Stocky alternatives: the real options for Shopify brands in 2026

If you're reading this, you're probably one of the thousands of Shopify operators who built your purchase-order workflow on Stocky and are now staring at a tool whose scope has been quietly trimmed back, whose roadmap stopped moving, and whose forecasting was never really there to begin with. Plus brands got it bundled, used it for years, and now in 2026 the conversation in every ops Slack is the same: what do we replace Stocky with?

This article is the answer I wish someone had handed me. It's not a "top 10 inventory apps" SEO listicle. It's a founder-to-founder breakdown of what a modern inventory tool actually has to do, the four real alternatives most brands end up choosing between, and the honest case for and against each — including Ecombone Inventory, which is the one we build.

If at the end you walk away with Cogsy or Inventory Planner instead of us, that's fine. The point is you stop using something that was built for a different decade.

Why Stocky stopped being enough

Quick context, because the framing matters. Stocky was Shopify's official inventory and PO app, included with Shopify Plus. It did the basics: purchase orders, vendor management, simple stock-level views. For a long time it was the path of least resistance — free with your plan, native to Shopify, no extra integration.

Two things changed:

1. Scope was reduced. Over the last couple of years its feature set has been narrowed and its development has slowed dramatically. Merchants report longer support cycles and a tool that no longer keeps pace with how modern Shopify ops teams actually work.
2. The bar for inventory tools moved. What was acceptable in 2020 — a static stock list and a manual PO builder — is not acceptable in 2026 when you're forecasting across multiple locations, juggling packaging materials, and trying to keep cash from sitting in dead inventory.

Operators aren't replacing Stocky because Stocky broke. They're replacing it because the gap between what it does and what a 2026 ops team needs has become uncomfortable.

What you actually need from a modern inventory tool

Before you compare alternatives, write down what you need. Most brands skip this step and end up with a tool that's beautiful in a demo and useless on a Tuesday. Here's the criteria framework I'd use, in priority order.

1. Real-time stock by SKU and location

Non-negotiable. If your tool syncs every 4 hours from Shopify, it's already a museum piece. You need on-hand, committed, and available numbers by location updating in real time, not on a cron.

2. Demand forecasting — not just "low stock alerts"

A red dot next to a SKU is not forecasting. Forecasting tells you: given lead time, current sales velocity, seasonality, and trend, when will this SKU run out, and how many should I order to cover the next N days without sitting on dead capital? If your tool can't answer that question per SKU per location, you're still doing forecasting in a spreadsheet and the "tool" is glorified storage.

3. Reorder suggestions that respect reality

A reorder suggestion is only useful if it accounts for:

• Lead time by supplier (and ideally lead-time variance).
• MOQ — your supplier's minimum order quantity.
• Pack size / case size — you can't order 47 units if they ship in cases of 24.
• Pending POs — you already have 200 inbound, don't tell me to order 200 more.
• Safety stock — a buffer that scales with demand variance, not a flat number.

A tool that gives you "you're low on SKU-123, order more" is doing 10% of the job.

4. PO lifecycle, not just PO creation

Real ops involves: drafts, approvals, sending POs to suppliers, partial receiving (the freight came in three boxes, two arrived today), backorder tracking, supplier-side cancellations, cost adjustments after the invoice comes in. A tool that lets you create a PO but not partially receive it has never met a real supply chain.

5. Multi-location intelligence

If you have a 3PL plus a fulfillment warehouse plus a flagship retail store, your tool needs to forecast and reorder per location, not lump it all into one number. Per-location velocity matters because LA sells different SKUs at different rates than your NJ warehouse.

6. Reasonable, predictable pricing

Stocky was free with Plus. Going from free to $500/month is a real budget conversation. Most founder-led brands under $20M GMV don't need (and shouldn't pay for) enterprise-tier inventory software. Flat, predictable pricing beats revenue-share or seat-based fees that explode as you grow.

7. Native Shopify

No fragile third-party syncs. No Zapier middleware. No "we connect via Shopify's REST API on a schedule." Native, real-time, GraphQL-first.

Now: who actually delivers against this?

The honest review of the main alternatives

I'm going to keep this neutral. I respect every team building in this space. The goal here isn't to trash competitors — it's to help you pick correctly the first time so you don't churn through three tools in 18 months.

Inventory Planner

The most established player in the Shopify forecasting space. Powerful, mature, deep feature set. Used by a lot of $20M+ brands and agencies.

Strengths: strong forecasting engine, robust reporting, well-built PO module, integrations beyond just Shopify (NetSuite, QuickBooks, etc.). If you're a multi-channel brand that also does wholesale and retail and you need finance-grade reporting, this is the heavyweight choice.

Watch-outs: pricing is on the higher end and scales with revenue, so the cost grows with you. The UX has the depth of an enterprise tool, which means a steeper learning curve. If you're a 3-person ops team at a $5M brand, you may use 20% of the surface area and still pay for the rest.

Cogsy

Newer, very founder-friendly UX, lots of love from DTC operators. Strong on the planning and "what should I be doing today" side.

Strengths: clean UI, demand-planning views that feel modern, good cash-flow projection layer. Genuinely pleasant to use day-to-day. Good fit for brands that want a planning tool that thinks in marketing campaigns and product launches, not just stock numbers.

Watch-outs: the PO lifecycle isn't quite as deep as Inventory Planner — partial receiving, complex supplier scenarios, and PO templating are areas where pure PO tools still go further. Also more focused on demand-side planning than full supply-chain operations.

Genie

The new entrant, growing fast, increasingly visible in the Shopify ecosystem. Clean interface, good for SMB Shopify brands.

Strengths: modern UI, fast onboarding, sensible defaults, native Shopify focus. Good first-time-buyer pick if you've never run inventory software before and don't want to feel like you're piloting an aircraft.

Watch-outs: as a younger product, certain edge cases — multi-currency POs, complex multi-location splits, raw-materials/BOM workflows — are still maturing. Worth checking that your specific edge cases are covered before committing.

Ecombone Inventory

This is us, so I'll be specific instead of promotional. Ecombone Inventory is built for the Shopify operator who outgrew Stocky but doesn't want to take on enterprise pricing or enterprise complexity.

Strengths: four built-in forecasting modes (30-day velocity, 90-day velocity, blended weighted average, and weighted moving average with seasonal multipliers and trend), per-location velocity, full PO lifecycle including partial receiving with auto-numbered POs and smart receipt detection, packaging-materials tracking (boxes, mailers, padding, tape) and raw-materials allocation in the same tool — so you're not running three apps to manage finished goods, components, and packaging. Flat predictable pricing: Basic at $9 (50 SKUs), Plus at $29 (300 SKUs), Pro at $49 (unlimited SKUs plus full forecasting). 14-day free trial.

Watch-outs: we're focused on Shopify-native brands. We're not the right pick if you need NetSuite-grade ERP, deep wholesale/B2B portals beyond Shopify's native B2B, or 1000+ SKUs with extreme weekly churn at enterprise scale. We'll cover that in the "when not to choose us" section below — honestly.

Side-by-side comparison

These categories are simplifications — vendors update features constantly, so always validate against your real edge cases on a trial.

When to choose Ecombone Inventory

Be specific. We are the right pick if:

• You're a founder-led brand doing somewhere between $500K and $20M GMV on Shopify.
• You want flat, predictable pricing — not pricing that scales with your revenue.
• You want forecasting + PO lifecycle + packaging materials + raw materials in one tool, not stitched across three.
• You used Stocky and you're tired of doing forecasting in a spreadsheet on the side.
• You're on Shopify (not Amazon-first, not multi-platform).
• You want a tool you can set up yourself, in an afternoon, without a Shopify Plus partner agency holding your hand.

When NOT to choose Ecombone Inventory

Equally important. We're not the right pick if:

• You have 1000+ SKUs at very high churn with weekly product launches at enterprise scale — the sheer operational volume is better served by Inventory Planner or a custom build.
• You need a complex 3PL plus wholesale plus retail split with finance-grade GL integration into NetSuite or SAP. We're Shopify-native, not full-ERP.
• You need integrations beyond Shopify — Amazon FBA forecasting, eBay multi-channel, Walmart marketplace. We focus on doing one platform exceptionally rather than five platforms adequately.
• You want a tool with a dedicated CSM and quarterly business reviews. Our model is self-serve with great support, not white-glove enterprise.

If two or more of those describe you, look at Inventory Planner first. Honestly. We'd rather you pick the right tool than churn off ours in three months.

Migration tips: getting your data out of Stocky

If you're moving off Stocky, the actual mechanical migration is less painful than people think. Here's the order I'd do it in.

1. Export your historical data from Stocky

Pull whatever you can — historical POs, supplier list, lead times, costs. The PO history isn't critical (your new tool will rebuild forecast off Shopify order history), but the supplier list, lead times, and unit costs are gold. Don't lose them.

2. Reconcile your SKUs and vendors in Shopify first

Before importing anything, make sure your Shopify product list is clean. Archive dead SKUs. Make sure each SKU has a vendor assigned in Shopify — your new tool will use that field. Five minutes here saves five hours later.

3. Load supplier info and lead times into the new tool

Most tools (Ecombone included) will auto-import your Shopify products, locations, and on-hand stock on first install. What they can't auto-import is supplier metadata: lead time per supplier, MOQ, pack size, payment terms. Load these manually or via CSV. This is the single highest-leverage migration step — without it, your reorder suggestions are guessing.

4. Set safety stock and reorder policy per SKU tier

Don't try to set safety stock SKU-by-SKU on day one. Tier your catalog: heroes (top 10-20%), mid, long-tail. Set a sensible default per tier, then refine over the first 30 days as you watch the forecasts.

5. Run the new tool in parallel for 2 weeks

Don't cut over cold. For your first two weeks, place POs in your new tool but cross-check against your Stocky-era spreadsheet. After ~2 weeks of agreement, kill the spreadsheet.

A note on pricing in 2026

The market shifted. Stocky was free with Plus, which set an unrealistic anchor. Modern inventory tools have to pay for real forecasting compute, real-time sync, and ongoing engineering against Shopify's evolving APIs. That said, you shouldn't be paying enterprise prices to do founder-led brand operations.

Our take: a sub-$10M GMV brand should be paying somewhere in the $30-$60/month range for inventory software, not $300-$500. Above $20M GMV, the math on Inventory Planner or Cogsy starts to make sense because the operational complexity is genuinely higher. Pick the price point that matches your stage, not the brand-name signal.

Closing

Stocky was the right answer for 2018. It is not the right answer for 2026. Whether you end up on Inventory Planner, Cogsy, Genie, or Ecombone Inventory, the action is the same: pick something modern, get your supplier and lead-time data clean, and stop doing forecasting in a spreadsheet you forget to update.

If you want to try us specifically, Ecombone Inventory installs from the Shopify App Store in about 15 minutes and ships with a 14-day trial — long enough to load your real catalog, run a full forecast cycle, and decide on real data instead of a demo.

No pressure. Pick the tool that fits your stage. Just don't keep running 2026 ops on 2018 software.