What to Do With Out-of-Stock Products on Shopify

An out-of-stock product on Shopify is any product or variant whose tracked inventory has reached zero. By default, customers can no longer buy it at that point, although the product page stays live.

What you do next decides whether that shopper waits for you or buys from someone else. You can leave the product as sold out, collect emails for a restock alert, take backorders, open a preorder, or take the page out of the store. Each fits a different stock situation. Shopify covers only part of that list on its own.

In this guide, you’ll learn what Shopify does when stock hits zero, how to choose between the options, how to set up restock alerts and preorders, and which mistakes cost the most sales.

What happens when a product sells out on Shopify?

Shopify stops accepting orders for an item once its inventory reaches zero. That only applies to products with Inventory tracked switched on. Products with tracking off are never counted, so they never sell out. A store that skipped inventory setup can oversell without any warning.

You can override that with Continue selling when out of stock, found in the Inventory section of a product or variant in your Shopify admin. It works only while Inventory tracked is on. According to the Shopify Help Center, the setting suits preorders, incoming stock and untracked quantities. It adds no message to the page, so a shopper has no sign that the item ships later.

The setting also has limits outside the online store. It does not apply to Shopify POS, where staff can sell at zero after a warning. With several locations, the online store looks at the location that fulfills online orders. If that location is at zero, the item shows as out of stock online even when another location holds stock.

Should you hide an out-of-stock product?

Usually not. A sold-out page that stays Active keeps its search visibility and can still collect restock signups. Shopify does offer several ways to take a product out of view. Each treats the URL differently. The table below shows what each does to your search traffic and to shoppers who already have the link.

Checked October 2026 against the Shopify Help Center pages on product status and URL redirects.

The right choice depends on where the product is headed. If it is coming back, keep it Active and show Sold out. If it is gone for good, redirect the URL to the closest replacement. Unlisted suits a product where people with an existing link should still reach the page. It will not appear on Google.

Which option fits your situation?

Each option suits a different stock situation, from a product that is discontinued to one you can sell before the stock lands. The table pairs each option with the situation it fits and its main risk.

Two of those options, preorder and backorder, are easy to confuse. A preorder (see our complete guide to preorders in ecommerce) sells a product that has not arrived or launched yet. A backorder sells a product that was in stock and has sold through. Both run on the same Continue selling setting. The difference is what you tell the shopper. A preorder states a date, and a backorder usually states a delay.

The restock date is only part of the decision. Also consider whether your supplier has delivered on time before and whether you want payment before the stock arrives. If the date is confirmed and the supplier has a track record, preorder. If you only expect stock soon, collect emails. If the product is not returning, send shoppers to a replacement.

How to set up a back-in-stock notification

A back-in-stock notification is an email or message that goes to a shopper once a sold-out product has stock again. Shopify has no built-in notify-me form for shoppers, so you either assemble the pieces yourself or use an app.

The manual route works for an occasional stockout. Add an email form to the sold-out product page and collect the addresses in a spreadsheet. Then set up a Flow workflow on the back-in-stock trigger to tell you when to write to them. Once you restock popular variants regularly, the copy-and-paste step becomes the bottleneck.

An app can handle the form, the email list and the sending in one place, which removes most of that manual work. TA Preorder & Back In Stock, for example, adds a Notify Me button to sold-out products and stores the shopper’s email against that variant. When inventory returns, it sends the alert automatically. For a launch or a planned restock, you can send the alerts manually instead.

The storefront rules are the same whichever tool you use. Show the button only on variants that are unavailable, in the spot where the cart button normally sits. That way a shopper never sees it next to an Add to cart button that works. The email should name the product and link straight to it, because an alert that lands on the homepage sends the shopper searching again.

Test the flow before you rely on it. Before a holiday launch, set one variant to zero, submit your own address through the form, then add stock and confirm the alert arrives.

How to take preorders and backorders

If you want to keep selling after stock hits zero, Shopify handles the ordering and leaves the messaging to you. To take a preorder or backorder, turn on Inventory tracked, then select Continue selling when out of stock on the product or variant. Shopify then accepts orders past zero. A preorder button and a ship date tell shoppers what to expect.

Shopify has no built-in Pre-order button, so that second half needs an app or theme code. Without it, the product page still reads as a normal purchase and customers assume the item ships now. Apps add the button, show the ship date under it, and can take a deposit instead of the full price.

The scope of the setting controls how much you can oversell. Turn on Continue selling per variant instead of across the catalog. Every variant you switch on becomes orderable at any quantity, including ones you cannot restock.

Payment and ship date still need a decision. Full payment at checkout is simplest, while a deposit lowers the commitment for expensive items. Shipping rules differ by country. Our Shopify preorder policy guide covers them in full.

Further reading How to Set Up Preorders on Shopify (With and Without an App) The step-by-step setup for a preorder button, ship date, and deposit.

How to set up a sold-out product page

A sold-out page should tell the shopper when the product is back, what they can do now, and what else fits. What you show depends on whether you know the restock date and whether the product is returning at all.

Out of stock with no restock date

Put the Notify Me form where the cart button normally sits, and say plainly that there is no date yet. Below it, link one or two similar products that are in stock, ideally in the same category and price band. The visit can then still end in a sale.

Out of stock with a reliable restock plan

State the date next to the button, even if it is only a month. If you can fulfill the orders and want payment up front, add a preorder button. If fulfillment is uncertain, keep the Notify Me form and show the expected date beside it. Check that the app blocks mixed carts, so a preorder and an in-stock item do not ship together by mistake.

Discontinued

Skip the Notify Me form, since no alert will ever send. Redirect the URL to the closest replacement, or keep the page Active with links to alternatives if it still earns traffic.

What to measure

To see whether the page and the alerts are producing orders, track these ratios. Notify Me signup rate is signups divided by views of the sold-out page. Alert click-through rate is clicks divided by alerts sent. Orders after restock is the number of purchases that come from those alerts. Check whether your app reports these. If it does not, a spreadsheet and your Shopify analytics cover the first and third.

How to choose an out-of-stock app

The comparison below includes apps from several developers, Tech Arms among them, assessed against the same criteria: free-plan limits, the cheapest paid plan, and whether the app takes deposits.

Volume decides most of the cost, so the free-plan limits and entry prices in the table matter first. A store that sends 500 restock alerts a month stays on a free plan only where the cap is above that. The paid entry prices differ by almost four times.

Checked October 2026 on each app’s Shopify App Store listing.

At 500 alerts a month, Essent’s $4.95 Lite plan covers you with room to spare. Notify! needs its $9.90 Kickstart plan, and Amp starts at $19. TA Preorder & Back In Stock lists as free, but its listing publishes no plan limits. Confirm what a high-volume store gets before you rely on it.

TA fits when you want preorders with deposits, Notify Me forms and automatic back-in-stock alerts in one app. It also suits a store that wants to start without a paid plan. Its weak spots are sample size and track record. 32 reviews is the smallest base in the table, and it launched in August 2025, against 2024 for Essent, 2020 for Notify! and 2011 for Amp. If review volume and years in market matter most to you, the older apps have been tested across more stores and edge cases.

Price and reviews do not show how an app behaves day to day, so check a few things before installing. Look at whether alerts send automatically or need a manual push, whether it blocks mixed carts, and whether it works with your email tool.

For a ranked look at preorder tools specifically, see our comparison of the best Shopify preorder apps

Mistakes to avoid

Once a sold-out product has a plan, the errors that remain come from the same few places: removing a page that should stay up, applying a setting too widely, promising a date without checking it, and forgetting to switch something off after the restock.

Moving a returning product to Draft or deleting it removes the page. The URL returns a 404, so every backlink and search result pointing at it dead-ends. Keep the page Active and sold out unless the product is gone for good. If it is, redirect it.

Switching on Continue selling across the catalog lets every item sell at any quantity. Apply it per variant, only where you have stock on the way.

Publishing a ship date you cannot hold leads to refund requests. Add buffer to the supplier’s estimate before you publish it, and email customers the day the date slips.

If you leave the preorder button on after the restock, it keeps taking preorders for stock that is already on your shelf. Those orders ship later than they could. Turn the campaign off when inventory lands.

Final thoughts

Start with how reliable your restock is. A confirmed date from a supplier you trust supports a preorder, and an expected restock supports a notification form. A discontinued product needs a redirect or a link to a replacement. Shopify supplies the inventory switch, while the button, the date and the alerts come from an app.