Managed at Password Protected → WooCommerce Protection. This screen appears whether or not WooCommerce is installed, but the protections only take effect when it is active.
Protect the entire store
One switch and one password covering every WooCommerce page: shop, cart, checkout, account pages and all products.
This is independent of global protection. You can lock the store while leaving the rest of your site public — useful for a wholesale catalogue attached to a public brochure site.
Product and category passwords
Create passwords scoped to:
- A single product — only that product is protected.
- A product category — every product in the category is protected, and the category archive is protected too.
A category password unlocks all the products within it, so you do not have to hand out one password per product.
Products can also be protected from the product editor, which has the same Password Protection box as pages.
Force protected products unpurchasable
Default: off.
With this on, a protected product cannot be added to the cart until the visitor enters the password.
Why this matters: without it, a protected product can still be bought through routes that never touch the product page — related products, products shortcodes, block listings and direct add-to-cart URLs. Turning this on closes that gap. It filters both the product’s purchasable state and the add-to-cart request itself, and it applies to product variations through their parent product.
Price hiding and shop badges
These apply automatically to protected products, with nothing to configure:
- Prices are replaced with “Password required to view price” for visitors who have not unlocked the product.
- A “Password Protected” badge appears on protected products in shop listings.
- Protected products are excluded from shop loop queries for visitors who have not unlocked them.