How to Create Product Bundles in WooCommerce (and When Frequently Bought Together Works Better)

WooCommerce has no true “bundle” product type built in, but there are five practical ways to sell products together. You can create a simple product that represents a kit, use the core Grouped product type, install the official Product Bundles extension, show Frequently Bought Together suggestions on the product page, or offer quantity discounts (“buy more, save more”). Which one is right depends on whether you need a bundle discount, stock tracking for each item, and how much manual work you are willing to keep up.

This guide explains how each option works, how to set it up, how to price a bundle without losing your margin, and how to choose products that belong together.

The five options at a glance

Option 1: a simple product as a kit

The quickest way: create a normal simple product, for example “Coffee Starter Kit”, with its own photos, description, SKU and price, and describe what’s inside.

Pros: you can set up any price in minutes, and it works with every theme and plugin.

Cons: WooCommerce doesn’t know the kit contains other products. Selling a kit doesn’t reduce the stock of its components, so you can oversell an item that also sells on its own. Your reports also won’t show those items as sold. This is fine when you pack a fixed number of kits in advance. It gets messy for anything else.

Option 2: grouped products (built into WooCommerce)

A grouped product is a parent page that lists several existing simple products, each with its own quantity field. To create one:

1. Go to Products → Add New, give the group a name, description and image.
2. In Product data, choose Grouped product.
3. Open the Linked Products tab and add the child products in the Grouped products field.
4. Publish.

On the page, shoppers see a table of the items, set a quantity for each and add them to the cart in one click. Each item becomes a separate line in the cart with its normal price, and stock is tracked per item.

The limitation: there is no group price or discount. The group shows a price range, and the total is just the sum of the items. Grouped products work well for “shop the collection” pages, such as a furniture series or a skincare routine, where the value is convenience rather than a lower price.

Option 3: the official Product Bundles extension

When you need a real bundle (one product with its own price that still tracks the stock of each item inside), the usual choice is the paid Product Bundles extension from the WooCommerce marketplace. It adds a Product bundle product type where you can:

• add existing products as bundled items, each with its own quantity;
• apply a discount to each bundled item;
• mark some items as optional, so shoppers can personalize the bundle;
• control how the bundle appears in the cart and on the order.

Stock comes from the bundled products, so the oversell problem from Option 1 goes away. The trade-offs are a yearly license and more products to manage: every bundle is another product to price, photograph and keep up to date. Check the extension page for current features, pricing and compatibility with your theme and other plugins before you buy.

Option 4: Frequently Bought Together

Instead of building fixed bundles, show a short set of complementary items on the product page. Each has a checkbox, and an “Add all to cart” button adds them in one click. The shopper stays in control: they can untick what they don’t need, and you don’t have to create any new products.

For many stores, this is the more practical choice:

• It scales. You don’t need a separate bundle product for every combination.
• It keeps your catalog clean. No duplicate products competing in search and category pages.
• It fits how people shop. A shopper buying a camera is often happy to add a memory card, but may not want the tripod that a fixed bundle forces on them.

WooCommerce doesn’t include this feature in core, so it comes from your theme or a plugin. XStore has a built-in Frequently Bought Together block. For any WooCommerce theme, SalesMax adds Frequently Bought Together alongside Smart Recommendations (suggestions based on category, cart contents, order history or totals) and Product Add-Ons, where each extra can have its own discount. Every SalesMax booster reports the revenue it brought in, so you can see whether the suggestions are working.

If you only need simple, manual suggestions, WooCommerce’s native upsells and cross-sells may be enough. See our guide to setting up WooCommerce upsells and cross-sells.

Option 5: quantity discounts (buy more, save more)

For products people buy more than one of, such as socks, coffee, supplements, printer ink or pet food, a “bundle” is really a multi-pack. Tiered quantity discounts handle this without creating new products. For example: 5% off two items, 10% off three or more.

WooCommerce coupons can’t easily create automatic tiers, so this usually comes from a plugin. SalesMax includes Buy More, Save More for tiered quantity discounts, plus Goal Order Discount (“spend X, get Y% off”) and Free Gift for cart-level incentives.

How to price a bundle without losing margin

A bundle should feel like a deal to the shopper and still make you money. Here is an example calculation with made-up numbers:

• Items bought separately: $40 + $25 + $15 = $80
• Your cost for the three items: $44
• Bundle price with a 10% discount: $72, a saving of $8 for the shopper
• Margin before shipping and payment fees: $72 − $44 = $28

Now compare that with what you would earn if the shopper bought only the main $40 item: in this example, $18 gross margin (with a $22 cost). The bundle earns more in total even with the discount, as long as it brings in sales of items that wouldn’t have been bought anyway. Before you launch, check three things:

1. Shipping: does the bundle ship as one parcel, and does it cross a weight or free-shipping threshold?
2. Payment fees: they are a percentage of the order, so a bigger order pays more.
3. Honest savings: calculate the “you save” amount from real regular prices, never from inflated ones.

Which products make good bundles

• Things used together: camera + memory card + case; shampoo + conditioner; grinder + beans.
• A device and its consumables: water filter jug + replacement cartridges.
• Starter kits for beginners, who don’t yet know what they need.
• Gift sets, especially before holidays, where a ready-made combination saves the buyer time.
• A slower seller next to a bestseller, but only when it really belongs there. Bundling unrelated leftover stock makes the whole offer look worse.

Look at your own order history for evidence. Export recent orders with more than one item and count which pairs appear most often. These are your strongest Frequently Bought Together and bundle candidates, and they come from your customers’ real behavior.

Where to show bundle offers

• On the product page, near the add-to-cart button: this is where Frequently Bought Together works best.
• In the cart, as a one-tap add-on or a free-shipping nudge.
• On category and landing pages for gift sets and seasonal kits.
• In emails after a purchase, for consumables that run out.

Our article on increasing average order value in WooCommerce covers how bundles fit with free-shipping thresholds, loyalty programs and other tactics. If you are not sure where your store misses these moments, the free SalesMax AI store scan walks through your product page, cart and checkout like a shopper and lists what is missing.

How to measure whether bundles work

1. In WooCommerce → Analytics → Orders, note your average order value and average items per order before launch.
2. Track how often the bundle or suggestion is taken: units of the bundle sold, or orders that include the suggested items.
3. Watch your margin, not just revenue. A bundle that raises order value but is mostly discount isn’t a win.
4. Give each change a few weeks and compare equal periods, keeping sales and seasons in mind.

Finally, check that the extra features haven’t slowed your product pages. A free test with FlashMax takes about a minute.

FAQ

Does WooCommerce support product bundles natively?

Not fully. Core WooCommerce has grouped products, which show several items on one page without a bundle price. For real bundles with their own price and per-item stock, use the Product Bundles extension or a similar plugin.

What is the difference between a grouped product and a bundle?

A grouped product is a page that lists separate products. Each is added to the cart as its own line at its own price. A bundle is one product made of several items, usually with its own price or discount, and it appears as one purchase.

Can I give a discount on a grouped product?

Not with core WooCommerce alone. You can create a coupon that applies to those products, but it won’t be automatic. For an automatic bundle price, use a bundle extension or a discount plugin.

How does stock work with bundles?

It depends on the method. A simple-product kit has its own stock and doesn’t touch its components. Grouped products, the Product Bundles extension and Frequently Bought Together all reduce the stock of the individual items.

Is Frequently Bought Together better than bundles?

For large catalogs and items that are often, but not always, bought together, usually yes: there’s less to manage and the shopper chooses. Fixed bundles are better for curated kits, gift sets and offers built around one bundle price.

Will a bundle plugin slow down my store?

It can, if it loads scripts on every page. Choose tools that load only where they are used, and test your product pages before and after installing.