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Offering the wrong shipping method at the wrong time can cost you money and customer trust. Next-day or same-day delivery options sound great, but if an order comes in after your daily cutoff time or during the weekend, fulfilling that promise may no longer be possible. That’s why many WooCommerce stores need a way to hide specific shipping methods based on the day of the week and time of day. In this guide, you’ll learn how to implement advanced conditional shipping logic using Flexible Shipping PRO, so customers only see delivery options you can actually deliver on.
Well-chosen and fast shipping methods have a positive impact on online store sales. So it’s important to have the right tool to configure shipping to match your client’s needs. An important part of configuring shipping is the ability to hide specific shipping methods based on day or/and time of day.
Let’s be honest: shipping configuration is a business decision that directly affects margins, conversion rates, and customer trust. Every shipping method you show at checkout is a promise. If that promise can’t be fulfilled reliably at a given time, the real cost is your reputation. E-commerce customers expect delivery options to reflect reality. Research across the industry consistently shows that predictability matters more than raw speed. For example, McKinsey’s analysis of e-commerce delivery preferences highlights that most consumers are willing to wait longer if delivery is reliable and reasonably priced, while failed or delayed deliveries quickly erode trust and increase churn.
From a store owner’s perspective, offering time-sensitive shipping methods outside operational hours creates several hidden risks.
First, there’s cost leakage. Next-day or same-day delivery options often rely on strict cut-off times. Orders placed after those cut-offs may require manual intervention, carrier upgrades, or refunds when expectations aren’t met. Over time, these edge cases quietly eat into margins.
Second, there’s checkout friction. Showing a premium shipping option that looks attractive but later turns out to be unavailable leads to frustration, order cancellations, or support tickets. Customers rarely blame “logistics limitations”, they just blame the store.
Third, there’s brand credibility. Consistently meeting delivery promises is one of the strongest trust signals in e-commerce. Stores that clearly communicate availability, and hide options when they’re no longer feasible, feel more reliable, even if they offer fewer choices at certain times.
That’s why hiding shipping methods based on the day or time of day becomes important. Instead of offering everything all the time, you align checkout options with your actual fulfillment capacity. Fast delivery appears only when it can realistically happen. The result is fewer broken promises and a checkout experience that feels honest and predictable.
Hiding shipping methods based on day and time of day can solve real, repeatable problems that many WooCommerce stores face once they scale beyond simple, all-day fulfillment.
One of the most common scenarios is daily cut-off times. Many stores dispatch orders only until a certain hour, for example 2 PM or 4 PM. After that, even “next-day delivery” realistically becomes a two-day delivery. If the fast shipping option remains visible after the cut-off, the store either has to absorb extra costs or deal with disappointed customers. Automatically hiding that method after the cut-off protects both margins and expectations.
Another frequent case is weekend fulfillment limitations. Warehouses, suppliers, or carriers often don’t operate on Saturdays and Sundays. Yet customers place orders 24/7. Showing express or next-day shipping during weekends creates false urgency and unrealistic promises. By hiding selected shipping methods from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, the checkout experience stays aligned with actual operations.
Finally, hiding shipping methods dynamically helps stores that rely on manual packing or limited staff availability. When fulfillment capacity depends on people rather than automation, offering fewer options during peak or off-hours prevents overload and operational errors.
WooCommerce itself doesn’t provide this feature, but you can use Flexible Shipping PRO, a powerful disable shipping methods WooCommerce plugin that allows you to add rules based on the day of the week and time of the day.
The best Table Rate Shipping for WooCommerce. Period. Create shipping rules based on weight, order totals or item count.
View Details or Add to cartHiding or displaying shipping method based on day and time of day is only one of many features of the Flexible Shipping PRO plugin. It also allows you to set shipping costs by weight, price, shipping class, dimensions, and many, many other conditions.
Let’s say you have a shipping method that you don’t want to offer to your customers on certain days. For example, let’s assume that it is Saturday. To hide the shipping method on that particular day, you’ll need a shipping method made with the Flexible Shipping PRO plugin. If you already have one, you can just edit it.
It can be, for example, a method that always costs $20, but this method will also work with more advanced shipping methods with rules based on price, weight, and other available conditions.
In your shipping method add a new rule with condition based on Day of the week and select the proper day of the week.
Now, in the Special action section, choose Hide for that shipping rule.
It’s very important to use that special action. It will cause that whenever the rule is called (i.e. on a certain day of the week), the shipping method will be hidden and will not appear in the store.
Save changes and that’s it. The shipping method won’t be displayed on that particular day. If you want, you can add multiple days in the same shipping rule to hide the shipping method based on two or more days of the week.
In a very similar way, you can hide the shipping method based on time of the day. This solution is the perfect way to manage your WooCommerce shipping cut-off time. It is especially useful for methods like next-day delivery, where orders must be placed before a specific hour to be processed. After a certain hour, the method will simply be unavailable to customers in the store. To set this, add a new rule based on Time of the Day in your existing shipping method made with the Flexible Shipping PRO plugin. Set the hourly time range when you want the method to be unavailable. For example, if you want to hide it after 6 PM, set it this way:
Remember to set the Special action as Hide in that shipping rule.
It will cause that whenever the rule is called (i.e. after 6 PM), the shipping method will be hidden and will not appear in the store.
You can combine those two conditions to hide the shipping method based on both the day and time of that day. For example, if you don’t want to offer the next-day shipping method from 4 PM on Friday to the end of Sunday, you can hide a certain shipping method for the whole weekend. To do so, add a few rules to your shipping method.
First, let’s hide that shipping method for Fridays after 4 PM. Add a new rule based on time and set the hours range after 4 PM. Then, add a new condition in the same rule. Use the plus button to do so.
In a new condition, choose Day of the week and select Friday.
This rule with two conditions will be called only when both conditions will be true. So, in this case, it will be hidden only on Fridays after 4 PM.
Now, hide the shipping method for both Saturday and Sunday. Add a new rule in the same shipping method and set the condition as Day of the week. Additionally, select Saturday and Sunday. You can set them in one rule.
Remember to set the Special action as Hide in both rules.
And that’s it. Now you know how to hide shipping method based on the day and time of the day in WooCommerce. I hope that it will be useful for you.
Yes, you can hide any shipping method on selected days of the week, such as Saturdays and Sundays. This is useful if your warehouse or courier doesn’t operate on certain days and you want to avoid setting unrealistic delivery expectations. On other days, the same method can remain fully available.
Yes, you can define a precise time range, for example hiding a shipping method after 6 PM. This works well for next-day or same-day delivery options that can only be fulfilled if the order is placed before a certain cut-off time. Once the time passes, the method is automatically removed from checkout.
Yes, day and time conditions can be combined within the same rule. This allows you to create more advanced scenarios, such as hiding a shipping method only on Fridays after 4 PM or throughout the entire weekend. The method will be hidden only when all defined conditions are met.
No, you don’t need to write any custom code or modify your theme. The entire setup can be handled through a shipping plugin that supports conditional rules based on day and time. This makes the solution accessible even for store owners without technical experience.
Time-based rules rely on the time zone configured in your WordPress settings. This ensures consistency across your store, but it’s important to double-check that your site’s time zone matches your actual business hours. Otherwise, shipping methods may be hidden earlier or later than expected.
Hiding shipping methods based on the day and time of day is a practical way to align your WooCommerce checkout with how your store actually operates. Instead of showing options you can’t realistically fulfill, you can control exactly which shipping methods appear, on which days, and within which time windows. This helps avoid unnecessary costs, prevents missed delivery promises, and keeps expectations clear for customers.
What’s important is that all of this can be achieved without custom development. By using a dedicated shipping plugin, you can build logic around weekdays, weekends, cut-off hours, or combined conditions, and adjust it as your business grows. The result is a checkout experience that feels reliable, intentional, and aligned with your real fulfillment capabilities.
Content Writer at Octolize
Bartosz Gajewski is a content and marketing specialist with a solid background in SEO, WordPress content strategy, and technical documentation for digital products. With years of hands-on experience in both in-house and freelance roles, he supports tech companies – especially in the SaaS and e-commerce space – by creating content that informs, engages, and drives results.
His approach blends storytelling with data-driven SEO, and he’s been involved in projects ranging from rebranding and product marketing to growth experiments and copywriting for complex software tools. On the blog, he shares actionable insights from his work across marketing teams, product documentation, and online store optimization.
