Quick Start Guide

Super Speedy Coming Soon Products lets you mark individual WooCommerce products as “Coming Soon.” The add-to-cart button is replaced with a countdown timer, an offer description, and an email signup form so customers can register for early access. After signing up, customers see social share buttons so they can spread the word.

This guide walks you through the full setup in under five minutes.

Requirements

• WordPress 5.0 or later
• WooCommerce 5.0 or later
• A MailerLite account (free tier works) or the Super Speedy Emails plugin

Step 1 — Install and activate the plugin

Upload the plugin through Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin or place the super-speedy-coming-soon folder in wp-content/plugins/. Activate it from the Plugins screen.

The plugin creates a custom database table (wp_sscs_signups) on activation to store signup records locally.

Step 2 — Add your MailerLite API key

Go to WooCommerce > Super Speedy Settings. Paste your MailerLite API key into the field and click Save Settings.

To find your API key in MailerLite, go to Integrations > API in your MailerLite dashboard and copy the key shown there.

If you plan to use Super Speedy Emails instead of MailerLite, you can skip this step — see the “Integration with Different List Providers” article for details.

Step 3 — Mark a product as Coming Soon

Open any WooCommerce product in the editor and scroll down to the Product data panel. In the General tab you’ll see a new group of fields:

• Mark as Coming Soon — tick this checkbox to enable the coming soon display for this product.
• Arrival Date — enter the date the product will be available, in YYYY-MM-DD format. This powers the countdown timer shown to customers.
• Offer Description — write the promotional text customers will see above the signup form. HTML is allowed, so you can use <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, bold, links, etc. to style your message.
• Email Provider — choose MailerLite or Super Speedy Emails (SSE only appears if that plugin is active).
• MailerLite Group ID — enter the ID of the MailerLite group/list you want signups added to. You can find group IDs in MailerLite under Subscribers > Groups — click a group and the ID is in the URL.

Click Update to save the product.

Step 4 — Preview the product page

Visit the product on the front end. Instead of the usual add-to-cart button you’ll see:

1. Countdown timer — four purple boxes showing Days, Hours, Mins, and Secs remaining until the arrival date. The timer hides automatically once the date has passed.
2. Offer description — your promotional text, followed by the prompt “Enter your email address below for early access.”
3. Email signup form — a single email field with a “LET ME IN” button. A hidden honeypot field protects against spam bots. If you’ve enabled Cloudflare Turnstile (see the “Spam & Abuse Protection” article), its CAPTCHA widget also appears above the button.

What happens when a customer signs up

When a customer enters their email and clicks LET ME IN:

1. The email is sent to your MailerLite group (or SSE form) via AJAX — the page does not reload.
2. A record is saved in the local wp_sscs_signups table with the email, MailerLite subscriber ID, referring user (if any), and WordPress user ID (if logged in).
3. A cookie (sscs_mailerlite_user_id) is set for one year so the plugin remembers this visitor.
4. The signup form is replaced with social share buttons — Facebook, X (Twitter), and a “Copy Link” button. Shared links include a ?shared_by= parameter so you can track referrals.

If a visitor returns to the page later (cookie still set), they see the share buttons immediately instead of the signup form.

Step 5 — Disable Coming Soon when the product launches

When the product is ready to sell, edit the product and uncheck Mark as Coming Soon. The standard WooCommerce add-to-cart button reappears immediately — no need to change anything else.

Theme compatibility

The plugin automatically detects where your theme renders the add-to-cart button and replaces it with the coming soon template. It checks the default WooCommerce hook (woocommerce_single_product_summary at priority 30) first, then scans all registered hooks as a fallback. This works with most themes out of the box.

If your theme uses a non-standard hook and the coming soon content doesn’t appear in the right position, see the Troubleshooting article for guidance.