How to Add Back-in-Stock Alerts to Your Shopify Store with Notify Me!

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A sold-out product page shouldn’t be a dead end. If a shopper wants something you can’t ship today, the next best thing is a way for them to say “tell me when it’s back”, and for your store to actually tell them.

Adding back in stock alerts to a Shopify store is one of the simplest ways to stop losing interested shoppers when a product sells out. Instead of a greyed-out “Sold out” button, the customer sees a “Notify me” option, leaves an email address or phone number, and gets a message the moment inventory returns. If you have been looking into back in stock alerts Shopify apps can provide, this guide walks you through setting one up with Notify Me!, a Shopify app that handles restock alerts, preorders, low stock signals and wishlists.

Every step below is based on Notify Me!’s own help center and its Shopify App Store listing. Where the official sources disagree or leave something unclear (pricing in particular), we say so rather than guess.

Why back in stock alerts matter for sold-out products

When a product sells out, demand doesn’t vanish. It just has nowhere to go. A shopper who lands on a sold-out page usually does one of three things: leaves and forgets, goes looking for the same thing at a competitor, or bookmarks the page and hopes to remember. None of those are great for you.

A back-in-stock alert changes that moment. It gives the shopper a clear action (“notify me”), and it gives you three things in return:

• A way to recover the sale later. The customer has already shown intent for a specific product and variant. When stock returns, you can bring them straight back to it.
• A demand signal you can act on. Every request is a data point. A pile of requests on one size or color tells you what to reorder first and how much.
• A permission-based contact. The shopper asked to hear from you about something they want, which is a much warmer starting point than a cold marketing list.

Restock alerts also help with operational decisions. If you know how many people are waiting, you can decide whether a small restock is worth announcing, whether to open preorders instead, or whether a product is worth bringing back at all.

What Notify Me! does

Notify Me! is built for Shopify (and BigCommerce, according to its site). On the Shopify App Store, the developer is listed as Notify Me! and the app name is “Notify! Back in Stock+Wishlist”. The listing describes four main jobs:

• Back in Stock: “Notify Me” buttons on out-of-stock product, home and collection pages, with automatic restock alerts by email, SMS and push.
• Preorder: accept preorders, with options such as discounts, notes and partial payments.
• Low Stock: an “only X left” counter on product pages, plus low stock alerts for you as the merchant.
• Wishlist: lets shoppers (including guests) save items and return later.

The App Store listing also says it works with Shopify POS, Shopify Flow, Checkout and customer accounts, and integrates with tools including Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp, PageFly and PushOwl. The Notify Me! website additionally mentions WhatsApp as a notification channel, and its help docs note that SMS and WhatsApp are billed per message with rates that vary by country.

Notify Me! pricing and plans

Pricing as of October 2026. The Shopify App Store listing shows four plans. All charges are billed in USD through Shopify, and recurring and usage-based charges are billed every 30 days.

Plan	Price (App Store)	Main limits listed	Notable inclusions
Free	$0	10 restock notifications, 5 preorders, 50 wishlist actions	Email, push and SMS alerts, low stock widget, widgets that auto-match your theme
Kickstart	$9.90/month or $79.21/year	500 alerts, 500 preorders, 2,000 wishlist actions	Complete widget/email customization, partial pay, minimum inventory for low stock display
Starter	$19.90/month or $159.23/year	500 alerts, 500 preorders	Branded emails, preorder fulfillment trigger, fundamental reports, page-builder integration
Standard	$39.90/month or $319.26/year	1,500 alerts, 1,500 preorders, 10,000 wishlist actions	Preorder discounts, collection page widgets, restock and preorder email templates, priority support

A few things to know before you pick a plan:

• Paid plans include a 7-day free trial on the App Store. The Notify Me! pricing page also mentions a 30-day money-back guarantee on subscriptions.
• Preorder overages apply. The listing shows $0.20 per preorder above the limit on Kickstart and Starter, and $0.15 on Standard.
• SMS (and WhatsApp) costs extra and depends on the recipient’s country.
• Kickstart may be restricted. The Notify Me! pricing page describes Kickstart as available only for Basic Shopify stores in their first year.
• The two official sources don’t match exactly. The notify-me.io pricing page describes the free plan differently (for example, 100 lifetime back-in-stock requests and 10 notifications per month) and shows an Enterprise option by request, while the App Store lists Starter and Standard. The listing also says “unlimited plans available inside the app”. Check the pricing inside the app or on the App Store before you commit.
• Promotions change. At the time of writing the listing showed a limited Black Friday/Cyber Monday offer. Treat any promo price as temporary.

For most small stores, the sensible path is to start on the free plan, test the full flow on one or two products, and upgrade once you see how many requests come in. If you expect real volume from day one, start a paid trial so you aren’t capped while testing.

Back in stock alerts Shopify setup, step by step

These steps follow Notify Me!’s “Get started” and “Back-in-Stock” help articles. Menu names are quoted as they appear in those docs; the app’s interface may shift slightly over time, so if something looks different, search the help center for the setting name.

Step 1: Install Notify Me! from the Shopify App Store

1. Open the Notify Me! listing on the Shopify App Store (you can get there through this Notify Me! link). On the App Store it appears as “Notify! Back in Stock+Wishlist”.
2. Click the install button and approve the permissions Shopify asks for.
3. Choose a plan. You can start on Free, or start a paid plan’s 7-day trial.
4. Once installed, the app appears under Apps in your Shopify admin sidebar.

Step 2: Activate the Notify Me! App Embed

The app embed is what puts the widgets on your storefront. Without it, nothing shows up for shoppers.

1. In Shopify admin, go to Online Store then Themes.
2. Find your live theme and click Customize.
3. In the theme editor’s left sidebar, click the App embeds icon.
4. Find Notify Me! in the list and toggle it on.
5. Click Save.
6. Back in the Notify Me! dashboard, check the App status section. The App embed badge should read Enabled.

Two things the docs flag: app embeds require an Online Store 2.0 theme (older “vintage” themes don’t support them, so contact support in that case), and you need to repeat this step whenever you switch to a new theme.

Step 3: Make sure your products are eligible

The “Notify me” button only appears on products Shopify considers out of stock. According to the help center, a product needs all three of these:

• Inventory tracking is turned on.
• The quantity is 0 or less.
• Continue selling when out of stock is turned off.

If you sell some products on preorder (where “Continue selling when out of stock” is on) and still want a Notify me button there, enable Show the “Notify me” button on pre-order product pages in the Back in Stock settings.

Step 4: Activate Back in Stock and choose your channels

1. In Notify Me!, open Dashboard or Back in stock.
2. Check the status badge. If it says Inactive, click Activate.
3. Go to the Back in stock settings and, under Notification status, select the channels you want: Email, SMS and/or Push.
4. Click Save.

Each channel has its own considerations:

• Email is the default and needs no extra setup. You can add your own sender address under Settings so alerts don’t come from the default Notify Me! address.
• SMS requires collecting phone numbers on the form. You can turn SMS on or off per notification type (First Alert, Reminder, Thank You and GDPR) under Back in Stock, Settings, then Back-in-stock notifications. Messages are billed per message by country.
• Web push is sent through PushOwl. The docs say you need to install Brevo PushOwl from the Shopify App Store (its Basic plan is enough), activate PushOwl’s own App Embed, then connect it in Notify Me! under Settings, Integrations. After that, show the push checkbox on the subscriber form and turn Push on in your alert settings.

Step 5: Customize the Notify me button

1. In Shopify admin, open Notify Me! under Apps.
2. Go to Back-in-Stock Settings and click Customize appearance.
3. Choose Buttons. Decide where the button appears (Product pages, Collection pages or Home page) using the toggle for each.
4. Edit the Button Label if you want something other than “Notify Me”, and toggle Show Bell Icon on or off.
5. On product pages, pick a placement: Inline Button, Float Button or Inline and Float.
6. Choose Smart Match with Theme (recommended in the docs) to inherit your theme’s colors and fonts, or Custom Style to set text color, background, border color, radius and thickness yourself.
7. Check the result in the Live View panel before saving.

Note that collection page widgets are listed as a Standard plan feature on the App Store, so check your plan if that toggle isn’t available.

Step 6: Customize the subscriber form and confirmation message

From the same Customize appearance area you can edit the Subscriber Form (the pop-up where shoppers enter their details) and the Confirmation Message they see after signing up. The help center also has guides for adding a privacy policy to the form, enabling GDPR double opt-in consent, and configuring a quantity selector so shoppers can say how many units they want.

Keep the form short. Ask only for the contact details you will actually use, and make the consent wording clear, especially if you collect phone numbers for SMS.

Step 7: Edit your alert templates

1. Go to Back in stock, then Customize appearance, and find the Notifications section.
2. Pick the notification type: First Back-in-Stock, Reminder or Thank-you message.
3. Click Email (or SMS or Push) to open the editor.
4. Choose a template. The docs list Simple, Supply, Simplify and Custom Template (your own HTML, which is reviewed before it goes live; that can take up to 48 hours, and your previous template keeps sending in the meantime).
5. Set the header (your logo or shop name), then edit the subject, title, description, the Add to cart and Visit product button labels, product price and an optional discount code. Variables such as {{shop_name}}, {{product_name}} and {{product_link}} personalize the message.
6. Adjust styles (color theme and font sizes) and add social links to the footer.

Step 8: Set a minimum inventory threshold and delivery rules

By default, alerts go out when inventory reaches 1. That can backfire: one returned item triggers alerts to everyone waiting, and most of them arrive to find it sold out again. A threshold fixes that.

1. In Notify Me!, click Back in Stock, then Settings.
2. In the Back-in-stock notifications section, click Edit next to First alert notification.
3. Click Set a minimum inventory threshold for notification alerts and enter a number greater than 0.

For product-specific thresholds, the docs describe tagging the product in Shopify with Restock-min-inventory-X (for example, Restock-min-inventory-20). Tags are case-sensitive, and each variant must meet the threshold on its own. The same settings area also covers the delivery policy for first alerts, which controls how alerts are released when many people are waiting.

Step 9: Turn on reminder notifications

A reminder is a follow-up sent after the first alert, for shoppers who didn’t act on it. To set one up:

1. Open the Back in Stock tab, go to Settings and click the Reminder tab.
2. Turn on the channels you want (email, push or SMS).
3. Choose the audience, for example people who clicked the original alert but didn’t buy.
4. Set the timing (for example, one or two days after the first alert) and click Save.

Step 10: Test the whole flow end to end

1. Open an eligible sold-out product on your storefront in an incognito window.
2. Click Notify me, enter a test email or phone number, pick a channel and submit.
3. In Notify Me!, go to Back in stock then Requests and confirm the test request is there.
4. In Shopify admin, raise that product’s inventory above your threshold.
5. Check your inbox or phone, then confirm the alert under Back in stock, Sent notifications.

If the button doesn’t appear, the help center has a dedicated troubleshooting guide for “Notify Me Button Not Showing on Sold-Out Products”. The usual suspects are the app embed being off or the product not meeting the three eligibility conditions in Step 3. During a trial, the docs mention daily sending caps (50 emails and 5 SMS per day), so keep tests small.

Optional: preorders, wishlist and low stock

The same app can do more than restock alerts, which is handy if you’d rather take money now than wait:

• Preorders: activate PreOrder in the dashboard, set the product to track quantity with “Continue selling when out of stock” turned on and inventory at 0 or less, then configure an offer under PreOrder, Offers (billing policy, discount policy and delivery fulfillment trigger). The help docs note that partial payment and some options need a higher plan.
• Wishlist: lets visitors, including guests, save products to come back to. The help center has a “Set up Wishlist for your store” guide.
• Low stock: show an “only X left” counter and get alerted yourself when inventory runs low.

Tips for better back in stock alerts

• Test with a real product. The Notify Me! docs recommend it, since placeholders can hide variant, location and theme issues.
• Offer more than one channel. Some shoppers ignore email but read texts, and vice versa. The help center suggests email plus SMS works well for most stores. Weigh the per-message SMS cost against your margins.
• Use a threshold for popular items. Don’t send alerts for a single unit if dozens of people are waiting. Disappointed shoppers are worse than delayed ones.
• Make the alert do the selling. Put the product image, price and a clear Add to cart button front and center. A short line like “you asked us to tell you” reminds people why they’re getting the message.
• Be careful with discounts. A code in the restock email can help, but people who asked to be notified already want the product. Save discounts for reminders or slow movers.
• Bring your existing list. If you’re switching from another app, the docs explain how to import existing subscribers from CSV so nobody waiting gets lost.
• Check consent rules. If you sell into regions with strict privacy laws, look at the GDPR double opt-in and privacy policy options for the form.
• Reach in-store shoppers too. If you run a physical shop, the help center has a guide to using Notify Me! on Shopify POS, so staff can sign customers up at the counter.

What to track after you launch

Back-in-stock requests are only useful if you look at them. Notify Me! includes Quick Reports with four headline sections, according to its help center:

• Products in Demand: which products have restock requests, and how that changes versus the previous period.
• Requests: how many customers are currently waiting.
• Sent Notifications: how many alerts went out, with a drill-down into engagement.
• Total Revenue: revenue from orders placed after alerts were sent.

The Back-in-Stock dashboard also has sections for High Demand, High Potential Revenue and Trending products. You can export your subscriber list to CSV (Quick reports, Requests, View report; the download link arrives by email), and the export includes product title, variant, SKU, vendor, status and request date.

That CSV is where restock alerts become a planning tool. A simple weekly routine:

1. Export the requests and paste them into your inventory tracker.
2. Group by SKU and variant to see which exact sizes or colors people are waiting for.
3. Compare waiting requests with your next purchase order. If a variant has a long queue, order more of it, or open preorders.
4. After each restock, note how many alerts went out and what revenue the app attributes to them, so you can see which products are worth restocking again.

If you track stock in a spreadsheet, our Inventory and Stock Management Spreadsheet gives you a ready-made place for stock levels, reorder points and supplier details, and adding a “waiting requests” column next to each SKU is straightforward. If you prefer to run your shop from Notion, the Retail Store HQ Notion template keeps products, inventory and suppliers together, so restock demand can sit right next to reorder decisions.

Useful fields to track per product:

Field	Why it helps
SKU / variant	Demand is usually concentrated in specific sizes or colors
Waiting requests	Sizes your next order and tells you whether to open preorders
Date sold out	Shows how long the product has been unavailable
Expected restock date	Lets you plan when alerts will go out
Alerts sent	Confirms the restock was actually announced
Revenue after alerts	Shows which products are worth restocking again

Is Notify Me! the right fit?

Notify Me! makes sense if you want restock alerts, preorders, low stock signals and a wishlist in one app instead of four. It has a free plan for trying things out and integrates with common email and marketing tools.

It may be less of a fit if you only need a basic email alert and already run a marketing platform that offers back-in-stock flows of its own, or if your volume is high enough that plan limits and per-preorder overages add up. Other back-in-stock apps on the Shopify App Store take different approaches to pricing and features, so compare a few on the metrics that matter to you: alert limits, SMS costs and the integrations you already use.

Frequently asked questions

Does Shopify have built-in back in stock alerts?

Shopify themes typically show products as sold out, but customer restock alerts are usually added with an app such as Notify Me! or through an email marketing tool’s back-in-stock feature.

Is Notify Me! free?

There is a free plan with small limits (the App Store lists 10 restock notifications, 5 preorders and 50 wishlist actions). Paid plans on the App Store start at $9.90/month with a 7-day free trial. SMS is billed separately. Pricing as of October 2026; check the listing for current rates.

Which channels can Notify Me! send alerts through?

Email, SMS and web push (push goes through a connected PushOwl app). The Notify Me! site also mentions WhatsApp, which is billed per message like SMS.

Why isn’t the Notify me button showing on my sold-out product?

Check that the App Embed is enabled in your theme, that inventory tracking is on, that quantity is 0 or less, and that “Continue selling when out of stock” is off. The help center has a dedicated troubleshooting guide if those are all correct.

Can I send back in stock alerts manually?

Yes. Alerts send automatically when inventory reaches your threshold, but the docs also describe opening a request and clicking Manually Send, and resending notifications.

Can I move my subscribers from another back-in-stock app?

The help center explains how to import existing back-in-stock subscribers from a CSV file, and the Notify Me! site has a page about migrating from other apps.

Conclusion

Back in stock alerts on Shopify turn a sold-out page into a waiting list, and give you real demand data for your next order. With Notify Me!, the core setup is short: install, enable the App Embed, activate Back in Stock, choose your channels, customize the button and templates, set a sensible threshold and test it. Start on the free plan, watch your requests for a few weeks, and let that data guide both your plan choice and your restocking.