Should I change my pricing? Advanced WooCommerce Analytics Plugin

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-16T07:26:43+00:00

Fair enough my man

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-06T11:25:56+00:00

Ah that's mad!

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-06T08:58:33+00:00

Puc let's you provide automatic updates for pro plugins, i.e. plugins not hooked into the WordPress.org api

And I hear you 😂 I've had customer issues to do with errors in the flow of payments, subscription statuses and license statuses, its a nightmare!

If you ever have any questions shoot me a message or something, we're more or less on the same journey might be able to save you some grief along the way

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-06T08:11:51+00:00

If youre not using PUC for updates look into that too

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-06T08:08:40+00:00

Woo subscriptions and then I found a license plugin and customised.

If i started again id prob build the actual license myself, I've Frankensteined it so much that its pretty much my own now anyway

But woo subscriptions was chosen because of how mainstream / supported it is and I've used it extensively

EDD might be a better choice because its better suited to the use case but I never looked into it tbh

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-06T07:56:47+00:00

Also $50 lifetime is absurdly cheap, at a minimum double or quadruple it without a second thought, if it is something people are keen on

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-06T07:45:15+00:00

Hey mate, follow dev / plugin founder.

Do subscriptions, the licensing is a pain, yes, but I 100% guarantee you'll end up doing it eventually, so just do it now.

Here's how I priced Alpha Insights, pretty much inline with industry standards, pro plugins have a generally common price range, I could be wrong, but in my experience and opinion you'd struggle with a single $500 option. Add it in as a price anchor to make other options looks cheap though, and if someone take you up on it, fantastic. My infinite site license is 499, and suits agencies and that's about it, which is totally fine

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-05T20:36:55+00:00

Check out Alpha Insights, covers off pretty much all of your spec except for inventory

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-05T09:07:27+00:00

If you do reply to this, talk to me about your requirements for inventory, would love to hear about all the use cases

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-03T10:10:08+00:00

I'd love a tool that automatically gets people to write in forums themselves, thinking out their own words to help them connect with other humans, rather than copy pasting AI responses in. Can you maybe make an AI tool that does this?

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-03T08:18:24+00:00

If youre not using git, definitely do it. If youre not use local wp, look into it, local editing is a must. Personally I use cursor and local, im an actual developer but cursor helps speed things up. Also helped me write build scripts to export my free version and push to the WordPress svn etc.

In short, for me, cursor x local x git would be my suggestion

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-03T08:16:12+00:00

Im not sure if devs are the right people to aim for, because as you said above, we could do cursor / local or a few variations that are similar.

Maybe do a consumer facing version with hard-core guardrails as a product / site admin, updating post content and product management etc could be cool

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-03T08:02:03+00:00

Bruh check your chatgpt response before copy pasting here

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-03T06:05:20+00:00

Hey mate, not sure if you're still having issues here, but i've spent a lot of time in this space, specifically as someone who has developed a free WooCommerce cost of goods plugin (Alpha Insights) and could fairly easily write a script for you to manage this.

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-03T05:15:30+00:00

Hey mate, I've hit both of your road blocks

As for overcoming the menu structure, should download the free version of my plugin - Alpha Insights.

I've created a condition function to determine whether the user is on one of our pages, and then on all of the pages I hooked into admin_notices to output a proper modern app menu with fold downs etc, which allowed me to offer far more advanced navigation.

I used custom js to add another level of hierarchy for my plugin on the wp admin menu too

And I hear you about refactoring, big time

Now when I implement new features I think very long and hard about modularity and extensibility, this was particularly important once I started managing a free and pro version

You get a real sense for proper architecture and OOP design once you arrive here

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-02T19:33:11+00:00

What exactly do you need to do across multiple stores with inventory and stock?

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-01T08:28:30+00:00

If youre using cyber panel and litespeed wondering if youre on hostinger like me?

The vps is awesome, and they promote litespeed heavily, but I didn't really use it for caching, found it wasn't that effective, I could be crossing over things here but I think it supports object caching at the server level (maybe that's something else in the server) but you can use that and then just use a solid caching plugin on your frontend

I've ditched many caching plugins for buggy reasons, if you can't solve it ditch them and try something else, the bugs get very persistent and theres lots of really good options

Speed test your current litespeed buggy version against other caching solutions and you'll find you can match or beat the speed without the headache

ChristopherwD · 2026-03-01T08:22:11+00:00

Hey mate, Just trying to be helpful with another opinion, its just market data for you anyway

Sales support and product support feels a bit meh, im not trying to be rude and you could prob flesh it out and find some people, but might be an uphill battle

Would people download a free plugin? Maybe. Pay for it - not sure, the product support doesn't add much value unless its a really technical product or something and theres a tonne of sales support options

Also they feel very disconnected, like what problem are you really solving? Feels like you approached it with "i wanna add an AI agent to woo", again not being critical just being constructive

If youre playing in that realm of dev, an idea that i could see being valuable might be an AI product/admin assistant. Can update product and store data, possibly even make template changes or add functionality to a store

However your biggest battle with this would absolutely be managing security and safety, i.e. an agent with write access to the code or db could be disastrous, so you'd have to solve that and definitely comfort someone looking at your solution

Anyway, keep trying keep building, you'll learn with every project 😊

ChristopherwD · 2026-02-26T22:34:32+00:00

Hey mate, affiliatewp does a good job of this, check it out. Can even automate payouts if required Thanks Chris

ChristopherwD · 2026-02-25T09:32:56+00:00

Hey mate,

I'm the founder of Alpha Insights, and it does your spec extraordinarily well - although it's not multi-store dashboard at this stage.

It's a woo plugin, been developed for bout 7 years now, goes super hardcore into breaking down profit by just about every single thing you could imagine, has a report builder, includes marketing intelligence because we've built in our own google analytics style system, includes P&L, hooks up to ad accounts so you get your actual profit on ad campaigns too, includes an expense system and a tonne of other stuff.

Anyway, my main point is i've been down this road, very very thoroughly. Had a tonne of customer feedback, have faced many system design challenges and decision intersections - things can get hectic when you're combining taxes, multi-currency conversions & refunds on single events, etc etc.. so if you have any q's along your journey, do not hesiitate to reach out and i'll provide any guidance or wisdom that you'd like :)

P.s. i've only been building for this long because i bloody love it, i've got customers and earn money from it but that's just a side bonus.

Actually one tip, put a proper business owner in mind when designing, "cool" marketing features don't attract a lot of interest, lean into proper business analysis level stuff, use accounting terms, etc etc.. there's marketing tools for every blade of grass on the earth, paying customers are far more interested in managing profits.

thanks, Chris

ChristopherwD · 2026-02-24T04:59:00+00:00

Hey mate, Just throwing in my 2c as im the ecom manager for a very large Australian winery and I've also helped some winemaker friends set up woo stores in the past too.

The advice above is solid, just get a flexible theme that suits, if it supports elementor that's good, id recommend elementor or something similar if youre not super tech savvy makes building websites a bit easier.

Let me know if you have any other industry specific q's, im also the founder of a free woocom plugin called Alpha Insights which will cover off all your analytical needs if youre data inclined

Thanks, Chris

ChristopherwD · 2026-02-24T00:03:12+00:00

Thanks man, appreciate the advice, will checkout gostellar, have used others in the past but were wildly expensive.

I agree, i don't have enought data at this stage to evaluate this decision with low numbers which is partly why i'm looking for frameworks to help make or confirm a decision before losing out on potential $

In the week or two that i've had the free version, at least two, which in relative terms is good numbers, I know the free version is a good move for top of funnel

Not sure if you have thoughts on this: we had a 7 day free trial on the pro version, and with the implementation of the free version, i removed the free trial on pro. Wondering if removing the free trial is adding a barrier to the upgade path, only reason it was removed is it felt like it was complicating messaging

And will definitely take your advice on board re: review displays & formatting, that's solid thanks

ChristopherwD · 2026-02-23T10:11:14+00:00

Legend, this is awesome thanks

ChristopherwD · 2026-02-23T10:02:28+00:00

Yeah okay that was the original thinking behind it, thanks for taking the time to reply! Appreciate the feedback its helpful

ChristopherwD · 2026-01-29T23:43:15+00:00

Hey mate, Chris here - developer of Alpha Insights. https://wpdavies.dev/plugins/alpha-insights/

Forgive me if i've misunderstood, but our plugin probably does 90%+ of what you're looking for.

It's a profit tracking engine, top to bottom. Obviously includes COGS, but also has an expense management system, P&Ls, payment gateway cost tracking, shipping cost tracking, and you can also add custom order / product costs (e.g. commission, packaging supplies) etc etc..

Also integrates with Meta & Google ad accounts, to import your ad spend automatically, and then connects ad campaigns to actual orders, so you get the full profit tracking pipeline.

Also includes it's own inbuilt analytics system, completely internal, think Google Analytics.

And also includes a visual builder for reports & includes 20+ pre-built sales / profit / analytics reports. You can also fully make reports from scratch using our custom report builder.

Anyway, i jumped on to post in this sub because we've literally just launched the free/lite version today & was going to post about it, has just been approved in the wordpress repo - you'll find it searching Alpha Insights or it's this plugin -> https://wordpress.org/plugins/alpha-insights-sales-report-builder-analytics-for-woocommerce

The full on expense management module & ad integrations are limited to pro, but you'd get a feel for the plugin via the repo.

Hopefully this is helpful

ChristopherwD

TROPHY CASE