Generate a WooCommerce abandoned cart recovery plugin
Abandoned cart recovery is one of those features where every shop needs something slightly different. You want emails that sound like you, not a generic template. You want to trigger the first reminder at 45 minutes instead of 1 hour. You want to exclude B2B customers from the automation. Existing plugins either lock this behind the pro tier or ship with an opinionated UX that you then spend hours fighting.
A generated plugin solves this by being shaped by your description. Describe when reminders should fire, what the email subject line is, how many attempts you want and when to stop, whether to include a discount code only for the second email. You get a plugin that does exactly that — nothing more, no upsell banners in your admin.
Why generate it instead of installing an existing plugin?
The free WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery plugin is solid for a vanilla setup, but the moment you want to segment by user role or product category, you hit the pro wall at roughly €60/year. Retainful, Omnisend and AutomateWoo start at similar ranges and add marketing surfaces you may not want.
The hidden cost of those plugins is data ownership. Cart data goes through their infrastructure to send the emails. For a B2B store with enterprise clients, that is a real privacy conversation. A self-hosted plugin that queues emails through your existing SMTP (or via wp_mail with an SMTP plugin you already trust) keeps everything on your server.
We also see shops paying for the enterprise tier of a SaaS just to get a feature like "skip abandoned cart emails if the customer has an open support ticket in our CRM". That kind of integration is a 15-line hook once the plugin exposes the right action — impossible to graft onto a closed SaaS, trivial on code you own.
Example prompt
This is the kind of description that generates this plugin. You can start from it and tweak whatever you need before hitting generate.
Plugin name: Acme Cart Recovery
Triggers:
- A cart is "abandoned" if 45 minutes pass after the customer entered the email on checkout step 1 and they have not placed the order yet.
- We store pending recoveries in a custom table acme_cart_recovery (id, email, cart_total, cart_items JSON, recovery_token, created_at, status).
Email flow (WP Cron):
1. At 45 min: send Email A "You left something behind" — no discount.
2. At 24 h: send Email B with a 10% code valid 48 h, code generated via WC coupon API.
3. At 72 h: send Email C (plain text, very short).
Each email uses a unique recovery_token link that pre-fills the cart.
Admin settings: subject line per email, toggle each step on/off, exclude users in role "wholesale".
Hook actions: acme_before_send_recovery, acme_after_recovery (so other plugins can log to a CRM).
HPOS-compatible. Uninstall drops the table and clears all scheduled cron events.What the generated plugin typically includes
- Custom DB table created via dbDelta with a schema versioning option
- Cron events scheduled on activation and cleared on deactivation + uninstall
- Email templates rendered from overridable template files under /templates/emails/ (theme can override)
- Recovery link with a signed token — no session needed to restore the cart
- Admin dashboard widget showing pending vs recovered vs expired
- Custom action hooks so you can plug your CRM or analytics
- HPOS compatibility declaration
Swap timings, add SMS via Twilio, hook into Mailchimp instead of wp_mail, segment by purchase history — all described in the prompt, no code edits after.
Frequently asked questions
Is this compatible with HPOS?
Yes. The plugin declares compatibility with custom_order_tables in before_woocommerce_init and uses wc_get_order() plus $order->get_meta() throughout. No get_post_meta on orders.
Where do the emails get sent from?
Through wp_mail(). Whatever SMTP plugin you already have (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, etc.) handles delivery. The plugin does not ship its own SMTP — that keeps your deliverability setup intact.
Can I exclude certain products or customers?
Yes, describe the rule in the prompt. Common ones: exclude items under a threshold, exclude specific categories, exclude users in certain roles, exclude guest checkouts. Each gets turned into a filter the admin can toggle.
What if a customer unsubscribes from the recovery emails?
We add a one-click unsubscribe token in every email footer and store the suppression in user meta. The plugin checks before sending each step. You can also describe GDPR erasure handling.