Freeze Shipping Alert and Global Hardiness Zones and Frost Data for WordPress Plugin Directory

Freeze Shipping Alert and Global Hardiness Zones and Frost Data is a WooCommerce extension that combines the WhatsMy.Zone climate lookup service with live forecast and geocoding services to detect freeze risk for shipping addresses worldwide.

Features

Automatic Freeze Detection – Detects freeze risk at checkout based on the customer’s shipping address, estimated delivery window, and climate data.

Protection Products – Offer one or more freeze-protection products at checkout and add them as real WooCommerce cart items.

Complimentary Protection Rules – Automatically include configured protection products for free on risky shipments, with customer-facing included/unavailable notices.

Protected Shipping Recommendations – Suggest one or more merchant-defined shipping options when those methods are safer during frost season.

Delivery Scheduling – Customers can schedule later delivery when their area is safe from freezing, with an optional delayed-shipping discount.

Risk Acceptance – Customers can acknowledge and accept freeze risk with a customizable disclaimer.

Worldwide Hardiness Zone Shortcodes – Display hardiness zone, frost dates, and growing season information on any page.

Admin Weather Forecast – Check current weather forecast data for an order’s shipping address.

Admin Shipping Controls – Configure shipping lead time, protection products, complimentary protection rules, recommended shipping labels, disclaimers, and delayed-shipping discounts.

Service-Backed Climate Lookups – Zone, frost, growing-season, and shipping-risk lookups are provided through the WhatsMy.Zone service.

Global Coverage – Worldwide climate lookups for supported destinations.

WooCommerce HPOS Compatible – Works with both legacy and High-Performance Order Storage.

Shortcodes

[freeze_alert_zone] – Interactive hardiness zone checker with search and location-based, Fahrenheit, or Celsius temperature defaults

[freeze_alert_frost] – Last/first frost date cards

[freeze_alert_season] – Growing season visualizer with month bar

Data Sources

Climate Lookups: WhatsMy.Zone service for zone, frost date, growing-season, and shipping-risk lookups

Weather Forecast: Open-Meteo API (free, no API key required)

Geocoding / Address Lookup: Nominatim/OpenStreetMap

WhatsMy.Zone Account and API Usage Freeze Alert uses a WhatsMy.Zone API key so this site can make authenticated climate lookups and show usage and plan details in the WordPress admin. Create or access an account at https://whatsmy.zone/account.html, copy an API key, and paste it into the plugin settings. The initial service plan is free and gives the site 100 WhatsMy.Zone API calls per month. If a site needs more calls, open the account dashboard from the plugin settings to upgrade the service plan.

WhatsMy.Zone API calls are used when Freeze Alert requests hardiness zone, frost date, growing-season, or shipping-risk data for a coordinate. This includes shortcode lookups, checkout freeze-risk checks, order/admin checks, and configured route exposure points when those features are used. Paid WhatsMy.Zone plans change only the service-side API usage limit; they do not unlock a separate premium version of the WordPress plugin.

External services Freeze Alert uses the following external service connections:

* WhatsMy.Zone: receives latitude/longitude coordinates for climate lookups (zone, frost dates, growing season, and shipping-risk checks). The plugin sends the saved API key in an x-api-key request header to authenticate climate lookups and retrieve live usage and plan details. The initial service plan is free and includes 100 API calls per month; upgrades are available only when a site needs a higher monthly service limit. Account creation, key management, and plan changes open the external WhatsMy.Zone account dashboard. Plan-selection links include the selected plan and billing cycle. The settings screen may also request a WhatsMy.Zone language-pack manifest, and installing a language pack downloads the selected JSON translation pack from WhatsMy.Zone. Service policies: https://whatsmy.zone/policies.html

* Open-Meteo: receives latitude/longitude coordinates to return weather forecast data used for shipping-date forecast checks. Terms and privacy: https://open-meteo.com/en/terms

* Nominatim / OpenStreetMap: receives either a location search query entered by the user, or shipping address fields needed for geocoding (street, city, state/region, postal code, country). Reverse-geocoding requests send latitude/longitude coordinates. Nominatim usage policy: https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim/ OpenStreetMap Foundation terms: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy

These services are external to the WordPress site and are contacted only when the related lookup, forecast, geocoding, account-dashboard, language-pack, or plan-selection action is requested.