Shopify is killing Stocky on Aug 31 and the native replacement drops the parts I cared about most, reorder suggestions and purchase orders. Shopify even confirmed those aren’t coming in 2026. The bigger paid apps and ERPs feel like overkill and got expensive.
For anyone who used Stocky: what did you actually use it for day to day, and what are you switching to? And honestly, if a simple tool did just the reorder suggestions plus an exportable PO and nothing else, would you pay something small for it, or just tough it out with the free native one?
Trying to figure out what people genuinely need before committing to a setup. Curious what everyone’s doing.
You’re definitely not the only one dealing with this right now. Most of the merchants I’ve spoken with didn’t use Stocky because it was a full inventory system—they used it because it made reordering straightforward and took some of the guesswork out of purchase orders.
The tricky part is that what seems like a simple “reorder suggestion” feature is actually driven by a lot of moving pieces behind the scenes: sales trends, supplier lead times, seasonality, inventory turnover, and stock coverage. That’s why many of the alternatives either feel too expensive or don’t quite solve the same problem.
Before jumping into a replacement, I’d look at what you’re actually relying on Stocky for day-to-day:
• Reorder recommendations?
• Purchase order creation?
• Supplier management?
• Multi-location inventory?
• Forecasting based on sales history?
The answers usually make it much clearer whether a merchant needs a dedicated inventory platform or just a lightweight solution to fill the gap.
I’m seeing some interesting trends among merchants preparing for the Stocky sunset, and the “best” replacement seems to depend heavily on store size and operational complexity.
Curious—roughly how many SKUs are you managing, and are you operating from a single location or multiple warehouses? That context would help narrow down the options considerably.
Hello there @erlenstoms
Mostly this is because many merchants used Stocky just for reorder recommendations and basic PO creation. A typical workaround is to work with Shopify inventory reports exported to Google Sheets with formulas for reorder points and turn approved restocks into draft orders or a PO template. Some also leverage Airtable to automate low stock alerts without the full ERP overhead. If a solution remained focused on just sugestions plus exportable POs I’d wager many merchants would fork over a very small monthly fee to stay clear of heavy systems.
Many sellers have already started moving from Stocky. Alternative depends on the needs, whether it’s forecasting, low-stock alerts, stock transfers, or more. Some tools offer features very similar to Stocky, and a few are even available for free like Channel Bay.
This is exactly the workflow I’m trying to understand better right now.
From what I’m seeing, the biggest gap does not seem to be “full inventory management” or another complex ERP-style tool. It seems to be the simple daily workflow Stocky covered for many merchants:
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know what needs to be reordered
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get a suggested reorder quantity
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create/export a purchase order
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receive the goods
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update inventory
For merchants affected by the Stocky sunset: would a focused tool that only solves reorder suggestions + simple POs + receiving be useful, or would that still not be enough?
Also curious: are most of you moving to another app, or are you falling back to spreadsheets and email for now?
I’m not selling anything here. I’m researching this workflow and trying to understand what merchants actually need before assuming a solution.
Hi @erlenstoms .
Yeah, this is a real simple recorder plus PO tool.
Most merchants don’t need a full ERP and would pay a small monthly fee for something focused.
Inventory Planner is the closet, but its pricy.
Disclosure, I make a barcode label app (LabelCraft), so I will speak to one slice of this and stay out of the reorder-forecasting debate. For the reorder and PO core, the names that come up most for Stocky refugees are the broader inventory suites (people mention Sumtracker, Fabrikator, Qoblex and a few others); worth trialing each against your real workflow. One thing that often gets unbundled in the move is label printing: Stocky printed barcode labels straight off a received PO, and a number of the replacements either skip that or treat it as an afterthought. If your new stack does not cover it, you can keep label printing as its own step (receive stock, then print barcodes from a label app). That is the niche my app fills, but the point holds whichever reorder tool you pick. Happy to compare notes once you have a shortlist.
Used Stocky mainly for reorder suggestions based on sales velocity and exportable POs, that covered the daily workflow for most people.
Switching to either native inventory + manual spreadsheer tracking or a smaller app focused just on reorder points/POs rather than a full ERP.
And yes, I’d pay a small amount for a tool that just did reorder suggestions plus an exportable PO. The native options missing reorder logic entirely is the main gap people want filled.
Before you pick a replacement: export your Stocky data NOW (some of it can’t be recovered later)
Whatever app you end up choosing, there’s one thing to do before August 31 that too few people mention:
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Export your purchase order history and inventory reports from Stocky as CSV while the export functions still work. After the shutdown, access
to historical data may be limited or gone.
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Your SUPPLIER data (contacts, lead times, minimum order quantities) has NO export function at all. If it only lives in Stocky, it disappears
forever on August 31. Open each supplier record and copy the details into a spreadsheet manually. Boring, but 30 minutes now saves you rebuilding
your supplier book from memory in September.
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Don’t count on the native admin to cover you: it does stock tracking, adjustments and transfers fine, but there are no purchase orders and no
reorder suggestions, and Shopify has confirmed those aren’t coming in 2026.
Full disclosure: I’m a developer and I’m building Restockmate, a deliberately simple Stocky replacement for retail stores. Just the reorder
suggestions > purchase orders > receiving loop, flat monthly price, no revenue-based fees, and it imports your Stocky CSV exports so you keep your
history. Early access opens in August, before the shutdown: restockmate.com
Even if you go with another app, do the export this week. And if you get stuck exporting your data, email me at hello@restockmate.com, happy to
help, free, no strings attached.
This is a solid starting point, and lumine’s pushback is the right one — a couple of things that helped me when I hit the same wall:
- Safety stock and the reorder POINT are two different jobs. The formula here sizes the buffer; it doesn’t tell you WHEN to act. Pair it with: reorder point = (avg daily sales x avg lead time) + safety stock. When on-hand crosses that number, it’s time to order — the safety stock is just the cushion baked into it.
- On lumine’s carrying-cost worry: the fix usually isn’t to drop the formula, it’s to apply it selectively. Run it on your A-items — the ~20% of SKUs that drive most of your revenue and hurt most when they’re out — and use a cruder flat buffer for the long tail. Holding “max lead time” worth of safety stock across your whole catalog is what ties up the cash; across your top 30 SKUs it’s cheap insurance.
- The variable most people under-weight is lead-time variability, not demand. In my experience most stockouts came from the supplier being late, not a demand spike. If your lead time swings from 12 to 25 days, that spread dominates the formula. Worth logging your last few POs’ actual arrival dates vs. what was promised — that “max lead time” number is often bigger than people assume.
For seasonal items the average-daily-sales input is the trap — I’d compute velocity off the comparable season last year rather than a trailing 30/60-day average, or the number lags the ramp every time.
Curious how others handle the seasonal SKUs specifically — do you recompute per season, or just widen the buffer and accept some overstock?