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Three types of app that get mixed up

Search the App Store for a low stock alert app and you get three different kinds of product back. Installing the wrong kind is the most common mistake merchants make here.

1. Apps that alert your own team

These tell you when stock is running down, by email or Slack, with thresholds, locations and a list of recipients. This is the kind of app this page is about. Stockwell is one of them, alongside apps such as Stockbot, Stockie, LSA Low Stock Alert, Merchbees and iAlert.

2. Back in stock apps

These tell your customers when a sold out item comes back. Completely different job. Worth having, but it wins back a sale you already lost rather than stopping you losing it. Do not install one of these expecting alerts for your own team.

3. Full inventory systems

Purchase orders, suppliers, forecasting and sometimes syncing stock across sales channels. Apps such as Assisty, Sumtracker, Prediko, Qoblex and Fabrikator sit here and they usually include alerts as one feature among many. The right answer if you need all of that. Expensive if the alert was all you wanted.

What the four alerting apps cost

A price snapshot rather than a ranking. These are four apps from the first category above, the ones whose listings publish enough detail to line up. Figures read on 3 September 2026. The entry paid plan is the row that matters, because it is where most stores land. The four apps do not price the same thing: the SKU allowance, the number of locations covered and the number of people who can receive an alert all move independently.

Two things stand out. Stockwell has the most generous free plan, at 500 SKUs against Bee's 250. Stockwell also gives the most SKUs per dollar on its entry plan, at 15,000 for $4.99. We build Stockwell, so read both of those next to the reviews column, where we are the only app on the table with nothing to show.

What each one actually does

Prices only mean something next to what they buy. Where a cell says not advertised, the capability is absent from that app's listing, which is not the same as it being absent from the product. Where a feature exists but is gated behind a higher plan, the price of that plan is in the cell.

Slack is where the plan boundaries differ most. Bee and Stockie both put Slack on their Advanced plan, at $11.99 and $9.99. StockAlert advertises Slack without naming a plan. Stockwell posts the daily summary to Slack on the free plan. Instant Slack alerts sit behind the same $4.99 line as instant email, so with us Slack costs exactly what email costs. You connect one channel from Settings and Slack's own dialog picks it, so there is no bot to invite.

The two variant rows are worth reading together, because they are easy to conflate. Every app here alerts on each variant separately: if the medium runs down while the large sits full, only the medium alerts. All four also let each variant carry its own number, so neither row separates them.

Which one fits which store

Read this as four honest recommendations rather than a ranking. The apps are genuinely aimed at different stores.

Pick Bee if you want to grow into forecasting

Bee's entry plan is an alerting app like ours, at $5.99 for 8,000 SKUs. Its higher tiers add forecasting and ABC reports, so you can move up without switching apps. It also carries one of the two largest review counts on this list, which counts for something on a decision like this.

Pick Stockie if you want the whole inventory system

Purchase orders, suppliers, forecasting and alerts in one app. If you are replacing Stocky in full rather than replacing its low stock report, this is the shape of tool you are looking for. Eight thousand variants on the $4.99 plan is a lot of headroom.

Pick StockAlert if you want reorder points calculated for you

Its entry plan is the priciest here at $7.99 for two hundred variants at one location, so it only makes sense on a short list of products. What it buys you above that is Smart Mode, which sets reorder points from sales history rather than leaving you to work the number out.

Pick Stockwell if you want one job done and evidence it happened

We do alerts. Not purchase orders, not forecasting, not suppliers. Fifteen thousand SKUs and every one of your locations for $4.99, by email or Slack, with a record of every alert we sent and when. That last part is the only row in the table above where every other column is empty. It is the reason we built the app.

Six questions to ask before you install

Every app here advertises low stock alerts. These six questions bring out the differences you would otherwise discover two months after installing.

1. Can each SKU have its own threshold?

The most important question of the six. One number for the whole store warns you too late on fast sellers and all day long on slow ones, which is exactly how alerts end up muted. If the app only does store wide numbers, it will stop working for you as your catalog grows.

2. Is each location checked on its own?

This only matters if you hold stock in more than one place. Then it matters completely. An app that adds your locations together will tell you everything is fine while one site sits empty.

3. How many email addresses does the plan allow?

Alerts that reach one person fail every time that person is on holiday. The number of addresses is very often what separates the price tiers, so check it against how many people actually need to know.

4. Instant alerts, a daily summary, or both?

Instant alerts catch sudden drops. A daily summary catches the slow drain and shows you everything running low in one place. Most stores want both. On plenty of apps, ours included, instant alerts are a paid feature while the daily summary is free.

5. What happens when stock sits right on the threshold?

Nobody advertises this and it gets annoying fast. Stock crossing your number back and forth can email you again and again about one product. Ask whether the app stops repeating until the stock has genuinely recovered.

6. What access does it ask for?

An alerts app needs to read your products, your stock and your locations. It does not need your customer data, your order data or permission to change anything. Anything asking for more deserves a question.

What Stockwell does and where it loses

Stockwell only does the first of the three. A threshold per SKU, every location checked on its own, several email addresses, instant alerts, a daily summary and a history of what was sent. The free plan covers 500 SKUs with one address and the daily summary. Instant alerts and per location checking are on the paid plans.

Where it loses, gathered in one place so you do not have to reverse engineer it from the tables:

• No reviews yet. The app is new. The other three have between one and one hundred twenty five. Weigh that however you weigh it.
• No purchase orders, suppliers or forecasting. Nor stock counts, barcode scanning or stock synced across sales channels. We do none of that and we are not planning to. If that is what you came for, one of the full systems above is the honest answer.

Before you install anything

The figures on this page were accurate on 3 September 2026 and they will drift, because four companies change their pricing on their own schedule and none of them tells us. A few minutes of checking beats trusting a page written by a competitor.

1. Try Shopify Flow first if you are on a paid plan. It is free and it might be all you need. Knowing exactly why it is not enough for you is the best preparation there is for choosing an app.
2. Count your variants and the people who need the email. Shopify admin gives you the variant count. Nearly every plan boundary on this page is a SKU count or a recipient count, so knowing both turns four pricing pages into one number each.
3. Open the listing and read the plan you would actually buy, not the one at the top of the page. Every app name in the first table links to its own listing. Pricing sits under the Pricing tab and it is the only version that counts.
4. Check the location limits if you run more than one. It is the constraint that surprises people, because it is not what any of these apps lead with.
5. Test it on one product before switching it on across the whole catalog.

If the internal alert is what you need

Stockwell does that one job: a threshold per SKU, every location checked on its own and alerts that reach your whole team. Free plan for 500 SKUs, no card needed.

Get it on the Shopify App Store Free plan covers 500 SKUs with a daily summary. Paid plans add instant alerts and more recipients. No card needed to start.