Country Based Restrictions PRO (CBR PRO) restricts what customers can see and buy in your WooCommerce store based on their country. You can restrict individual products, whole categories, payment gateways, and more — by the customer’s shipping or billing country.
How It Works
Country Detection
The plugin determines the visitor’s country from these sources, in order of precedence:
- The country the visitor selected — in the Country Detection widget or shortcode (stored in a cookie named country).
- The customer’s address — the saved address of a logged-in customer, or the address entered at checkout (billing or shipping, depending on the Restriction by country setting).
- IP geolocation — via WooCommerce’s MaxMind integration, which requires a free MaxMind license key.
Note: the Force geolocation setting makes the plugin detect the country by IP geolocation only, ignoring the saved address of logged-in customers. For the full detail — the MaxMind key, the country cookie, caching, and VPNs — see How CBR PRO Detects the Customer’s Country.
Visibility of Restricted Products
Four catalog visibility modes determine how restricted products appear to customers in a restricted country:
- Hide Completely — restricted products are completely hidden from your store.
- Hide Catalog Visibility — restricted products are hidden from the shop and search results, but remain accessible via direct link (and are not purchasable there).
- Catalog Visible (non purchasable) — restricted products stay visible in the catalog but cannot be purchased; a restriction message is shown instead.
- Restrict product only on Place Order (Checkout) — products stay visible and can be added to the cart; the restriction applies only when the customer clicks Place Order at checkout.
What PRO Adds Over the Free Plugin
The free Country Based Restrictions plugin restricts individual products. PRO adds:
- Bulk catalog restrictions by category, tag, attribute, shipping class, custom taxonomy, or globally
- Payment gateway restrictions by country (including WooPayments and block checkout)
- Restriction by billing or shipping country, with per-variation rules for variable products
- Scheduled (time/date-based) restrictions and the Restriction Analytics & Insights Dashboard
- Country Detection widget and shortcodes, custom restriction messages, 404-page redirect, sort by availability, custom “No products found” message
- Bypass restrictions for specific users, CSV import/export of restriction rules, HPOS compatibility
Documentation
- Getting Started — install the plugin, activate the license, set up geolocation
- How CBR PRO Detects the Customer’s Country — detection sources, the country cookie, caching, VPNs
- Setup & Configuration — visibility modes, restriction settings, messages
- How to Set Product Restrictions — per-product and per-variation rules
- How to Set Up Bulk Catalog Restrictions — rules by category, tag, attribute, shipping class, custom taxonomy, or globally
- How to Use the Country Detection Widget — let visitors select their country
- How to Use the Country Detection Shortcode — place the country selector anywhere
- Payment Gateway Restrictions — show or hide payment methods by country
- CSV Upload Restrictions — import and export restriction rules
- Compatibility — caching plugins, page builders, HPOS
- Translations — WPML, Loco Translate
- Code Snippets — customize behavior with filters
- Changelog — version history