Advanced Coupons Tab Won’t Go Away? Here’s the Fix

Debs | WebbySpice
FixesWooCommerceWordPress

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

If you’ve ever removed a plugin from a client’s WooCommerce site and noticed a ghost tab still hanging around under WooCommerce > Marketing, you’re not alone.

In this case, the culprit was the Advanced Coupons tab — still showing up and displaying a promo page for a plugin that had been uninstalled. Cheeky.

What’s Going On?

A quick dig through the WordPress.org support threads turned up the developer’s response:

“You may see the ‘Advanced Coupon’ tab on your website because you have some of our other plugins installed. This is simply a static page that won’t impact your site’s performance or cause any issues.”

That response is now over a year and a half old. The promised fix to add a removal option? Still not arrived.

Fair enough — it might not technically break anything, but an unsolicited promo page for a plugin that isn’t even installed has no business being on a client’s dashboard. Here’s how to send it packing.

The Fix

Step 1 — Get a Snippet Plugin (If You Haven’t Already)

If you’re still editing functions.php directly, please stop. A snippet plugin keeps your custom code safe, organised, and well away from theme files. I use WPCode — others are available, but that’s my go-to. It genuinely will change how you work.

Step 2 — Add This PHP Snippet

This tells WooCommerce to stop fetching and displaying third-party extension suggestions from its marketplace entirely:

php
/**
* Completely disable WooCommerce marketplace suggestions
*/
add_filter( 'woocommerce_allow_marketplace_suggestions', '__return_false' );
add_filter( 'woocommerce_show_marketplace_suggestions', '__return_false' );

Add it as a PHP snippet, activate it, and the heavy lifting is done.

Step 3 — Turn Off Suggestions in WooCommerce Settings

Belt and braces. While you’re in the dashboard:

  1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced
  2. Click the WooCommerce.com tab
  3. Uncheck “Display suggestions within WooCommerce”
  4. Hit Save changes

Step 4 — Clear WooCommerce Transients

Transients are temporary data WooCommerce stores in the database — and they can cause old suggestions to hang around even after you’ve made the changes above. Clear them out:

  1. Go to WooCommerce > Status > Tools
  2. Click Clear WooCommerce Transients
  3. Then click Clear Expired Transients for good measure

Step 5 — Clear Your Cache

Because it’s always a good idea. Whatever caching setup you’re running — plugin, server-level, CDN — give it a clear. Fresh start, clean slate.

Result

Tab gone. Promo gone. Clean dashboard. Happy client.

If a plugin is genuinely needed it’ll get installed — but on my terms, not because WooCommerce is advertising it from beyond the grave.

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