with additional filters and taxonomies’ representations is $42.
Pros:
- fully functional free version;
- rich, dynamic features.
Cons:
- lack of customization options.
JetSmartFilters (Premium)
🏆 Best for implementing WooCommerce filters on Elementor and Gutenberg sites.
JetSmartFilters is a complex product filtering tool that brings advanced functionality to WordPress sites while making filtering intuitive and fast. It packs some powerful filter types that most other solutions don’t offer. For example, a search filter allows the detection of relevant products based on corresponding words anywhere in the product’s description.
Using Elementor or a native WordPress editor, you can mix and match twelve filter types and build filtering hierarchies, so users can locate all products they’re interested in with just a few clicks. Note: no coding is required for creating such complex structures.
JetSmartFilters key features:
- all filters have design customization options;
- a counter feature to indicate items in each category;
- the ability to create any filtering hierarchy;
- a variety of unique filters (indexer, search filter, visual filter, and more);
- fully compatible with JetEngine and JetWooBuilder to create dynamic online stores;
- easy-to-use filter bar builders.
Pricing: JetSmartFilters costs $43 per year for one project or $88 for unlimited projects. It can be purchased as a part of 20 JetPlugins for $199/399 per year for one/unlimited websites.
Pros:
- advanced filters;
- drag-and-drop intuitive creating process;
- multiple customization options for individual filters and a filtering panel.
Cons:
- no free version.
Product Filter by WooBeWoo (Free/Premium)
🏆 Best for customizing filters in Elementor.
Product Filter by WooBeWoo free version has an excellent rating (4.9 stars) on wordpress.org. The plugin’s premium version makes it simple to apply unique product filters and display them in different places on the website. One of the advantages of Product Filter by WooBeWoo is compatibility with custom post types which allows the creation of custom filters without using a single line of code.
In addition to the possibility of creating custom filters, each filter comes with customization options and different controls, and the filtering panel on the front end can appear as a customizable pop-up element.
Product Filter key features:
- implement filters using WordPress widgets, shortcodes, Elementor widgets, and PHP functions;
- enable/disable AJAX features;
- drag-and-drop intuitive builder;
- pop-up filters;
- create different layouts for mobile and desktop.
Pricing: the basic version is free, and the premium plans that include all the essential features start at $99 per year for one site.
Pros:
- compatible with Elementor;
- many customization options for creating unique filters.
Cons:
- all advanced features are available in the premium version.
Advanced AJAX Product Filters (Free/Premium)
🏆 Best for providing users with a friendly and intuitive interface.
This advanced WordPress tool is a part of the suite called WooCommerce and eCommerce plugins by BeRocket. Like most other plugins on the list, it allows filtering products by several indices and presenting filters by various visual elements (radio buttons, checkboxes, etc.)
Advanced AJAX Product Filters plugin has some unique design features. For example, you can get rid of the conventional sidebar presentation and set the filters at the top of the page as a series of dropdown menus. This provides more space for illustrating your WooCommerce products.
Advanced AJAX Product Filters key features:
- multiple styles for filters, including colors and images;
- drag-and-drop filter builder;
- creates SEO-friendly URLs;
- advanced filter layouts;
- ability to hide values without products;
- dynamic product recount;
- custom CSS styles;
- integrates with most major WordPress page builders.
Pricing: the free version is available. To access all the features that make this plugin distinguishable from competitors, buy the premium plan for $44 for one site.
Pros:
- user-friendly design with cool options;
- variety of advanced features in the premium version.
Cons:
- no obvious disadvantages in the paid version, but the free version is very limited.
Filter Everything (Free/Premium)
🏆 Best for building custom filter sets.
In addition to common WooCommerce product filtering features, Filter Everything allows using filters for a variety of WordPress content, including posts, post authors, pages, and custom post types – anything that has an archive. The plugin has many hooks and template overwriting features to create custom filters and individual filter sets for every page.
Filter Everything stimulates traffic on your e-store by making filtered results pages indexable to search engines. SEO rules implemented in the plugin automatically fill the SEO title and meta description on matched pages.
Filter Everything key features:
- use filters on any post types;
- compatible with many page builders;
- step-by-step filtering;
- custom URL prefixes for filters;
- intuitive WordPress native UI.
Pricing: the free version includes many advanced features. To include all of them, upgrade to the pro version for $40.
Pros:
- developer-friendly;
- enhances SEO visibility;
- the free version has some advanced features.
Cons:
- doesn’t provide many design options for non-developers.
Search and Filter (Free/Premium)
🏆 Best for users who need an easy-to-use solution.
With over 50 thousand active installations on WordPress.org, Search and Filter is another popular plugin compatible with WooCommerce and major WordPress page builders. And using various integration methods, there are ways to make it work with any WordPress theme.
Since this plugin allows searching custom fields, post meta, post types, dates, authors, taxonomies, tags, and categories, you can create filters based on almost any content on your site.
Search and Filter key features:
- built-in caching;
- drag-and-drop filter builder;
- AJAX to display results dynamically;
- insert filters using shortcodes or widgets.
Pricing: most of the features are available in the free version. The pro license costs $20 for one site or $75 for unlimited sites.
Pros:
- easy-to-use UI;
- affordable premium version.
Cons:
- there aren’t many hooks for customizations. Styling options depend on the WordPress theme and page builder you are using.
FAQ
Product filter plugins enable customers to search for desired items on WooCommerce sites by using the price, availability, ratings, and other filters.
These tools allow customers to locate the products they’re interested in fast. This increases the site’s revenue and improves user experience.
AJAX is a web development technology that allows sending and retrieving data from a server without interfering with the display. For example, AJAX allows applying filters without reloading the page.
Summary
I hope this article provided you with essential information about the benefits of implementing product filter plugins on WooCommerce websites and made it easier for you to decide which solution fits your needs better. Let’s quickly sum up the most prominent features of each plugin discussed previously:
- HUSKY is great for developers who want to create custom filters with extension API;
- JetSmartFilters provides advanced search and filter functionality, including indexer and compatibility with Elementor and Gutenberg;
- Product Filter by WooBeWoo is perfect for customizing filters in Elementor;
- Advanced AJAX Product Filters plugin offers unique design features;
- Filter Everything offers the most hooks and template overwriting features for building custom fields;
- Search and Filter is the most affordable solution with an easy-to-use interface.
Check out our blog to learn more about WooCommerce add-ons and WordPress filter plugins.
