This guide covers installation and takes you to your first live group buy. It assumes WooCommerce is already set up with at least one payment method, because customers pay for a group buy through your normal WooCommerce checkout.
Requirements
- WordPress 6.5 or later
- WooCommerce 8.0 or later
- PHP 7.4 or later
- A payment gateway that supports refunds (Stripe, PayPal, WooPayments and most card gateways do) if you want failed campaigns refunded automatically. Without one, failed orders are put on hold for you to refund by hand. See Automatic refunds.
Campaigns are opened and closed by Action Scheduler, which ships with WooCommerce. You don’t need to set anything up, but on very quiet sites it helps to run WP-Cron from a real cron job so campaigns close on time.
Installing the free plugin
From your dashboard (recommended):
- Go to Plugins → Add New.
- Search for “Tribuy Group Buy”.
- Click Install Now, then Activate.
Manual upload:
- Download the ZIP from WordPress.org.
- Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the ZIP, and click Install Now.
- Activate the plugin.
If WooCommerce is missing or older than 8.0, the plugin shows an admin notice and stays inactive instead of breaking your site. Once it’s active:
- Group buy becomes a product type in the product editor, and Awaiting group becomes an order status.
- A Group Buys screen appears under the WooCommerce menu, and a Group buy tab under WooCommerce → Settings.
- Customers get a Group buys tab in My Account.
Installing Tribuy Pro
Pro is an add-on that extends the free plugin. You need both active:
- Make sure the free Tribuy – Group Buy for WooCommerce plugin (1.1.0 or later) is installed and active.
- Download the Pro ZIP from your BeautifulPlugins account.
- Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, upload the ZIP, and activate it.
- Activate your license. Pro features only switch on with a valid license.
Creating your first group buy
- Go to Products → Add New and give the product a title, description, and image, exactly as you would for any WooCommerce product.
- In the Product data dropdown, choose Group buy.
- On the General tab, set the Regular price, the normal price that shoppers compare against.
- Open the Group buy tab and fill in:
- Group price: what every participant pays. It must not be higher than the regular price.
- Goal quantity: the total units all customers together must buy for the deal to go ahead.
- Maximum quantity: optional cap, for example your supplier limit.
- Minimum per customer and Maximum per customer: how many units one customer may order.
- Ends: the deadline. Leave Starts empty to open the campaign immediately.
- Publish.
The group buy is live. The product page shows the group price with the saving, a progress bar, the units still needed, a countdown and a Join group buy button. Every field is explained on Creating & Managing Group Buys.
Tip: campaign dates use your site timezone (Settings → General). Check it’s correct before scheduling campaigns, or they’ll open and close at unexpected times.
Example: a coffee roaster sells a 1 kg bag for $30. With a group price of $22, a goal of 200 bags, a maximum of 500, and 2–20 bags per customer, the roaster only places the bulk order with the farm once 200 bags are sold.
Adding a group buys page
Give your campaigns a page of their own: create a page (for example “Group buys”), add the Group Buy Campaigns block or the [tribuy_campaigns] shortcode, and publish it. See Storefront, My Account & Shortcodes for the options.
Review the settings
Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Group buy (or click Settings under the plugin on the Plugins screen). The defaults work out of the box, but decide now:
- When the goal is reached: keep selling until the end date or the maximum (the default), or close the campaign immediately.
- Mixed carts: whether group buy items can share an order with regular products (off by default).
All options are on Settings & Emails.
What happens next
- Customers order between the per-customer minimum and maximum and pay at checkout.
- The paid order moves to Awaiting group instead of Processing. The customer gets a “You joined the group buy” email, and you get the usual new order email.
- When the campaign ends, or reaches its maximum:
- Goal reached: every waiting order moves to Processing, and customers get a “deal confirmed” email.
- Goal missed: every waiting order is refunded through the payment gateway, and customers get a “did not reach its goal” email.
- You get a campaign ended email with the outcome and the number of participants.
Follow every campaign under WooCommerce → Group Buys.
Updating
The free plugin updates through WordPress.org like any other plugin. Pro updates appear on your Plugins screen once your license is active. Keep both plugins on their latest versions, because Pro releases are built against the matching free release.
Next steps
- Creating & Managing Group Buys covers the full campaign lifecycle, orders and refunds.
- Pro Features covers tiered pricing, wholesale and private campaigns, relaunching, and more.