Freeze Shipping Alert and Global Hardiness Zones and Frost Data

Freeze Shipping Alert and Global Hardiness Zones and Frost Data is a WooCommerce extension that combines the WhatsMy.Zone climate lookup service with live forecast and geocoding services to detect freeze risk for shipping addresses worldwide.

Features

• Automatic Freeze Detection – Detects freeze risk at checkout based on the customer’s shipping address, estimated delivery window, and climate data.
• Protection Products – Offer one or more freeze-protection products at checkout and add them as real WooCommerce cart items.
• Complimentary Protection Rules – Automatically include configured protection products for free on risky shipments, with customer-facing included/unavailable notices.
• Protected Shipping Recommendations – Suggest one or more merchant-defined shipping options when those methods are safer during frost season.
• Delivery Scheduling – Customers can schedule later delivery when their area is safe from freezing, with an optional delayed-shipping discount.
• Risk Acceptance – Customers can acknowledge and accept freeze risk with a customizable disclaimer.
• Worldwide Hardiness Zone Shortcodes – Display hardiness zone, frost dates, and growing season information on any page.
• Admin Weather Forecast – Check current weather forecast data for an order’s shipping address.
• Admin Shipping Controls – Configure shipping lead time, protection products, complimentary protection rules, recommended shipping labels, disclaimers, and delayed-shipping discounts.
• Service-Backed Climate Lookups – Zone, frost, growing-season, and shipping-risk lookups are provided through the WhatsMy.Zone service.
• Global Coverage – Worldwide climate lookups for supported destinations.
• WooCommerce HPOS Compatible – Works with both legacy and High-Performance Order Storage.

Shortcodes

• [freeze_alert_zone] – Interactive hardiness zone checker with search
• [freeze_alert_frost] – Last/first frost date cards
• [freeze_alert_season] – Growing season visualizer with month bar

Data Sources

• Climate Lookups: WhatsMy.Zone service for zone, frost date, growing-season, and shipping-risk lookups
• Weather Forecast: Open-Meteo API (free, no API key required)
• Geocoding / Address Lookup: Nominatim/OpenStreetMap

WhatsMy.Zone Account and API Usage

Freeze Alert connects to WhatsMy.Zone so this site can make authenticated climate lookups and show usage and plan details in the WordPress admin. The initial connection is free and gives the site 100 WhatsMy.Zone API calls per month. If a site needs more calls, the service plan can be upgraded from the plugin settings.

WhatsMy.Zone API calls are used when Freeze Alert requests hardiness zone, frost date, growing-season, or shipping-risk data for a coordinate. This includes shortcode lookups, checkout freeze-risk checks, order/admin checks, and configured route exposure points when those features are used. Paid WhatsMy.Zone plans change only the service-side API usage limit; they do not unlock a separate premium version of the WordPress plugin.

External services

Freeze Alert uses the following external service connections:
* WhatsMy.Zone: receives latitude/longitude coordinates for climate lookups (zone, frost dates, growing season, and shipping-risk checks). If you connect a WhatsMy.Zone account from the plugin settings, the plugin also sends the site domain and admin email to register or reconnect the site account, and uses the saved API key to retrieve account usage and plan details. The initial service connection is free and includes 100 API calls per month; upgrades are available only when a site needs a higher monthly service limit. If you start a plan upgrade, the plugin sends the selected plan, billing cycle, and connected WhatsMy.Zone user ID to WhatsMy.Zone, which returns a Stripe-hosted checkout URL. The settings screen may also request a WhatsMy.Zone language-pack manifest, and installing a language pack downloads the selected JSON translation pack from WhatsMy.Zone. Service policies: https://whatsmy.zone/policies.html
* Open-Meteo: receives latitude/longitude coordinates to return weather forecast data used for shipping-date forecast checks. Terms and privacy: https://open-meteo.com/en/terms
* Nominatim / OpenStreetMap: receives either a location search query entered by the user, or shipping address fields needed for geocoding (street, city, state/region, postal code, country). Reverse-geocoding requests send latitude/longitude coordinates. Nominatim usage policy: https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim/ OpenStreetMap Foundation terms: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy

These services are external to the WordPress site and are contacted only when the related lookup, forecast, geocoding, account, language-pack, or checkout-plan action is requested.