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Need a better way to manage your inventory and notify your visitors?
You came to the right place.
In this post, you’ll find a collection of WooCommerce plugins made for tracking your product inventory and sending automated alerts.
Using the plugins here, you can receive email notifications when a product is running low, or send shoppers an email when a formerly out of stock product becomes available.
For a more robust solution, you may also like our collection of inventory management plugins.
Out-of-stock plugins for WooCommerce
Each plugin here offers different functionality, so you may even want to get a couple of them for your site.
Only plugins that have high reviews from users have been included, so you can depend on these out-of-stock WooCommerce plugins to be reliable. You’ll also find both free and premium solutions listed below.
1. WooCommerce Out of Stock! Manager
Plugin Description
The WooCommerce Out of Stock! Manager plugin is a simple solution for any store owners who want to keep an eye on their inventory. The way it works is really quite simple.
If you find out that a product is out of stock then you’ve already fallen behind. You know that you can’t instantly replenish the stock of your items, which is why you need to receive a warning before the inventory completely runs out. With this plugin, you’ll define a warning level for each product’s inventory. You can set a custom level for individual products, product variations, and groups. Every time a customer completes a purchase, the products they bought have their inventory reduced and if any of them hit their threshold level, you’ll receive an email notification letting you know. This makes it easy to reorder items well before they run out of stock.
Customers are loving this WooCommerce plugin because it is so straightforward and easy to use. The UI is clean and understandable, so it won’t take you long to set up and have automated inventory tracking for your eCommerce store.
2. Bulk Stock Management
Plugin Description
The Bulk Stock Management plugin is simple and straightforward. It adds a new menu item called Stock Management underneath the Products menu where you can review the inventory status of all your products.
From the new stock menu, you can see all of your products listed in a table that looks a lot like the regular Products menu. Each product includes its current inventory as well as a notice saying whether it’s in stock or out of stock. These labels are color-coded making it easy to browse them quickly to get an overview of your store’s inventory. The table also lets you know if any of the products have a backorder that’s waiting to be fulfilled.
For large stores, you’ll appreciate the filtering options which let you quickly pull up products based on their name, SKU, or by stock quantity. Bulk Stock Management also has a special print option allowing you to create a paper printout of your inventory levels.
3. Advanced Notifications
Plugin Description
The Advanced Notifications plugin is great for any eCommerce store owners working with a team. The main benefit of this plugin is that you can send custom email notifications to other people besides the store admin.
With Advanced Notifications, you can send emails triggered by:
- New orders
- Backorders
- Low stock
- Out of stock
You can create as many of these email notifications as you’d like to be sent to any email addresses you want.
You will also have full control over which products trigger these notices. You don’t have to rely on these same emails across all products. For example, you can configure a “low stock” notification for an individual product, all products in a certain category, or even products belonging to a particular shipping class. This makes for a very flexible notification system to keep track of your store’s performance and inventory.
4. WooCommerce Lead Time
Plugin Description
So far, the plugins we’ve looked at have primarily been for your own administrative use. The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin differs in that it’s designed to help you communicate with prospective buyers.
It’s always frustrating to customers when a product is out of stock. WooCommerce itself displays an ‘Out of stock’ notice but doesn’t provide any information on how long the product will be unavailable. The customer has no idea how long they will have to wait, so they’re likely to give up and buy elsewhere.
WooCommerce Lead Time solves this problem by displaying clear information about when the product will be back in stock. It does this by adding a simple note to the single product page. The customer can instantly see how long they will have to wait and can make an informed decision on what to do next.
There are plenty of options, and you can choose which stock statuses to display information for, such as out-of-stock products. You have full control over the message’s wording and can set it globally or for specific categories, products, or variations.
5. Back In Stock Notifier
Plugin Description
While the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin helps to manage customers’ expectations, they also need a way to be told when products are back in stock. The Back In Stock Notifier for WooCommerce plugin is perfect for this.
This out-of-stock plugin was designed in a very clever way so that you won’t have to spend much time controlling it and sending emails yourself. Whenever a product on your site runs out of stock, an email lead form will automatically be added to the product page. Visitors can subscribe to be notified when the product comes back in stock. Once you increase the stock for the product, an email will be sent out to all of the subscribers. It’s a beautifully automated process that will lead to tons of sales.
While this plugin is set-and-forget, there are a lot of customization options available when you first get started. You can change the subject line and completely customize the copy in the body of the “back in stock” email. You’ll also get a subscriber page where you can view all the shoppers that have subscribed to a notification including whether they’ve been notified yet and whether they are a registered member or a guest. And best of all, the email optin form and email templates are beautiful out-of-box, so you won’t have to worry about customizing them to look good on your site.
6. Woo Custom Stock Status
Plugin Description
This final plugin has an interesting twist on communicating your product stock to shoppers.
The first feature offered by Woo Custom Stock Status is the option to change the “Out of stock” text that displays on your product pages. Additionally, you can display “In stock” text and add custom text for items available for backorder or getting low on stock. Each of these messages can be assigned a custom color too, so you can use green for items in stock and a bright yellow to alert visitors an item is almost out of stock. These options can be configured globally via the WooCommerce Settings page and updated individually for each product.
Overall, Woo Custom Stock Status is a very simple plugin, but it’s completely free and works well for its intended use.
Which out of stock-of-stock plugin is best?
There were some great plugins that turned up in this collection.
That said, the WooCommerce Out of Stock! Manager plugin stood out amongst the rest. If you need a simple way to keep track of your product inventory, that plugin is the best option.
It’s also worth highlighting the Back In Stock Notifier plugin which is the only plugin aimed at informing visitors about products returning for sale. If you commonly run out of inventory, this plugin is a no-brainer for building an email address and getting more sales.
To find more similar solutions for your eCommerce store, check out this post next:
The 6 Best Inventory Management WordPress Plugins
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