Stocky vs SimpleStock vs Inventory Planner: Which Shopify Inventory App to Pick in 2026
Disclosure: I built SimpleStock, one of the apps compared below. I’ve tried to write a fair head-to-head, including when SimpleStock loses. If Inventory Planner fits your store better, I’ll say so.
Stocky is shutting down on August 31, 2026. If you’re reading this in May or June 2026, you have 10–15 weeks to pick a replacement, migrate your supplier data, and verify it works. The replacement decision comes down to two real candidates: SimpleStock (lean, cheap, built for small stores) and Inventory Planner by Sage (enterprise-grade, expensive, powerful). This article puts all three products in one place so you can make the call.
For a full migration walkthrough — exports, data re-entry, parallel running — see The Stocky Replacement Guide. This article focuses on the product comparison itself.
TL;DR
| Stocky | SimpleStock | Inventory Planner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (required POS Pro at $89/location/mo) | Free–$29.99/mo | $299/mo and up |
| Status | Shuts down Aug 31, 2026 | Active, maintained | Active, maintained |
| Best for | Was: small stores on POS Pro | Small–mid stores, simple reorder workflow | Mid-market to enterprise, multi-warehouse |
| Demand forecasting | Had it (removed Jul 7, 2025) | No | Yes (core feature) |
| Purchase orders | Yes | No | Yes |
| Multi-warehouse | Basic | Yes (stock levels, not transfers) | Yes (transfers + forecasting) |
| Learning curve | Low | Low | High (2–3 months to master) |
Bottom line: If you had a simple Stocky workflow — open the dashboard, see what’s low, email your supplier — SimpleStock covers that for $14.99/month. If you ran purchase orders inside Stocky, tracked received quantities, or need AI demand forecasting, Inventory Planner is the upgrade path, budget permitting.
Why This Comparison Matters Right Now
Stocky has been sunsetting in stages:
- July 7, 2025: Demand forecasting and stock transfers removed
- February 2, 2026: Removed from the App Store (no new installs possible)
- August 31, 2026: Full shutdown — APIs offline, purchase orders stop syncing
That last date is real. If you’re still on Stocky today, you need a decision in the next few weeks, not the next few months.
The challenge is that Stocky sat in an unusual middle position: more capable than bare-metal Shopify Admin, but far cheaper than real inventory software. That gap is now yours to fill, and the two tools that best represent the two sides of that gap are SimpleStock and Inventory Planner.
What Stocky Did (and What You’re Actually Losing)
Before comparing the replacements, it’s worth being precise about what Stocky did.
Stocky’s core features (at peak):
- Purchase order creation and tracking (received vs. ordered quantities)
- Supplier management (names, contacts, lead times)
- Reorder point alerts based on stock levels
- Demand forecasting (removed July 2025)
- Stock transfers between locations (removed July 2025)
- Cost price tracking
Demand forecasting (definition): a method of predicting future product demand using historical sales data, seasonality, and trends — used to determine how much to order and when.
If you were using Stocky heavily for PO creation and supplier management, the most powerful features (forecasting, transfers) were already removed in July 2025. What survived was the purchase order workflow and the reorder dashboard — useful, but a shadow of what Stocky offered at its peak.
If your workflow was mostly “look at the dashboard, see what’s running low, place an order externally,” you were already using Stocky light. That’s the use case SimpleStock is built for.
SimpleStock: For Stores That Used Stocky Light
Pricing: Free (30 SKUs, no credit card) / Growth $14.99/mo / Pro $29.99/mo 14-day free trial on Growth and Pro plans.
SimpleStock is deliberately narrow. It covers the dashboard-and-alerts layer of inventory management: what’s low, what’s dead, what’s about to run out based on sales velocity. It does not try to be a full inventory planning suite.
What SimpleStock does:
- Inventory health dashboard (low stock, out of stock, dead stock, overstock)
- Reorder alerts based on configurable thresholds and sales velocity
- Vendor lead time tracking (so alerts fire with enough buffer to reorder)
- Multi-location stock levels (view across locations, not inter-location transfers)
- CSV export for offline analysis
- Works without POS Pro — embedded Shopify admin only
POS Pro (definition): Shopify’s paid retail plan at $89/location/month that unlocks advanced point-of-sale features. Stocky required it. SimpleStock does not.
Where SimpleStock stops:
- No purchase order management — you can’t create, send, or track POs inside the app
- No stock transfer workflows between locations
- No demand forecasting — no AI or statistical models
- No cost price tracking or margin reports
- No barcode scanning or stock takes
- No multi-channel support (Amazon, wholesale, etc.)
That list of missing features is intentional. The goal was to build a replacement for a specific slice of Stocky’s functionality, not replicate everything. PO management may come in a later version. It won’t be ready before August 31.
Migration from Stocky to SimpleStock: About 30–60 minutes for 100 SKUs. Product catalog, variants, and inventory quantities sync from Shopify automatically. You re-enter vendor names and reorder thresholds manually. There’s no PO history import — SimpleStock doesn’t have POs.
Inventory Planner by Sage: For Stores That Ran Stocky Hard
Pricing: Starts at approximately $299/month (up to ~1,000 orders/mo and ~1,000 SKUs). Mid-tier around $599/month. Enterprise pricing is custom and requires a sales call. Annual contracts are standard.
Important note on pricing: Inventory Planner’s pricing has reportedly increased since Sage acquired the product. The $299 entry figure is widely cited, but actual quotes vary by order volume and SKU count. Some merchants report additional onboarding charges ($500–$2,000) on higher-tier plans. Ask specifically about the contract term before signing.
Inventory Planner is real inventory planning software — the kind that mid-market retailers with full-time operations staff use. It’s not marketed at small Shopify merchants, and the pricing reflects that.
What Inventory Planner does:
- Demand forecasting using historical sales data, seasonality, and trend algorithms
- Automated replenishment recommendations based on forecasts
- Purchase order creation, approval workflows, and tracking
- Supplier management with lead time modeling
- Multi-warehouse allocation and transfer recommendations
- Multi-channel support (Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, wholesale)
- Deep inventory analytics and financial reporting
- Budget forecasting (how much cash you’ll need for reorders over the next N months)
- Safety stock calculations per SKU per location
Where Inventory Planner gets harder:
- Learning curve: Users consistently report 2–3 months to fully understand and configure the system. Feature-rich, but that richness requires real investment to unlock.
- Cost: $299/month is 20x the price of SimpleStock’s Growth plan. For a small store doing $20K/month in revenue, the math is difficult.
- Annual contracts: Month-to-month flexibility is limited. Committing before you know the product works for your setup carries risk.
- Onboarding: Enterprise plans often include additional charges for initial configuration. Lower-tier plans rely primarily on documentation.
Migration from Stocky to Inventory Planner: More involved than SimpleStock. Inventory Planner pulls historical sales data from Shopify automatically. You’ll re-enter supplier data and configure forecasting parameters. Budget 1–2 full days for initial configuration, then several weeks to validate that forecasts are calibrated correctly for your store.
Full Feature Comparison
| Feature | Stocky | SimpleStock | Inventory Planner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free (w/ POS Pro) | $0–$29.99/mo | $299/mo+ |
| Free plan | Yes (POS Pro required) | Yes (30 SKUs) | No |
| Trial | N/A | 14 days (Growth/Pro) | Demo call required |
| Contract | N/A | Month-to-month | Annual (typically) |
| Status | Shutting down Aug 31, 2026 | Active | Active |
| Demand forecasting | Removed Jul 7, 2025 | No | Yes |
| Purchase orders | Yes | No | Yes |
| Supplier management | Yes | Vendor names + lead times | Yes (full) |
| Reorder alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dead stock detection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-location stock view | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Inter-location transfers | Removed Jul 7, 2025 | No | Yes |
| Multi-channel (Amazon, wholesale) | No | No | Yes |
| Cost price / margin tracking | Yes | No | Yes |
| Budget forecasting | No | No | Yes |
| Barcode scanning | No | No | No (separate app needed) |
| CSV export | Yes | Yes (Growth+) | Yes |
| POS Pro required | Yes | No | No |
| Learning curve | Low | Low | High (2–3 months) |
| Target store size | Small (POS Pro stores) | Small–mid (50–2,000 SKUs) | Mid-market to enterprise |
| Setup time | ~1 hour | 10–30 minutes | 1–2 days + calibration weeks |
Store Size Scenarios: Which App Fits
Scenario A: 200-SKU apparel store, $30K/month revenue, single location
You’ve been using Stocky mainly to see what’s running low and send reorder emails to two or three suppliers. You don’t create POs inside Stocky — you just use it as a signal.
Verdict: SimpleStock. This is exactly the use case it’s built for. At $14.99/month, you’re paying less than a single hour of freelance help to replace the functionality you actually used. Inventory Planner at $299/month would be paying for features you’d never touch.
Scenario B: 800-SKU home goods store, $150K/month revenue, two locations
You used Stocky for POs, tracked received quantities, and adjusted reorder points by location. You relied on demand forecasting before it was removed. Now you’re managing reorders manually.
Verdict: Inventory Planner. You’ve already lost the features that made Stocky most useful (forecasting, good PO workflows). SimpleStock won’t fill that gap — it doesn’t have POs. At $150K/month GMV, $299/month is a small percentage of inventory carrying costs, and the time saved on PO management and forecast calibration pays for itself quickly. Budget 1–2 days for setup and a few weeks to validate forecasts.
Scenario C: 400-SKU gift shop, $60K/month revenue, single location, tight margins
You used Stocky for the dashboard and occasional PO generation. Margins are thin — every $100/month in software spend matters. You’re a team of two.
Verdict: This one’s genuinely harder. SimpleStock covers the dashboard side cleanly at $14.99, but you’d lose PO management entirely and handle that in a spreadsheet or via supplier emails. Inventory Planner covers everything but at a price that may not pencil out. Prediko’s $49 Starter tier is worth checking here — it has PO workflows and some forecasting at a price between the two. I didn’t build Prediko, and I’m not recommending it out of politeness — it’s genuinely the right suggestion for this scenario.
”Choose X If…” Decision Blocks
Choose Stocky if…
There’s no good reason to choose Stocky at this point. It shuts down August 31, 2026. If you’re still on it, pick something this month, run both in parallel through July, and cut over before the deadline. The migration guide has the step-by-step.
Choose SimpleStock if…
- Your core Stocky workflow was: check dashboard, see what’s low, reorder externally
- You want a replacement under $30/month with no annual commitment
- You have 30–2,000 SKUs across 1–5 Shopify locations
- You don’t need PO management, demand forecasting, or multi-channel sync
- You want something running in under 30 minutes with no sales call
SimpleStock has a free plan for up to 30 SKUs and a 14-day Growth trial if you need more. No credit card on the free plan.
Choose Inventory Planner if…
- You used Stocky’s PO workflow seriously (tracked received vs. ordered, sent POs from the app)
- Demand forecasting was part of your reorder process before Stocky removed it
- You operate multiple warehouses and need transfer recommendations
- You sell across Shopify plus at least one other channel
- Your monthly GMV is high enough that $299/month is clearly worth it (rough threshold: $100K+/month where inventory decisions have real dollar consequences)
- You have someone who can invest 2–3 months in learning the system properly
FAQ
Q: Is SimpleStock cheaper than Inventory Planner? A: Yes, significantly. SimpleStock Growth is $14.99/month, month-to-month. Inventory Planner starts at approximately $299/month and typically requires an annual contract. That’s a difference of roughly $3,361/year at the entry tiers.
Q: Can I switch from Stocky to Inventory Planner directly? A: Yes. Inventory Planner pulls historical sales data from Shopify automatically. You’ll re-enter supplier data and configure forecasting parameters manually. Budget 1–2 days for initial setup, plus several weeks to validate that forecasts are calibrated to your store’s patterns. Higher-tier plans include onboarding support.
Q: Does SimpleStock have purchase orders? A: No. SimpleStock does not have purchase order creation, sending, or tracking. If PO management inside the app matters to you, Inventory Planner, Prediko, or Fabrikatör are better fits.
Q: Does Inventory Planner require POS Pro? A: No. Inventory Planner operates independently of Shopify’s POS tier. You can use it on any Shopify plan. This is unlike Stocky, which required POS Pro at $89/location/month.
Q: What happens to my Stocky data when it shuts down on August 31, 2026? A: Purchase orders stop syncing. Supplier lists become read-only briefly, then disappear. Export your supplier list, PO history, reorder thresholds, and cost prices now — not in August. Stocky’s CSV export is in its settings.
Q: Does SimpleStock have demand forecasting? A: No. SimpleStock uses sales velocity to calculate reorder points and trigger alerts, but it does not run statistical demand forecasting models. If forecasting was a meaningful part of your Stocky workflow, Inventory Planner is the right tool.
Q: What if I’m between these two options — too complex for SimpleStock, too small for Inventory Planner? A: That middle zone is real. Prediko ($49–$349/month) and Assisty (from $19/month) sit in that range with PO workflows and AI forecasting at a lower price point than Inventory Planner. I covered them in The Stocky Replacement Guide. Fabrikatör is also worth a look if you want PO automation with AI replenishment at mid-market pricing.
Q: How long does setup take for each app? A: SimpleStock: 10–30 minutes from install to first reorder alert. Product catalog and stock quantities sync from Shopify automatically; you re-enter vendor names and thresholds manually. Inventory Planner: 1–2 full days for initial configuration, then several weeks to validate and calibrate forecasts for your store’s patterns.
The Bottom Line
Stocky’s shutdown created a fork in the road. One path is SimpleStock: cheap, narrow, fast to set up, honest about what it doesn’t do. The other is Inventory Planner: comprehensive, expensive, powerful for the stores that need it.
Most Stocky users used it light — dashboard glances and reorder signals, with ordering handled externally. For those stores, a $299/month enterprise tool is the wrong answer. A $14.99/month app that covers exactly what they used is the right one.
For stores that ran Stocky hard — POs, supplier workflows, forecasting (before it was removed) — the replacement has to match that scope. SimpleStock won’t get you there. Inventory Planner, or one of the mid-tier alternatives, will.
Deadline: August 31, 2026. Pick something this month. Run it alongside Stocky through July. Don’t let the deadline make the decision for you.
If you want to try SimpleStock: the free plan covers 30 SKUs, no credit card. The 14-day Growth trial unlocks multi-location, CSV export, and vendor lead times. If it fits, $14.99/month. If it doesn’t, cancel and move on — no contract.
- Try the live demo: simplestock.kumostudio.dev/demo
- App Store: apps.shopify.com/simplestock
よくある質問
- Q. Is SimpleStock cheaper than Inventory Planner?
- Yes, significantly. SimpleStock Growth is $14.99/month, month-to-month. Inventory Planner starts at approximately $299/month and typically requires an annual contract. That's a difference of roughly $3,361/year at the entry tiers.
- Q. Can I switch from Stocky to Inventory Planner directly?
- Yes. Inventory Planner pulls historical sales data from Shopify automatically. You'll re-enter supplier data and configure forecasting parameters manually. Budget 1-2 days for initial setup, plus several weeks to validate that forecasts are calibrated to your store's patterns. Higher-tier plans include onboarding support.
- Q. Does SimpleStock have purchase orders?
- No. SimpleStock does not have purchase order creation, sending, or tracking. If PO management inside the app matters to you, Inventory Planner, Prediko, or Fabrikatör are better fits.
- Q. Does Inventory Planner require POS Pro?
- No. Inventory Planner operates independently of Shopify's POS tier. You can use it on any Shopify plan. This is unlike Stocky, which required POS Pro at $89/location/month.
- Q. What happens to my Stocky data when it shuts down on August 31, 2026?
- Purchase orders stop syncing. Supplier lists become read-only briefly, then disappear. Export your supplier list, PO history, reorder thresholds, and cost prices now — not in August. Stocky's CSV export is in its settings.
- Q. Does SimpleStock have demand forecasting?
- No. SimpleStock uses sales velocity to calculate reorder points and trigger alerts, but it does not run statistical demand forecasting models. If forecasting was a meaningful part of your Stocky workflow, Inventory Planner is the right tool.
- Q. What if I'm between these two options — too complex for SimpleStock, too small for Inventory Planner?
- That middle zone is real. Prediko ($49-$349/month) and Assisty (from $19/month) sit in that range with PO workflows and AI forecasting at a lower price point than Inventory Planner. Fabrikatör is also worth a look if you want PO automation with AI replenishment at mid-market pricing.
- Q. How long does setup take for each app?
- SimpleStock: 10-30 minutes from install to first reorder alert. Product catalog and stock quantities sync from Shopify automatically; you re-enter vendor names and thresholds manually. Inventory Planner: 1-2 full days for initial configuration, then several weeks to validate and calibrate forecasts for your store's patterns.