Brick Product Tabs: a maintained alternative to YIKES Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce

If your WooCommerce shop uses Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce by YIKES, Inc. (usually called "YIKES Custom Product Tabs"), you are in good company: it has been one of the most popular ways to add extra tabs to product pages for years. If you are looking for a maintained YIKES Custom Product Tabs alternative, this guide explains where the plugin stands today, what that means in practice, and how to move your tabs to Brick Product Tabs for WooCommerce, a new free plugin by NotoriousBrick, without retyping them.

Disclosure: we make Brick Product Tabs, so we are not neutral. We have tried to state only facts we could check, with their source and date, and to point out where other plugins are stronger.

The situation, in numbers

All figures below come from the public WordPress.org plugin directory API, read on 8 November 2026:

• Active installations: 80,000+ (wordpress.org rounds this number into bands).
• Last update: 12 April 2025, version 1.8.6. That is about 19 months without a release.
• Tested up to: WordPress 6.7. WordPress has had several major releases since then.
• Rating: 88 out of 100 from 163 ratings: 134 five-star ratings and 20 one-star ratings.

Five-star ratings are 134 of the 163, so most people who rated the plugin were satisfied. Some negative reviews from 2024, however, share a theme: the three below concern the paid Pro version rather than the free plugin. Short excerpts from reviews on WordPress.org:

• "Paid/Pro version appears abandoned: Pro throws curl errors when attempting to validate license" (September 2024);
• "receiving emailed requests to pay to update the PRO version but haven't heard back since January" (July 2024);
• "No support, Dead Links, not working with HPOS" (August 2024).

These are individual user reports, not verified bug reports, and we have no information about the authors' plans. If YIKES releases an update, this picture changes, and we will update this page.

What this means for shop owners

A plugin that has not been updated for a while does not stop working overnight. Your tabs are stored in the WordPress database and will keep showing as long as the code runs. The risks are gradual:

1. No declared compatibility with new versions. WordPress, WooCommerce and PHP all change. The plugin's public compatibility information does not go beyond WordPress 6.7, and WordPress.org shows a notice on plugins that have not been tested with the latest three major WordPress releases.
2. Slower security fixes. If a vulnerability is found in a plugin that is no longer actively maintained, an official fix may take longer or may not come.
3. Slower help when something breaks. If a WooCommerce update changes how product pages are built, compatibility problems may take longer to be resolved.
4. Pro licence problems. Some Pro users report problems validating their licence and getting Pro updates.

For a shop with a handful of products, retyping the tabs into another plugin is a chore. For a shop with hundreds of products, it can be a major migration task. That is the problem the import solves.

How the one-click import works

YIKES keeps its data in standard WordPress places, which makes a clean import possible. Brick Product Tabs reads:

• the product meta key yikes_woo_products_tabs: the custom tabs of each product (title, content and order);
• the option yikes_woo_reusable_products_tabs: your YIKES saved tabs;
• the option yikes_woo_reusable_products_tabs_applied: which saved tabs are applied to which products.

Each YIKES saved tab becomes a Brick saved tab, and products that used it stay linked: when you edit the saved tab later, every linked product is updated. YouTube and Vimeo embeds come along with the content.

The import is designed with live shops in mind:

• Read-only on YIKES data. It never modifies or deletes anything YIKES stored, so the original YIKES data stays available if you want to go back.
• Batches with a progress bar. Products are processed 100 at a time, which suits large catalogues and slow hosting.
• Protected against duplicates. Running it a second time does not duplicate anything: the second click is refused unless you explicitly choose "Import again (overwrite)". Even then, it replaces only the tabs that came from YIKES and keeps the tabs you added afterwards.
• Products with their own tabs are skipped. Products that already have their own Brick Product Tabs tabs are not touched by the import and are listed in the import summary.

Comparison: Brick Product Tabs, YIKES and Smart Tabs

Smart Tabs by ShapedPlugin is an established, actively updated alternative (10,000+ active installations, last updated on 29 October 2026). It is a broader tab builder, for WooCommerce and for regular WordPress content, with many layout options. Figures checked on WordPress.org and on wptabs.com/pricing on 8 November 2026.

Our take. If you want tabs that look different from your theme (accordions on mobile, vertical tabs, icons, galleries inside tabs), Smart Tabs offers far more design options than we do, and it is actively updated. If you want to keep your theme's tab styling, move your YIKES tabs without retyping them and, if you need Pro features, pay once instead of every year (the Pro add-on is planned as a one-time purchase), Brick Product Tabs is built for exactly that. "Not checked" or "not in the description" means we could not confirm the feature from public pages, not that it is missing.

Migration in five steps

1. Back up your whole site, as before any plugin change. The tab data itself is stored in the database.
2. Install and activate Brick Product Tabs. You can keep YIKES active while you migrate; WordPress 6.4+, WooCommerce 8.0+ and PHP 8.1+ are required.
3. Open Products > Brick Product Tabs. The plugin detects your YIKES data and shows how many products and saved tabs it found.
4. Click "Import from YIKES Custom Product Tabs" and wait for the summary: "Imported X products and Y saved tabs".
5. Check a few product pages, then deactivate YIKES. Look at a simple product, a variable product and a product that used a saved tab.

Two details to check after the switch:

• Tab anchors change. Brick tab anchors start with #tab-bpt- (for example #tab-bpt-shipping instead of #tab-shipping). Update any custom CSS or links that pointed to YIKES tabs.
• Tab position. Brick tabs appear after the Reviews tab by default. If you prefer them before the standard tabs, change it in the settings.

If you used YIKES Pro global or category tabs, they are imported as saved tabs; you then add them to products yourself or assign them by category, tag or attribute with the Pro add-on.

FAQ

Is YIKES Custom Product Tabs abandoned?

We cannot speak for its authors. What we can say is factual: according to WordPress.org, the last release is dated 12 April 2025 and the plugin is tested up to WordPress 6.7 (checked on 8 November 2026). Some Pro customers report licence and support problems in their reviews.

Will my product pages change after the import?

The content of the tabs stays the same. The tabs use your theme's WooCommerce tab styles, as YIKES tabs did, so the look usually stays close. The anchor names and the default position can differ, as described above.

Can I go back to YIKES?

Yes. The import never modifies or deletes YIKES data, so if you reactivate YIKES its original tabs are still there.

What happens if I run the import twice?

Nothing is duplicated. The second click is refused unless you choose "Import again (overwrite)", which refreshes only the tabs that came from YIKES.

Do I need the Pro add-on to migrate?

No. The import is part of the free plugin. Pro is only for rules by category, tag or attribute, bulk assignment, renaming the default tabs and CSV import.

Does Brick Product Tabs track my shop?

No. The plugin has no tracking, makes no external requests and shows no advertising in your dashboard. (Embedded YouTube or Vimeo players load from those services, as in posts.)

Sources: WordPress.org plugin directory API for "Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce" (slug yikes-inc-easy-custom-woocommerce-product-tabs) and "Smart Tabs" (slug wp-expand-tabs-free), and wptabs.com/pricing, all read on 8 November 2026. Prices and numbers change: check the linked pages for current figures.