Running Your Store in Catalog Mode Print

What catalog mode is

Catalog mode turns your online store into a display window rather than a shop. Your products are shown, browsable, and complete with descriptions and images, but the buying is switched off: no cart, no checkout, no payment. Visitors can see everything and buy nothing, which sounds odd until you realise how many businesses actually want exactly that.

Who it's for

• Businesses that sell offline but want their range visible online, so customers can browse before phoning, emailing, or visiting.
• Enquiry-based selling, where prices depend on the job, the quantity, or a quote, and a fixed checkout does not fit how you work.
• Staged launches, where you want the catalogue live and being found while the payment and delivery side is still being sorted out.
• Wholesale or trade catalogues, shown to the public with pricing handled privately.

You can run catalog mode with prices shown or hidden. Prices visible makes it a price list; prices hidden makes it a pure showcase that drives enquiries. Both are common, and which suits you depends on whether your pricing is fixed or negotiated.

On ThirtyBees

ThirtyBees has catalog mode built in, so switching it on is a native setting rather than an add-on. It is found in the store's preferences, and enabling it removes the cart and checkout across the whole store at once. Because it is native, it is clean and reliable, no extra plugin to maintain, and it toggles off again just as easily when you are ready to start selling.

On WooCommerce

WooCommerce does not have a true catalog mode in its core, which is worth knowing before you go hunting for the setting and cannot find it. The result is achieved instead through a catalog-mode plugin, or through configuration that hides the add-to-cart buttons and prices. It works perfectly well, it simply is not a single built-in switch the way it is on ThirtyBees, and a plugin is the usual route. As with any plugin, keep it updated, and our WordPress update service covers exactly that if we manage your site.

Turning it on and off

On both platforms this is something you can do yourself, and it is designed to be reversible. Switch it on while you build or while you sell offline, switch it off when you are ready to take payments, and nothing about your products or content is lost in either direction. If you would rather not touch the settings yourself, or you are on WooCommerce and unsure which plugin to trust, open a support ticket and we will set it up for you, and if we installed your store, catalog mode can be part of how we configure it.

Good to know

Catalog mode is a genuinely useful halfway house, and it removes the pressure to have everything perfect before you go live. Get your products online and being found now, in catalog mode, and switch on selling once your gateway, delivery, and order emails are all tested and ready, the pieces covered in our articles on payment gateways, courier fees, and store order emails. A visible catalogue earning enquiries beats an invisible shop waiting for perfection, and this is how you get the first without waiting for the second.