Essent Preorder Back in Stock Review (2026)25 Free, Then $4.95
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The plans are cheap until a launch works.
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 4 Oct 2026
| This tool | $4.95 | 3rd cheapest of 48 |
| Cheapest | $2.99 | MX AI |
| Median | $14.50 | |
| Most expensive | $450 | Attribuly |
Lowest paid entry price per account a month, billed monthly, in USD, among the 48 e-commerce growth apps we have researched (read between 2026-08-19 and 2026-10-04). Only tools priced in the same unit and on the same billing are compared — not a market survey, and cheapest is not best.
Four plans on the listing plus an unlimited plan mentioned on the top card, priced on two meters: pre-orders a month and back-in-stock notifications a month. Free covers 25 pre-orders and 300 back-in-stock notifications a month, with unlimited Notify me sign-ups, automated pre-orders and restock alerts, variant-level campaigns, full and partial payments, customisable buttons, forms and emails, and 24/7 support. Lite is $4.95 a month for 100 pre-orders and 1,000 notifications, and adds translations, a pre-order confirmation email sent from your own domain, scheduled pre-order campaigns, the Omnisend and Shopify Flow integrations and premium support.
Starter is $8.95 a month for 300 pre-orders and 2,500 notifications, and adds campaigns limited to specific markets and mixed-cart validation, with all features unlocked. Essentials is $24.95 a month for 500 pre-orders and 10,000 notifications, with priority support. Past the allowance each paid plan charges per use: $0.25 per extra pre-order on Lite, $0.20 on Starter and $0.10 on Essentials, and $1.00 per 100 extra notifications on all three.
The Essentials card adds that unlimited volume is available on a Professional plan at $59 a month. Paid plans carry a 14-day free trial. The listing does not say what happens on the free plan past 25 pre-orders. All charges are in USD; recurring and usage charges are billed through Shopify every 30 days. Developer Essential Apps, with an address in Vilnius, Lithuania; the listing gives a launch date of 22 November 2024 and shows 1,291 reviews, eleven of them at three stars or lower. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: E-commerce. Across the 34 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $19 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Essent Preorder Back in Stock’s entry price of $4.95 a month sits below that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Each paid plan has a monthly allowance and then charges per use: on Lite, the 101st pre-order in a month costs $0.25, and so does every one after it, so a drop that sells 300 pre-orders on Lite costs $4.95 plus $50 in overage. Starter at $8.95 would have covered those 300 without any. Restock alerts are metered the same way, at $1.00 per 100 past the allowance. Pick the plan on the size of the launch you are planning, not on an average month, and check the usage screen while a campaign runs.
The free plan's 25 pre-orders is enough to test the flow end to end, and the listing does not say what happens when a free store passes it. Two features stores often assume are basic sit higher up. Mixed-cart validation, which stops a shopper from putting an in-stock item and a pre-order item in one order, starts on Starter at $8.95, as do campaigns limited to specific markets. A pre-order confirmation email sent from your own domain and scheduled campaigns start on Lite.
The critical reviews are few but specific. A South African store six months in wrote in September 2025 that the app counts inventory across every location, so a store with stock in a physical shop cannot run pre-orders for its online warehouse alone; the developer replied in October 2025 that the request had gone to its development team. An Australian store wrote in June 2026 that after turning the app off with stock back in, its code stayed behind and blocked the checkout button for days; the developer replied after an internal investigation.
A US store in August 2025 reported unreliable email delivery and that the pre-order status did not appear on the customer's order confirmation. Earlier one-star reviews describe the app putting every product on pre-order instead of the chosen one, a discount lost when a shopper changed size or quantity, and an admin that would not load; the developer answered each by offering support. The long list of positive reviews deserves one note.
Several reviews were written within the first hour of use, and one UK merchant asked the developer to prompt for a review after three days rather than one hour. The app asks for broad access too: the data-access section lists viewing sensitive customer data and editing customers, products, orders, Shopify Functions and the online store. We have not installed the app.
What Essent Preorder Back in Stock does
Shopify pre-order and back-in-stock app: presale and made-to-order campaigns with deposits and split payments, a Notify me waitlist with automatic restock emails, mixed-cart rules and market targeting, with plans tiered by monthly pre-orders and notifications.
Size the plan on your biggest drop
The features barely change between the paid plans; the allowances do. Free covers 25 pre-orders and 300 restock alerts and already takes full and partial payments. Lite at $4.95 adds translations, your own sending domain for the confirmation email, scheduled campaigns and the Omnisend and Flow integrations, with 100 pre-orders. Starter at $8.95 adds mixed-cart validation and market-specific campaigns, with 300 pre-orders and every feature unlocked. Essentials at $24.95 raises the allowance to 500 and cuts the overage to $0.10.
For most stores Starter is the plan to start a real campaign on: four dollars more than Lite, three times the pre-orders, and the first plan that stops mixed carts, which is where pre-order fulfilment usually goes wrong. Work out the overage before a launch: on Lite, every pre-order past 100 costs $0.25, so Starter is cheaper as soon as a month passes about 116 pre-orders. Professional at $59 makes sense once a typical month runs well past 500.
How to actually use Essent Preorder Back in Stock
Install on the free plan and set up one pre-order campaign on a single product or variant. Place a test order end to end, including a partial payment if you plan to take deposits, and check what the customer's confirmation email says about the pre-order, since one reviewer found the status missing there. If you also sell from a physical shop, test the inventory rule before you announce anything: a reviewer reported that the app reads stock across all locations together.
Try a mixed cart with an in-stock item and a pre-order item; blocking that needs Starter. Add the Notify me form to sold-out products and send a test restock alert. Before a launch, estimate the pre-orders and alerts it will bring and move to the plan that covers them, because overage is charged per pre-order. If you remove the app later, check that the checkout button works on products back in stock.
Distilled from Essent Preorder Back in Stock's Shopify App Store listing, including its pricing table, feature list, data-access section and all reviews rated three stars or lower, read in a live browser on 4 October 2026; the vendor's pricing page at essential-apps.com/pricing, which lists no prices; our Timesact Preorder dossier (read 25 September 2026) for the comparison. We have not installed the app.
Essent Preorder Back in Stock vs Timesact Preorder, side by side
Each column shows the vendor’s own published entry price, read on the date shown. Entry prices can cover different services or units, so check what each one buys. We do not average them into a score.
Both names above are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. Neither changes what this table says.
The natural comparison is Timesact Preorder — Timesact Preorder is the closest app in our own dossiers. On our reading of 25 September 2026 Timesact's free plan covered 20 orders a month, its usage-based CORE Flexible plan started at $5 a month for 10 orders and $17 for 100, with $0.20 per order past the volume you pick, and its CORE Fixed plan covered unlimited orders for $23 a month on a Basic Shopify store, rising to $117 on Shopify Plus. Essent Preorder Back in Stock, read on 4 October 2026, gives 25 pre-orders and 300 restock alerts free, 100 pre-orders for $4.95 and 300 for $8.95, with unlimited volume on a $59 Professional plan. At low and medium volume Essent is the cheaper of the two; a Basic Shopify store that regularly passes a few hundred pre-orders a month pays less on Timesact's fixed plan. Both bundle back-in-stock alerts with pre-orders and take deposits..
Visit Essent Preorder Back in Stock →
Frequently asked questions
What does Essent Preorder Back in Stock cost?
Free covers 25 pre-orders and 300 back-in-stock notifications a month. Lite is $4.95 a month for 100 pre-orders, Starter $8.95 for 300 and Essentials $24.95 for 500, with a 14-day free trial; a Professional plan with unlimited volume is $59 a month. Read on the Shopify App Store on 4 October 2026.
What happens when I go over my plan's pre-orders?
On a paid plan you pay per extra pre-order: $0.25 on Lite, $0.20 on Starter and $0.10 on Essentials, plus $1.00 per 100 extra notifications. The listing does not say what happens on the free plan past 25.
Can the free plan take deposits?
Yes. The listing puts full and partial payments on the free plan. Mixed-cart validation and market-specific campaigns start on Starter.
What should I weigh before buying E-commerce software?
Check your platform and version specifically. Shopify support is close to universal in this category, while WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento and headless setups vary a lot, and 'supported' sometimes means a generic API rather than a maintained app. A listing in your own platform's app store, with recent reviews there, is a better signal than the vendor's logo wall.
Is this a hands-on review of Essent Preorder Back in Stock?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Read 2026-10-04 on apps.shopify.com/essential-pre-order, pricing table and data-access section; the vendor's own pricing page at essential-apps.com/pricing lists the apps but no prices.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
Others in this category
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This is our researched assessment — not a paid placement. The “Visit” links on this page are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you, and it never changes our take. How we review →