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.
⚡ TL;DR: K1 PreOrder Now & Deposit is our overall winner — the only app in this roundup that automates deposits, installments, and balance collection on flat, fee-free pricing. Timesact brings the biggest community and white-glove onboarding, PreOrder Globo is the best flat-price value, Prequik is the budget pick, and Amai offers unlimited volume on every plan.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:
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.
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Bottom line: if pre-orders are a revenue channel rather than a cosmetic button swap, this is the strongest toolset of 2026.
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.
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Bottom line: the safest crowd-pleaser in the category — as long as you model what your real order volume will actually cost.
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.
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Bottom line: the best price-to-coverage ratio here — if manual balance collection fits your volume.
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.
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Bottom line: the budget pick — ideal for validating pre-orders before committing to a heavier tool.
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.
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Bottom line: worth a careful trial if you need unlimited volume on a Basic-plan store — test billing and mobile rendering first.
| App | Rating | Free plan | Starting price | Deposits & balance automation | Extra fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| K1 PreOrder Now & Deposit | 5.0 (36) | ✅ | $9.99/mo flat | ✅ Deposits + automatic balance capture | None |
| Preorder Now Presale Timesact | 5.0 (1,970) | ✅ 20 orders/mo | $5/mo Flex | ✅ Deposits & split (paid plans), manual balance | $0.2–0.3/order over Flex limits |
| PreOrder Globo | Back in Stock | 4.9 (1,851) | ✅ first 20 presale | $9.90/mo | ⚠️ Partial only, manual balance | None |
| Prequik | PQ | 4.9 (507) | ❌ | $7.99/mo | ⚠️ Partial only | None |
| Amai PreOrder Manager + Notify | 4.2 (484) | ❌ | $12.95/mo | ⚠️ Split only, manual balance | None |
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.
Not in most setups — you need an app. K1 and Timesact support true deposits; Globo, Prequik, and Amai handle partial or split payments.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.