Shopify pre-order app – staff pick 2 years in a row
Launch new products
with a next-gen
Shopify pre-order system
You shouldn’t have to wait until stock hits your warehouse to sell your next product. Start capturing pre-orders to boost sales & demand.
Some of the brands
we’ve worked with:
Flexible Pre-orders
Choose between charge upfront, charge later, or partial payments (deposits). Discounts and max limits fully supported.
Customer Communication
Notify via custom front-end wording, email campaign and customer portals to keep customers informed.
Secure Revenue Earlier
Vaulted payment gateway tech to deliver a secure ‘charge later’ mechanism and boost cash flow.
Smart Fulfilment
Stop pre-orders from being prematurely shipped with fulfilment holds.
Precise Control or Automate
Manage pre-orders in detail on the individual pre-order level or opt in to our inventory based automations and set rules instead.
Take pre-orders earlier from your website with confidence
Charge when you want,
how you want
Charge in a way that suits your business whether that’s upfront, later or with partial payments (deposits). PreProduct lets brands capture pre-orders and cash flow for upcoming launches at any point in the new product cycle or supply chain.
This allows you to pre-sell, gauge demand & recoup cash quicker in a way that all stakeholders feel comfortable with. Join hundreds of merchants collectively taking millions of dollars in pre-orders each month.
“PreProduct is the greatest Shopify pre-order app if you need to have the ability to pre-book out of stock items without having to charge customers until the product actually ships. It lets you determine interest before committing to production and/or financing. Highly recommended!”
– H-street review
Communicate to shoppers and sell earlier without added customer service
Keep Shopify pre-order
customers in the loop
Maintain customer loyalty whilst letting shoppers purchase items on pre-order. Communicate via custom front-end wording, customer portals and email campaign. Letting PreProduct handle pre-order communication from when the customer places their order, ensures your customer support team stays happy and unburdened by sales of pre-order products.
Need to update the estimated shipping date for a listing? Send out an update email and let customers know they can check their pre-order portal at any time for reassurance and confirmation.
“Run, don’t walk and install PreProduct! We’ve been a very long time looking for the perfect pre-order app and can happily report we’ve found it! The deferred payment options and flexibility are absolute game changers, and better yet – the support and service”
– Accurascale review
Powerful management and control of your Shopify pre-orders
Seamless flows with your platform & fulfilment
Monitor and interact with pre-orders in their own dedicated system as well as your Shopify/platform admin. PreProduct places fulfilment holds on pre-order items automatically, so they won’t prematurely flow from your online store through to fulfilment.
Once ready to fulfil, you can trigger charges to collect payment and release fulfilment on the listing or customer level. Alternatively, opt-in to our auto-charge automation which will do this for you, depending on stock added in your Shopify admin.
Get the Shopify App
“Glad I went for this pre-order app. Very flexible and well thought out functionality. Also the customer service is some of the best I’ve experienced – friendly and highly responsive.”
– Dory review
5 stars in the Shopify Appstore
Pricing
Shopify pre-order pricing
Growth
For individuals and small sized brands
$19.99
USD / month
+0.5% of paid pre-order revenue
Take me to the Shopify App Store – 7 day free trial
Take pre-orders from your e-commerce/Shopify storefront
Unlimited pre-order listings
Charge customers upfront, later or via deposit
Customise pre-order front-end & email campaign
Customer portals
Plus
For small to medium sized brands
$59.99
USD / month
+0% commission on up to 5k of monthly paid pre-order revenue, then 0.5% afterwards.
Take me to the Shopify App Store – 7 day free trial
All of Growth features
Listing Manager automation access
API access
Priority support
Platinum Plus
For medium to large sized brands
$159.99
USD / month
+0% commission
Take me to the Shopify App Store – 7 day free trial
Our top plan with all the features
Developer support (2 hour p/m quota)
0% commission
Shopify Pre-order FAQ
Start by visiting the Shopify app store and installing a pre-order app like PreProduct. Once added to your Shopify store, you’ll see info on the ‘setup’ screen on how to add our app block to your store.
Once you’ve done the above, you can list products for pre-order in the app. In PreProduct, this is done by clicking the “Create listing” option in PreProduct’s main menu.
How do you start listing pre-orders on Shopify?
Absolutely. PreProduct can be set up to use your native store’s add-to-cart button for pre-orders. (we have a doc here).
PreProduct will dynamically manage the button, spotting when it should be in pre-order mode. Allowing your store’s native form to be taken over when PreProduct isn’t required.
Can I use my own cart button for pre-orders?
There are various pre-order apps available, each offering different functionality. Some are as simple as swapping your button’s text to say “pre-order”, others are more ambitious like PreProduct.
PreProduct is designed with a focus on flexible charging methods, customer communication, and flows with your platform. Ultimately what the term ‘great app’ means to you will depend on your business.
What kinds of pre-order apps are there?
Absolutely. PreProduct can be set up to use your native store’s add-to-cart button for pre-orders. (we have a doc here).
PreProduct will dynamically manage the button, spotting when it should be in pre-order mode. Allowing your store’s native form take over when PreProduct isn’t required.
Can I use my own cart button for pre-orders?
Using a platform or app’s pre-order feature, means merchants can assess interest in a new product before stock arrives. If you’ve chosen charge-later as a pre-order option, you don’t have to trigger the pre-order charge, you can simply cancel the individual pre-orders. This helps in de-risking investments and testing average order value, whilst ensuring you’re selling products that your customers want.
How to gauge demand and de-risk by using pre-orders?
While PreProduct offers out-of-the box functionality for the front-end and back-end, if your business has specific needs, you can hide a lot of PreProduct’s default behaviour and just make use of it’s back-end.
Building a custom pre-order solution that takes advantage of features like partial pay, exclusive discounts and payment gateway integrations would be a large undertaking and depend on the platform and developer resources of your business.
Can I build my own custom pre-order solution?
After installing the app in question from the Shopify app store, navigate to the Shopify apps section, and click into the app dashboard in your Shopify admin. Here, you can set up pre-order listings, choose when to charge customers (upfront, later, or partial pay via deposit), set discounts, a deposit price and any other details.
Taking pre-orders on Shopify is then just a matter of driving qualified traffic to pages containing your pre-order products. PreProduct will let customers buy products, even though they are out of stock in the Shopify product admin by toggling the “continue selling when out of stock” option.
How to set up pre-orders with a Shopify app?
Yes, our Shopify pre-order system lets you take pre-orders without a fixed ship date. You can notify your customers before they pay/mid-campaign when you have a definite shipping date.
It’s worth being transparent before customers purchase in your pre-sale, making sure to customize front-end wording via the app, so that customers note the complete sales conditions.
Can I still offer a pre-order if I’m not sure when my product will ship?
Our app integrates with Shopify checkout, enabling pre-orders to pass through just like regular orders. You can set it up to charge immediately or delay the payment until you’re ready to ship.
Pre-orders on Shopify either need positive stock levels or the “continue selling when out of stock” box ticked. PreProduct automatically manages the latter for you when you have an active listing in the app.
How do I allow products on pre-order to pass through my checkout?
The pre-order campaign starts when you list an out-of-stock or upcoming product for pre-order. It goes through the phases of collecting pre-orders, updating customers via an email campaign or customer portal, and finally charging and releasing fulfilment (when the customers pay the business) once the inventory is available.
What is the pre-order campaign life cycle?
With PreProduct, you can either add our native Shopify block via the customize editor, or alternatively add our snippet directly into your theme. Once you create a pre-order product listing in PreProduct, a pre-order button will replace the standard ‘add to cart’ button on your website, allowing customers to pay for pre-orders.
Like some other apps, PreProduct supplies a default pre-order button out of the box. However, you can tell PreProduct to use your native Shopify store button too.
How to add a pre-order button on Shopify?
After a customer clicks the pre-order button, they’ll be redirected to your cart or checkout (depending on your settings) with any pre-order discounts applied, they’ll then be able to see the pre-order terms and any other additional information before clicking to purchase.
If the pre-order uses deferred-charge, a deposit amount will be payed upfront, then their payment details are saved securely with Shopify or your payment provider. You can then decide when to charge them based on your set criteria.
If the product was a charge-upfront pre-order, the card will be charged straight away. (fulfilment holds will prevent premature shipping)
What happens after a customer clicks pre order?
The discount is ‘locked in’ to the individual orders, meaning previous discounts can not be changed but future customers will pay according to the new discount.
Can I change the discount?
Absolutely. Should any changes arise in your supply chain, you can update the estimated shipping statement in PreProduct (other apps usually support this too). It’s then up to you whether you’d like to communicate these changes via an email update or just rely on the customer portal being updated.
Changes to pre-order shipping statements is quite common. You can start pre-order campaigns earlier and capture more sales, we would just recommend using charge-later or partial pay pre-orders if you think the shipping times could blow out. (as customers could be less forgiving if they pay the full amount upfront)
Can I change my shipping date?
Fulfilment holds are a feature that prevent line items from pre-order sales from being prematurely shipped to shoppers. When an item is on pre-order, a hold in the Shopify orders admin (or on PreProduct’s side if non-Shopify) ensures it doesn’t proceed to your platform’s shipping integrations until it’s available and any payment from customers has been taken.
If a customers card fails and they can’t pay the full price, the fulfilment hold won’t be released for the pre-order item.
What are fulfilment holds?
Yes, we can add banners on your collection page (often to one side or next to the price). A banner will explain the sales situation to customers before they visit the product page (only appearing when the product is a pre-order item).
Can I display a pre-order banner on my product images?
Yes, you can tell PreProduct to ‘force’ a redirect to checkout which will load with just the pre-order items attached. (doc here on preventing customers from mixing preorder items and non-preorder items)
Can I stop mixed orders of pre-order and buy-now items?
Yep, we have a quick-start video on Shopify pre-orders here.