Guides › Comparing alert apps

Three categories that get confused

Searching for a low stock alert app returns three different kinds of product. Installing the wrong category is the most common mistake.

Internal alert apps

Tell you when stock is running down. Email or Slack, thresholds, locations, recipients. This is the category this page is about. Stockwell sits here, alongside apps such as Stockbot, Stockie, LSA Low Stock Alert, Merchbees and iAlert.

Back in stock apps

Tell customers when a sold out item returns. Completely different job. Useful, but it recovers a lost sale rather than preventing one. Do not install one of these expecting internal alerts.

Full inventory suites

Purchase orders, suppliers, forecasting, sometimes multichannel sync. Apps such as Assisty, Sumtracker, Prediko, Qoblex and Fabrikator sit here and they generally include alerting as one feature among many. Correct if you need the whole workflow, expensive if you only wanted the alert.

Six questions that separate them

Every app in this category advertises low stock alerts. These questions surface the differences that show up two months after installing.

1. Can the threshold differ per SKU?

The single most important question. One store wide number alerts too late on fast movers and constantly on slow ones, which is how alerting setups end up muted. If thresholds are store wide only, the app will stop working for you as the catalogue grows.

2. Is each location evaluated separately?

Only matters if you hold stock in more than one place, but then it matters completely. An app summing across locations will tell you everything is fine while one site sits empty.

3. How many recipients does the plan allow?

Alerts reaching one person fail during annual leave. Recipient count is very often what separates the pricing tiers, so check it against the number of people who actually need to know.

4. Instant alerts, digest, or both?

Instant catches sudden drops. A daily summary catches slow drift and gives you a view of everything currently low. Most stores want both. On many apps, including ours, instant alerts are a paid feature while a digest is available free.

5. What happens when stock hovers at the threshold?

Rarely advertised, quickly annoying. Stock crossing back and forth can produce repeated emails about one situation. Ask whether repeats are suppressed until the condition genuinely resets.

6. What permissions does it request?

An alerts app needs to read products, inventory and locations. It does not need customer data, order data or write access. Anything asking for more is worth a question.

Where we fit and where we do not

Stockwell does the first category only. Per SKU thresholds, every location judged separately, several recipients, instant alerts and a daily summary, plus alert history. The free plan covers 50 SKUs with one recipient and a daily summary. Instant alerts and per location evaluation are on the paid plans.

It is the wrong tool if you need purchase orders, supplier records, demand forecasting, stocktakes, barcode scanning or multichannel inventory sync. We do none of those and have no plans to. If that list is what you came for, one of the full suites above is the honest answer.

Before you install anything

1. Try Shopify Flow first if you are on a paid plan. It is free and it may be enough. Knowing exactly why it is not enough for you is the best possible preparation for choosing an app.
2. Count your real recipients and check that number against the plan tiers.
3. Check current pricing on the listing itself. App pricing changes and any figure quoted in an article, this one included, may be out of date.
4. Test on one product before rolling out across the catalogue.