I’ve been trying out some local coffee shops for a while, and I thought, “Why not set out to try as many different shops as possible?” Maybe I’ll find some new favorites, new spots to make my office for the day. From my experience, you always end up chatting with someone cool or enjoying some good people-watching. So, I want to dedicate this "series" to all the coffee spots I get a chance to check out.

#Crema Espresso Gourmet

Even before moving down here, my sister and brother-in-law were singing praises for Crema. Conveniently located just a few minutes from their place, we’ve been frequenting the spot for light breakfast items and, of course, their coffee. Over the last 6-7 months, I’ve made my fair share of visits to Crema. Sometimes, it’s a quick pickup, and other times, I’ll sit for a while, working or reading a book. I haven’t noticed any consistent patterns for when it’s busiest or least busy. I’ve experienced both: times when the place is packed and all the tables are taken, and times when most tables and chairs are open, and I can pick my favorite spot.

I always gravitate toward their little setup in the back with coffee tables and couches/armchairs—it’s perfect for a more relaxed hangout instead of the usual chair/table setup. It’s especially fun if you’re there with someone and just catching up. The bar-top seating by the window and the main dining area are better for working on your laptop. But I’ve also definitely lounged on the couch with my laptop on my lap to get some work done!

#What I Like to Order

Drink – I usually go for an iced coffee with oat milk or a latte with an extra shot of espresso—and of course, oat milk.

Food – For a while, I was wholly addicted to their almond croissants. Recently, they had an almond & chocolate version that was fantastic. Their croissants always seem so fresh—perfectly crispy on the outside and absolutely moist and delicious on the inside. I also absolutely LOVE their "Sunshine Aioli Sandwich," which is a super simple sandwich that blows my mind every time. It’s arugula, sliced hard-boiled egg, cucumbers, and their aioli sauce. I think that’s it! It’s so simple but ridiculously tasty and fresh.

#Final Thoughts: You Won't be Disappointed!

I’d give their coffee a solid 8, ambiance & coffee house environment an 8.5, service an 8, and food a 9. But hey, I’m not sure if I’m keeping track of scores just yet! Either way, I definitely recommend stopping by Crema to try their coffee and one of their delicious pastries or sandwiches!

#Why I Left KnownHost for Rocket.net

I manage high-volume WooCommerce stores with high traffic and order velocity. My sites rely on recurring subscriptions, affiliate programs, and wholesale operations, so uptime is critical. I was using a high-spec VPS with KnownHost, configured with Plesk Control Panel, Immunify360, and KernelCare for security and performance. The server was configured with Litespeed, and the Woo site with Litespeed Cache. But after repeated outages and generally slow server performance, I started looking for alternatives.

The tipping point was when I noticed a significant uptick in spam traffic, bots, and failed subscriptions due to downtime. For high-volume WooCommerce stores, even a few minutes of downtime can result in substantial revenue loss. Days with extended outages saw as much as a 30-50% drop in daily average revenue. It became clear that I needed a more reliable, high-performance hosting provider.

#My Experience with Other Hosting Providers

Before KnownHost, I hosted with Cloudways, and before that, I tried WPEngine, FlyWheel, and Kinsta. I’ve used these providers for a range of sites, from small blogs to 8-figure WooCommerce stores. While each of these hosts initially performed well, they all eventually fell short in one area or another:

• Cloudways: Decent performance but lacked the reliability needed for DTC WooCommerce sites. While their support is typically available via live chat and quick to reply, their responses weren't great.
• WPEngine and FlyWheel: Both had restrictive environments and expensive plans, which didn’t justify the lackluster performance. I actually straight hated their backend dash. Everything was an upsell.
• Kinsta: This was a while back, but at the time, their support and performance were underwhelming, and overpriced.

Across the board, I found these hosts to be restrictive, slow (despite claiming to have high-performing servers), and, in some cases, overpriced for what they offered. For WooCommerce stores that rely on background processes like recurring orders, these shortcomings became deal breakers. Online reviews for these hosts were at best mixed. At times, I'm dumbfounded by how they still exist and what caliber of Woo shops and WP sites they host/manage.

#What Makes Rocket.net Stand Out for WooCommerce Hosting?

After extensive research, I decided to move my sites to Rocket.net. From the start, the experience was different. Rocket.net offers managed WordPress hosting optimized for WooCommerce, and their features are designed to handle the specific needs of high-volume WooCommerce stores. Just take a look at their website for a list of their critical features included in the price.

What immediately grabbed my attention was the backend/control panel. It’s fast, intuitive, and thoughtfully designed. The founder, Ben Gabler, has talked about his goal of reducing the number of clicks required to complete any task, and that philosophy is evident throughout the platform. For example, updating your site’s PHP version is neatly tucked under the "Advanced" tab for each site, alongside other key tools like WP CLI, SSH keys, and database management.

Here are some of the standout features that make Rocket.net a game-changer for WooCommerce hosting. And it's not just about having these features but how easy and quick everything works.

• Plugin Management: Manage all your plugins directly from the control panel without dealing with WordPress’s slow plugin page.
• Backups: Daily and manual backups with easy restore options, perfect for high-traffic WooCommerce sites.
• Logs: Built-in activity and access logs that are fast and easy to scan, which is critical for diagnosing site issues. Not hard to find, not hard to understand or dig into details if needed.
• Reporting: See detailed reports on blocked bots, spam, and WAF (WordPress Firewall) activity. For WooCommerce stores, this means fewer headaches with security. Something about their firewall reporting makes me super happy.
• File Manager: Unlike the clunky file managers in cPanel, Rocket.net’s file manager is fast and glitch-free. It is honestly a nice built-in file manager when you don't want to SFTP or SSH into a server.

#Rocket.net’s Backend UI/UX: A Game-Changer

As someone who spends a lot of time in backend interfaces, I appreciate a platform with a clean, intuitive design. Rocket.net's control panel is one of the best I’ve used in terms of UI/UX. Everything is where you expect it to be, and the overall experience is smooth.

I’ve used tons of other online platforms like Judge.me and Yotpo for reviews, and while they get the job done, their backends can feel slow and outdated. In contrast, Rocket.net feels modern, fast, and responsive. It’s a pleasure to work in, which is essential when you manage multiple WooCommerce stores and need to make quick updates. Rocket.net brings a modern SaaS experience to the hosting world. And I love it.

#How Rocket.net Improved My WooCommerce Site Performance

Now, let’s talk about the numbers. I migrated five WooCommerce sites—ranging from small to enterprise-level—to Rocket.net over one weekend, and the performance improvements were immediate and significant.

Before migrating to Rocket.net, my sites experienced slow TTFB, high latency, and inconsistent performance. Here’s a comparison of one of my sites before and after moving to Rocket.net:

#Site A Before Rocket.net:

#Same Site on Rocket.net:

As you can see, TTFB improved dramatically, with an average of 77ms across multiple locations. The same site, without any additional optimizations, runs faster just by being on Rocket.net’s servers. WooCommerce stores, especially high-traffic ones, benefit greatly from reduced TTFB. Faster TTFB means faster page loads, which is crucial for user experience and SEO rankings. This is pretty much through their powerful server and their enterprise edge Cloudflare CDN.

#Is It Just Numbers?

No. The performance improvements are tangible. After migrating, I noticed that the sites felt snappier, and the loading times were noticeably shorter. This wasn’t just something that tools like GTMetrix or Pingdom picked up—end users reported a smoother experience, and we saw fewer abandoned carts and improved conversion rates.

#Final Thoughts: Why Rocket.net is a Must-Try for WooCommerce Hosting

If you're managing a high-volume WooCommerce store and your current hosting provider isn’t meeting your performance and reliability needs, it’s time to make the switch to Rocket.net. Their platform is optimized for WooCommerce hosting, offering fast load times, excellent server uptime, and a seamless backend experience.

I’ve been through the wringer with hosting providers, and Rocket.net is the first one that’s truly delivered on its promises. From the intuitive UI to the outstanding site performance, it’s a solution designed with high-traffic WooCommerce stores in mind.

#Ready to upgrade your WooCommerce hosting?

Try Rocket.net today and experience the difference for yourself. With their optimized infrastructure, your WooCommerce store will run faster, smoother, and more reliably than ever before.

The Challenge with Traditional Value-Based Targeting

However, exclusively targeting high-CLV customers limits your growth potential, especially without proper controls in place. If you let Meta target a broader audience without refining your criteria, you risk attracting users who may seem like high CLV prospects but are unlikely to purchase, or worse, never become high CLV customers. Without additional controls, Meta’s algorithm lacks the data needed to effectively exclude low-value prospects.

The Solution: Segmenting Your Audience for Better Control

To address this, consider further segmenting your customers into high and low CLV groups. Instead of uploading a single high-CLV customer list, create two separate lists: one for high CLV and another for low CLV. When setting up your campaign, exclude the low CLV group and their lookalike audiences. This allows you to focus on the most profitable customers while avoiding unnecessary spending on less valuable segments.

Don’t Overlook Low CLV Customers

Even though low CLV customers may not be as lucrative, they’re still worth targeting—just at a lower cost. This approach lets you appeal to a broader audience while keeping acquisition costs in check, a crucial step in scaling your brand to household name status. You can change the tone of your ad, test different offers, promote a lower-ticket hero product, and more to figure out how to unlock this audience as you would with high CLV audience targeting.

Understanding Value-Based Bidding (VBB)

Value-Based Bidding (VBB) is a strategy that leverages your customer segmentation to maximize ad spend efficiency. Rather than treating all potential customers the same, VBB allows you to set different bid caps for different audience segments based on their expected CLV. This way, you can afford to spend more on high-value customers while keeping costs lower for less valuable prospects. VBB is particularly useful in competitive markets where you need to maintain a balance between acquiring high-CLV customers and preserving profitability.

Implementing Value-Based Bidding

Here’s how to put VBB into practice:

1. Segment Your Customers: Divide your customer base into five value-based groups, each representing 20% of your customers. Label these groups A to E.
2. Upload and Create Lookalikes: Upload these segments as custom audiences (not value-based) and create lookalike audiences for each group.
3. Set Target CAC: For each segment, establish a target Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) based on their expected CLV. For example:
   • Audience A: $200+ CLV, CAC $100 (2:1). This segment is worth taking a first-order loss for potential high future value.
   • Audience B: $100+ CLV, CAC $33 (3:1). Maintain profitability by setting a lower CAC for this segment.

The goal is to align your spending with your business objectives—whether that’s aggressive growth, balanced scaling, or maximizing profitability.

Meta’s New Update: Automating the Process

Meta has introduced a new feature that automates some aspects of this strategy. While promising, it’s advisable to continue using manual controls as Meta’s updates can sometimes be unreliable. Testing this new feature alongside your manual methods can help you determine if it provides similar or better results.

Who ELSE Should You Exclude from Your Campaigns?

When refining your audience, consider excluding the following segments:

• Existing customers (last 90 days): Adjust this based on your average time between orders and customer lapse period.
• "One-and-done" customers: Those who ordered once but not in the last 120 days—indicating they weren’t satisfied or the product didn’t fit their lifestyle. This is similar to your low-CLV customer segment but provides a more granular approach. Use either, or both!
• Negative reviewers: Even if they have a high CLV or AOV, they’re unlikely to return.
• Frequent returners/refunders: High return rates often signal dissatisfaction, making them poor targets for future campaigns.

Conclusion: A Balanced Approach to Scaling

By leveraging these strategies—segmented targeting, Value-Based Bidding, and careful audience exclusions—you can optimize your ad spend, target the right customers, and drive more growth and profitability for your brand. Whether you’re aiming for rapid growth or sustainable profitability, these methods provide a roadmap for effectively scaling your business in a competitive market.

Side note: Klaviyo's documentation provides extensive coverage on how to execute tasks but often falls short on explaining what strategies to implement. This is where strategic thinking becomes crucial. It would be incredibly helpful if Klaviyo included some of these default segments, as they are applicable to almost all types of brands and would simplify the segmentation process for us.

#The Importance of Knowing Who to Exclude

For example, knowing who to exclude is crucial. Consider a pet shop that sells both dog and cat toys and treats. If your list doesn’t identify who owns dogs, who owns cats, or who owns both, it becomes challenging to sell a dog toy to a cat owner and vice versa. By properly segmenting your email marketing list, you can avoid sending irrelevant offers to your subscribers, increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns. I can almost promise that your metrics/KPIs will drastically improve with these strategic segments.

#Segmentation Groups

I’ve divided my segments into three main groups to keep things simple and easy to understand: Master List, Customer List, and Suppress List. Each definition below is an "AND" statement unless otherwise stated as an "OR" statement.

BONUS: For almost all of the segments below, you can paste the definitions into Klaviyo's AI segment builder, and it'll do the heavy lifting for you. Or, if you want to see which segments you're missing and what they're worth, Blindspot reviews your Klaviyo account and ranks the fixes for you.

#Master & Engaged Lists

ML - Master Email List

• Can receive marketing emails.
• Is not suppressed, or suppression is not set.
• Not a suspicious email, or suspicious is not set.

Why: Ensures the list consists of legitimate, non-suppressed emails that can receive marketing communications. You may have a number of different signup lists (website popup, footer signup, in-field sampling collection, etc). This list is your, well, "Master" list of everyone on your list that can receive email marketing.

ML - Master SMS List

• Has a phone number.
• Can receive SMS marketing.

Why: Identifies contacts who have opted in for SMS marketing, allowing for targeted SMS campaigns.

ML - SMS Subscribers in the USA

• Has a phone number.
• Can receive SMS marketing.
• Phone number region is US.

Why: Enables targeting of SMS campaigns to subscribers in the USA, ensuring compliance with regional regulations.

ML - Engaged 15D, 30D, 60D, 90D (4 segments)

• Opened or clicked an email at least once in the last x days.
• Can receive email marketing.

Why: Focuses on subscribers who have recently engaged, increasing the likelihood of response to future emails and helping guide content for each time lapse.

ML - Very Highly Engaged

• Opened an email at least 3 times in the last 16 days or clicked an email at least 2 times in the last 16 days or clicked an email at least once in the last 6 days.
• Can receive email marketing.

Why: Targets highly engaged subscribers who are most likely to interact with your emails. Sometimes these could be your competitors, most of the time these are people who are interested in your brand. A good segment to send an initial survey!

#Customers List

Most of these segments likely exist in your ESP, but it's essential to exclude refunded or returned orders!

CL - Master Buyers List

• Placed an order at least once over all time.
• Refunded order zero times over all time or placed order greater than 1 over all time.

Why: Identifies all-time buyers, ensuring communications reach active purchasers.

CL - Repeat Customers List

• Placed an order at least twice over all time.
• Refunded order zero times over all time or placed order greater than 2 over all time.

Why: Focuses on loyal customers who have made multiple purchases.

CL - High LTV Customers List

• Total lifetime value is greater than $250-$300.

Why: Identifies high-value customers or otherwise your "VIP" customer list, allowing for campaigns such as new product drops (early adopters), new program launches (ie. referral, loyalty, etc), and surveys!

CL - Purchased Last 7, 14 Days

• Placed an order at least once in the last 7 or 14 days.
• Refunded order zero times in the last 14 days or placed order at least twice in the last 14 days.

Why: Targets recent purchasers, increasing the relevance of follow-up communications.

CL - Purchased [Product Category] 30 Days

• Placed an order at least once in the last 30 days, where product category equals product category name.

Why: Enables category-specific marketing to recent buyers of certain products.

CL - Recurring Subscription Customers

• Signed up for a subscription.
• Had 2 or more successful recurring orders.

Why: Identifies subscription customers for targeted retention campaigns.

CL - Zero Orders Non-Customers

• Placed an order zero times over all time.

Why: Highlights inactive subscribers who have not made any purchases.

#Suppressed List

These segments are critical for preventing your emails from being sent to the wrong people!

SL - Bounced 2x

• Bounced email at least twice over all time.

Why: Prevents wasting efforts on email addresses that are invalid.

SL - Never Opened + Never Clicked

• Received email at least 8-10 times over all time.
• Opened email zero times over all time, where Apple privacy open is false.
• Clicked email zero times over all time.
• Created in the last 90 days.

Why: This one is pretty obvious but missed by many marketers. Removes uninterested subscribers who have never engaged with your emails.

SL - No Recent Engagement

• Opened an email at least once over all time.
• Created in the last 365 days.
• Opened emails zero times in the last 90 days.
• Placed order zero times in the last 90 days.

Why: Focuses on disengaged subscribers for potential re-engagement or suppression.

SL - Suspected Spam Traps

• Viewed product zero times over all time.
• Started checkout zero times over all time.
• Opened email zero times over all time.
• Clicked email zero times over all time.
• Placed order zero times over all time.
• Active on site at most once over all time.
• First name is not set.
• Received email at least 4 times over all time.
• Submitted review zero times over all time.
• Suspicious is true, or suspicious is not set.

Why: Protects your sender reputation by avoiding potential spam traps.

SL - Left Negative Review

Why: Identifies customers who may be dissatisfied, preventing further negative interactions. This one requires that you have an integration with your review's platform. I prefer Judge.me but others that sync reviews data into Klaviyo will work too! It doesn't make sense sending promotional campaigns to people who've reported having a bad experience, right?

SL - Subscription Churned List

Why: Highlights customers who have canceled subscriptions for targeted win-back campaigns.

SL - Resend Excludes, Recent Engagers

• Opened an email at least once in the last 4 hours, where Apple privacy open equals false.
• Or clicked an email at least once in the last 12 hours.
• And received an email at least once in the last 16 hours.

Why: Ensures you don't bombard recent engagers with repeated emails, improving user experience.

By implementing these segments in your Klaviyo setup, you can significantly improve your email marketing efforts, ensuring that your messages reach the right audience and improve overall campaign effectiveness.

One glaring gap in this integration is between WooCommerce Subscriptions and Klaviyo. WooCommerce's native email templates are quite basic and fall short of modern standards. This becomes a problem when you want to customize and centralize your subscription notification emails through Klaviyo. Centralizing all your email notifications has numerous benefits, yet many shops struggle to achieve this. Typically, you end up with marketing emails from your preferred ESP (like Klaviyo, Sendlane, or MailChimp), order notifications from your store platform, review request emails from another service, and referral and loyalty emails from yet another platform. This leads to emails with inconsistent look and feel, templates, tone, and overall design.

To address this, I created a simple WooCommerce plugin that syncs all WooCommerce Subscriptions events to Klaviyo. This plugin sends all the relevant details, enabling you to create automated marketing email flows, order notifications, and more. Here are some of the key metadata items included in the sync:

List of Events Synced

• Subscription Created
• Subscription Renewed
• Subscription Cancelled
• Subscription Paused
• Subscription Updated

List of Meta Data with Each Event

• BillingInterval: The frequency at which the subscription is billed (e.g., every 1, 3, 6 months).
• BillingPeriod: The period for which the subscription is billed (e.g., month, week, year).
• CustomerID: The unique identifier of the customer associated with the subscription.
• DateCreated: The date when the subscription was initially created.
• Items: A JSON array that includes a list of products with details such as product name, quantity, subtotal, and product image URL.
• LastPaymentDate: The date of the most recent payment made for the subscription.
• NextPayment: The scheduled date for the next payment of the subscription.
• OriginOrderID: The unique identifier of the original order that created the subscription.
• PaymentMethod: The method used for payment (e.g., credit card, PayPal).
• PaymentUrl: The URL where customers can make a payment for failed or paused subscription orders.
• Shipping: Details of the shipping method and its cost for the subscription.
• ShippingTotal: The total cost of shipping for the subscription.
• Status: The current status of the subscription (e.g., active, paused, cancelled).
• SubscriptionID: The unique identifier of the subscription.
• SubscriptionUrl: The link to the customer portal on the website where customers can manage their subscription.
• SubscriptionValue: The total value or cost of the subscription.

If you're new to creating Klaviyo flows using custom metrics and trigger filters using meta data, I'll post another article with examples of how to create subscription email notifications such as subscription confirmation, welcome series, cancellation notification, and more.

Plugin Minimum Requirements

• PHP Version: 7.4 or higher
• WordPress Version: 5.0 or higher

Plugin Zip Download

Download woo-subscription-events-for-klaviyo.zip

With this plugin, you can finally centralize your email notifications, ensuring consistency in design and tone across all customer communications in Klaviyo. This not only enhances the customer experience but also streamlines your operations, making it easier to manage your communications from one central platform.

Front-End / Customer Experience

1. CheckoutWC: Upgrades checkout with side-cart and address auto-complete.
2. Magic Login: Logs users in via secure email link.
3. TrackShip: Provides order lookup and shipment tracking.
4. Saved Addresses for WooCommerce: Saves multiple customer addresses.
5. Lootly: Manages loyalty, referral, and affiliate programs.
6. Judge.me Product Reviews: Affordable and customizable review platform.
7. ZigPoll: Gathers surveys and feedback across platforms.
8. Shipping Insurance for WooCommerce: Handles shipping insurance fee collection.

Backend / Store Management

1. Metorik: Offers detailed WooCommerce reporting and analytics.
2. Express Login: Provides unique login links for accounts.
3. Add Customer for WooCommerce: Creates customer profiles manually.
4. Woo Delayed Orders Report: Tracks and notifies about delayed orders.
5. Woo Subscription Events for Klaviyo: Syncs subscription events to Klaviyo for email automation.
6. WooCommerce Shipment Tracking: Integrates tracking numbers with orders.
7. Pixel Manager (By SweetCode): Manages marketing tracking codes.
8. WP Mail SMTP: Improves email deliverability with SMTP.
9. BlogVault: Provides real-time backups for WooCommerce.
10. SEOPress: Simplifies and manages site SEO.

#Top Plugins & Tools for High Growth Woo Stores

• CheckoutWC – A much-needed, modern checkout experience for WooCommerce shops. Among several other options for improving the checkout experience, CheckoutWC really stands out with its features and options for customization.
  • Some of my favorite features are the built-in side-cart, order confirmation/thank you page, order pay page, cart & checkout upsells (order bumps), floating cart icon, and seamless Google Address AutoComplete at checkout. Learn more on their website!
  • Cost – starts at $15/month but the $25/month plan is the best deal for unlocking all the best features.
• ZigPoll – A survey & feedback platform that is easy to use, provides great reporting, is cost-effective, and is cross-platform (you can integrate with not just Woo, but Shopify and BigCommerce). While the tool allows you to create any number of surveys, polls, and feedback forms that can be prompted anywhere on the site (e.g., website experience feedback), I have found it to be the best tool for post-purchase attribution surveys.
  • My favorite features are the reports & charts, AI summaries, and the ability to send really any/all types of custom data. For example, I like to send order data along with a post-purchase attribution survey; data points like order number, order amount, order quantity, coupon code, coupon amount, and shipping zip & state/region. Combining attribution data + order info is extremely helpful in identifying and assigning value to attribution sources.
  • There are quite a few case studies on ZigPoll’s website which do a good job of showcasing different use cases.
  • Cost – starts with a free option and increases quite reasonably for more features and submissions.
• Judge.me Product Reviews – I’ve been using Judge.me for a good 5+ years and they have yet to fail me. For a fraction of the cost of other major reviews platforms (looking at Yotpo & similar), Judge.me provides virtually every feature you’d expect from a product reviews platform.
  • My favorite aspect of Judge.me is its customizations, integrations, and API. It’s a platform-agnostic tool and regardless of where your shop is, the app does a great job of getting the basics right. Send review request emails & texts easily, create an “all reviews” page with a drop of a snippet, let the app take care of native rich snippets for SEO, and more.
  • I appreciate its integrations with Klaviyo (for sending emails) & AfterShip (sending requests based on shipment delivery confirmation).
  • Cost – if you’re just starting out, the free plan is more than satisfactory. However, at only $15/month for the premium version…it’s well worth it!
• Metorik – To me, Metorik is the holy grail of reporting, analytics, and insights for WooCommerce. It’s everything Woo’s reporting and analytics should be but I’m glad it’s an app that lives outside of Woo. It’s fast, intuitive, and provides a ridiculous amount of data & insights about your store.
  • There are too many features to list but I have to mention their subscriptions reports (MRR, ARR), cohort analysis, product sales & cost analysis, and cost tracking (COGS, advertising, fees, and more)!
  • Cost – Starts at only $20 and increases based on your store’s order volume. If you manage a large ecommerce store, it can definitely get expensive but relatively still invaluable for the cost (10k orders per month would be $250/month).
• Pixel Manager (By SweetCode) – This one seems like a bit of a hidden gem for me. This plugin seamlessly implements your marketing tracking codes across nearly all digital platforms like Meta, Google (Ads & GA4), TikTok, Pinterest, and more. It has a ton of advanced options and can act as a CAPI provider for your Facebook/Meta Pixel natively.
  • Cost - Free version available & great option for basic setup. Pro version is $19/month.
• TrackShip – A better, cheaper alternative to AfterShip. I’ve used Aftership as a default go-to for years, back when it was cost-effective as well and provided good support. In recent years, I’ve found them to get expensive quickly, and the tech to be limited.
  • Some great features include an easy-to-implement Order Lookup page, fantastic analytics & reporting that are paywalled (*ahem* AfterShip). Also, they provide great integrations with both Woo & Shopify, and Klaviyo!
  • Cost – Free plan for up to 50 orders a month, and gradually increases based on the number of monthly shipments.
• WooCommerce Shipment Tracking – This is a must for associating tracking numbers with orders. The benefit of being the shipment plugin made by WooCommerce allows for most 3rd party apps and plugins to integrate natively such as your 3PL or fulfillment house. This does work in tandem with TrackShip but not fully replace it.
  • ShipHero fulfillment integration as an example – if you have Shipment Plugin installed, it’ll input tracking numbers. Otherwise, it’ll add the tracking numbers to the order notes — which works but isn’t the best customer experience nor great for customizations.
  • Cost: $59/year from WooCommerce.com
• WP Mail SMTP – Email delivery, especially for transactional communications, is absolutely critical for an eCommerce shop. I’m honestly disappointed that, of all things, this is something that shop owners just shouldn’t have to worry about. If you use Shopify, you’ll never worry if your order confirmation emails are being delivered or not. The same should be true for Woo.
  • Alas, this tool allows you to connect your shop to a dedicated transactional SMTP/mail service provider instead of relying on your Woo site’s PHP mail server. This will dramatically increase the reliability and deliverability of your shop’s emails. I’m particularly a fan of the email logs and error notifications for easy debugging!
  • Cost - Free version available (and pretty solid). Pro version starts at $39/year. This does not include the cost of email server / SMTP provider (such as Mailgun, SendLayer, SendGrid, Brevo, among many others).
• Express Login – A great tool for customer service and development teams to easily access/log into any user’s account to debug issues. Additionally, unlike the “Magic Login” plugin, you can actually generate & send a unique login link to the user. Very helpful in cases where your mail server may malfunction or store emails are landing in user’s spam inbox.
  • Cost - $49/year
• Magic Login – Phenomenal little tool that allows users to log in to your site without using a password. A secure link is sent via email that can be clicked on to be logged in immediately. It’s a feature that most customers have been used to and familiar. To me, it easily & quickly elevates your customer’s experience.
  • Cost - Free version available (and more than enough!). Pro version is $39/year for a single site.
• Saved Addresses for WooCommerce – If you think about it, it’s a little ridiculous and silly that WooCommerce doesn’t provide the option for multiple billing or shipping addresses on file for a customer. This little plugin creates the ability for customers to save multiple addresses on their account, set an address as default, and use any of the saved addresses at checkout for either billing or shipping!
  • Cost - $79/year from WooCommerce.com
• Add Customer for WooCommerce – Another small, simple yet impactful missing feature added by this plugin. While creating manual orders, it gives the admin user the option to create a customer/user in your store.
  • Cost - Free!
• Woo Delayed Orders Report – Somewhat of a niche problem that is solved by this plugin. As suggested by the name of the plugin, it provides a report for delayed orders by measuring the date/time of the order and the current date. You can set your own thresholds according to your store’s shipping and fulfillment policies. It ensures that you don’t let any orders slip through the cracks or get stuck at the fulfillment warehouse.
  • In addition to generating a report, it also sends order delayed events to Klaviyo, allowing you to create email/SMS notifications to alert the customer that their order is delayed and set expectations. What’s worse than a delayed order? Not receiving any communication from the brand/store about the delay! You can choose to provide a discount code as appeasement based on the length of the delay.
  • Cost – Free!
• Woo Subscription Events for Klaviyo – It’s a little wild that we don’t have native integration by either Klaviyo or Woo to send subscription events into Klaviyo (or really any other ESPs/CDPs). This plugin syncs subscription events such as Subscription Created, Renewed, Cancelled, Paused, and more into Klaviyo as events/metrics. You can easily trigger email flows based on these events. Why is this important? If you’re looking to improve your transactional emails and make them more engaging, high-converting emails, you’ll likely want to build them in Klaviyo, instead of relying on the default (and quite boring) emails sent by Woo.
  • Unlike the other plugin that exists (made by Tribe – Klaviyo Toolkit), this plugin sends along a full set of event data, enabling you to create emails with subscription details that customers would expect.
  • Cost – Free!
• Shipping Insurance for WooCommerce – I don’t buy into the shipping insurance providers like Route, ShipInsure, OrderProtection, or any of the other multiple options. All they do is facilitate charging the customer a fee on their order and, as needed, provide refunds, replacements, etc., for damaged shipments. But they pay for it from the fees collected. So why not just collect the fees yourself and provide free replacements or refunds as needed? This plugin lets you do exactly this and ultimately gives you a few hundred to thousands of dollars in “fee” revenue. All for you to keep.
  • Cost - Free version available but for most of the features, it's $79/year.
• SEOPress – There are plenty of articles and reviews out there for SEOPress, and funny enough, it likely isn’t the most installed, reviewed, or talked about SEO plugin for WordPress/Woo. But I find it to be the best plugin for managing your site’s SEO.
  • It doesn’t clutter your dashboard or admin pages, unlike most other SEO plugins (AIOSEO, Rank Math, etc.). Those other plugins may even be better, but they provide a terrible user experience for shop owners. We don’t have time to sift through so much clutter.
  • It’s feature-packed and intuitive to use, without much, if any, impact on your site’s performance.
  • Cost – Starts for free and upgrades to their PRO version for just $49/year. Yes, that’s $49 per YEAR. Their pricing is the best among other options.
• BlogVault – I tend to despise anything with “Jet” in their names (e.g., Jetpack, VaultPress Backups). And it seems Jetpack is perhaps the only other option for real-time store backups. If you run a high-velocity eCommerce shop, relying on your web host’s or server’s daily or even hourly backups will not be enough. BlogVault provides a great alternative to Jetpack for real-time store backups. The plugin will back up every minute or so, or any time there’s activity on your site (new order, new users, customer password changes, etc.).
  • Cost – At $149/year, it’s not necessarily cheap, but it’s one of those things you don’t want to skimp on.
• Lootly – An all-in-one loyalty, referrals, and affiliate marketing tool. After countless hours of research for the best loyalty & referral tool, I landed on Lootly and have used them across a number of high-growth, high-velocity stores for well-known brands. Their backend is simple and easy to use with a ton of options to customize your program. The customer experience is also great; the widgets and UI such as the program overview page, checkout options, and referral popup are all stellar. It’s also a platform-agnostic tool, so it works across Woo, Shopify, and even BigCommerce!
  • There are certainly better tools out there — Talkable (for referrals, used by Olipop), or Snowball.io (Shopify only, used by brands like Cann, 1906, etc.). But a platform of similar caliber that works with Woo? Lootly! You may come across Beans platform, which also works with Woo and Shopify. But their pricing is ludicrous. It’s completely unsustainable for high-velocity stores.
  • Cost – At a starting price of $299, it’s not cheap. And if you want to unlock all the features & options, it goes up to $699.

By incorporating these essential WooCommerce tools and plugins, you can significantly enhance your store's performance and customer satisfaction. These plugins streamline everything from the checkout process and user login to order tracking and detailed analytics. Leveraging these tools will help you manage your store more efficiently and provide an exceptional shopping experience for your customers. Whether you’re aiming to optimize backend operations or improve front-end interactions, these plugins are invaluable assets in achieving and sustaining high growth in the eCommerce world.

Prices and plans are as of mid-2024 and have likely changed. Since writing this, tracking, returns, and post-purchase in Woo kept coming up often enough that I built OrderCtrl to handle them in one place.

However, despite multiple online reports that IGA SleepPods accept Priority Pass, we were turned away at the reception. It's quite possible that the person at reception wasn't aware but that seems unlikely. More so, caution that once you get out of the IGA Lounge, you aren't able to get back in. We definitely lost out on some comfy chairs for the remainder of our 4-hour layover in Istanbul.

On our journey to Saudi Arabia for our Umrah pilgrimage, we flew via Qatar from JFK with a layover in Doha. On the way back, we flew Turkish from Medina to JFK with a layover in Istanbul.

Both flights consisted of Boeing 777, except Qatar's plane was outdated and economy seat layout was 3-4-3. Compared to Turkish's B777 3-3-3 layout. This made a huge difference - on Qatar's we felt like cattle being herded onto a school bus with flight attendants that were frankly rude to some older folks. Notably, the seats on Qatar had nearly 0 cushioning, they looked worn out to the max - I mean the cushion was pretty much flat to the seat backing. It was not comfortable whatsoever.

Bathroom with a window and plenty of space to move around.

We hadn't noticed this until we flew Turkish on the way back but the bathroom on Qatar's B777 was also considerably smaller and... less clean. One of the bathroom's sink was clogged the entire flight. Whereas on Turkish, the bathroom had a window (which in itself made the room feel much bigger and airy) but also you had much more room to move around. Bathroom also smelled great, which was a nice surprise. Because airplane bathrooms never smell good nor inviting.

USB A port and standard audio jack on Turkish Boeing 777

The infotainment system on Qatar felt outdated, with laggy Touchscreen and confusing menu. While the movie/TV selection was solid, it just wasn't worth trying to utilize the system (we brought downloaded movies on our tablets anyway). Small detail to consider - while Qatar had a two-prong headphone jack, Turkish had a standard audio jack.

The flight from Medina to Istanbul consisted of a good percentage of older folks, who were definitely not frequent flyers. We thought the crew was super helpful, had a great attitude, and was stern when necessary without yelling or becoming upset. Same couldn't be said about the flight from Doha to Makkah, which had a similar flyer profile on board.

As we spent very little time at Doha, it wouldn't be a fair comparison to Istanbul's brand new airport.

But one major negative for Turkish (but really more Istanbul Airport) was the boarding process. Can't really even call it a process as there was none. Triple security checks - once just to get to the gate area, then another before getting to baggage & pat down station, and finally the actual station where they go through all of your carry on and personal items and pat you down. Followed by extremely unclear boarding instructions, misguided lines, people being told to flip flop from one side to another, then ultimately just trying to get everyone boarded at once. JFK certainly attracts all sorts of people, so this was really no surprise but it was the least efficient and optimal boarding of any airport or airline... Other than JFK itself maybe.

Overall, if flying over to Asia or Middle East again, if it's between Turkish or Qatar, we will most likely choose Turkish. The seat layout alone is worth never flying on a Qatar B777. Now, I've heard Qatar Airbus flights are completely different, so there's a chance they might redeem themselves on a future flight.

However, my perspective changed during a recent visit to my friend Max's place to celebrate his birthday. As we chatted about plants (an always delightful topic), I mentioned the sorry state of my pothos while admiring his thriving one. Max, noting my watering frequency and my plant's general "decay," suggested it might be root rot. While I had considered root rot as a possibility, I hadn't done any research to confirm it. Max's input made me realize that I had a real problem on my hands, one that needed solving.

I knew the general solutions for dealing with root rot, but I also understood that it would involve a significant amount of work. After all, it meant diving into a world of plant care videos, online advice, and, of course, more work. Nevertheless, I couldn't give up on my plant so easily. As I write this now, I'm reminded of the bond I share with my plants and how I couldn't let this one suffer.

The task ahead seemed daunting. Cleaning numerous leaves, big and small, nestled within the nooks and crannies of a pothos was no small feat. I anticipated that it would be time-consuming and would require patience to meticulously examine each leaf and branch. Nevertheless, I pressed forward. After watching a few YouTube videos, reading Reddit posts, and perusing blog articles, one solution seemed to have a unanimous consensus: showering the plant with a mixture of 80% rubbing alcohol and 20% water using a spray bottle. Ordinary 70% isopropyl alcohol from a drugstore would suffice.

The videos I watched explained that the fuzzy patches were actually tiny bugs. When you spray them with alcohol, they die instantly, turning from white to black right before your eyes. It was oddly satisfying to spray the pothos' leaves and branches from every angle and witness these little pests shrivel up (though I'm not sure if "shriveling up" is scientifically accurate). It felt like redemption for the plant, which couldn't defend itself against this infestation. So, what causes a mealybug infestation, you ask?

"Mealybugs are attracted to plants with high nitrogen levels and soft growth; they may appear if you overwater and over-fertilize your plants. Properly watering and feeding plants not only lower the risk of mealybugs but are also crucial for preventing plant diseases." - (source: thespruce.com)

My recent purchase of The Miracle-Gro Indoor Plant Liquid Food had filled me with excitement. The prospect of faster and better growth had seduced me. However, I had overlooked the fact that overfeeding and overwatering could harm plants and lead to infestations like the one I was now dealing with. With determination, I sprayed each leaf individually, making sure to cover both the top and bottom, while also clearing away any dead leaves and branches that were unsurprisingly infected.

I found the shower to be the perfect setting for this task. It allowed me to hang the plant from the showerhead, making it easier to reach every nook and cranny. When it came time to rinse, the handheld showerhead provided just the right balance of pressure and agility. The alcohol spray could be inhaled (I assumed), and it certainly had a strong smell, so wearing a mask or using a shirt to cover my face proved useful and effective.

As I write these thoughts down, my pothos stands on the path to recovery. I just hope that none of my other plants start reacting negatively to the growth hormones and nutrients I've been providing. I haven't fed the plants in about a week or two, and I don't plan to for the next few weeks.

In the end, the experience served as a valuable lesson in plant care. It taught me that the joy of watching my plants thrive should be balanced with a mindful approach to their needs. Sometimes, even in the face of adversity, we can find redemption for the things we care about the most.