Best WooCommerce product filter plugins: A comparative study

How to set up a WooCommerce product filter: Step-by-step guide + 10 best plugins (2021)

Imagine a supermarket with no sections and no organization whatsoever. There are chips next to milk next to a mop next to a guitar. Wouldn't you just skedaddle out of there? Well, a WooCommerce online store without product filters is exactly like that!

The best WooCommerce products filter plugins help customers find products easier and faster. Adding personalized and relevant product filters to your store can automatically increase conversions and sales!

There are WordPress plugins out there that can make adding product filters a piece of cake. With so many options available, it can be difficult to choose the best option. In this post, we’ll reveal 10 of the best WooCommerce filter plugins for your online store.

We'll explore the different options and compare the top plugins to help you find the one best suited to your needs – an easy-to-use, feature-rich but no-nonsense product filter.

Why use product filters?

Product filters can help customers sift through hundreds and thousands of products and zero in on the ones that match their needs and interests.

Think of it this way: if customers have the option to narrow down their search, they'll be able to find the products they're looking for much faster. This means they can add them to the cart and proceed to the checkout page instead of spending hours browsing your product catalog.

In other words, filtering can improve the user experience, increase product views, and ultimately, boost conversions in your store.

Not a fan of reading? Watch the video we made about these plugins instead!

12 best WooCommerce product filter plugins

Here, we’ll walk you through some of the best options available for filtering your WooCommerce products and enhancing the user experience on your online store.

If you’re in a hurry, you can look at the WooCommerce product filter plugins feature comparison table below:

Plugins compared

  1. Barn2 WooCommerce Product Filters
  2. Barn2 WooCommerce Product Table
  3. HUSKY Products Filter for WooCommerce
  4. BeRocket WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter
  5. YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter
  6. UpFilter Product Filter for WooCommerce
  7. WooCommerce.com Product Filters for WooCommerce
  8. XforWooCommerce Product Filter for WooCommerce
  9. Themify WooCommerce Product Filter
  10. Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter
  11. Super WooCommerce Product Filter
  12. Etoile Ultimate WooCommerce Filters
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Choice of vertical or horizontal filters Tick Tick Cross Tick Tick Cross Tick Tick Cross Cross
Display products in an order form layout Cross Tick Cross Cross Cross Cross Cross Cross Cross Cross
Category, attribute, tags, rating & price filters Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick
Custom taxonomy filters Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Cross Tick Cross
Checkboxes Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick
Dropdowns Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Cross Cross Tick Cross
Radio Buttons Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Cross Tick Cross
Color swatches Tick Cross Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Cross Tick
Image filters Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Cross Tick Cross
Text/label filters Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Cross
‘In stock’ filter Tick Cross Cross Cross Tick Cross Tick Tick Tick Cross
‘On sale’ filter Tick Cross Cross Cross Tick Cross Tick Tick Tick Cross
Sort dropdown Tick Tick Cross Tick Tick Cross Cross Cross Cross Cross

At a glance, the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin offers the highest level of product filter functionality out of the list. The only thing missing is the order form layout, which you can get by using it together with WooCommerce Product Table 🚀

Keep reading to learn about each product filter plugin in more detail.

#1. WooCommerce Product Filters by Barn2

WooCommerce product filter AJAX plugin

The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin is the best WooCommerce product filter plugin for store owners. It lets you create individual filters for products and then structure them into groups.

This is easily the best WooCommerce products filter plugin. It has everything your customers need to find products quickly and easily.

Features

  • Filter by anything: categories, attributes, colors, tags, custom taxonomies, price, ratings, stock status, and on sale items.
  • Multiple style options for each filter. Choose from dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, or tag clouds/labels. You can even create more visual filters using images or color swatches.
  • 2 filter layouts. Display filters above the list of products, or as sidebar widgets.
  • Filter visibility options. Save space by optionally hiding filters until the customer clicks on them, or allowing users to toggle each filter open and closed. You can also display filters in a mobile-friendly slide-out panel instead of on the page.
  • 2 filter modes: Filter products instantly using AJAX, or make multiple selections and click an 'Apply Filters' button.
  • Performance-boosting indexing feature: The plugin's custom index ensures that the filters will load quickly even if you have tens of thousands of products.
  • Quick and easy to use. You'll have filters up and running in less than 5 minutes!

One of the best features of the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin is that it only shows valid and relevant filter options. For example, if you sell t-shirts and all blue t-shirts are out of stock, the Blue option won’t appear in the filters. This helps you deliver a good user experience and avoid disappointment for your customers.

This WooCommerce products filter plugin is easy for beginners to use, while also being developer-friendly and easy to customize. You can add different filters to different parts of your store, structured into groups to save you time.

#2. WooCommerce Product Table by Barn2

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin offers a professional solution for displaying WooCommerce products in an attractive and responsive product table. This lets customers quickly add multiple products to their cart. At the same time, they can see important product information without clicking through to single product pages.

Filterable product tables are ideal for stores with large numbers of products. The product table view makes it much easier to find, compare and select products.

Features

The main feature of WooCommerce Product Table is that it displays products in a quick order form. This robust plugin also comes with two (or three!) types of product filter:

  • Filter dropdowns above the table. Add filter dropdowns for categories, tags, attributes, or even custom taxonomies.
  • Sidebar filter widgets alongside the table. These look like the filters that come with WooCommerce itself. You can add WooCommerce filter widgets for attributes, star rating, or price.
  • Finally, you can get advanced filters by using WooCommerce Product Table together with WooCommerce Product Filters. (Our #1 best WooCommerce products filter plugin featured above.) This gives you the best of both worlds as you get the benefits of the product table layout, with the most sophisticated product filters on the market.

#3. HUSKY – Products Filter for WooCommerce

WOOF Products Filter

HUSKY - Products Filters for WooCommerce is a product filter plugin for WooCommerce. It lets you offer customers an easy way to filter WooCommerce products on your store.

Features

  • Filter products by categories, product tags, products custom taxonomies, attributes, and price.
  • Add filters anywhere on your website using a shortcode.
  • Display product filter options using dropdown menus, checkboxes, radio buttons, and a multi-dropdown menu.
  • AJAX filters let users quickly find the products they’re interested in without having to refresh the page.

The plugin offers some useful features, but is not as well coded or as nicely styled as most other WooCommerce filter plugins on this list. This means it doesn’t look very professional on the front-end of your WooCommerce site. It's also difficult to use in the back end. This filter plugin also has some missing advanced filter functionality - such as filtering products by SKU, color filters, image filters, quick search, and adding a meta filter to WooCommerce.

#4. WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter

WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter

WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter is designed to effectively and easily filter products on your online store.

Features

  • Create filters by product attributes, custom taxonomies, price, tags, and product categories.
  • Choose a layout for displaying product filters on your WooCommerce site. This means you can select from different layouts including sliders, images, and colors.

WooCommerce AJAX Products Filter is a popular plugin that offers some great features and a nice selection of different types of filters. However it’s missing some of the features you get in WooCommerce Product Filters. These include advanced filtering options to display filters above the list of products, hide filters within toggles, filter by stock status, sale status, and create SEO-friendly filter URL's.

#5. YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter

YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter

The YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter plugin offers an easy way to let customers conveniently look for products. It helps make your WooCommerce site more user-friendly.

Features

  • Set up powerful filters on your WooCommerce product pages.
  • Customers can use the filters to decide what they want to see.
  • Create unlimited sets of filters and display filters on custom WooCommerce pages.

The YITH WooCommerce AJAX Product Filter plugin is one of the better WooCommerce filter plugins available. This is because it has lots of features and a professional design. However, it does have some missing features such as choosing the order of filters or toggling filters open and closed to save space. You also cannot show filters as radio buttons or use color swatches with images to better identify textures or patterns. In contrast, WooCommerce Product Filters has all of these features.

#6. UpFilter - Product Filter for WooCommerce

WooCommerce filter plugin

UpFilter is an excellent solution for businesses with WooCommerce powered sites looking for an advanced and efficient product filtering plugin for WooCommerce. It is a WooCommerce Ajax Filter plug-in that enables buyers to quickly and efficiently find exactly what they are looking for.

With UpFilter, customers can filter products by taxonomy, attributes, price range, size, and more in order to receive the most accurate search results with minimal effort. UpFilter is the best Product Filter for WooCommerce!

Features

This WooCommerce products filter plugin gives customers a comprehensive selection of features to quickly and easily find what they're looking for:

  • Streamline searching with an advanced AJAX filterNarrow down your search with a user-friendly AJAX filter, which includes taxonomies, attributes, sorting options, a search field, and price range.
  • Enable or disable the default AJAX filterYou have the power to turn on or off this feature at any time.
  • Make the filter option accessible anywhereWith the integration of shortcodes and widgets, you can easily add filter options in any location.
    WooCommerce products filter plugin
  • Filter by various options at a timeNarrow down your options quickly by filtering through various criteria.
  • Lots of styles to choose fromYou can also customize how taxonomic/attribute terms are displayed using checkboxes, radio buttons & selectors while organizing them in hierarchical structures if that works best for you. By using both the radio and select forms, you can display a range of sorting choices.
  • Create a captivating search iconMake your search icon stand out by customizing its color, and set the primary and secondary colors for price ranges to make them more appealing.
  • Showcase the precise product quantityDisplay the number of products associated with a selected taxonomy and attribute terms.
  • Organize the taxonomies/attributesArrange the taxonomies and attributes into a hierarchical order for easier navigation.
  • Eliminate empty taxonomy and attribute termsYou can hide the taxonomy terms and attribute terms that have no products associated with them.

Like other good filter plugins, UpFilter helps unlock the potential of your online store. Enhance your customers' shopping experience through AJAX filtering. This helps to deliver accurate search results.

#7. WooCommerce.com Product Filters for WooCommerce

WooCommerce.com Product Filters for WooCommerce

Product Filters for WooCommerce is a simple-to-use filter plugin that lets your customers easily find products on your online store.

Features

  • Offers AJAX functionality for displaying filter results.
  • Lets users filter products by categories, attributes, tags, taxonomies, prices, and stock status.
  • Add adaptive filter options and product counts as well as adaptive product thumbnails.

It’s always nice to buy official extensions from woocommerce.com and this plugin claims to be developed by the team at WooCommerce rather than a third-party author, so this plugin is worth a mention.

However, it’s only rated 2.5/5 and users have reported many problems - despite it being the official WooCommerce filter plugin. Users claim that the plugin has compatibility issues and offers little to no customer support after you purchase the plugins. There are various performance complaints, which would be a problem if you have many products or slow hosting. The plugin is also presented very vaguely with a few screenshots and offers no demo. This way, it’s hard to know or tell what you’re buying.

#8. XforWooCommerce Product Filter for WooCommerce

XforWooCommerce Product Filter for WooCommerce

The Product Filter for WooCommerce plugin lets you set up product filters on your WooCommerce site.

Features

  • Using the one-click product filter demos, you can quickly set up and start letting customers filter WooCommerce products on your online store.
  • Display stock status filters for variable products on your WooCommerce store.
  • Add product variation images to your filters.
  • Users can filter products on your WooCommerce store thanks to AJAX support. This helps them quickly find what they’re looking for using the flexible filters.

The Product Filter for the WooCommerce plugin was originally published back in 2014. While it has been getting regularly updated and maintained, the plugin still uses older technologies and techniques behind the scenes. You will get more modern filters with a newer WooCommerce filter plugin like WooCommerce Product Filters.

#9. Themify WooCommerce Product Filter

Themify WooCommerce Product Filter

The Themify - WooCommerce Product Filter is a free plugin designed to make your WooCommerce store more user-friendly by creating product filters.

Features

  • Uses modern AJAX technology to display live search results to customers who quickly need to find the products they’re interested in.
  • Lets you create a search form using a drag and drop builder. This is great if this is your first time creating one and you don’t know how to code.

This plugin is a great option for you’re looking for a free WooCommerce product filter plugin with no premium version that has a nicely designed filter on the front-end. However, it does have some usability issues in the back-end which explain the plugin’s 3.5/5 star rating. The documentation is quite good for a free WooCommerce product filter plugin.

#10. Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter

Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter

The Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter plugin offers an all-in-one solution for creating and managing WooCommerce product filters on your online store.

Features

  • Display all available product filters using a single widget and let customers filter the search results.
  • Built-in caching system.
  • Display filters for product variations on your WooCommerce site.

The Premmerce WooCommerce Product Filter plugin is a robust plugin but lacks some functionality compared to other product filter plugins. For instance, you cannot add on sale, in-stock, or rating filters to your WooCommerce pages. In addition to this, you’re limited with SEO functionality which doesn’t let you create “clean” URLs for your WooCommerce product pages.

At the time of writing, this plugin was being advertised for sale and is likely to have been acquired by the time you read this. If you are considering this plugin then I recommend researching the new owner to make sure it is being maintained by a professional WordPress plugin company.

#11. Super Woocommerce Product Filter

super woocommerce product filter plugin preview

Experience a revolutionary way to discover your favorite products with the Super WooCommerce Product Filter. This filtering tool reshapes your shopping experience, guaranteeing precision in every product search. Whether you're narrowing down by category, setting a price range, or filtering based on specific attributes, this system is designed to deliver precisely what you seek.

Dive into a better online shopping experience with the Super WooCommerce Product Filter. Forget long scrolls and enjoy a faster, smarter way to find what you want. This tool makes shopping easier, accurate, and more satisfying.

Features

  • 10 different field display types with multiple styles.
  • Easy drag and drop - Choose your preferred layout, color scheme, typography, layout preferences and display options.
  • Product count and search filter.
  • Filter products by category, price range, attributes, and more.
  • AJAX-based filtering to eliminate page reloads and speed up the browsing experience.
  • Shortcodes for seamless integration on any page.
  • Designed to seamlessly integrate with any WordPress page builder.
  • Ensure consistent styling and functionality across different theme environments.
  • Customize the filtering experience for individual products by establishing rules that enable or disable filters based on the category or tag.
  • Slider choices for users to set their desired price ranges.
  • Sort products by customer ratings and feedback.
  • Filter products according to available stock.
  • Effortlessly set up intricate rules to display products that satisfy multiple conditions at once (AND) or products that fulfill at least one condition (OR).
  • Crafted for diverse language compatibility, our plugin guarantees a smooth experience for users viewing your online store in various languages.
  • Tailor filters using specific attributes like size, color, or brand.
  • Efficient codebase for peak performance.

#12. Etoile Ultimate WooCommerce Filters

Etoile Ultimate WooCommerce Filters

Etoile Web Design's WooCommerce Filters plugin lets you add flexible filters to WooCommerce product pages.

The sales page of the plugin suggests that is is very basic and is missing a lot of essential features. The documentation is also very sparse. As a result, I only recommend this plugin if you are willing to do a lot of investigation and customization yourself.

Tutorial: How to set up a WooCommerce product filter

Here, we’ll explain step-by-step what you need to do to set up a product filter on your online store. We'll be using WooCommerce Product Filters because as we have seen, it is the best WooCommerce products filter plugin available.

Step #1: Install the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin

If you haven’t done so already, get the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin and install it on your WordPress site.

You’ll receive a license key in a confirmation email. Activate the license key in the setup wizard.

Step #2: Create filters

The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin lets you create as many filters as you’d like. You can choose from categories, attributes, colors, tags, custom taxonomy, price, ratings, in stock, on sale, and sort by options.

Go to ProductsFilters in the WordPress admin panel and open or create a new filter group. Next, fill in the information on the Add new filter form.

WooCommerce filter by different product data types

You can enter a filter name, select the data the filter will use, choose a filter type, and assign to groups. Structuring filters into groups helps you better display filters on the front-end. Once you’re done, click the Add new filter button to proceed.

Repeat these steps to create as many filters as you’d like.

Step #3: Add filters to a page

Use the Display on shop/archive pages option on the plugin’s settings page to automatically display selected filter groups on your online store.

By default, WooCommerce Product Filters displays the filter groups in a horizontal layout above the list of products on your shop page, product category pages, and archive pages.

Alternatively, you can display a filter group by adding the 'Product Filters' widget to the sidebar in Appearance → Widgets. The plugin also comes with a shortcode which you can use to display filters on pages that you build using other methods, such as Gutenberg blocks, Elementor, and so on.

Tips and tricks to set up product filters

Here are some tips and tricks you can use to set up product filters in WooCommerce:

Use personalized filters instead of popular ones

Our first pro tip is to use personalized filters instead of using popular filters. The idea is to personalize product filters for the types of products you sell instead of using the same filters everyone else is using.

For example, let's say you sell pre-built computers, laptops, and computer parts. A gamer looking for a laptop would appreciate a filter for RAM or Processor. Similarly, if you sell clothes, your customers might be more interested in filters like BestsellingColor, and Size.

Speak your customer's language

Avoid using complicated words and jargon when simple terms will do just fine.

For example, if you're selling the same dress in multiple colors, you might internally have them stocked with names like Cerulean or Mauve. However, it might be better to use the terms Blue-Green and Light Purple on the front-end for customers.

Show relevant filters

Customize your product filter settings to only display the filters that are relevant to the products in view instead of an exhaustive list of store-wide filters on every page.

Let's say you sell crockery. If a customer is viewing the Dinnerware product category page, they should only see product filters that are relevant to dinnerware. There's no reason to show product filters for drinkware, serving bowls, or table linens on the Dinnerware product category page.

Make sure the filters are easy to find

Since unseen filters are about as good as non-existent filters, it's important to make them as conspicuous as possible. Make sure your filter options are displayed so visitors can see them at first glance. You can display them in the sidebar or across the top of the page.

The best way to filter WooCommerce products

WooCommerce Product Table with Filters
A website using the WooCommerce Product Filters and Product Tables plugin together, for best results

With so many options available, it can be challenging to choose the best WooCommerce product filter plugin. As a store owner, you want to choose one that fulfils your business requirements perfectly and lets you create more user-friendly WooCommerce product pages.

There are many plugins out there that do similar things but they may not have all the features of WooCommerce Product Filters. Most importantly, the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin lets you create customized, powerful product filters that will improve customer experience and, hence, conversions.

In short, are you ready to start offering WooCommerce product filters on your online store? Get WooCommerce Product Filters and WooCommerce Product Table today!

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