Age Verification 18+ for WooCommerce — customer age check per product and category, checkout blocking, verification log for DE/AT/CH

Age Verification 18+ for WooCommerce is a plugin for shops that sell age-restricted goods into Germany, Austria and Switzerland: alcohol, tobacco and vapes, knives, fireworks, hazardous chemicals. Most age-check plugins put a single splash screen in front of the whole website. For a mixed shop that is awkward: someone buying shampoo gets asked their age, and nothing ends up in the order.

Here the age belongs to the goods. You give a category (or a single product or variation) its minimum age, and the shop asks only when such a product is actually in the cart: on the product page, on adding to cart and before checkout. An order without confirmation goes through neither the classic nor the block checkout — the check sits on the server, not only in the dialog. The answer is written into the order and into a log the shop can show when asked whether it checked the age.

What the plugin does not do. A date of birth typed into a browser is a statement by the customer, not an identity check. The plugin does not replace identification and does not make a shop “legally compliant” by itself: whether such a process is enough for your goods is for your legal adviser to decide. It documents that the shop asked, stops orders that fail the rule and, in Pro, lets you close the gap where it can really be closed — on delivery, with a carrier that checks the ID at hand-over.

What the customer sees

The customer opens a product with a minimum age — an 18+ badge sits next to the name. If the product-page question is on, the gate opens straight away; if not, it appears when the customer clicks “Add to cart” or goes to checkout. The gate has three fields: day, month and year of birth. The cursor is already in the first field and moves on by itself once a number is entered. Instead of a date you can switch on one-click confirmation — a lighter variant that proves less.

An adult date closes the gate, the answer is remembered for the chosen period (30 days by default) and the product goes into the cart. A date that makes the customer younger than required is refused; after three such attempts (the number is configurable) the gate locks, and the customer can be sent to a page of yours, for example one explaining the age limits. Ordinary products without an age are bought as usual, with no questions.

Closing the gate and ordering around it does not work. On the block checkout, “Place order” without confirmation shows a banner with the product name and the required age, and no order is created. On the classic checkout WooCommerce shows its standard notice about a problem with items in the cart, and the cart itself shows which age the product requires; the checkout form does not appear until the customer answers. With JavaScript switched off, ordering is impossible too.

What the shop owner gets

The settings live under WooCommerce → Age verification in four tabs: “Log”, “Settings”, “Rules” and “Licence”. Above the tabs is a short status line: what exactly is protected, how many categories have a rule, how many attempts were blocked in the last 30 days, and whether it is the free or the Pro version. In German the admin is called “Altersverifikation”.

On the “Rules” tab every category can get a minimum age as a single number. Subcategories inherit it, and you can see that at once: next to “Whisky” it says “18+ (from Spirituosen)”, and the same appears in the “Age” column of the category and product lists. A single product or variation can be raised higher or exempted from the category rule by entering 0.

The “Settings” tab holds the gate switch (off after installation), what to protect (only products with an age, or the whole shop), the default age, the answer method, how long the answer is remembered, the number of attempts, the address for locked-out visitors, the question on adding to cart and on the product page, product badges, writing into the order, your own gate texts with the {age} placeholder, and the log: whether to keep it and how to store the IP.

Every order with an age-restricted product gets a note such as “Age verification: 18+ required, customer confirmed 36 (date of birth: 1990-03-15)”, and the order screen shows an “Age verification” panel: the age confirmed for, the declared age, the date of birth, the log reference and a plain reminder that this is the customer’s statement, not an identity check. The panel works with both HPOS and the legacy order screen.

The “Log” tab is the record of every check: “Confirmed”, “Too young”, “Blocked”, “Order placed”. Each row has the date, the required and declared age, the date of birth, the order, the country and a reference that ties the confirmation to the order. The log can be filtered by event, order and dates. Rows are only ever added, never edited.

Pro: age per delivery country, and the delivery itself

Age limits differ between countries, so Pro lets you set a minimum age per delivery country — for everything restricted or for a specific category. A country rule can only raise the age, never lower it. There are starting presets for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and they are deliberately strict: 18+ on everything restricted that ships to the country. Where the law allows less (beer and wine from 16, for example), lower the category on purpose. In our test a 17-year-old customer confirmed for 16+ placed an order with a German address, while with a Swiss address the order was refused with the exact requirement. On the block checkout the country rule applies on “Place order”: switching the country does not show the banner immediately, but the order is refused.

The second part of Pro is the delivery. For orders with age-restricted goods you can leave only selected shipping methods — a carrier that checks the ID at hand-over, or pickup — and hide payment methods such as cash on delivery. An ordinary cart still sees every method. A note “hand over only against an ID showing an age of 18 or more” (the text can be changed) is added to the order and to the customer e-mail. Pro also brings CSV export of the log for a date range, automatic deletion of old rows, and your logo and colour in the gate.

Austria and tobacco. § 2a TNRSG prohibits mail-order sales of tobacco and related products in Austria altogether. No age check changes that, so for tobacco and vapes into Austria the plugin is not the answer — such goods are not shipped there at all.

How it works — step by step

1. For every product in the cart the minimum age is resolved: the variation, then the product, then its categories including parent categories; in Pro also the delivery-country rule, which can only raise the age.
2. If the cart holds a product with an age and there is no answer yet, the customer sees the gate — on the product page, on adding to cart or at checkout.
3. The answer is checked on the server. An adult date is stored in the session for the chosen period and in the log as “Confirmed”; a date that is too young as “Too young”, with an attempt counter.
4. Before the order is created the server checks the cart against the answer once more — separately for the classic checkout and for the block checkout through the Store API. No confirmation, no order.
5. The new order gets the verification data, the order note, the panel on the order screen and an “Order placed” row in the log with the same reference.
6. In Pro the shipping and payment restrictions and the hand-over note are applied to the age-restricted order.

How much it costs

Pro — 990 UAH, a one-year licence. A year of updates, technical support and all Pro features. You can take a longer term straight away — the longer, the cheaper per year:

• 1 year — 990 UAH
• 2 years — 1,880 UAH (−5%, 940 UAH a year)
• 3 years — 2,610 UAH (−12%, 870 UAH a year)
• 4 years — 3,250 UAH (−18%, 810 UAH a year)
• 5 years — 3,710 UAH (−25%, 740 UAH a year)

No automatic charges: renewal is manual, and reminders come by e-mail. A purchased licence keeps the Pro features for good — when the term ends, the shop only stops receiving new versions and support. One key — one domain.

Trial first, payment later. The 7-day Pro trial starts only with the “Try Pro free for 7 days” button on the “Licence” tab; the key comes by e-mail, no card needed. When the trial ends only the Pro features switch off; the age check and the log keep working.

Under the hood

• Server-side blocking. Classic checkout — woocommerce_add_to_cart_validation, woocommerce_check_cart_items, woocommerce_checkout_process; block checkout — Store API cart errors and a refusal while the order is being built. One decision in one place.
• The gate is plain HTML in the footer, with no separate build for blocks, and appears the same way on both checkouts.
• The log is its own table, rows are only added. The IP is hashed by default: repeated attempts from one device are visible, the identifier itself is not stored.
• Session. For a guest who answered the gate a WooCommerce session is started (cookie wp_woocommerce_session_*) — without it the attempt limit would not work.
• Developer hooks: ccav_product_required_age — the final word on a product’s age, ccav_order_verified — an order has just been marked as verified.
• Deletion. The log stays by default: it is the evidence that the shop asked. To remove everything, add define( 'CCAV_DELETE_DATA', true ); to wp-config.php before deleting.

How to install

1. Download the catcode-age-verification-for-woocommerce-1.0.1.zip archive with the button at the top of the page: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → Install → Activate.
2. WooCommerce → Age verification → “Rules”: give every category with regulated goods its minimum age. Single products can be changed on the product edit screen.
3. “Settings”: choose what to protect (only products with an age, or the whole shop), how the customer answers and how long the answer is remembered.
4. Switch on “Age gate” and place a test order with an age-restricted product — on the classic and the block checkout if your shop offers both.
5. For Pro: paste the key from the e-mail after payment on the “Licence” tab, or click “Try Pro free for 7 days”.