Woocommerce Deactivation Issue

Hi there @phil1ooo,

Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback and concerns here. I hear your frustration and I want to clear up a bit of the confusion around this. WooCommerce doesn’t remove your ability to deactivate the plugin through the standard Plugins → Installed Plugins screen in WordPress. You should always be able to deactivate WooCommerce from the dashboard just like any other plugin, without needing to touch configuration files.

If you’re running into a situation where the “Deactivate” link isn’t available in your Plugins list, that points to a specific conflict—either with the theme, a security plugin, or a server-level restriction—not a default WooCommerce behavior. In fact, many store owners regularly deactivate WooCommerce for troubleshooting, and it does not erase store data (your products, orders, and settings remain in the database).

Here’s what I suggest you check:

• First, go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and confirm whether the “Deactivate” link appears under WooCommerce.
• If it’s missing, temporarily switch to a default theme like Storefront and disable other plugins one by one to see if one of them is hiding that option. Security tools like AIOS, Loginizer, or server-level controls can sometimes remove the link.
• If your site is hosted in a managed environment, your host may also restrict certain deactivations for stability. It’s worth checking with them directly.

Also, just to clarify why in troubleshooting we often ask merchants to deactivate all other plugins: it isn’t because WooCommerce wants to remove control, but because it’s the most effective way to identify conflicts. WordPress sites often run dozens of plugins built by different developers, and when issues arise, deactivating everything except WooCommerce and a default theme provides a clean baseline. Once the issue is confirmed to be absent in that state, you can reactivate plugins step by step to identify which one is causing the problem. This ensures the fault is narrowed down quickly without guessing.

Rest assured, you should not have to edit config files just to deactivate WooCommerce. If you’d like, could you share a screenshot of what you see on the Plugins page when you look at WooCommerce? That would help us pinpoint what’s happening on your setup.

I understand this situation feels like it’s taking away control, but this isn’t the intended behavior of WooCommerce itself. Let’s narrow down what’s causing it so you can get back that flexibility.

Hi @phil1ooo,

Thank you for clarifying. That’s helpful. When you’re back at your desktop, please feel free to share a screenshot of your Plugins list showing WooCommerce. An easy way to do this is to upload it to https://snipboard.io and drop the link here.

It would also be great if you could share your WooCommerce System Status Report. You can copy it from WooCommerce → Status → Get system report → Copy for support, then paste it into https://pastebin.com or https://gist.github.com and share the link with us.

This will give us a clearer picture of what’s happening on your site and allow us to help you resolve the deactivation issue.

Hi @phil1ooo,

Thanks for sharing the screenshot and your system report.

From the screenshot, it says:

Required by: Google for WooCommerce, WooPayments

Note: This plugin cannot be deactivated or deleted until the plugins that require it are deactivated or deleted.

What that means is you have two extensions that depend on WooCommerce to work, so to deactivate it, you’ll need to deactivate them first.

That said, could you go ahead and do that for Google for WooCommerce and WooPayments? Once done, you should be able to deactivate WooCommerce.

I hope that helps. Let us know if you need anything else.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Frank Remmy (woo-hc).
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Frank Remmy (woo-hc).

Hi there!

I’m glad you were able to deactivate the Woocommerce plugin, Could you please share a bit more about why you want to deactivate WooCommerce? Are you troubleshooting an error, or is there another reason?