Guides › Native inventory limits
What Shopify's built in inventory tools cover
Plenty of apps are sold to solve problems Shopify already solves. Here is an honest line between what you have for free, what needs a workflow and the narrow set of things that genuinely need an app. We sell one of those apps, which is why this page is specific about when you do not need it.
Last reviewed 16 August 2026
On this page
What is already included
- Quantities per variant per location. Shopify tracks stock separately at every location you have configured. This is the foundation everything else reads from.
- Inventory states. Available, committed, unavailable and on hand are tracked separately, which matters because available is the number that decides whether a customer can buy.
- Stock adjustments with a history. Changes are recorded, so there is an audit trail.
- Transfers between locations. Moving stock is native.
- Filtering and export. You can filter the inventory view to low quantities and export it.
- Continue selling when out of stock. A per variant setting for whether Shopify accepts orders past zero.
For a single location store with a modest catalogue, this really is enough, provided somebody looks.
What is not included
- Anything that reaches you unprompted. This is the central gap. Every native feature is a screen you visit. Nothing arrives.
- A threshold that lives on the product. You cannot set "warn me at 20 for this SKU and 5 for that one" natively.
- Purchase orders and suppliers. Not part of core Shopify.
- Demand forecasting. Not part of core Shopify.
- Routing to the right person. There is no concept of who should be told about which product.
The one that matters. Every other gap has a workaround. The first one does not. It is also the one that produces actual stockouts. Accurate data that nobody looked at on the week it mattered still ends with an empty shelf.
The middle ground: Shopify Flow
Between native screens and a paid app sits Shopify Flow, free on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. It closes the biggest gap, because a workflow can email you on a threshold without you opening anything.
It does not close the per product threshold gap or the routing gap cleanly and it triggers per variant. Full detail in the Shopify Flow low stock alert guide.
When an app is genuinely justified
Not before one of these is true:
- Your catalogue is past roughly a hundred SKUs and one shared threshold has stopped being meaningful.
- You hold stock in several places and need each judged on its own.
- More than one person is responsible for restocking.
- You have already had a stockout you should have caught. The clearest signal and unfortunately usually retrospective.
If none of these apply, use the native view with a standing weekly slot in the calendar and spend the money elsewhere.
When the gap is the alerting, not the data
Shopify already holds accurate stock levels. Stockwell reads them and makes sure somebody hears about it, per SKU and per location, without an admin screen anybody has to remember.
Get Stockwell on the Shopify App Store Free plan covers 50 SKUs with a daily summary. Paid plans add instant alerts and more recipients. No card needed to start.Common questions
Does Shopify have low stock alerts built in?
It has a low inventory view you can filter and export, but no unprompted alert. To have something arrive on its own you need Shopify Flow or an app.
Can I set a reorder point on a Shopify product?
Not natively as a per product threshold that drives an alert. You can filter the inventory view by quantity, but the number is applied by you at the time of looking rather than stored on the variant.
Does Shopify handle inventory across multiple locations?
Yes, quite well. Quantities are tracked per location and transfers between locations are native. What is missing is a per location alert that reaches you without opening admin.