PreOrder Pilot – Pre-Orders for WooCommerce

PreOrder Pilot by PLANO is a free WooCommerce pre-order plugin for selling products before they become available. Enable pre-orders on unlimited simple products, show an expected availability date and collect full payment through your normal WooCommerce checkout.

Customers see the pre-order message and availability date on the product page, in the cart, at checkout and in their confirmation email. Manage products and pre-orders from one dashboard, update dates in bulk and release orders when products are ready.

Features

Everything below is free, with no product limit and no license key:

• Pre-orders for any number of simple products, each with an optional expected availability date.
• A custom pre-order button label and an availability message on the product page, in the cart, at checkout, in the order and in emails.
• Full payment at checkout using your normal WooCommerce gateways.
• A dedicated Pre-ordered order status (HPOS and legacy storage), so paid pre-orders are easy to find and are not shipped by mistake.
• A “Pre-order confirmation” customer email built on WooCommerce emails. Edit it under WooCommerce → Settings → Emails, or override the template in your theme.
• An admin dashboard with pre-order totals, a product list with search, an order list, and bulk enable, pause, set-date and mark-released actions.
• Mark a product released and its pre-ordered orders move to Processing.
• WooCommerce Classic and Cart/Checkout Blocks support.
• Every string is translation-ready; community translations are delivered through WordPress.org language packs.
• No account, no telemetry and no remote requests. Everything runs inside your store.

Free vs Growth

The free plugin supports simple products and full payment at checkout. Variable products, deposits, pay later, automatic stock rules and back-in-stock alerts require the separate Growth add-on.

PreOrder Pilot is complete on its own. PreOrder Pilot Growth is a separate, optional paid plugin that extends it through the public hooks below. It adds:

• Deposits (fixed or percentage) and pay-later orders, with balance payment links and reminders.
• Mixed-cart rules: allow, block, or split pre-order items into their own order.
• Variable products and per-variation settings.
• Automatic pre-orders when out of stock, and automatic release on restock.
• Pre-order rules by product category.
• Quantity limits with atomic reservations, start and end dates, and discounts.
• Extra customer emails: release date changed, product released, balance reminder, and “email me when available” alerts.
• CSV export of pre-orders and subscribers.
• Countdown timers, a launch calendar and per-country allocations.
• Marketing webhooks for Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend and similar tools.

This free plugin contains none of the Growth code and never limits or locks its own features.

For developers

Actions: preorder_pilot_loaded, preorder_pilot_settings_saved, preorder_pilot_release_date_changed, preorder_pilot_product_released, preorder_pilot_order_confirmed, preorder_pilot_product_panel_end, preorder_pilot_settings_fields.

Filters: preorder_pilot_setting_defaults, preorder_pilot_sanitize_settings, preorder_pilot_validate_settings, preorder_pilot_is_active, preorder_pilot_modes, preorder_pilot_supported_product_types, preorder_pilot_availability_message, preorder_pilot_product_field_definitions, preorder_pilot_snapshot, preorder_pilot_cart_item_data, preorder_pilot_email_classes, preorder_pilot_admin_tabs, preorder_pilot_use_preorder_status.