How does WooCommerce Private Store work with Coming Soon mode?
You can use WooCommerce Private Store to hide your store either temporarily or permanently. As a result, lots of people use it to put WooCommerce in "Coming soon" mode and then remove it when their store is ready to launch.
This article explains how WooCommerce Private Store works with the Coming Soon mode which is built into WooCommerce itself.
What is Coming Soon mode?
The Coming Soon mode which is part of WooCommerce core provides basic functionality allowing you to prevent public visitors from accessing the shop parts of your store (or your complete website if you prefer) while you're still working on it.
For more advanced features, you can use the WooCommerce Private Store plugin instead of Coming Soon mode. This gives you more control, for example the ability to choose which specific users and roles can access the store before it's launched.
For a full comparison, please see our tutorial about the 2 ways to set up WooCommerce coming soon mode.
Can I use Coming Soon mode AND WooCommerce Private Store?
No - The two types of Coming Soon mode are mutually exclusive.
If you have WooCommerce Private Store installed and the built-in Coming Soon mode is also enabled, then WooCommerce Private Store will be ignored. To restrict your store using WooCommerce Private Store, you should disable Coming Soon mode via WooCommerce → Settings → General → Site visibility in the WordPress Dashboard.