WooCommerce price monitoring without a monthly CSV upload

WooCommerce connects with a key pair you generate inside your own store admin, so nothing is installed on your server and you keep control of the permission level. Products, variations, SKUs, regular and sale prices and stock status sync in. Competitor prices, promotions and MAP violations come back against each item. Writing a price into WooCommerce requires a read-write key and an explicit opt-in on the rule that does it.

What the WooCommerce connection gives you

A live catalogue rather than a snapshot. Self-hosted stores change constantly, and a monitoring list built from a January export is quietly wrong by March. The connection keeps the product list current, hands matching the identifiers it needs, and gives repricing a destination if you want one. It also lets us read your sale price, which matters more than it sounds: comparing your regular price against a competitor promotion produces the wrong answer every time.

What data flows in each direction

How to connect a WooCommerce store

1. 1

   Generate a key pair

   In your WooCommerce settings, create a new API key with read permission and a description you will recognise in six months. WooCommerce shows the consumer key and secret once, so copy both before closing the screen.

2. 2

   Paste the store URL and keys

   Open Integrations in your account, choose WooCommerce, and enter the store address with the key and secret. The connection test tells you immediately whether the store answered, and what blocked it if not.

3. 3

   Map your GTIN field

   Newer WooCommerce installs have a dedicated GTIN, UPC, EAN or ISBN field. Older stores usually keep barcodes in a custom field added by a feed or PIM plugin. Point at whichever one your store uses.

4. 4

   Import and review matches

   Filter the import by category or tag if you would rather not start with the whole catalogue. Matching runs, and every candidate carries a confidence score for you to confirm or correct in bulk.

5. 5

   Choose where output goes

   Alerts to email or Slack, proposals to a review queue, scheduled CSV exports, or price write-back. Only the last one needs a read-write key, and it stays off until you enable it.

Which identifiers WooCommerce price monitoring matches on

Variations are matched individually. A shirt in three colours and five sizes is fifteen items to WooCommerce and fifteen items to us, because a competitor can be out of stock in large and undercutting you in medium at the same time.

• GTIN, UPC or EAN. Wherever your store keeps it, an exact identifier join runs first and needs no review.
• SKU. Yours, not theirs. It anchors your side of the match and keys any write-back, and it is what a CSV export uses so your team can reconcile.
• Brand and MPN. Usually a product attribute or a custom field in WooCommerce. Map it during setup and it does real work in categories where barcodes are patchy.
• Title, attributes and image. The fallback when nothing is shared, scored for confidence rather than guessed. See the product matching guide for how the waterfall is ordered.

Price write-back on a self-hosted store

You choose which field a rule writes: the regular price, or the sale price with the regular price left intact. Writing to sale price is the safer default for most stores, because reverting is a matter of clearing one field. Every write is logged with the old value, the new value, the rule that produced it and the response your store returned, and rollback restores the previous value as a new entry rather than erasing the old one.

What the WooCommerce integration does not do

• It does not install a plugin, add code to your theme or run anything on your server.
• It does not read orders, customers, coupons or subscription data.
• It does not create or delete products, variations or categories.
• It does not manage stock levels, tax classes or shipping zones.
• It does not need a read-write key unless you want write-back, and a read key cannot be used to change anything.

Multiple WooCommerce stores connect the same way, one key pair each, and roll up into one account. If a store sits behind a VPN or an internal network, a scheduled CSV over SFTP or the REST API is the practical route, and both are included on every plan. The broader collection method is described in ecommerce price monitoring.