Top Shopify Inventory Management App: What Are The Best Options?

Inventory management is one of the key components of any business development. A small movement in managing product stocks can make or break your business.

Despite being one of the best eCommerce solutions on the market, Shopify only gives you very basic functionalities that you need to track and adjust your product inventory information.

Hence, it’s best to find an alternative way to manage your inventory updates more efficiently and also in the most cost-effective manner. Don’t worry, you can always find one matches your needs in the Shopify app store.

In order to help you shorten your decision-making process, today we’ll go through:

• Benefits of deploying Shopify inventory management apps
• What to expect in a 3rd party solution for your inventory management?
• A list of the best tools on the marketplace

Without further ado, let’s dig in!

Why does inventory management matter to all businesses?

As we mentioned, managing stock is an indispensable part of running an effective business. This is essentially what a high-quality Shopify inventory management app can do for you:

• Make sure your products don’t run out of stock: 72% of online shoppers would turn to your competitor if they notice the products they want is out of stock on your website. Hence, the app should be able to provide you with useful insights about stock availability so that you can restock the items whenever you run low.
• Detect inventory trends: Each product has different selling capacities. Therefore, a good Shopify inventory management app should be able to predict the number of items you could sell based on past data. Accordingly, you can restock wisely and prevent dead stock.
• Enhance customer experience: Having up-to-date inventory data can free you from the fear of creating poor shopping experiences due to misleading stock information. In the long run, this type of communication enhances your client’s brand love and trust, which is key to surpassing the competitors.
• Product tracking and updating automation: This process should be 100% automated. Automation means no manual work and more accuracy. Furthermore, you’ll be able to spend more time on marketing activities and continue growing your brand.

With all these attractive benefits, you should definitely get one app in hand. However, make sure to consider certain aspects before paying for the subscriptions.

What to expect from a Shopify inventory management app?

Generally, a superb Shopify inventory management app should allow you to easily manage all of your sales channels while making accurate forecasts regarding future demands and availability. With that, users will be able to precisely predict how your inventory demands alter over time and better prepare themselves for seasonal variations.

In short, when choosing your inventory app, look for the one that can:

• Automate your inventory updates, inform you of all the orders received, update order fulfillment information and send you real-time notifications whenever your stock runs low.
• Works well with other Shopify apps.
• Include POS integrations since you might have to open a brick-and-mortar store one day.
• Provide actionable reports and analysis, offering you predictions and insights to guide the decisions you make for your business.

Shopify inventory management app: What are the top ones?

Now you know what to look for in an inventory management system, let’s examine 7 of the most highly rated applications to see which one suits you best.

Stock Sync Inventory Updates

With over 800 5-star reviews on the marketplace, Stock Sync has been the most widely used Shopify inventory management apps.

The app helps you to automatically update your inventory, control product pricing, and sync inventory to various sales channels. On top of that, this software can even sync inventories with your physical stores if you have one.

Pricing

• The free plan is available for you with the most basic feature: unlimited user updates, batch Inventory update with fixed column, and a limitation of 2000 SKUs.
• You can try out the paid plans for free in the first 14 days if you opt for the trial option.
• The Basic plan which costs you $5/month grants you access to 80+ connection methods and 2 times daily inventory update schedule.
• With the Pro and the Enterprise plan, you’ll have access to more SKUs, more update feeds, and more daily schedules.

Core features

• Automatically update inventory on various sales channels. The inventory update function works even when you don’t add the products using Stock Sync.
• Freely alter your product lists.
• Allows setting pricing rules to change the price of your goods.
• You can edit different product fields such as descriptions, titles, images.

Pros

• Inclusive inventory feed management.
• Advanced reports right in the app.
• Support most product feed formats such as CSV, XLS, XSLX, XML, JSON, TXT and EDI.
• Excellent shipping features, support drop shippers as well.

Cons

• The setting up process is quite complicated.
• Using mapping features requires advanced technical knowledge.

Sellbrite

If you are a multichannel seller and you’re available on eBay, Amazon, and Etsy, Sellbrite is the ultimate option for both product listing and inventory management.

For your information, Sellbrite is more than just a Shopify inventory management app. This software comes with a premium set of features to help you significantly boost the performance of your eCommerce platform.

As a Sellbrite user, you can instantly list your products on whichever selling channel that you wish to have your presence on. Thanks to its in-depth analytics, you are able to easily keep track of your product inventory on your chosen selling funnels. Sellbrite is also capable of improving the speed of your site, which greatly contributes to boosting your customer experience.

Pricing

• The forever-free version is only suitable for small businesses with less than 30 orders per month. Once subscribed, you’ll get unlimited channels, SKUs, and users with the ability to sync inventory quantity and multichannel price every 2 hours.
• The higher plan you choose the more orders you can fulfill and the faster you can sync your inventory and price information.
  • $19/month: up to 100 orders, sync every 15 minutes.
  • $59/month: up to 500 orders, sync every 15 minutes.
  • $99/month: up to 2000 orders, sync every 15 minutes.

Core features

• Real-time inventory sync: whenever conversion happens, Sellbrite will automatically sync the inventory across all your sales channels. Hence, you can avoid overselling products that you don’t have any in stock.
• Support multiple warehouse locations and integrate with Amazon fulfillment: Everything is consolidated in one single dashboard.

Pros

• Super intuitive and user-friendly interface.
• There is a non-paid plan for low-budget business owners.
• Even with the most affordable subscription, users still get access to all features.
• One-click multichannel product listing.
• Centralized dashboards.
• You can control multiple warehouses in one place.
• Integrates with the most popular marketplaces.

Cons

• Unlike the other Shopify inventory management apps, Sellbrite doesn’t support POS.
• Its stock management feature set is quite limited.

Stocky by Shopify

Next step, Stocky is another Shopify inventory management app with a huge number of good reviews on the app store.

Unlike its competitors, Stocky focuses solely on inventory management. With that direction, the application offers some advanced features such as demand forecasting and automatic stock updates.

However, based on the reviews its former users left on the Shopify app store, there is a lack of support from the Stocky team during your business operations.

Pricing

Stocky is free to install. If you subscribe to Shopify POS pro plan, you’ll automatically get access to smart inventory management features of Stock.

Core features

• Demand forecasting: the app analyzes your order information and makes recommendations on which product you should restock along with how many items you might need.
• Centralized order management: you are able to create and manage all your orders from one place. Correspondingly, this could facilitate effective communication with your suppliers, enabling all parties to acknowledge what’s coming and when they come.
• Comprehensive reporting: you can create in-depth reports which specify low stock and best-selling items to make better inventory decisions.
• Shopify POS pro integration: this allows you to connect with your physical store and manage inventory of both sides effectively.

Pros

• Create and manage orders with ease.
• Along with in-depth analytics on sales volume, Stocky actually helps you forecast customers’ future demand based on your current sales rate.
• Let you know which products are running low so that you can fill up the stock.
• Allows fast warehouse transfers between Shopify POS and Shopify admin.

Cons

• Stocky is purely a Shopify inventory management app. As a result, its functionality is somehow limited compared to the others. You’ll need to manage other aspects of your business using other software.
• If you’re not a Shopify POS pro user, you cannot get access to Stocky.

Skubana

With a mission to free online retailers from the tedious task of running fragmented solutions, Skubana is not just a Shopify inventory management app. It is everything you need to run your business profitably.

The app provides multichannel inventory management, powerful multi-warehouse demand forecasting, and purchase orders automation. Furthermore, you’ll also gain insight into your seasonal trends and profitability due to dynamic analytics.

Although Skubana has a very high price point, a lot of its users are satisfied with what they get out of their subscription fees. Therefore, we only recommend this tool for large-scaled store owners who have to handle complex operation tasks.

Pricing

Skubana doesn’t have a fixed price range. On the other hand, you’ll have to fill out a form specifying what features your business needs. Then, the team will send you a customized quote.

However, keep in mind that $1000 is the minimum amount you have to pay if you plan to use Skubana.

Core features

• Automate the inventory and orders management system across multiple selling channels, warehouses, drop shippers, and FBA distribution centers.
• The system is fully customizable with the open API. If you’re a fine coder and you want some unique changes to the platform, you have every right to do that.
• Users can smoothly monitor the returning process.
• You can integrate with some of the biggest online marketplaces like Zapier or Shopify Plus in just one click.
• Offers comprehensive analytics and reporting from sales performance, best and worst selling products to overhead expenses, and predictive analytics.

Pros

• The dashboard is very user-friendly.
• Excellent customer support.
• Help users save a lot of time and effort on managing inventory and orders thanks to its automated nature.

Cons

• Skubana doesn’t have fixed pricing plans and it seems to be quite overpriced in comparison with other Shopify inventory management apps.

ShipHero Inventory & Shipping

This is an incredible multi-channel inventory management solution for your online shop. With ShipHero, you can have access to a plethora of fantastic tools that will assist you in avoiding overselling and increasing sales prospects. This software allows for real-time inventory synchronization across all of your sales channels.

Once you sync your inventory information, you’ll have access to batch order processing, purchase order information, returns management, and a variety of sophisticated reporting options.

ShipHero will quickly improve your sales procedures if you wish to go beyond merely a direct link with USPS. You may even create your own automatic rules.

Cycle counting, kit development, merged order alerts or popups, and different warehouse inventory management systems are all available with ShipHero. This software works with eBay, Amazon, and the US Postal Service. It is, however, significantly more expensive than some of the other applications on the market.

Pricing

Shiphero offers 3 pricing plans:

• The $499/month allows you to have 2 users and 1 store connection only. Paying an extra of $150/month will give you the right to add more users. With this plan, you’ll get: unlimited SKUs, returns, automation rules, shipping rate shopper, set up & training.
• For brands, you have to pay at least $1850/month if you want to get access to unlimited orders, multi-warehouse, API access and batch pick & pack.
• For larger enterprises, you can get quoted pricing by contacting the sales team.

Many people are concerned if Shiphero is worth such a high price tag. Let’s we what we get out of that much money.

Core features

• Support multi-warehouse with real-time inventory sync.
• Outstanding packing and shipping functions.
• Support cloud-based software.
• Fully integrated with USPS, eBay and Amazon.
• Kit creation and cycle counting included.

Pros

Here are some of the advantages of Shiphero over other Shopify inventory management apps.

• Brilliant warehouse management.
• Optimized shipping process which leads to reduced shipping cost.
• Faster and more accurate pick, pack, and shipping procedures.
• Excellent customer support.
• Easily scalable with smooth operation.

Cons

• Too expensive
• The system is quite complicated for beginners and non-techie.

Realtime Stock Sync & Bundling by Trunk

If you’ve ever maintained inventory across various sales channels, you understand how time-consuming and complex it can be. As a result, you must seek an alternative answer to assist you in overcoming those obstacles. In particular, a lack of synchronization between Shopify’s shop and sales channels can cost your company significant sales losses.

Let’s think about it, what if a consumer placed an order only to discover that the item is out of stock? In other words, you present misleading stock information! It is equal to a bad customer service experience.

As a result, Realtime Stock Sync & Bundling by Trunk seems to be the inventory management savior for your shop. The program allows you to integrate your whole warehouse in real-time with your sales channels. Trunk integrates with a wide range of popular e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Faire, QuickBooks Online, Squarespace, and Shopify.

Besides, the application grants you access to comprehensive bundling, synchronization, and customization.

Pricing

Basically, there are 2 pricing plans: Essential and Pro.

• The Essential starts at $35/month and comes with real-time stock sync and low stock alerts. 
• The Pro plan costs you a minimum of $39/month. With that, you’ll have everything in the Essential plan along with bundling & kitting and duplicate SKU syncing features. 

With both subscription plans, you may have to pay additional fees as your stores receive more orders.

Core features

• Provide a powerful automated inventory management procedure for small and medium-sized businesses selling on multiple channels.
• Synchronize inventory management.
• Update stock in bundles or kits based on the inventory of the components.
• Allow for complete customization.
• Connect with Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Square POS, QuickBooks Online, and other services.
• Send warnings when your stock is running low.

Pros

• User-friendly interface.
• Unlimited sales channels.
• Help you avoid overselling.
• Affordable for small businesses.

Cons

• There are not as many features compared to other Shopify inventory management app.

Katana ‑ Manufacturing ERP

Until now, Katana is by far the most popular tool among manufacturers. Unlike other Shopify inventory management apps which are usually meant for resellers or drop shippers, Katana focuses on product-making enterprises.

With Katana, you can integrate your Shopify store with a growing variety of industry-leading solutions. This allows you to integrate inventory control, accounting, sales fulfillment, and shipping processes into a single, unified platform.

In addition, its visual interface and intelligent real-time data update provide manufacturers with a precise perspective of their operation.

Pricing

At present, Katana offers 2 subscription options: Essential and Pro.

• Essential starts at $99/month, giving you the right to native integration, Katana API integration, 1 user, and 3 warehouses.
• The Pro plan which costs $299/month supports multicurrency, batch and expiry date tracking, barcode scanning, and unlimited warehouses. 

Luckily, you can try out either the Essential or Pro plan for free in 14 days with the trial option without having to enter any card information. Sounds amazing, right?

Core features

• Automatically sync orders from your Shopify store to Katana.
• Streamline inventory tracking for manufacturing.
• Expiry date and batch tracking to ensure real-time inventory control.
• Centralize production, scheduling, and resource management in one visual dashboard.
• Keep track of raw material and finished products to ensure no stockout.

Pros

• Easy to use with an intuitive dashboard.
• Suitable for businesses that manufacture goods themselves.
• Reliable real-time data.
• Fully integrated with Shopify POS and Shop Floor control app.

Cons

• The app focuses mainly on smart manufacturing and inventory management so its features are somewhat too basic compared to other apps on our list.

Final thoughts

In short, it’s definitely essential to have an inventory management app to support your business operation. Although Shopify does have some of the most basic features to help you manage your stock, it is nowhere near what you can expect from a third-party application. A stock control system will prevent you from running out of stock or overstocking.

Therefore, the key is to find the right Shopify inventory management app. The best one is not the most expensive one but the most suitable one for your business needs.