The whole reason I started building free CartRules plugins was to eventually point people toward a paid one. That part never actually existed until this week!
One in Cart Pro has been sitting half-finished for a while: a real plugin, but with no licensing, no tests, and nothing tying it back to the free plugins. This week I finally closed that loop, on the plugin itself and on the whole site around it.
Here’s what shipped, and what I’m actually planning to do with it now that it’s real.
Pro Actually Works Now
One in Cart Pro can now be licensed and activated for real. It has an uninstall routine that removes its own data instead of leaving it behind, and a small test suite covering the one bug I’d already hit once and didn’t want to hit again.
None of that is visible to a customer. All of it is the difference between a plugin I’m comfortable charging for and one I’m not.
Every Free Plugin Now Points at Pro
The four free plugins (category, tag, brand, shipping class) each got a proper product page this week: a real icon, real screenshots of the settings screen, and a description that ends the same way every time.
Also, very important, the “this plugin only restricts by one thing, Pro combines all of them” call to action.
All five plugins link to each other as related products, and the whole site finally reads like one connected thing instead of four separate listings that happen to share a logo.
What I’m Doing With This Now
Having the funnel actually exist changes what’s worth doing next. Three things I’m planning:
Reusing what Business Bloomer already has
I’ve written about cart restrictions and one-per-order rules on Business Bloomer for years, long before CartRules existed. Instead of writing new tutorials from scratch, I’m going back through that existing content and linking the relevant snippets and posts to the plugin that now does the same thing, properly, without needing custom code.
Adding a Pro section inside the free plugins themselves
The website upsell only reaches people who visit cartrules.com. Most people using the free plugins never will. So the next round of updates adds a real “want more control?” section directly in each free plugin’s own settings screen, not just on the product page.
Trying to actually own “one in cart”
That’s the specific, narrow problem CartRules solves, and right now nobody owns that search term or that framing. I’d rather be the obvious, boring answer to “how do I stop customers mixing X in one order” than compete for attention on anything broader.
None of this is glamorous. It’s linking old posts, writing plugin copy, and picking a lane on purpose instead of a broad one.
But it’s the first time since starting CartRules that there’s an actual funnel to point that work at, so it finally feels worth doing.
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