Since WooCommerce 8.3, every new install features Cart, Checkout, and Confirmation blocks as the default experience, replacing the classic Cart and Checkout block.
While this experience is theoretically more simple for the end user and has higher conversion rates for the shop owner, there are some drawbacks to moving away from the classic checkout, namely the fact that it is not easy to customize the fields that are presented to the user.
The classic checkout had simple WordPress filters that allowed both shop owners and developers to move, remove, or add fields with very few lines of PHP code, and snippets are available all over the internet. With the new block-based checkout it’s an all-new story… You can use the block editor to move some sections up and down and show and hide some predefined fields, but that’s basically it unless you want to enter the dark and scary path of React, Node Modules, and other witchcraft…
Long story short: there’s a plugin for it
After long discussions on GitHub, in which we have been actively participating, WooCommerce 8.7 shipped an experimental “Additional Checkout Fields” API that finally allows the creation of custom fields on the new Blocks Checkout, and we used it to develop our new plugin: “Simple Custom Fields for WooCommerce Blocks Checkout“.
For now, it’s possible to add text, select, and checkbox fields into three areas of the block-based checkout:
- Contact information: at the top of the form, after the email field;
- Shipping and Billing Address: after the core fields;
- Additional information: a new section that will show up at the bottom of the form, if fields are added to it;
The pricing and the future of the “Simple Custom Fields for WooCommerce Blocks Checkout” plugin
As mentioned before, this is based on an experimental API. Things will change and we are committed to updating and improving this plugin on each new iteration of the API.
We decided to have an initial pricing, while the API is not stable, to reward everyone who wants to support the development of the solution in this phase:
The yearly license starts at 15€ for one website and goes up to 75€ for 10 websites. It’s a steal!
When the API is considered stable, we are projecting practicing prices from 49€ to 249€, but anyone who buys at the initial temporary price will keep that price forever, as long as the license is renewed every year.