Imagine this: A beauty influencer praises your long-lasting lip tint on their TikTok account, and the product starts flying off the shelves. With your focus on shipping logistics and answering customer questions, you don’t realize your stock levels are low. Since you didn’t reorder in time, you can’t keep the viral momentum going.
Stockouts are common: Worldwide, stockouts cost retailers $1.235 trillion annually. However, you can mitigate this dreaded scenario with a low-stock alert app, a tool that helps you maintain inventory levels.
What are low-stock alert apps?
Low-stock alert apps are tools that help businesses manage inventory in real time. They send automated notifications via SMS and email when inventory levels reach a certain threshold, giving businesses enough time to reorder products. Avoiding stockouts can ensure you don’t miss sales opportunities.
3 benefits of low-stock alert apps
Low-stock alert apps notify you when you’re running low on a product before it’s too late, and they can positively impact your business in three ways:
Efficient inventory management
Manually monitoring your inventory can be time-consuming and introduce human errors. Low-stock apps help you reorder the right amount at the right time. This helps prevent stockouts, and it also protects against overstocking. Excess stock translates to higher storage costs and, in some cases, dead stock—inventory that is obsolete and hard to sell.
Improved customer experience
Inventory shortages affect customers. Let’s say a customer excitedly clicks into your website because they want to purchase one of your products. When the page loads, they see the words “out of stock.” Disappointment quickly washes over them. A lack of readily available products can mean delayed delivery times and frustration, which can affect how a customer feels about your brand.
Market retention
Out-of-stock items can hurt your long-term sales prospects. If customers try to buy a product and find it’s unavailable, they may turn to your competitors. But if a product is in stock when a customer needs or wants it, you can nurture that relationship and potentially generate more sales in the future, helping you retain market share.
Top low-stock alert apps
To select the best low-stock alert app for your online store, consider your budget, ease of use, and features. Below are some of the best stock alert apps that can integrate directly with your ecommerce store:
Stockie
Stockie is a user-friendly app with a straightforward dashboard that lets you explore your real-time and projected inventory counts. You can receive push notifications on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis to stay up to date on your inventory levels, and you can get immediate alerts if stock counts dip below a chosen threshold. You can set low-stock alerts for all products in a particular warehouse location, a single product collection, or an individual product type.
Pricing: Stockie offers a free plan for one scheduled notification at one warehouse location for one user. The Basic includes five instant or scheduled notifications for three users and comes in at $4.99 a month, and the Advanced plan has unlimited notifications, users, and locations for $9.99 a month.
LSA
A leading software for inventory alerts, LSA sends both regularly scheduled email reports on products with low stock levels and instant alerts for products that have dipped below your chosen quantity threshold. If you have more than one warehouse or storefront, LSA offers multi-location support, aggregating all inventory information in one dashboard.
Pricing: LSA offers a 14-day free trial to help you become familiar with all the features. The plans range from $5.99 a month, best for stores with 300 products or less, to $29.99 a month for businesses with up to 2,000 products.
Stockbot
Offering more than customizable stock alerts, Stockbot is a robust inventory tracker and sales forecasting tool that syncs inventory across locations, anticipating restocking needs before they arise and pinpointing optimal reorder quantity for each product based on demand. You can tailor email notifications with multiple filters such as store locations, product categories, and individual SKU variants.
Pricing: A free version of this app sends store-wide low-stockalerts and real-time web reports to small businesses with fewer than 200 products. Businesses with up to 10,000 products must upgrade to the paid plans, starting at $9 a month.
Bee Low
Bee Low is a great app for optimizing the overall efficiency of your inventory management. By customizing dynamic thresholds for stock counts, you can set a minimum and maximum stock level, sending automated notifications to you and your vendors when products fall beneath a certain point. You can customize notifications by filters including variant name, store location, and vendor. Plus, you can export sales forecasting metrics and inventory counts as a CSV file for your convenience.
Pricing: A free version is available for shops with less than 250 SKUs. The Professional (8,000 SKUs) plan is $5.99 a month and the Advanced (100,000 SKUs) plan is $11.99 a month.
Notim
Designed specifically for Shopify businesses, Notim features customizable alerts, low inventory alerts, and analytics for product demand based on sales metrics. When products dip to your set reorder point, you will receive alerts that give you enough time to create purchase orders for each vendor well before stockouts occur.
Notim also lets customers sign up for restock email alerts, so they can make purchases as soon as you replenish your stock. This encourages a higher potential for future sales and keeps you in contact with customers.
Pricing: Notim has four tiers: Extra Small, a max of 300 products for $4.99 a month; Small, 500 products or less for $8.99 a month; Medium, 1,000 products for $18.99 a month; and Large, a cap of 2,000 products for $28.99 a month.
iAlert
Designed to make inventory management a breeze, iAlert features a high level of customization for alerts, tags, and multiple locations. When items run low, the app can send email or Slack notifications, allowing you to integrate notifications wherever your team corresponds. Plus, you can receive notifications on a scheduled basis or instantly as items dip below a certain level.
Pricing: The free version gives you limited access to features for up to 500 SKUs. Larger businesses must upgrade to the Basic Plan (1,000 SKUs/$2.99 a month), Advanced Plan (10,000 SKUs/$4.99 a month), or Enterprise Plan (100,000 SKUs/$9.99 a month).
Low stock app FAQ
Can you use low-stock alert apps on Shopify?
Yes, you can use low-stock alert apps with your Shopify store, including Stockbot and Notim. Visit the Shopify App Store to find and download your chosen app.
What do low-stock alert apps do?
Low-stock alert apps monitor inventory levels across all your storefronts and ecommerce shops, sending notifications when products reach a certain stock threshold. These automated notifications help you reorder inventory in a timely manner and avoid stockouts that can lead to a loss of sales.
How do you choose which low-stock alert app is right for your ecommerce store?
Choosing the best low-stock alerts app comes down to the size of your business, the pricing of paid plans that fit within your budget, and the functionality you need for inventory efficiency. Try free trial versions of low-stock apps to learn which works best for you.
