Best AI Product Recommendation Plugin for WooCommerce

AI product recommendations can help WooCommerce stores show products that are more useful and relevant to each shopper. Instead of showing the same related products to everyone, a recommendation system can use product information, customer actions, sales data, and product relationships to decide what products should appear next.

But AI alone is not enough. Store owners still need control over where recommendations appear, which products can be shown, how products are sorted, and how each recommendation looks.

In this guide, we’ll explain how AI product recommendations work in WooCommerce, what features you should look for and manage product recommendations with AI and rule-based controls.

What Is Product Recommendation in WooCommerce?

Product recommendations are product suggestions shown to customers while they shop in your WooCommerce store.

You may have already seen recommendation sections such as:

• You May Also Like
• Frequently Bought Together
• Related Products
• Recommended for You
• Best Sellers
• New Arrivals
• On Sale Products
• Complete Your Order

The main purpose is to help customers find products that match what they are already looking at, buying, or interested in.

For example, imagine a customer is viewing a laptop. Instead of showing random products, the store could recommend a laptop bag, wireless mouse, keyboard, or other useful accessories.

Recommendations can also appear at different parts of the shopping journey. You can show one recommendation on the product page, another in the cart, another during checkout, and even another after the order is completed.

A more advanced system can use different signals together. It may check the current product category, customer browsing history, stock status, sales performance, or previous purchases before deciding what to show.

This gives store owners more control and can make recommendations more useful for customers.

Can You Use AI to Recommend Products in WooCommerce?

Yes. AI can make the process of creating product recommendations much easier.

Normally, a store owner may need to select filters, choose sorting rules, set a placement, and configure other options manually.

With AI, you can describe what you want in normal language.

For example:

Create a best seller recommendation from the last 30 days and show it after add to cart.

An AI-based recommendation builder can understand that request and create the required settings for you.

You could also ask:

Recommend products customers recently viewed and show the highest-rated products first.

The AI can turn that instruction into filters and sorting rules. This saves time, especially when you are not sure which settings you need.

However, AI should not completely control the recommendation system. You should still be able to review the result, change the filters, adjust the sorting, choose a different placement, and edit the design.

WowRecommend uses this type of approach. AI can help create the recommendation, but the full setup remains available for manual editing.

Choosing the Right AI Product Recommendation Plugin

When choosing an AI product recommendation plugin, do not look only at whether it has AI. A useful recommendation plugin should also give you enough control over how recommendations work in your store.

Important features include:

• AI-powered rule creation
• Multiple recommendation placements
• Product filters
• Customer behavior filters
• Sales-based filters
• Product relationship filters
• Sorting controls
• Personalization
• Recommendation styling
• Scheduling
• Display conditions
• Upsells and order bumps
• Analytics

AI Product Recommendation Plugin Comparison

The three plugins cover different levels of product recommendation. Smart Related Products mainly focuses on behavior-based related products. AI Product Recommendations for WooCommerce adds OpenAI-powered recommendations, personalization, upsells, cross-sells, and an AI shopping assistant.

WowRecommend provides a broader recommendation-building system with AI Chat, Guided Steps, 32+ filters, multiple page placements, live preview, premade templates, dedicated Popup Upsells, Checkout Order Bumps, and detailed recommendation analytics.

Here is the detailed discussion of the three WooCommerce recommendation solutions:

WowRecommend

WowRecommend is an AI product recommendation plugin made for WooCommerce.

It gives store owners a Recommendation Rules Builder where they can create recommendations with AI, guided options, premade templates, or manual settings.

Recommendations can be added to several WooCommerce pages, including:

• Product Page
• Shop Page
• Product Archive
• Cart
• Checkout
• Thank You Page

Each page can also have more than one placement. This means you can decide exactly where a recommendation should appear.

WowRecommend includes more than 32 recommendation filters divided into four groups:

• Product
• Sales & Performance
• Customer Behavior
• Product Relationship

These filters can be used for many recommendation ideas.

For example, you can recommend best-selling products, recently viewed products, products from a specific category, products from a selected brand, upsells, cross-sells, related products, or products often bought together.

After choosing the products, Smart Sorting controls which products appear first. You can sort by popularity, conversion, freshness, price, rating, random order, or bought-together performance.

The plugin also includes premade templates, live preview, scheduling, display conditions, Popup Upsells, Checkout Order Bumps, and analytics.

AI Product Recommendations for WooCommerce

AI Product Recommendations for WooCommerce is a WooCommerce Marketplace extension by Azent Labs. It uses OpenAI to generate product recommendations and personalized shopping suggestions based on store data and customer activity.

It also includes separate features for upselling, cross-selling, and an AI shopping assistant that can answer product questions.

Recommendations can appear on the Shop page, Product pages, Cart, and Checkout, while shortcodes can be used for custom locations. Store owners can configure recommendation counts, result filtering, relevance settings, upsell and cross-sell strategies, triggers, and display options.

The plugin also includes built-in performance and conversion analytics.

Smart Related Products – AI-Inspired Recommendations for WooCommerce

Smart Related Products is a WooCommerce recommendation plugin by Shark Themes. It focuses on showing related products based on customer activity instead of relying only on WooCommerce’s default random related products.

The plugin can use products customers have viewed, products in their cart, and their purchase history to find relevant suggestions.

The plugin can automatically match the store theme, making basic product recommendations easier to display without extra styling.

Its main focus is behavior-based related products. The official pages do not list a merchant AI chat rule builder, dedicated Popup Upsells, Checkout Order Bumps, or recommendation sales analytics.

Setting Up Product Recommendations With the Help of AI: Step-by-Step

WowRecommend gives you more than one way to create recommendations. You can use AI Chat, Guided Steps, premade templates, or create everything manually.

Here is a simple AI-based setup process:

Step 1: Install and Activate the Recommendation Plugin

Install and activate WowRecommend on your WooCommerce website.

After activation, open the Recommendation Rules Builder. This is the main area where recommendations are created and managed.

The left side shows the available target pages. The right side shows a live preview of the selected page. You can also see the available recommendation positions directly inside the preview.

Step 2: Connect an AI Provider

WowRecommend does not have its own separate API key field. It works with the AI Client and Connectors system available in WordPress 7.0.

AI providers are connected from:

WordPress Dashboard → Settings → Connectors

Once an AI provider is connected there, WowRecommend can use that connection for its AI Chat.

If no AI provider is connected, you can still use the Guided Steps. Only the natural-language AI Chat requires an active AI connection.

Step 3: Use WowRecommend to Build the Recommendation Rule

Select the page where you want to create the recommendation. Then open AI Recommendation Chat from the bottom-right corner.

You can start with Guided Steps. The available suggestions change depending on the selected page. For example, the Product Page may show options such as:

• Upsell Products
• Bought Together
• Best Sellers
• New Arrivals
• Personalized Picks
• On-Sale Deals

If AI is connected, you can also type your own request.

For example:

Create a personalized recommendation based on recently viewed products and show 4 products.

You can then continue the conversation:

Keep the same products, but sort them by rating.

Once the setup looks right, choose a placement and apply the recommendation.

Step 4: Customize Filters, Sorting, and Recommendation Placement

AI-created recommendations can still be edited manually. You can change the filters, sorting, placement, product count, schedule, and other settings.

Filters decide which products can appear. For example, you can create a rule that shows best sellers but removes out-of-stock products.

Sorting controls the order of the products that match those filters. For example, you can show the highest-rated matching products first.

You can also add more than one sorting rule and use priorities. If two products have the same result under the first sorting rule, the next priority works as a tie-breaker.

WowRecommend also includes optional Display Conditions. These are useful when multiple recommendations use the same placement. You can show them together or display them one after another.

Step 5: Select the Styling of Your Recommendations

The Layout section controls how the recommendation looks. You can choose a premade layout and select either Grid or Slider.

You can also control:

• Total number of products
• Products per row
• Desktop layout
• Tablet layout
• Mobile layout
• Heading alignment
• Content size
• Borders

You can also choose which product details should appear:

• Product image
• Category
• Product title
• Rating
• Price
• Add to Cart button

The live preview shows your changes while you work.

WowRecommend also includes Popup Upsells and Checkout Order Bumps. Popup Upsells can appear after actions such as adding a product to cart, clicking a button, or staying on a page for a set amount of time. Order Bumps can show recommended products directly on checkout and can also include an optional percentage or fixed discount.

Can You Show Personalized Recommendations Based on Customer Behavior?

Yes. Customer behavior can make product recommendations much more personal and relevant.

WowRecommend includes 9 Customer Behavior Filters:

• Products Viewed
• Recently Viewed
• Frequently Viewed
• Added to Cart
• Removed from Cart
• Previously Purchased
• Customer Interest Categories
• Customer Interest Tags
• Customer Interest Attributes

These filters allow recommendations to change based on what customers have already done in the store.

For example, you could show products a customer recently viewed, recommend products from categories they often browse, or recommend products with similar attributes to products they previously purchased.

These behavior filters can be combined with other filters. For example, you could recommend recently viewed products but only show items that are currently in stock. This gives you personalization while still keeping the rules under your control.

Summing Up

AI product recommendations can make it easier for WooCommerce stores to show useful products at the right time. But a good recommendation system needs more than AI.

Store owners also need control over product filters, sorting, placement, design, timing, and performance.

WowRecommend combines these features in one recommendation system. It includes an AI Rule Builder, Guided Steps, 32+ filters, Smart Sorting, flexible placements, premade templates, live preview, scheduling, display conditions, Popup Upsells, Checkout Order Bumps, and recommendation analytics.

You can use AI to create a recommendation quickly and then edit every part manually — or you can skip AI and create the complete recommendation yourself. This makes it possible to use AI for speed without giving up control over how recommendations work in your WooCommerce store.