Top 5 Shopify Pre-Order Apps in 2026: Turn Stockouts Into Revenue

Every e-commerce brand knows the feeling: a product takes off, inventory hits zero, and the traffic you paid for starts bouncing off an "Out of stock" label. That's not a supply problem — it's a revenue recovery problem. A pre-order app closes the gap: shoppers commit (and often pay) today, and you ship when stock lands.

What actually matters in a pre-order app

Shopify's pre-order category is crowded, and the real differences hide in the fine print. In our comparison, four things separated the winners from the rest:

1. Money mechanics. Taking a deposit is easy; collecting the remaining balance weeks later is where most apps quietly hand the work back to you.
2. True cost at scale. Per-order surcharges and volume caps tend to activate exactly when a campaign succeeds — always model your real order volume against the pricing page.
3. Cart behavior. Mixed carts (in-stock + pre-order items together) break more launches than any other single issue.
4. Evidence over marketing. All ratings and review counts below were verified on the Shopify App Store in September 2026, and we weighed recurring themes in recent merchant reviews over vendor claims.

1. K1 PreOrder Now & Deposit

• Rating: 5.0 ★ (36 reviews) · Built for Shopify
• Pricing: free plan; paid from $9.99/mo — flat tiers, zero transaction fees
• Best for: brands that treat pre-orders as managed cash flow

Most pre-order apps stop working at the "Pre-order" button. K1 is built around what happens to the money afterwards: deposits, split payments, and automated collection of every outstanding balance. Pre-orders switch on per product, variant, or collection, each with its own payment model — full payment, a fixed deposit or percentage, or scheduled installments.

The dedicated dashboard is the differentiator: every open pre-order with amount paid, balance due, and next charge date, plus one-click or bulk charge, reschedule, refund, and card-update requests. A customer portal lets buyers track their own pre-orders and payments, and Smart Cart Inventory Allocation — unique in the category — splits mixed carts automatically, so in-stock units ship now while pre-order units follow their own payment and fulfillment schedule.

Pros:

• Deposits, percentages, and installment schedules per product, variant, or collection
• The only app in this roundup with automated balance capture and a pre-orders money dashboard
• Native mixed-cart splitting and a self-service customer portal
• Custom email flows for every stage, Shopify Flow automation, multilingual widgets
• Flat pricing with no per-order or transaction fees; support fixes typically land within hours

Cons:

• No back-in-stock alerts yet (planned as a separate K1 app) and no countdown timers on the widget
• Complex Shopify Markets setups are worth validating case by case

Bottom line: if pre-orders are a revenue channel rather than a cosmetic button swap, this is the strongest toolset of 2026.

2. Preorder Now Presale Timesact

• Rating: 5.0 ★ (1,970 reviews) · Built for Shopify
• Pricing: free for 20 orders/mo; Flex plans from $5/mo + $0.2–0.3 per order above the limit; Fixed plans $23–$117/mo depending on your Shopify plan
• Best for: stores that want the most battle-tested option and hands-on onboarding

Timesact has the biggest active fan base in the category — nearly two thousand reviews holding a 5.0 average — and support famously includes free guided video onboarding calls. The toolkit is broad: pre-orders and backorders for both D2C and B2B, partial and split payments, $0-down pre-orders with card vaulting, automatic pre-order discounts, countdown timers, order tagging, and back-in-stock waitlists.

Activation is unusually flexible — by inventory level, by date, or by product tag, which is handy if your merchandising already runs on tags. Notification emails are unlimited even on the free tier (with Timesact branding), Klaviyo is supported out of the box, SMS alerts start at $0.02 per message, and higher tiers add charge-on-fulfillment and storewide automatic back-in-stock.

Pros:

• Largest review base in the niche at a perfect 5.0; white-glove video onboarding
• Deposits, split payments, and $0-down pre-orders (on paid plans)
• Generous free tier: 20 orders/mo with unlimited notification emails
• Tag-, date-, and inventory-based activation; Klaviyo and SMS support

Cons:

• Pricing takes a spreadsheet: Flex plans add $0.2–0.3 for every order above small included limits, while Fixed plans mirror your Shopify tier — $23/mo on Basic but $117/mo on Plus for the same features
• Deposits and split payments are paid-plan features; the free tier carries app branding
• No consolidated balance dashboard — collecting outstanding money means working order by order

Bottom line: the safest crowd-pleaser in the category — as long as you model what your real order volume will actually cost.

3. PreOrder Globo | Back in Stock

• Rating: 4.9 ★ (1,851 reviews) · Built for Shopify
• Pricing: free for the first 20 presale orders; Lite $9.90/mo (100 presale/mo), PRO $19.90/mo (unlimited presale)
• Best for: pre-orders plus restock alerts at a flat, predictable price

On the market since 2017, Globo bundles two jobs into one app: pre-orders and back-in-stock notifications. Pre-order rules can be driven by inventory or by a schedule with start and end dates; partial payments pair with automatic discounts; each product can show a custom delivery note under the button; and sold-out items get a "Notify me" flow with batched restock emails.

For the price, integrations are unusually wide — Shopify Flow, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, HubSpot — and the storefront widget ships in six languages. PRO at $19.90/mo with unlimited presale orders is one of the cheapest uncapped plans in the entire category.

Pros:

• Excellent value: unlimited presale orders at $19.90/mo with no per-order fees
• Pre-orders and restock alerts in one subscription
• Partial payments with automatic discounts, scheduled campaigns, automatic order tagging
• Broad integrations and a six-language widget

Cons:

• Partial payments start only from the Lite tier; the free plan covers just the first 20 presale orders total
• No automatic capture of remaining balances — you chase them manually, with no payment dashboard
• Restock emails stay capped (5,000/mo) even on PRO

Bottom line: the best price-to-coverage ratio here — if manual balance collection fits your volume.

4. Prequik — PreOrder Now & Pre order | PQ

• Rating: 4.9 ★ (507 reviews)
• Pricing: no free plan; $7.99/mo (60 pre-orders) → $14.99 (150) → $24.99 (350) → $49.99 unlimited; 7-day trial
• Best for: getting a pre-order campaign live in minutes on a small budget

The youngest app on this list (2023) earns its 4.9 rating on simplicity: pre-order, backorder, or coming-soon modes per product, scheduled pre-order windows, urgency timers and badges, and inventory-level automation. Partial payments and pre-order discounts are included even on the cheapest plan — rare at $7.99.

Setup genuinely takes minutes, and reviewers consistently single out the live-chat support for hands-on help — often configuring the widget directly on the merchant's theme.

Pros:

• Lowest realistic entry price in the roundup, with partial payments included from $7.99
• Coming-soon pages, scheduled windows, and urgency timers out of the box
• Fast setup and highly rated live-chat support

Cons:

• No free plan; hard volume caps on every tier below $49.99 (60–350 pre-orders/mo)
• English-only interface and almost no third-party integrations
• No deposit automation, deferred capture, or balance tracking beyond your order list

Bottom line: the budget pick — ideal for validating pre-orders before committing to a heavier tool.

5. Amai PreOrder Manager + Notify

• Rating: 4.2 ★ (484 reviews)
• Pricing: no free plan; $12.95–$89.95/mo depending on your Shopify plan; 14-day trial
• Best for: unlimited pre-orders with launch-calendar features on established stores

One of the oldest players in the niche (since 2015), Amai takes the "everything included" approach: every plan gets unlimited pre-orders, back-in-stock notifications, coming-soon calendars, countdown timers, location-based pre-orders, and split payments. Integrations cover Shopify Flow, Klaviyo, Omnisend, PageFly, and Zipify.

The catch is the pricing model: cost follows your Shopify plan while the feature set stays identical — $12.95/mo on Basic becomes $89.95/mo on Plus. And the 4.2 rating is the lowest in this roundup, with 12% of reviews at one star; recent complaints mention billing disputes and mobile display bugs, so use the 14-day trial deliberately.

Pros:

• Unlimited pre-orders on every tier — no volume math at all
• Widest bundled feature set: calendars, timers, locations, restock alerts, split payments
• Mature app with broad integrations

Cons:

• Lowest rating here (4.2, 12% one-star); recent billing and mobile-rendering complaints
• The same features cost roughly 7× more on Shopify Plus than on Basic
• No free plan

Bottom line: worth a careful trial if you need unlimited volume on a Basic-plan store — test billing and mobile rendering first.

Side-by-side: the numbers

How to choose

Start with your payment model, not the feature lists. If you only ever take full payment upfront, almost any app here will do the job — pick by price and support. Prequik at $7.99 is the cheapest serious start, and Globo adds restock alerts for barely more.

If you take deposits or installments, the shortlist shrinks to two: Timesact (deposits and split payments on paid plans, with balances handled order by order) and K1 (deposits plus automated balance capture and a dedicated money dashboard). At meaningful volume, that automation is the difference between a revenue channel and an accounts-receivable chore.

Whatever you pick, run one test order with a mixed cart before launch — it's the single most common failure point in pre-order setups.

FAQ

Can Shopify take pre-order deposits without an app?

Not in most setups — you need an app. K1 and Timesact support true deposits; Globo, Prequik, and Amai handle partial or split payments.

Deposits vs. partial payments — what's the difference?

A deposit vaults the customer's card and charges the remaining balance later, ideally automatically; a partial payment simply splits the price and leaves collection timing — and the follow-up work — to you. In this roundup, only K1 automates the second charge end to end.

Do any of these apps take a cut of sales?

None of the five charges a percentage of pre-order revenue. Model usage costs instead: Timesact's Flex plans add $0.2–0.3 per order above included limits, and Prequik and Globo Lite cap monthly volume by tier.

What happens when a cart mixes in-stock and pre-order items?

This is where many setups break. K1 splits mixed carts natively — in-stock items ship immediately, pre-order items keep their own schedule. Timesact warns the shopper with a mixed-cart alert; with the others, test the flow before launch.

How do I keep pre-order cancellations low?

Set expectations early: show the expected ship date under the pre-order button (all five apps support a custom note) and repeat it in the confirmation email. Unclear dates are the #1 driver of pre-order cancellations.

Final thoughts

An out-of-stock page is just demand with nowhere to go, and any app on this list can capture it — the difference is how much work you inherit afterwards. For a $7.99 experiment, Prequik will prove the model. For pre-orders as a real, prepaid sales channel — deposits, installments, and automatic balance collection included — K1 PreOrder Now & Deposit is the pick of 2026: flat pricing, zero transaction fees, and a 5.0-star rating earned on exactly this workflow.