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28.7 % of pre-orders processed with PreProduct were taken as “capture-only” (ref: One Million Pre-orders report). It’s popular amongst our Japanese merchants, as well as hobby stores.

If you’ve ever eaten a surprise cost increase or watched freight rates spike after locking in prices, you know the pain. This guide breaks down the two types of 100% pay later pre-order —Charge-Later and Capture-Only, so you can decide the best fit for your business.

TL;DR

• Charge-Later pre-orders convert best but lock your price in — often fine, but riskier in volatile markets.
• Capture-Only safeguards margin by splitting the flow into (1) placing a reservation and (2) completing checkout later.
• 43.8 % of all PreProduct pre-orders run Charge-Later.*
• 28.7 % run Capture-Only.*

*Source: PreProduct — one million pre-orders

Why “locking-in” the price can come back to bite you

• Supplier volatility: quotes expire in days, not months; delays and surprise surcharges are now the norm.
• Freight roulette: sea-freight rates swung from roughly $2.4 k to $8 k per FEU on key routes in 2025 (Freightos index).
• Tariff whiplash: US and EU duties can change mid-production.

Charge-Later pre-orders vault the card and lock the price the moment a shopper checks out—great for conversion, but prices and orders are fixe.

Capture-Only pre-orders flips that flow. The reservation sits outside your ecommerce platform until you’re ready; then a payment-link email drops customers into a pre-filled checkout with the final price.

Types of ‘pay later’ pre-order

Charge-Later Pre-orders (Vaulted Credit Cards)

1. Product is listed in pre-order app as charge-later.
2. Shopper completes checkout; With PreProduct’s Shopify/Woo/BC integration, a order is locked in at today’s price.
3. You manufacture or receive goods.
4. You trigger charges from the pre-order app; the vaulted card is charged at the locked-in price.

Gotchas

• Any cost increase comes straight off your margin.
• Editing price fields post-order breaks the flow.
• Cancelling and re-invoicing is messy

Capture-Only Pre-Orders (Wish-List-With-Teeth)

1. Product is listed in the pre-order app as capture-only (reservation mode).
2. Shopper reserves with name + email — no checkout, no card data.
3. You tally demand, then lock in supplier, freight and duty costs.
4. When ready, batch-send payment-link emails from the app; shoppers hit a pre-filled one-click checkout that reflects the current price.
5. Paid orders sync into Shopify / Woo / BigCommerce and run through your normal fulfilment flow.

Gotchas

• Lower overall conversion than charge-later (some shoppers ghost at the payment-link stage).
• Zero cash-flow until links are clicked.
• Reminder cadence matters — drop-offs spike if you don’t nudge.
• Needs crystal-clear messaging that price is finalised later to avoid surprises.

Pros, Cons & When to Use Each

	Charge-Later	Capture-Only
Conversion rate	(no further action needed from customer to pay)	(not all customers will complete payment link checkout)
Cash-flow boost	(none until you trigger charges)	(none until payment link)
Price flexibility
Risk profile	Medium (prices are locked in, but cancelling pre-orders doesn’t accrue refund fees, as no money has changed hands yet)	Low (Easy to change price, as well as cancel/edit)

Ideal Use-Cases for Capture-Only

• Pricing in flux: tariffs, commodity costs, or bespoke customisations.
• Long lead-times: luxury furniture, custom bikes, Kickstarter-style runs.
• Particularly risk adverse merchants

Pro-Tips for Smooth Capture-Only Launches

1. Communicate the process. “We expect to ship in 2–6 months. Estimated price €45–€55 depending on freight.”
2. Send follow-up payment links. Use your pre-order app’s follow-up feature to remind customers their slot is expiring if they haven’t clicked the link.

Quick-Start on Shopify / BigCommerce / Woo

1. Install PreProduct.
2. List a test product in Capture-Only mode to check the flow and integration.
3. Test-purchase the listing end-to-end.
4. Launch for real. Market the new “Pre-Launch” to your list and socials.

Next Steps

Grab PreProduct’s Starter plan or a 7-day free trial of any fixed-cost tier. Weigh up Capture-Only versus Charge-Later for your own launch, then pick the flow that protects your margins. Questions? Ping me (Oli) anytime—keen to hear how you’re handling pre-orders this quarter.

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Want to see a video instead? Click here to watch Oli talk through pre-orders on the variant level.

Introduction

The global retail industry loses an estimated $1.75 trillion annually due to stockouts (ref). For e-commerce stores selling products with multiple variants—sizes, colors, styles—this problem becomes even more critical. When a customer’s preferred size is out of stock, they don’t just abandon that variant; they often abandon the entire purchase.

But what if you could capture those lost sales? What if running out of Medium t-shirts or Shade #3 lipstick didn’t mean losing revenue? The solution lies in variant-level pre-orders, a strategy that turns stockouts into sales opportunities.

The Hidden Cost of Variant Stockouts

When you order inventory, buyers estimate demand across all variants. Despite their expertise, it’s nearly impossible to predict exactly how many size Large vs. Medium items will sell. This leads to:

• Uneven inventory depletion: Some variants sell out while others gather dust
• Lost sales opportunities: Customers leave empty-handed when their size is unavailable
• Abandoned carts: The “almost perfect” scenario where everything except size is right
• Increased discounting: Overstocked variants require markdowns to clear

The psychology is clear: customers will wait for their perfect product if given the option. The key is offering that option seamlessly. …and luckily for us, they’ve often happy to wait longer for the perfect option.

Manual Variant Pre-Order Setup

Approach 1: Manual Variant Pre-Order Setup

The simplest approach involves manually enabling pre-orders for specific out-of-stock variants:

1. Identify stockout patterns: Monitor which variants consistently sell out first
2. Enable selective pre-orders: Use tools like PreProduct to enable pre-orders only for out-of-stock variants
3. Set clear expectations: Display estimated restock dates and shipping timelines
4. Maintain in-stock sales: Keep functioning variants as “Buy Now” while only out-of-stock variants show “Pre-Order”

This mixed approach means customers see “Buy Now” for available sizes and “Pre-Order” for their preferred size if it’s out of stock, rather than seeing “Sold Out” and leaving.

Approach 2: Automated Variant Pre-Order Solutions

For larger catalogs or lean teams, automation provides scalable solutions:

• Inventory automations: Use an automation like PreProduct’s Listing Manager to enable pre-orders automatically when variants hit zero stock
• Template-based rules: Set up conditional logic (tags, product types, seasonal items)
• Batch management: Organize by shipment dates or product seasons

Automation works best for established stores with predictable restock patterns and larger product catalogs where manual management becomes unmanageable.

The Approach

Best Practices for Variant Pre-Orders

Always show delivery estimates: Customers need to know they’re placing an actual order, not joining a wishlist. Clear restock dates build confidence.

Create urgency through scarcity: Use the fact that variants sold out to create urgency: “Pre-order now to secure your size—this style sells out fast.”

Offer pre-order incentives: Consider “Pre-order today and save 10%” to compensate for the wait and encourage immediate action.

Smart messaging: Use variant-specific messaging that acknowledges the stockout while positioning pre-order as the smart choice.

When to Use Manual vs. Automated Approaches

Start with manual if you’re:

• Testing pre-orders for the first time
• Working with a small product catalog
• Need tight control over which products accept pre-orders
• Testing a new pre-order app
• Discontinuing certain variants

Move to automated when you’re:

• Managing hundreds or thousands of variants
• Experiencing frequent stockouts across multiple products
• Working with a lean team
• Confident in your pre-order process

Real-World Impact

Stores implementing variant-level pre-orders capture sales that would otherwise be lost to stockouts. Instead of customers leaving when their size is unavailable, they place pre-orders, securing revenue and maintaining customer relationships.

Consider a fashion brand with 20 products, each in 6 sizes. Without variant pre-orders, selling out of even 2 sizes per product means losing potential potential sales from 40 different SKUs. With variant pre-orders, those stockouts become revenue opportunities.

Implementation with PreProduct

PreProduct offers both manual and automated approaches for variant pre-orders:

• Manual control: Enable pre-orders for specific variants while keeping others as regular sales
• Automated triggers: Set up the listing manager or use Shopify Flow to automatically enable pre-orders when variants go out of stock
• Template system: Create reusable settings for different product types or seasons
• Multi-platform support: Works across Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce

The platform includes features like estimated delivery dates, mixed cart capabilities (in-stock + pre-order items), and customer communication tools to optimize the pre-order experience.

Conclusion

Variant stockouts don’t have to mean lost sales. By implementing variant-level pre-orders—whether manually or through automation—you can capture revenue that would otherwise disappear. The key is giving customers the option to wait for their perfect product rather than forcing them to choose between a compromise and leaving empty-handed.

The technology exists today to turn every stockout into a sales opportunity. The question isn’t whether you can afford to implement variant pre-orders; it’s whether you can afford not to.

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Intro

At PreProduct we recently passed one million pre-orders processed for merchants, totalling over $85M USD (report here). We dug into the data to pull out 4 key lessons to inform your pre-order strategy — things you can actually use to sell more (and smarter).
Prefer a video? click here.

Lessons

Lesson 1: Ditch the discount

• Insight: 90.4% of pre-orders don’t offer a discount. Turns out, early access is often enough of a hook. The opportunity is to be one of the first to grab the item.
• Lesson: Instead of relying on discounts to drive urgency, open the doors earlier. Longer sales windows = more time to capture demand without undercutting your price. Bonus: you get to run two launches — one for pre-order, one for general availability

Source: https://preproduct.io/one-million-pre-orders#discounts

Lesson 2: Don’t be afraid to go early

• Insight: The most common stated shipping time range for pre-order is 4 – 5 months from the date of pre-launch
• Lesson: Taking pre-orders well in advance is totally doable — especially with charge-later or deposit-based flows. Most customers are happy to wait, as long as expectations are clear.

Source: https://preproduct.io/one-million-pre-orders#shipping-timing

Lesson 3: Whatever the price, as long as it’s above $10

• Insight: Products can do well regardless of price which the partial exception of the $0-10 price range. The $25–$50 range made up 42.7% of orders. But the $250+ range brought in more than 2x the revenue by our estimates.
• Lesson: Unless your product is priced under $10, there’s a strong case for running a pre-launch to take pre-orders. Higher price? Consider taking a deposit or charging upfront. Long lead time? consider charging-later pre-orders.

Source: https://preproduct.io/one-million-pre-orders/#pricing

Lesson 4: Don’t let mixed carts scare you off

• Insight: 62.1% of stores don’t allow buy-now and pre-order items in the same cart — and that’s totally fine.
• Lesson: Mixed carts are doable — via fulfilment holds or conditional line item logic — but they’re not required to get started. Keeping pre-orders in separate orders is often the simplest path early on, and you can always evolve from there.

Source: https://preproduct.io/one-million-pre-orders/#mixed-carts

Bonus insight: Pre-orders aren’t just for startups

• Insight: From what we’ve seen over the last 4 years, more pre-orders come from existing brands than early-stage startups (although there’s plenty of them too).
• Lesson: Pre-orders aren’t just a Kickstarter tactic. They’re a flexible tool — whether you’re managing cashflow, gauging demand, or building buzz. Whatever your company size, there’s most likely a way they can provide value.

Conclusion

That’s it — 4 lessons (plus a bonus) from 1 million pre-orders. Hopefully a few ideas in there can help you sell earlier, smarter, and with fewer discounts this year.

If you’re experimenting with pre-orders or planning a launch, feel free to get in touch or click the button below to start a free trial.

At the start of every year, we focus on our Common Pain Points project—tackling smaller but meaningful improvements based on customer support trends and feature requests that don’t quite fit into larger development cycles. Over the past six weeks, we’ve shipped a number of updates designed to smooth out pre-orders, optimize workflows, and add new flexibility. Here’s what’s new:

Refunds, Payments & Order Management

You can now issue refunds directly from PreProduct, making it easier to handle cancellations and customer requests without needing to jump into Shopify or BigCommerce admin. This streamlines workflows and keeps everything in one place.

For those using the Shop Pay app, we’ve introduced automatic toggling of the sales channel when listing or de-listing a product for pre-order. This ensures that Shop Pay (which doesn’t support pre-orders) doesn’t allow customers to bypass the pre-order flow.

We’ve also added support for editing pre-order quantities—though at this stage, only decreases are supported. This helps merchants manage inventory levels dynamically as pre-orders roll in.

Better Pre-Order Button & UI Handling

We’re introducing an experimental Optimized Button Loading feature for Shopify stores, which ensures that buy-now buttons are hidden more quickly for pre-order products. This reduces friction and prevents customers from checking out incorrectly before the pre-order messaging loads.

We’ve also improved add-to-cart button detection to ensure it doesn’t hide other essential elements on the page, such as quantity selectors and carousel navigation.

Customization & Merchandising Enhancements

Merchants can now set default Shopify ‘purchase option’ names directly from the ‘Customize Wording’ screen, giving more control over how pre-orders and deferred payment options appear to customers.

We’ve added a unit count display for pre-order sections on “See All” listing screens, making it easier to track pre-order demand at a glance.

Backend & Developer-Focused Improvements

Agencies and developer stores can now access a free, unlimited ‘Partner Test’ plan, making it easier to build and test pre-order setups without incurring extra costs.

We’ve updated our search functionality, allowing Shopify users to find products by name, handle, or SKU. BigCommerce merchants will continue to use their native ‘search like’ function for finding products.

On the technical side, we’ve rolled out updates to the latest platform APIs, libraries, and frameworks to ensure long-term stability and compatibility.

Availability Monitoring & Customer Experience

We’ve added a storewide Availability Issues notice to the top-right of the main dashboard. This feature detects pre-order listings with availability issues and allows merchants to resolve them directly from a pop-up modal.

Customers can now update their payment method directly from their customer portal, reducing friction and improving the self-serve experience.

Looking Ahead

These updates are all about making the pre-selling experience smoother, less error-prone, and better converting. We have some exciting bigger features and updates in the pipeline, but for now, here’s to a great 2025!

Oli