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Stocky, Shopify's own inventory management app, stops working after August 31, 2026. That is today.
The Help Center is unambiguous: "The Stocky app will no longer be available after August 31st, 2026. You need to transition to Shopify's Inventory management features to continue managing your inventory without interruption." It was already delisted from the App Store on February 2, 2026, so reinstalling is not an option.
The migration target is native Shopify inventory. But "migrate to native" is not the same as "keep working the same way." Some data does not come across, and some workflows are still not supported natively — and Shopify documents both, in its own migration guide.
Below: what disappears, what survives, and the four specific places where the Help Center itself tells you to go get an app. Research date: August 31, 2026.
The short version
If you only need quantity adjustments, location transfers, purchase orders, receiving, and change history, native is enough. No additional cost.
If you need weighted-average costing or landed cost allocation (duty, freight, tax), native does not do it. That is an app.
If one product has multiple suppliers, with supplier SKUs, lead times, and case packs feeding your reorder math, native stores that as reference metafields only — it does not feed ordering calculations.
If you run multi-participant, full-location stocktakes, native is a CSV export, an offline count, and a CSV import.
And regardless of which bucket you fall into: anything still sitting in Stocky needs to be exported manually, and some of it cannot be exported at all.
What Stocky was
Stocky's developer was Shopify. As of August 31, 2026, its App Store rating was 3.1 across 188 reviews — 81 five-star reviews against 49 one-star and 25 two-star. Roughly 40% of its reviews were one or two stars. First-party does not mean well-reviewed.
It was English only; the listing carried the note that the app was not translated into other languages. Pricing was "free to install," but in practice it came bundled with a Shopify POS Pro subscription — with a documented exception that stores which installed it before May 4, 2020 got it free with their Shopify subscription.
So the merchants actually running Stocky were largely retail stores on POS Pro, using it for demand forecasting, purchase orders, supplier records, stocktakes, and inter-store transfers.
What does and does not survive
The migration guide's considerations double as today's checklist.
After the date: from September 1, 2026 you cannot manage inventory in Stocky. You get read-only access to export your data for at least 90 days after that.
Not migrated automatically: historical Stocky data — old purchase orders, stocktakes — does not move into Shopify. If you want it for tax or audit records, you export it yourself using Stocky's built-in reports.
Cannot be exported at all: suppliers cannot be exported from Stocky. That is stated plainly in the guide. If Stocky was your supplier master, you need another way to capture it.
Cannot be imported: historical purchase orders cannot be imported into Shopify. The native purchase order CSV upload only adds product line items to a new draft PO — it does not carry past statuses, received quantities, or supplier links.
APIs: all Stocky APIs stop working on August 31, 2026. Any third-party tool integrating with Stocky stops on the same day.
Two scheduling instructions from the guide are worth repeating: stop creating new purchase orders in Stocky roughly 14 days before the cutoff, and receive and close every open, in-transit PO before the deadline. Anything still open at cutover gets recreated in Shopify as remaining quantities only.
What native inventory does cover
The migration target is broader than it was in Stocky's heyday. Documented capabilities include:
- Transfers between locations, with split shipments and accepted/rejected quantities recorded per receipt
- Purchase orders with assigned suppliers, supplier currency, payment terms (Cash on delivery, Payment on receipt, Net 30), and adjustments for shipping, fees, or duties
- Inventory adjustments with preset reasons, plus adjustment history showing what changed, why, and which staff member did it
- Unlimited inventory history and customizable reports
- Bin locations assigned via the bulk editor or CSV
- Automated low-stock alerts through Shopify Flow
- Sidekick for questions like "What should I reorder?" — it drafts the PO or transfer for you
The core of what Stocky did has genuinely moved into the platform. This is not simply a feature removal.
The four places the Help Center points to an app
These are the boundaries worth knowing before you shop.
Costing. Each product variant carries a single static Cost per item field. It does not change when you receive a purchase order or transfer. For weighted-average costing or automatic landed cost allocation, the guide says to use a third-party costing app that integrates with Shopify's product cost data.
Stocktakes at scale. Quick count in Shopify POS is designed for spot checks, capped at 1,000 items per session. A multi-participant, full-location stocktake is documented as: export on-hand inventory to CSV, count offline, import counted quantities, and keep all three files as your audit trail. If you have strict external audit requirements, the guide recommends a third-party app with dedicated counting and approval workflows.
Supplier complexity. Each product has one Vendor field. Multiple suppliers per product, supplier-specific SKUs, lead times, minimum order quantities, and case packs go into variant metafields or metaobjects. But the guide states these metafields "are independent of purchase order ordering and receiving calculations," so staff convert case packs into individual units manually.
Bin-level movement. Each variant gets one bin per location, and transfers move stock between locations only. If you need to track moves between bins inside a single location, the guide points to a third-party inventory app.
A few other documented gaps that do not have an app recommendation attached but will affect workflows: you cannot email a purchase order from the admin (download the PDF and send it yourself), you cannot convert a customer order into a purchase order or merge purchase orders, there is no dedicated native report for total PO spend by supplier, and purchase order APIs are not generally available — the Transfers API is, and new physical inventory APIs are in developer preview.
Check your location ceiling too
One number worth confirming before you evaluate anything:
| Plan | Active location limit |
|---|---|
| Starter | 2 |
| Basic | 10 |
| Grow | 10 |
| Advanced | 10 |
| Shopify Plus | 200 |
Basic, Grow, and Advanced are all 10. Upgrading within that range does not buy you more locations — only Plus does.
Two useful exceptions: deactivated locations do not count toward the limit, and you can still view, transfer, adjust, and restock inventory at a deactivated location. And apps that physically stock inventory for you — dropshipping apps, 3PLs, custom fulfillment services — are treated as locations but also do not count toward the limit.
Three billing models
The Shopify App Store's inventory category lists 433 apps as of August 31, 2026. Most of the popular ranking is marketplace connectors, ERP integrations, and stock syncing — a different job from what Stocky did. Working down that list top-first will not get you a replacement.
Narrowing to forecasting and purchase orders, the billing units diverge sharply.
| App | Developer | Rating (reviews) | Billing unit | Cheapest plan with purchase orders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prediko Inventory Management | Prediko | 4.9 (234) | Store revenue tier | $49/month |
| Stockie Inventory Management | Plutonian | 4.9 (133) | Feature tier | $59.99/month |
| Inventory Planner by Sage | Inventory Planner by Sage | 4.4 (130) | Custom quote | Not published on the App Store |
The two apps that reach roughly the same price get there in opposite ways. Prediko gives a store under $100K revenue every feature for $49/month. Stockie starts at $4.99/month but withholds purchase orders until its top $59.99 tier. Small stores pay less on Prediko; stores that only want one slice of the functionality pay less on Stockie.
Prediko Inventory Management
Best for: stores that need a non-English UI and can accept revenue-linked pricing.
Covers AI demand forecasting, purchase order management, transfers and stocktakes, multi-location and multi-store inventory, and bundle inventory. Listed languages are English, German, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, and Brazilian Portuguese — the only one of these three that ships more than English.
Pricing is banded by store revenue: Starter $49/month (up to $100K), Scale Up $119/month (up to $500K), Growth $199/month (up to $2M), with Enterprise quoted individually above $2M. 14-day free trial.
The tradeoff: your bill tracks revenue, not inventory complexity. A store whose SKU count and supplier list stay flat still pays more as sales grow.
Stockie Inventory Management
Best for: stores that want low-stock alerts now and might want purchase orders later.
Carries the Built for Shopify badge. Developer is Plutonian. English only.
Four tiers: Basic $4.99/month (5 alerts, up to 8,000 variants, 3 recipients, unlimited locations), Advanced $9.99/month (per-product custom thresholds, Slack notifications, unlimited alerts/variants/recipients), Pro $29.99/month (forecasting dashboard, lead time and safety stock settings, predicted reorder dates), and Pro Plus $59.99/month (purchase order creation and management, shipment tracking, automatic Shopify inventory adjustment, PDF/CSV supplier sends). No free plan; 14-day trial on each tier.
The thing to notice: purchase orders — Stocky's centerpiece — are top-tier only. As an alert tool it is inexpensive. As a Stocky replacement it starts at $59.99/month.
Inventory Planner by Sage
Best for: stores already committed to Sage or an external accounting/ERP stack.
Rated 4.4 across 130 reviews, but the distribution is polarized: 110 five-star against 12 one-star. English only.
Pricing needs care. The App Store shows "free to install," but the listing states that Inventory Planner by Sage may bill externally, separately from your Shopify invoice, and that pricing is adjusted to your business needs with a quote on request. You cannot determine the monthly cost from the App Store listing. Comparing it against the other two requires getting a quote first.
Before you install anything
- Export Stocky's completed purchase order reports, stocktake history, and historical cost data as CSV
- Capture your supplier list separately — Stocky cannot export it
- Repoint or replace any third-party tool that integrates with Stocky's API
- Remove Stocky's Transfers POS UI extension tile from your Smart Grid
- Name the specific workflow where native falls short: costing, stocktake scale, supplier complexity, or bin-level movement
- Check where your active location count sits against your plan's ceiling
- Identify each candidate's billing unit: revenue tier, feature tier, or quote
- Confirm which plan actually includes purchase orders — it is often not the entry tier
- Confirm language support if your warehouse team does not work in English
Bottom line
- Export today. Read-only access lasts at least 90 days, but suppliers cannot be exported at all.
- Establish what native covers. Transfers, purchase orders, adjustments, and unlimited history are all in the platform now.
- Name your one gap. The Help Center points to apps in exactly four places — costing, large stocktakes, supplier complexity, bin-level moves.
- Compare on billing unit, not monthly price. Revenue-linked and feature-tiered pricing cross over at different store sizes.
An inventory app does not make inventory accurate. It closes one named workflow that the platform does not handle. Open Products → Inventory and Settings → Locations, write down what is still manual, and shop against that list.
Related reading: all 40 free first-party Shopify apps, rated on why first-party is not a quality signal, what an uninstall leaves behind, and the published limits on Shopify Flow if you plan to automate low-stock alerts natively.
Shopify's admin address validation is on by default, free, on every plan, and supports the US. Checkout-time validation is one toggle away. Shopify's own documentation then warns that running a third-party address validation app at the same time can create conflicting suggestions and reduce checkout conversion — you are meant to pick one. That reframes the whole category: apps are not there to duplicate deliverability checking, they are there to enforce policy Shopify's validator does not enforce, like blocking PO boxes or requiring an apartment number. We priced four real apps from the US App Store on September 2, 2026, spanning $4.99/month flat, $0.04 per order, and one that requires a separate subscription billed outside Shopify.