Setting prices by user role in your WooCommerce store will give you the flexibility to create dynamic pricing so that you can offer your products at different prices for each customer type. 

However, if you’re looking to add this useful feature to your store, you’ll need the help of a plugin. This is because WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to set prices by user role on its own.

So, by the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to set up role-based pricing in your WooCommerce store using the plugin WooCommerce Wholesale Pro.

woocommerce prices by user role

Why set different prices for different user roles?

As a store owner, you know that each one of your customers has a different need, whether they’re retail, wholesale, or subscribers/members. You want to make sure you’re giving them the best experience possible, and this includes customer-specific pricing. 

For example, if you do business with wholesalers, you might want to offer them a different price than you do to your retail customers. Similarly, you might want to give your best customers, or members, the best possible price for their loyalty. 

Here are the three reasons why you should add role-based pricing to your store.

You have a private wholesale area of your store 

If you have a private wholesale area for your store, you’ll likely want to save yourself the time of adding each WooCommerce product twice (one for your retail customers and one for your wholesalers). 

With WooCommerce Wholesale Pro, you’ll be able to create a new user role (‘Wholesaler’) for them so they can see their allocated discount in your customer-facing store.

Having a different price for your wholesalers is a perfect example of role-based pricing, especially because these are the customers that are likely to buy more of your products. You want to make sure they have the most up-to-date information without any products missing from your store.

You want to offer discounts for subscribers or members

If you run a membership program, you might offer customers different tier levels (bronze, silver, and gold) with each one having different pricing. You might also want to offer an initial discount to your existing customers as an incentive to join the program. 

Another possible scenario is that you might want to increase loyalty and offer discounts for your members. You can use role-based pricing to encourage these customers to come back for future purchases.

You want to give employees a discount 

If you run an online store and want to give your employees a discount on your products, you can easily set this up by creating a new user role ‘Employee’ with their custom pricing. 

This creates shared loyalty because your employees will be glad to shop where they work, and they’ll make sure their friends and family also become future customers.

Now that we’ve established why you should be setting prices by user role in your WooCommerce store, let’s dive into how to do that. 

Introducing WooCommerce Wholesale Pro

If you want to add user role pricing to your WooCommerce store, you’re going to need the help of a plugin, since WooCommerce doesn’t have this capability built-in. We recommend the plugin, WooCommerce Wholesale Pro

Don’t be fooled by the word ‘wholesale’ though. WooCommerce Wholesale Pro isn’t just for wholesale stores. If you want to set user role-based pricing, as we’ve mentioned above, then the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin will help you achieve that in the easiest and fastest way possible. 

wholesale prices by user role

Here are some of the plugin’s benefits. 

  • 3 pricing options. Global discounts, category discounts, and product-specific prices. Depending on your customer type, you’ll be able to set the prices per role accordingly. 
  • Wholesale visibility. You have full control over what your customers see in your store depending on their role. You can show/hide categories, taxes, coupons, payment, and shipping options. 
  • Create unlimited roles. You can easily add users to each role so that they each have their own unique discounts.

So now we’ve introduced WooCommerce Wholesale Pro, let’s go through the steps to set up your prices by user role.

How to set prices by user role in WooCommerce

If you want to set your prices by user role in WooCommerce, you’ll need to purchase the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin to begin. With that step completed, let’s go through the step-by-step instructions to get your role-based pricing set up.

Step 1: Install WooCommerce Wholesale Pro

Once you’ve purchased the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin from the Barn2 store, you need to take the following steps:

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.
  2. Choose the zip file you downloaded, upload, and then click Activate.
  3. Once activated, you’ll need to enter your license key.

With your plugin activated, you can now go ahead and create as many user roles as you need.

Step 2: Add your new roles

Not sure of how many roles to add? Here’s one way to know. 

If you answer ‘yes’ to both of the following questions, then you can keep the one default role that’s already in there (when you installed the plugin, a default ‘Wholesale’ role was created). 

If the answer is ‘no’ to either one of the questions, then you need to create a new role for each group. Then you can begin to assign different prices by user role.

Here are the two questions:

  • Will all your customers get the same pricing on your products?
  • Will you show different products to different users?

Remember that you can add unlimited roles, depending on how complex your offerings are. 

Here are the detailed steps to add your new roles:

  1. Go to your WordPress dashboard.
  2. From the menu on the left, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Wholesale > Roles.
user role settings
  1. Click on the ‘Add new role’ button.
add new user role woocommerce
  1. Choose a display name for the role and a percentage discount for its assigned users.
WooCommerce role based pricing
  1. Click on ‘Save changes’ to continue.

With those roles in the system, let’s go ahead and set up your user role prices. 

Step 3: Set your user role prices

Now that you’ve created your roles (based on your customer types), you can assign one of the following 3 types of role-based pricing to them. 

Global Percentage Discounts

By setting a global percentage discount, you’ll be able to offer a particular user role a flat percentage discount on all your available products. This is meant to be an overarching discount. 

For example, you might want to offer your wholesale customers a discount of 10% over what the retail price is for the rest of your customers. 

Another way to use this setting is to offer your tiered members different discounts. For example, you’ll want to give a 5% discount to your Silver-tiered members while your Gold-tiered ones will receive an 8% discount. 

WooCommerce role based pricing

Once you set it up in this manner, your product page will show the relevant price for each customer’s role.

If you want more information on how to accomplish this, go to this article.

Category Percentage Discounts

As a WooCommerce store owner, you might be interested in creating a discount for each one of your categories, or only a select few. This is where the category percentage discounts come into play as a type of role-based pricing. 

For example, if you have a seasonal category (such as Halloween or Christmas), you’re able to give your customers a discount on those specific category products. You can even take it a step further and offer your Gold-tiered members, for example, a higher discount on those same products. 

category based pricing woocommerce

Additionally, you can give visibility to certain product categories for only your wholesale customers, your regular guest customers, or both of them. This setting will let you hide certain products from your public storefront. 

Exact prices

If you want to set an exact price for a product, instead of offering a discount on it, you can also take this route. One case study might be that you wish to set an exact wholesale price for a product for each one of your tiered members (user roles). 

product based pricing woocommerce

These are the three main methods to set up your role-based pricing depending on what your needs are, and what kind of customers you have.

Use role-based pricing in WooCommerce today

There’s no easier way to set up prices by user role in your WooCommerce store than by using the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin. 

As we’ve seen, you have the ability to create as many user roles as your business model needs. You can customize your pricing offers for each one of your customer groups, making it a seamless experience for them in your store. 

With a dynamic pricing set, you don’t need to worry about the manual work that goes into adding the same product multiple times in your store. You can now offer a global percentage discount, a category percentage discount, or set up an exact price for each individual product as you see fit. 
Get the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin and start offering prices by user role.