WooCommerce Protected Categories

WooCommerce Protected Categories is a premium extension developed by Barn2 Media that allows you to create private sections within your WooCommerce store, visible only to authorized customers. Instead of protecting product by product, this tool centralizes control at the category level, greatly simplifying the management of catalogs with restricted areas.

The plugin is especially designed for B2B stores, wholesale sales, internal catalogs for distributors, exclusive areas for VIP customers, or any scenario where you need to separate public products from private ones within the same WordPress and WooCommerce installation. With it, you can protect entire categories with passwords, restrict access by user roles or individual users, and even hide categories completely from the public storefront.

Among its most notable features are password protection with support for multiple passwords per category, allowing you to assign unique credentials to each customer or group. It also offers a centralized login page via shortcode, where customers enter their password and are automatically redirected to the corresponding category. Subcategories and products automatically inherit the protection of the parent category, ensuring consistent security throughout the catalog structure.

The plugin allows you to hide protected categories from navigation menus, widgets, and search results, keeping a clean and professional storefront. Products within protected categories are also safeguarded against direct links, preventing a shared link from exposing restricted content. Additionally, it is compatible with WPML for multilingual stores and works with most WooCommerce themes and extensions.

For the administrator, configuration is intuitive: simply go to Products → Categories, select the desired visibility option, and assign passwords or permissions. The plugin also allows you to expire access after a certain number of days, control which users can view each category, and customize the text and style of the password form with your own CSS.

If you manage a hybrid B2B/B2C store, work with distributors, or need to offer exclusive catalogs without duplicating your site, WooCommerce Protected Categories gives you the control needed to maintain a single WooCommerce back-end while clearly separating public from private.