How to set up back-in-stock notifications on Shopify

No — Shopify has no native back-in-stock notification on any plan, including Plus. When an item sells out, nothing captures the shoppers who wanted it, and nothing emails them when it returns. You can use Shopify Flow to hide and re-show the product on restock, but that only toggles visibility — it doesn’t know who was interested or send them anything. To actually recover the sale you need two pieces: a “notify me” capture on the sold-out product page, and an automation that emails those shoppers the moment inventory comes back. Here’s how each option really works, and where the money leaks.

Does Shopify have back-in-stock notifications?

No. There is no built-in “email me when available” on any Shopify plan. Out of the box, a sold-out product either shows a disabled “Sold out” button or, if you leave selling-when-out-of-stock on, keeps selling into negative inventory. Neither captures interested shoppers, and Shopify never emails anyone on restock.

What about Shopify Flow?

Flow is often suggested, but it solves a different problem. A prebuilt Flow template can unpublish a product at zero inventory and republish it when stock returns (Flow is free on Basic and up). That manages the product’s visibility — it does not capture the shoppers who hit the sold-out page, and it emails them nothing. It also tends to republish to your default channels rather than the exact prior per-channel visibility, and the product page 404s while it’s hidden. Useful for tidiness; useless as a customer alert.

How do the options compare?

Method	Captures interested shoppers?	Emails them on restock?	Effort
Do nothing (default “Sold out”)	No	No	None — and you lose the sale
Shopify Flow hide/republish	No	No	Low, but visibility only
Manual list + email by hand	Partly (if you ask)	Manually	High, doesn’t scale
Back-in-stock app	Yes	Yes, automatically	Low

Only the last option does both jobs — capture the demand and act on it — without a person watching inventory.

Why losing the restock sale is expensive

A shopper on a sold-out product page is the most qualified visitor you’ll get: they found the exact item and tried to buy it. If there’s no way to raise their hand, that intent evaporates:

• They leave and, more often than not, buy the same thing from someone else.
• You get no signal about how much demand is stacked up behind the out-of-stock line, so you can’t prioritise what to reorder first.
• The restock, when it happens, launches to silence instead of to a list of people already waiting.

Recovering even a fraction of those shoppers is usually the highest-ROI “marketing” a store can do, because the interest already exists. If the wait will be long, it’s also worth deciding whether to let shoppers pre-order instead of just waiting.

How to set up back-in-stock notifications

1. Add a “notify me” form to the sold-out state of your product page (a theme block is the clean way — it appears only when the variant is out of stock).
2. Collect the shopper’s email against the specific product and variant they wanted.
3. Watch inventory, and the moment it goes back above zero, email everyone waiting with a link straight back to that product.
4. Rank your waiting demand so you can see which sold-out products have the most shoppers queued — that’s your reorder priority list, handed to you.

Watch the per-alert pricing

Here’s the trap in this category: many back-in-stock apps charge by the number of alerts or emails sent per month. That means your most successful restock — the viral product thousands of people are waiting on — is also your most expensive, and your software bill spikes exactly when the feature is earning the most. Prefer flat pricing so a big restock costs the same as a small one and you can send without watching a meter.

The fix: Restockwell

Restockwell adds a “Notify me” button to the sold-out state of your product page, captures each interested shopper against the exact variant, and emails them automatically the moment it’s back in stock — with a link straight to the product. Its demand report ranks your sold-out products by how many distinct shoppers are waiting, so reordering is a priority list, not a guess. The free plan covers the “Notify me” button and 50 email alerts a month; Pro (€24/mo) makes alerts unlimited, syncs captured shoppers to Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and keeps flat pricing with no per-alert fees — so a restock that notifies thousands costs exactly the same as one that notifies ten.